“Thanks,” he says.
Hiding and denying and being afraid is no way to treat love. Love demands bravery. No matter the occasion, love expects us to rise, and with that in mind I check my phone.
“Boys,” I say. “We have a party to attend.”
*
The party has spilled from Shelbie’s house to the street, where some neighbors are blasting music from a huge speaker in their garage. Lehna and Candace are sitting with their arms around each other on Shelbie’s stoop. Lehna smiles when she sees me. June and Uma are dancing along with so many others. I don’t know if the people around them are Shelbie’s friends, but I do know that on a day like today there is no such thing as a stranger.
“Let’s dance,” I say to the boys.
“I’ve never danced with a girl in a leotard and wings before,” Wyatt says.
“I bet you’ve never danced with a guy before, either,” Mark says, and Wyatt blushes, and Mark grabs his hand.
The warm sun. The people filling the streets. The bass so powerful it thrums through me. The people hawking Jell-O shots and bottles of water. The drag queens and drag kings. The trans men and trans women. The straight couples cheering us on. The topless girls, waving from apartments above us. The gay boys on fire escapes, shaking their asses. The bears, holding hands in matching wedding rings. The lesbian moms with toddlers on their shoulders. And those not as easily identified or defined. The bi, the genderqueer, the questioning. All of us with love in our hearts.
We are all a part of this.
My phone vibrates.
Walking through Dolores Park. Found Greer and Quinn! Meet us here?
“Dolores Park?” I call out, and Shelbie runs inside and returns with a picnic blanket. We push through the crowds together.
On Dolores Street, the line of motorcycles and scooters stretches for blocks, topped by women of all ages and colors, wearing spike heels and combat boots, lingerie, and leather, and in one case nothing at all. The sun is warm on my skin and the paint on my arms is still bright. I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror of a car and my cheeks still sparkle gold.
Violet, I think.
Her name isn’t a spell I’m trying to cast or a way to forget anymore. It’s a thrill that courses through me, a current of love, and then there she is, waving.
“You look incredible,” she says, and she touches my cheeks, and she touches my hair, and the neckline of the leotard, and the edges of the wings. She spins me around and then she wraps her arms around my neck and she’s kissing me here, under the hot sun, her mouth warm and soft, and I can’t get enough of her.
We kiss, and kiss, and kiss.
I will never get enough of her.
And when we stop kissing, I say, “I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me.”
“My parents agreed,” I say. “I sent an email to the admissions office. So it’s official: I’m free for another year.”
“Oh, Kate,” she says. “Let’s do something amazing.”
*
The motorcycles roar to life. The pigeons take flight. The crowd goes wild.
Quinn’s dressed in a bright pink bunny suit.
“It looks hot in there!” I shout over the revving engines.
“Say that again?” he yells back.
“I said, it looks hot in there!”
“That’s what I thought you said!”
And then, with a flourish, he unzips the suit and steps out of it in only a pink sparkly Speedo.
“Oh, God,” I say. “Have you been waiting all day to do that?”
“Yes,” he says, and starts dancing.
And the sun rises higher in the sky and then begins its descent. We take up three tables in a crowded Mexican restaurant and sit next to someone else every time someone yells, “Switch!” We carry our plates and silverware to new chairs and ignore the annoyance of our frenzied waiters.
I sit next to Violet and hold her hand.
I sit next to Wyatt and dab glitter on his cheekbones.
I sit next to Lehna and make dinner plans for after graduation.
I sit next to Greer and tell them I loved their poem.
I sit next to Mark and say, “Let’s know each other like this for a very long time.”
I sit next to Quinn, who plants a kiss on my mouth for old times’ sake.
I sit next to a kid I don’t know. “What’s your name?” I ask. “Sky,” she says.
I sit next to Violet again. She says, “We could drive across country. We could volunteer to build houses. We could go live on a farm. I’m still thinking.”