Kate
Making my way toward Lehna at lunch, I feel the closest I’ve ever felt to being one of those lonely freshmen in the first days of school. The unfortunate boys and girls whose families have uprooted them just in time for high school, or the quirky, formerly homeschooled kids, or the kids who live in nearby, more dangerous towns and have found their way, through lottery luck or parental cunning, to our suburban haven of a school.
Lehna and I use to say blessings for them. Let purple backpack kid with the scarf find his people. Pigtailed girl with brand-new white Converse, head north to the circle of girls with their Sharpies out and make those shoes your own.
Eventually, unless they were very unlucky, each of them would find somewhere to belong, but for those first self-conscious, wandering days when they nibbled their sandwiches with their heads down, Lehna and I agonized on their behalf. We had arrived at school hand in hand, both of us newly out to the world with a summer’s worth of scavenged rainbow paraphernalia gracing our backpacks. Rainbow friendship bracelets, Legalize Gay T-shirts, the paper bag covers for our textbooks emblazoned with all the Tegan and Sara songs we knew by heart, which was every one of them.
We were beacons to the other queer kids. We got the hard part over with in eighth grade. No awkward boys asking us to Homecoming, thankyouverymuch. June and Uma, then strangers to us and each other, found us by the rainbow glow of our backpacks. A boy named Hank found us, too, and for six months he filled our lives with comic books and Frank Ocean. And then he started dating Quinn and his parents found out, and he began his slow fade from our school and, eventually, from our lives altogether.
We should have known it already—the world was trying to tell us in so many ways—but Hank is the one who taught us that life wasn’t so easy for all of us. Hank is the one who told Lehna and me that we were lucky. Hank is the one who made luck a sometimes complicated thing.
And it’s Hank I’m thinking about now, as I step down to where my friends are lounging, their backs to me, on the senior deck. They’re looking out at the rest of the school from this hard-won place of seniority. I set my backpack down next to Lehna. I get out my phone and pull up Frank Ocean’s “Super Rich Kids.” I turn the volume up as loud as it’ll go and set it on the railing in front of us.
We bob our heads and listen.
When it’s over, Uma says, “He should be here with us.”
June says, “I went on a rampage once, trying to find him online. I searched everywhere. I even thought of all the fake names he might use.”
“I did that once, too,” Uma says.
“Kate and I did, too,” Lehna says. “And I thought I saw him once, on Telegraph. I called his name, but he didn’t look up.”
“We were so young when we were friends.” It’s the kind of proclamation adults would roll their eyes over, but it’s true. “We were fourteen. His voice hadn’t even changed. He was skinny like a little kid. I don’t know if I’d even recognize him now.”
“Hank,” June says. “We are sending you our love, wherever you are.”
We sit in silence for a little while, and then I say, “I have something to tell you guys.”
“Let me guess. You and Mark are getting married.”
“Come on, Lehna,” June says, and we all turn to her, surprised. “What? Things feel normal for the first time in a week. Let’s just try to stay positive, okay?”
“Well, okay,” Lehna says. “Sorry, everyone. Kate, go ahead.”
“I’m going to take a gap year.”
“Seriously?” Uma says. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“But where did this come from?” June asks. “You never even mentioned it. Like, not even as an idea.”
“I know,” I say. “It just kind of came to me.”
“But aren’t you excited about college?” Uma asks.
“Only in a distant-future kind of way.” I feel Lehna looking at me, not critically, but like she’s really listening. I see my opening. I take it: “Distant, like the way I think of my wedding day with Mark.”
“Right,” Lehna says. “You in your white veil, him in his black tux.”
“I know it will happen, but I have to sow my oats first.”
“Work your way through the rest of the baseball players.”
“Only the Varsity team.”
“All those muscles. Those skintight pants, that sexy bulge—”
“Excuse me, but this is actually pretty serious,” June says.
“Is it?” I ask. “I don’t know.”
“Um, yeah. We’re talking about your future. We all worked hard to get into our colleges.”
“And I’m still going to go to college. It’s just…” I wrack my brain for a good reason to give them, and then I give up and just say what’s true. “I want to let things be messy. I want to be free, but only as free as feels right in the moment. And,” I say, “I want to be with Violet.”
“Oh,” June breathes.
“Oh,” Uma echoes.
“Love,” they say.
“Maybe,” I say, because it’s more prudent than yes, because it’s been less than a week since our first kiss, fewer than twenty-four hours since I asked her to trust me. I say maybe because when you’re a teenager there’s this rule: You aren’t supposed to make decisions based on love. You are supposed to tell your heart that it’s an immature and fickle thing. You’re supposed to remind yourself of Romeo and Juliet and how badly it turned out for them.
Your poor teenage heart. It isn’t equipped for decisions like this.
Except maybe. Maybe. It is.
* * *
I still need to talk to Lehna.
Lunch ends and we head to our lockers together.
“What are you doing after school?” I ask her.
“Going over to Shelbie’s. Candace is going to be there, so we’re all going to grab some dinner.”
