Authors: David Levithan
“What would you have me do?” I spy the sign-up sheet next to his elbow. “Join the midnight underwear contest? Dance around on the bar?”
“Yes! That is
exactly
what I’d have you do!”
“So I can find a guy to hook up with?”
“Or
talk to
. Don’t look at me that way—we’re far from the only teenagers in this place. Mr. Right could be right here, right now.”
Can’t you see it’s you?
the part of me that should know better wants to ask. But that, too, is against the rules.
“Fine,” I say, and before Ryan can say another word I am reaching across the bar for the clipboard. I pull the ever-present pen from his pocket and write my name down.
Ryan laughs. “No way. There’s no way you’ll follow through on that.”
“Watch me,” I say—even though I know he’s right. I’m fine in the locker room, or with Ryan. But in public? In my underwear? That would seem about as likely as me going home with a girl.
Still, it’s one thing for me to have it in my head that I’m not going to do it and quite another for Ryan to have it in
his
head. Because the more he insists I’m going to flake out, the more I want to prove him wrong. There’s definitely a double standard here—there’s no way he would do it, either. But I’m the one who’s being dared.
We bicker along these lines for a few more minutes, and then it’s midnight and the DJ is telling all the underwear contestants to make their way to the bar. The bartender puts all the names in an upturned pink wig, then yells my name out first, followed by nine others. The man next to me immediately starts to take off his clothes, exposing a steel-armor chest and graph-paper abs. I think I may have seen him swimming in the Olympics, or maybe it’s his Speedo-shaped underwear that’s tricking me. The bartender says we’ll be starting in a minute.
“Now or never,” Ryan tells me. From the way he says it, I can tell his money’s on never.
I kick off my shoes. As Ryan watches, dumbstruck, I pull off my jeans, then remove my socks, because leaving my socks on would look ridiculous. I cannot give myself any time to think about what I’m doing. It feels strange to be standing barefoot in the middle of a packed club. The floor is sticky. I pull my shirt over my head.
I am in my underwear. Surrounded by strangers. I thought I’d be cold, but instead it’s like I’m feeling the heat of the club more fully. All these bodies clouding the air. And me, right at the center of it.
I don’t think I’d recognize myself, and that’s okay.
The bartender calls out my name. I hand my shirt to Ryan and jump onto the bar.
My heart is pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears.
There are loud cheers, and the DJ throws Rihanna’s “Umbrella” into the speakers. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. I am standing on a bar in my red-and-blue boxer briefs, afraid I’ll knock over people’s drinks. Obligingly, the patrons pull their glasses down, and before I know what I’m doing I’m … moving. I’m pretending I’m in my bedroom, dancing around in my underwear, because that is certainly something I do often enough. Just not with an audience. Not with people hooting and whistling. I am swiveling my hips and I am raising my hand in the air and I am singing along with the “-ella, -ella, -eh, -eh-.” Most of all I am looking at the expression on Ryan’s face, which is one of pure astonishment. I have never seen his smile so wide or so bright. I have never felt him so proud of me. He is whooping at the top of his lungs. I point at him and match his smile with my own. I dance with him, even though he’s down there and I’m up here. I let everybody see how much I love him and he doesn’t shy away from it, because for a moment he’s not thinking about that—he’s only thinking about me.
I take it all in. The world, from this vantage point, is crazybeautiful. I look around the crowd and see all these people enjoying themselves—having fun with me or making fun of me or imagining having fun with me. Pairs of guys and pairs of women. Young skateboarders and men who look like bank presidents on their day off. People from all over the Bay Area patchwork, many of them dancing along, some of them starting to throw money my way. Clark Kent’s in the crowd, looking me over. When I see him, I swear he winks.
I feel my gaze pulling itself back to Ryan. I feel myself coming back to him. But along the way, someone else catches my eye. Before I can return to Ryan—while I’m still up there in my underwear, thinking he’s the only person in this whole place who knows who I am—I see another face I know. It’s like the song stops for a second, and I’m thrown. Because, yes, it has to be her. Here, in this gay bar, watching me dance near naked over a carpet of dollar bills.
