Chapter Text
September
The way the sun leans into September, dangling gold across the treetops, takes the edge off the nerves that always jangle Breha at tryouts. She’s loved golden hour all her life; the memory of lying alone in the patch of a late, ripened sunbeam is a postage stamp of contentment in her mind. The light’s melting over all the freshmen on the field, mellow in the warm air. They’re all in the jewel tone jerseys of their high school colours, sapphire and gold and ruby and onyx, and their legs have all mostly healed over the summer, with a few delicate mauve scars on knees and some yellowing patches up and down calves. For now, they are clean and untested, just like the grass on the field, left to grow in the summery cycle of warm days and dewy nights. Breha thinks back to what July was like, forbidden foods and skinny dipping. Teaching someone else what the constellations were, getting lost together in the sky. She mindlessly puts her hair in a french braid like she does before every match, finishing just as Coach Holdo blows her whistle for everyone’s attention. She rises from the bench, picks up her crosse, then tugs at the shoulder of her dark green jersey in a tic that only comes out on the field.
Every girl on the grass is pretty to Breha, because Breha loves girls. She loves their curled-up eyelashes and their voices that fry like funnel cakes and their Nivea-softened thighs. She loves girls who dye their hair purple and wear home-made earrings that look like gummi bears, and girls with tooled-leather cuffs who fill out Dickies onesies with their undeniable hips. She watches them scrolling makeup tutorial TikToks or old Happy Gilmore gifs and grabs her little surge of fondness for them, and slips it into a jar like a captured firefly. These secret lights are hers alone.
For the passing and scoring tests, Coach pairs them up by opposing position, because she says she wants to “see their fire”. Breha plays Third Man, because the daughter of Harvard’s best-ever Lacrosse player has to be good at everything. Holdo puts her up against a Third Homer who is half as tall as she is, but surefooted and agile as a gymnast. She’s got a face that’s open and blooming like a peony, and she’s wearing a burgundy jersey, one from the public school downtown. Her cleats are grass-stained and the pink tape on her crosse is frayed. Her run around the tiny pylon before she spins and passes to Breha is clean, tidy and quick. Everything about her is like a glowing reactor core, boundless energy harnessed, but that power is so precise. Her pass falls right into Breha’s net like a messenger pigeon, like she barely had to think or react in order to catch it. This tiny dark-haired girl with pony-strong legs is the best Third Home player Breha has ever seen. She can’t imagine executing a pass like that, but when it’s her turn, her partner makes catching look just as easy; she moves her stick a few inches out of position and plucks it straight from the air.
“Yeah, Rose!” someone cheers from beyond the pylons, another burgundy jersey running toward the crowd, and Breha knows that voice.
It’s a driving-too-fast-down-a-three-AM-street voice. A voice that repeats “Cassiopeia” three times, like a poem, to make sure she’s getting it right. A voice that goes secret and sticky after a bucket of cherry limeade and seven shiver-inducing tongue-kisses at a picnic table. Before she can react, the voice says, “Oh my god! Bee!”, and then Breha’s idle summer and ambitious fall collide.
July
Niney has a key, so she lets herself in. Her black Docs tromp in on Breha’s mom’s handmade persian rug, all symmetrical pomegranates, and stop at the archway into the living room. Breha’s hanging upside-down on the green velvet settee because she’s beating Okami again and doing it right-way-up isn’t a challenge anymore. Niney glances at the window-sized tv, and when she looks at her friend, it’s full of pity, as if she’s staring into a carton of abandoned kittens.
“The dog game? Again?”
“She’s a sacred dog,” Breha says. Her foot bounces a bit on the back of the sofa. “She makes dead trees bloom and shit. You’d kill an air plant.”
“OK,” Niney says, because she and Breha love by fighting like sisters. “But what if, instead of sitting in your mom’s empty house pressing buttons like some Elon-Musk-loving loser, you came to the Chappell Roan dance party with me?”
