“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.”