Katie Cleary.
The senior I sit next to in Calculus.
Kate
“Tell me about her again,” I say.
I change lanes on the top deck of the Bay Bridge so that we get the best view of the city lights, even though June and Uma are kissing in the backseat, oblivious to the scenery, and Lehna is busy scrolling through her phone for the next song we should listen to.
She laughs. “I don’t know if there’s anything left to tell.”
“It’s okay if I’ve heard it before.”
The first chords of “Divided” by Tegan and Sara start to play, and for a moment I remember what it felt like for Lehna and me to stand in the sea of girl-loving girls at their concert when we were in eighth grade, how I felt something deep in the core of my heart and my stomach that told me
yes
.
“She got home on Tuesday,” Lehna says. “And she was pretty jet-lagged, but she told me she was used to traveling, not getting much sleep, keeping weird hours in general. When I talked to her on the phone she was sewing sequins onto a scarf. She says she likes to sparkle at Pride.”
“Do I look too plain tonight? I am the opposite of sparkling.”
I began worrying about what to wear several weeks ago, but that didn’t make me any closer to a solution by the time today got here. I ended up choosing what I hoped would look a little bohemian, effortless but still put together. A soft, light chambray button-up tucked into darker jeans. A brown belt with a turquoise buckle. High-heeled boots. Long, diamond-shaped bronze earrings and bright red lipstick. I put my hair into a loose side braid that falls over my shoulder. In between moments of almost-paralyzing self-doubt, I looked in the mirror and thought, for about half a second, that I looked like the kind of person I might like to know if I didn’t know myself already.
“You look great!” June calls from the backseat.
“I would totally fall in love with you,” Uma says.
Lehna says, “Yeah. You look European, which Violet will appreciate. And after the performers she’s been hanging out with, you’ll probably seem refreshingly normal.”
That word—
normal
—it fills me with panic.
“Make sure to remember to reapply your lipstick. It brings out the green in your eyes.”
I nod. I will. I turn up the music and try to calm myself down. Out the window, the lights of the city spread before us, full of so much promise. People in the cars around us are smiling or nodding their heads to music. We are all on our way to the same party even if it’s taking place in hundreds of different bars and living rooms. We are going out to celebrate ourselves and one another. To fall in love or to remind ourselves of all the people we’ve loved in the past. For me that would be a very short list. Which is part of why tonight scares me so much.
Lehna and I have been friends since we were six, so I’ve known about her cousin Violet for years. The daughter of Lehna’s photojournalist aunt, Violet has never lived in one place for more than a year, has never attended a traditional school, and has been traveling across Europe for the past twenty months, studying with trapeze artists while her mother documents circus life. Violet’s always been a source of fascination. Even more so when, last year, she wrote to Lehna from Prague and told her she’d fallen in love with a girl. Violet described it in a way that no one living a normal life in a California suburb could explain it. She used words like
passionate
and phrases like
love affair
. The girl was from the Swiss Alps and her name was Mathilde and it began and ended over the span of two weeks, from the moment the circus got to town to the moment it packed up and left.
And then, a couple months later, Violet wrote again to say that she was going to move back to San Francisco. Her mother was continuing the circus project, but Violet was turning eighteen and wanted to make her own life.
I want to know how it feels to stay in one place for a little while,
she wrote.
So I’m coming home, even though I don’t even remember what the seasons feel like there.
When Lehna exclaimed late one night that she should set Violet and me up, I pretended that the thought hadn’t occurred to me, when really it was all I’d been thinking about for months.
“Remember to call me Kate in front of her,” I say.
“Got it. Kate-not-Katie.”
“Thanks,” I say, even though I can tell by her smirk and the tone of her voice that she’s annoyed.