Breha presses pause. She thinks about putting on her favourite Converse. About the smell of pineapple vape smoke on the street and Corona-lime breath at the coat check. About what it’s like to feel the base thump in her solar plexus and to move around other bodies, collapsing into bed exhausted from sweating and singing and smiling, instead of a screen-gifted headache.
“Yeah. OK.” She says, and Niney lets out a little grunt of surprised satisfaction, before drawing a quick little pentacle on her phone to unlock it.
“I can’t believe that worked,” She tells Breha as she types. “I’m telling Aimee she owes me twenty bucks.”
Aimee’s perched in the passenger seat of Niney’s car, carefully running her tinted lipgloss around her mouth, perfectly precise as always. Her perfectly moulded sweetheart minidress is riot-pink and the silky fall of her carroty hair makes Breha wish she’d spent more time smoothing mousse into her curls, but only for a moment. High school is over, she reminds herself. Don’t be a stupid baby. She knocks twice on the window and Aimee rolls it down.
“We’re taking an Uber, come wait with us on the porch.”
While they’re waiting for their white Nissan, the last light of the long day fades, and something small lopes along Mr. Lando’s lawn, minding its own business.
“Oh look, a raccoon,” Niney points out. Three more dusky shapes scurry to catch up. “It has babies! Awwww.” Her dark green painted lips smile and show her dimple. The family is swallowed by the hedge; Breha secretly hopes that dad left the grate unlocked on the compost bin. She likes the thought of little raccoon babies eating her leftover chicken strips and rock melon rinds.
The car pulls up right then; and for once, she manages to buckle up without elbowing Niney in the ribs.
The dance club is lit in pink and purple, and everybody in there except for Breha looks like a fairy princess. Even Niney, in her all black everything, black nails and black corset and blackest black eye makeup, seems like a creature of myth.The glam is so beautiful, but it’s not for her; she’s like a centaur among them, all muscles and broad shoulders, a barely tamed mane on her head and flat rubber-soled shoes at the end of tall, powerful legs. As always, it’s enough just to look at them all; glittery faces and hair that trails on and on, some arms piled with friendship bracelets and others swirled with henna. Even the handful of non-femme people look like royalty; one person has put beads and braids in their beard like a Viking, another is draped in a long vest of gold brocade and has wrapped a garland of fake leaves around their otherwise bald head. They’ve been here for almost an hour, and nobody has left the dance floor. Everyone is moving and some people are touching, circular groups of people who came together are jumping, swaying, weaving their arms in the air. Breha loves a moment like this, where the outside world doesn’t matter, and she knows exactly where her body needs to go. It’s like being on the field, except here, all she has to do in order to belong, is just be. This, Breha thinks, surrounded by beauty and utterly accepted, is what heaven will be like. All I have to do is get there.
She’s coming out of the bathroom, and there’s a beautiful trans girl waiting for the ATM. She’s wearing a silvery sequinned onesie and she smells like jasmine. Three seventeen-dollar cocktails and bouncing to the extended mix of Pink Pony Club have made Breha brave, so she gently says, “Excuse me,”
“Hi,” The girl says. Her earrings are dangly pearls that match the colour of her teeth. Her eyes are an alert and chilly blue. She’s gorgeous.
“Do you mind if I ask you, are you single?”
“No, I have a boyfriend,” the girl replies, sweet like a cupcake.
From the back door next to the bathrooms, Breha hears a scream.
She expects to see something that will burn her adrenaline, a knife or two people punching each other. Instead, it’s a young woman and her phone. She’s wearing a headband that has bobble-stars on two springs; they’re raining gold glitter on her as they swing. She’s dancing around the questionable puddles in a pair of green Converse that are just like Breha’s black ones. The rest of her outfit is a pair of denim cutoffs that make her look like a pinup from the back, a white crop tee with a sunflower embroidered on the pocket, and gold glitter smeared high on her cheeks and across her nose. Her Clydesdale-brown hair is half up, half down. She screams again, and now that Breha is looking at her, she can see the shape of her smile.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“Oh - oh my god;” The stars stop bobbling as the woman pulls herself straight, grounded, and clutches her phone to her heart. “I’m so sorry if my screaming alarmed you. I just - I just got great news!” The hand with her phone in it gives a little shake.