“Want to get coffee first? I’m heading over there, too.”
“To see Violet?”
“Yeah, and I have to stop by AntlerThorn. I got a message from Brad. Something about the auction.”
“Oh yeah. Congrats on that, by the way.”
“On what?”
“Your painting.”
“What about it?”
“The bidding had just ended when we left the show that night. Yours sold for a lot.”
“Really?”
She laughs, amazed that I don’t know this already.
“Yeah. Like, thousands. I was too pissed for it to totally register, but I know it raised more money than any of the others. Anyway,” she says. “Yeah. I can do coffee.”
* * *
It’s four hours later, and we’re across from each other at a café table in the Mission, identical foam ferns gracing the tops of our cappuccinos. I see the way they match and I just say it.
“Twins.”
She shrugs.
“It was a great poem. Everyone thought so,” I say.
I think about it now, all the ways we had been twin-like, with our identical taste in books and music, our simultaneous realizations that we liked girls, the way we never even entertained the thought of us fooling around because sisters just don’t do that. We even came out together, gathering both pairs of parents in Lehna’s living room as though we were all one family.
“We’re lesbians,” we said in unison, our sweaty, fourteen-year-old hands clasped.
“Are you a couple?” my dad asked.
We turned to each other, surprise at the suggestion momentarily wiping out our nervousness, and cracked up laughing.
I’m crying now. I didn’t see it coming, but here are tears down my cheeks, and then Lehna is crying, too. This café is full of the young and queer and beautiful. Everyone’s slightly older than we are; everyone has lived through something like this already. But still. I know that I’ve ruined something between us. I know that I stopped feeling like Lehna’s twin a long time ago, and it’s a terrible thing to be the one who walks away.
But it’s Lehna who says, “Look. I need to apologize.”
“What for?”
“All that bullshit with Violet. Like telling you to reapply your lipstick, and saying you looked normal, and making you come up with a fake gallery show as if who you are isn’t good enough.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. It’s just this feeling I got … like you didn’t have fun with me anymore. Like I suddenly wasn’t interesting enough. And I didn’t like feeling that way.”
“I don’t really know what happened to me,” I say.
“You just changed. You went from Katie to Kate. And I don’t really think you wanted to take anyone with you.” She shakes her head. “It sucks to be left behind.”
“I felt so lost,” I say.
“And then, what? Mark helped you find yourself?”
“I’m allowed to make other friends.”
“Of course you are. And you’re allowed to switch them out for me like I was just a stand-in for the real thing the whole time. You’re allowed to replace me, but I’m allowed to be angry about it.”
“I wasn’t trying to replace you,” I say, but even as I get the words out I’m wondering if it’s true.
But now—as Lehna wipes tears off her face—in this moment it’s what’s true. The thought of losing her forever is impossible.
“It’s fine if you make new friends,” she says. “We’re both going to make new friends. For the first time in our lives we aren’t going to live near each other. We aren’t even going to live in the same state. I just don’t understand why it had to happen now. This is the last week of high school, Kate. These are our last days together. They aren’t supposed to be like this.”
I nod.
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
We stare into our cups. Lehna takes a sip, and I do, too.
“People probably think we’re breaking up or something,” Lehna says.
I smile, wipe the tears off my face, and look around, but I don’t catch anyone paying attention.
“Seems like things are good with Violet,” she says.
Even in the midst of all of this, happiness surges up from some deep place within me.
“Yeah,” I say.
“I’m glad. You guys are gonna be great together.”
“And with Candace?”
She breaks into a slow grin. I recognize her feeling.
* * *
Brad waves to me as I step inside the gallery.
“Hey,” he says.
I brace myself for his verbal onslaught, but nothing follows.
“Hey?” I say. “That’s all?”
“Long day. Audra left early. Sometimes a boy’s gotta take a break.”
“A break from what?”
“From what everyone expects of me,” he says. “Come on back.”
He leads me through the gallery and up a short flight of stairs, his gait less buoyant than usual. Even his hair is more subdued.
“Welcome to my office,” he says.
It’s a small space with concrete walls, metal file cabinets, and a fluorescent light.
“Cozy.”
“It’s a fucking cell. I think it’s Audra’s idea of a joke.”
“She’s a real sweetheart.”
He snorts.
“I just need you to sign this, saying you’re giving the proceeds of your painting to the Angel Project.”
He hands me a contract.
“Sure,” I say.
“We raised over twenty grand for them.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Your painting accounted for almost a third of that.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Total bidding war.”
My hand trembles as I sign my name. I thought Violet was going to be my only collector.
“Garrison’s picking it up today. I told him you would be dropping in around now. Mind waiting a few minutes?”
“Garrison bought it? I can wait.”
We head back into the sunny gallery, and only then do I see my painting. It’s hanging on a wall in a prime spot. I see my others, too. I want to throw a sheet over them to spare me my embarrassment. But this one is different. I can see that.
Brad stands beside me and looks.
“I’m going to miss this piece,” he says.
I turn to him. His face is pure sincerity.
