You Know Me Well(63)

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.”

We join yet another street dance party. We are swept into a stranger’s living room to judge a round of drunken karaoke. We stand in line at Bi-Rite for ice cream and end up back at the park with sticky hands, trying to predict who we’ll all be in five years.

Shelbie says we can stay over at her place tonight, be among the first to show up for the parade tomorrow. Everyone texts their parents—except Greer, who calls the shelter—and all the parents and Greer’s guardian say yes. Tomorrow we will line up along Market Street, shoulder to shoulder. The Dykes on Bikes will be back to kick everything off, and the mayor will be there, and all of the gay cops and firefighters. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will be in full drag, lip-synching to some Katy Perry song. There will be floats and classic cars, and chants and songs and tears. There will be old people who fought hard for what we all have now. There will be babies who will only know a country where everyone can marry. There will be signs reminding us of how far we still have to go. We’ll watch everyone go by, and our hearts will swell with the sight of it.

But not yet.

It’s late now, and we’re all walking to Walgreens for toothbrushes and a couple extra pillows. It’s late, but we’re still wide awake, and each time Violet touches me I’m filled with wonder, because soon we’ll be finding a quiet patch of floor in Shelbie’s living room to share all night.

“Okay, three more,” she says. “We could go to the Grand Canyon. We could teach ourselves to cook. We could learn a dying language and keep it alive.”

“How will we choose?”

“We’ll just pick something,” she says. “It doesn’t even matter what.”

We’ve gotten a few steps ahead of the group. I slow down, turn to see them. We’re on our own now, on an empty street, but the sounds of celebration echo through the night. And here we are. Lehna and Candace and Shelbie, June and Uma, Mark and Quinn and Wyatt and Sky and Greer, and Violet, and me. I don’t know if we’ll all ever be together like this again. I don’t know if Sky and Wyatt and Greer will become my friends for life or only for these two short days. I don’t know if Lehna and I will end up sitting on a porch together, bickering in our old age, or if this week will have been the beginning of a slow fade from each other’s lives. I don’t know if Violet and I will make it … but I hope so, I hope so. They’ve all caught up now, at the corner of this street, with the glow of the drugstore only a block in the distance. And we step off the curb, all of us together, as if to say, Here we come—through hard days and good ones, through despair and through exhilaration, in love and out of love, for just now or for forever. Here we come. It’s our parade.