I exit onto Duboce. I’ve driven us to this house a few times. It’s a classic San Francisco Victorian with small rooms and high ceilings. Lehna’s friend Shelbie lives there along with a big chocolate Lab and parents who never seem to be home. Violet knows her, too. Shelbie’s mom and Lehna’s mom and aunt go way back, I guess. I don’t totally understand the connection, but I am willing to accept it because it’s taking me a step closer to finally meeting Violet.
Now that we are actually in the city, my dad’s old Jeep taking us closer and closer to where we’re going, the streets full of celebrating people, the night buzzing all around us, I feel my hands start to shake.
I know that it’s just a first meeting. I know that Violet has already heard about me and that she wants to meet me, too. I know that it shouldn’t be the end of the world if it doesn’t work out between us. But the embarrassing truth is that I have far too much at stake to be casual about this.
When I’m sitting through History, listening to my teacher drone on about dates and the names of battles, I think about Violet. At night, as I do the dinner dishes listening to love songs through oversize headphones, I think about Violet. I think about her when I wake up in the morning and when I’m mixing oil paints and when I’m getting books out of my locker. And when I begin to worry that I chose the wrong college, or that my future roommate will hate me, or that I’m going to grow up and forget about the things I once loved—cobalt blue, this certain hill behind my high school, searching for old slides at flea markets, the song “Divided”—I think about Violet. She’s swinging from a trapeze, mending colorful costumes, driving in a caravan across Europe while cracking jokes with fire-breathers and tightrope walkers—then coming home to San Francisco and falling in love with me.
“There’s something I should mention,” Lehna says as we make our way down Guerrero Street. “I may have told her you had a solo show coming up at a gallery in the city.”
“What?”
“We were talking about how good of a painter you are, and then I just got carried away for a second.”
“But I don’t even
know
any galleries in the city,” I say.
“We’ll look up a couple places when we get to Shelbie’s house, okay? Once Violet gets to know you she won’t care about it anymore. For now it makes you seem sophisticated and accomplished. Here, park in the driveway. Shelbie said it was fine.”
I pull into the narrow space and park at an incline that seems perilous.
“Lovebirds!” Lehna calls into the backseat. “It’s time to get out of the car!”
I hear Uma murmur something and June giggle, and then I guess some weird time-lapse thing happens, because the three of them are outside of the car and I am still here, clutching the steering wheel.
Lehna knocks on the window.
“Come on,
Kate
.”
I follow them inside to where Shelbie and her cool city-dwelling friends sprawl across the sofas and rugs, laughing and drinking and looking fabulous. All these kids, gay and straight and everything in between—they look at us and wave and say hello and I would like to stop and get to know some of them, but Lehna heads to the study, where the computer screen saver glows, shifting family snapshots, and says, “We have to look something up real quick. We’ll be right back.”
And then, even though I am right behind her, she says, “Let’s go,
Kate
.”
I’m about to ask why it’s so annoying to her; it’s my name, after all. And it’s not like I’ve decided that I want to be called something totally random. It’s just another form of Katherine, one I think might suit me better. But I don’t even need to ask her because I already know the answer. When you’re friends with someone for such a long time, it’s easy to feel like she belongs to you, like the version of the person you became friends with is the only real version. If she hated peas when she was a kid then she will always hate peas, and if she starts to eat them and declares them delicious, really she is deluding herself, masking her hatred of them, trying to pretend that she’s someone she’s not.
But the thing is, I never chose to be called Katie. As far as I know, that’s what my parents called me the moment I popped out and I never even thought of the other possibilities until recently, when I started to feel like something was a little bit off every time someone said my name. And as I stand here in this dim room while Lehna looks up the names and descriptions of San Francisco art galleries I can’t help thinking about how that applies to a lot of my friends, too. I didn’t choose to be friends with Lehna. Not
really
. I kind of just fell into it the way you fall into things when you’re a kid in a new school and the first person who pays attention to you feels like such a gift, such an overwhelming relief. You are not alone. You have a friend. And it’s only later—maybe even years later—that you stop and wonder,
Why this person? Why her?