“That’s the best compliment you’ve given me.”
“Is it?”
“Brad. You called my paintings quaint.”
“Not this one,” he says.
The door swings open, and in rushes the city noise, and then a tall, handsome man.
“Well, look,” I say. “It’s the manufacturer of my fifteen minutes of fame.”
“That fame is not going to be so fleeting,” Garrison says. “I swung by the night of the show just to say hello. I didn’t find you here, but I did find this painting. I couldn’t stop looking at it.”
“Thank you,” I say. It comes out a whisper—I mean it so much.
“What for?” Brad asks. “He’s getting a painting he wants and you’re not getting a dime from the sale.”
But it isn’t about the money. It’s about what I know is true. Because I’m looking at this bright red storm of color on a canvas, at all my delicate lines and passionate brushstrokes. I’m looking at something so urgent and true, so far beyond what I thought I was capable of making.
I’m looking at what happens when I let go and trust myself, and the vision of it thrills me.
* * *
The cashier at the de Young ticket booth tells me she can’t sell me a ticket this near to closing.
“You only have fifteen minutes,” she says.
“That’s okay,” I tell her. “It’s worth it.”
This is where Violet told me she’d be. She offered to meet me outside when she was finished, but I can’t wait another fifteen minutes. I need to see her now.
“There’s the observation tower,” the woman says. “It’s free and open to the public. You still have time to go there. But there’s no food allowed.”
“Oh, this?” I say, holding up the artichoke I bought on my way over. “It isn’t actually food. At least, not in this context. It’s a flower.”
“Put the flower in your backpack, please.”
* * *
I text Violet to meet me in the tower and find my way to the elevator.
She’s looking out over North Beach when I find her. So many people are up here, taking in the panorama of the city through the glass walls, but there are things I need to say that can’t wait. So much is clear to me now.
I touch her shoulder. She turns to face me.
“Hey there,” she says.
“The Exploratorium yesterday. The de Young today. Is this a museum tour?”
“It’s just a habit, I guess. It’s always easy to find the museums, and that way you’re guaranteed something good to look at.”
I smile.
“But somehow I don’t think you’re here to discuss my habits,” she says. “You look nervous. What’s wrong?”
A chime sounds, and then a recorded voice tells us that the museum will be closing in ten minutes. So I rush in and say, “I think I never really wanted to meet you. That’s why I ran away from Shelbie’s party.”
Hurt flashes across her face, but I keep going.
“The idea of you kept saving me, over and over. Every time I felt worried, all I had to do was think of your name and I would be calm again. All of my paintings were about you, but they were also about the idea of another world, another life, one that might feel better than the one I’d been inhabiting. You were my escape. I needed you to keep being an idea to me.”
She shrugs, which is not what I’m after. I have to push through this part, though, to get to what I really want to say.
“All those stories Lehna told me about you. I survived on them. I was destined to be disappointed and then what would save me?”
She looks away, but I take her hand.
“Wait,” I say. “This time I’m not finished. Then something happened: I met you. It didn’t matter how much I managed to mess things up in order to prolong the dream of you—you showed up anyway. And you were—you are—better than the dream. And I’m realizing now that your job isn’t to save me, and I’m okay with that. All I need for you is to be in my life, and I’ll figure out the rest of it.”
“Be in your life?” she says. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“More than be in my life,” I say. “Much more than be in my life. I mean I want to be your girlfriend. I want to see you every day. I want to wake up to texts from you that say good morning and I want to kiss you whenever I want to. I want to kiss you right now.”
She laughs.
“You really know how to worry a girl,” she says. “I mean, a little warning next time would be good. Something like, ‘I’m going to say a bunch of things that sound like rejection, but in the end I’ll turn it all around and say something good.’”
“I was just being honest!” I say. “The opposite of elusive!”
“Right,” she says. “Good. I very much prefer honesty.”
“I almost forgot!” I reach into my backpack and pull out the artichoke. She looks confused for a moment, but then I see her remember. She takes it from my hands.
“So can we kiss now?” I ask.
“Yes.”
It’s entirely different than it was on the street. Her mouth is still soft, but just as I relax into the kiss she bites my lower lip. I yelp in surprise, but I don’t pull away. I can feel her smile. The bite is a warning. It’s a Don’t think I’ve forgotten, a Don’t you dare pull anything like that again. And now her hand is on my neck, and she’s pulling me even closer, and ohmygod we need to get out of here. But even though I know this is taking PDA one step too far, I can’t stop kissing her. So we become the exhibit of us. One more spectacle in a museum packed with things to see. We breathe each other in. We tune the world out. Our kiss builds walls around us, until—
“Ah-hem!”
An elderly white-haired docent is standing a few feet from us, looking more amused than stern.
“Museum’s closing,” he says.
“I’m sorry!” I say, but the joy in my voice betrays how immensely far from sorry I am.
Violet takes my hand. She grins at the man.
“My girlfriend and I got carried away,” she says, and he laughs, and we cross the tower to the elevator, and before the doors slide shut we’re in each other’s arms again.