“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.