Her smile and the glitter and her breezy joy blow over Breha, and she feels light too. Like she could skip a circle around an alley puddle. Like this is a place she could belong, even though there are no purple lights here, no dancing, and no fading into a crowd.
“Do you feel like sharing your good news with a stranger?” she asks.
“Over a beer? If you’re buying,” The star-sprite says, and when they’re inside and she grabs Breha’s hand so they can stay close in the dancefloor-crush on the way to the bar, it feels inevitable, like a meteorite falling to Earth.
Some butch in a blue velvet blazer has bought a table for Aimee, and Niney is vaping with two Swifties and the Viking just outside the door (“It’s grape-flavoured. We’re graping”, she says, which nudges Breha’s eyes into rolling), so Breha’s free to take Star-Sprite around the corner to the all-night pizza place.
“I always need half a pound of pepperoni after two beers, don’t you?” she asked Breha five minutes ago, in the aquarium glow of the blue LEDs behind the bar.
“Engineering student, just got a full ride to Uni, named Rey-with-an-e, hungry for pepperoni.” Breha counted on her fingers. “What else should I know about you?”
“Stick around for longer than five minutes,” Rey tells her while they hit the sidewalk and sniff the grape in the air, “And maybe you’ll find out.”
It’s a joke-that’s-not-a-joke, and the bittersweetness sparks, blooms, then fades fast like a firework. Breha has more than five minutes for this creature, whose touch is easy as stepping into a creek, who smells like caramel, warm and sweet. She has a whole summer in front of her. They cross the neon-pink threshold of Chewy’s Pizza Palace, and then the frosted-tips stoner behind the counter is floating up to the cash, and Breha says “One medium pepperoni, please.” She fishes in her back pocket for her wallet and catches a glimpse of Rey in the mirror along the back wall. She’s looking out at the street as if she’s waiting for someone to walk by, and the expression looks like something she wears every day, like a broken-in moto jacket.
“Actually, you know what CJ,” Breha pipes up. “Make that extra pepperoni. And a Fanta.”
When she sits down in the fake wood booth, Rey puts the bobble-star headband on Breha.
“What’s this for?” she laughs.
“I’ve had glitter raining on me all night from these things,” Rey explains. “Now, it’s your turn to shine.”
The mirror reflects her, tall and black-haired, a serious pout above a set chin, an aquiline nose and a somber brow. Then, two stars dancing, just a little.
“Yeah, yeah ok.” Breha says. She gazes at Rey. “Yeah, it can be my turn now.”
“Great,” Rey reaches up and flicks one star. Gold glitter flutters over Breha, and then over Rey too, because they’re kissing, and catching it on their cheeks and their lashes.
Breha is good at kissing, she does it like a siren drowns a sailor. She holds on, pulls her partner into the whirlpool, and they swirl together until it’s time to crawl ashore, panting and wet. Kissing with Rey is like embracing another siren; it feels like it could rush on and on, until they find themselves at the bottom of the reef.
When they pull apart, Breha has to gulp at the air. She whispers “Wow,” but the word is lost.
“Hey, no doing it in front of the pizza, ok? This is a g-rated pizza,” CJ says in his fuzzy, easygoing way. The food on their table looks like a slab of pepperoni loosely held together with some cheese and sauce. Rey gazes at it as if it’s about to propose marriage. She grasps the Fanta and snatches it close to herself, eagerly popping the tab.
“You said you’ve lived here all your life,” Rey says, after a slice of pizza and three gulps of her drink. “Is it true that in the summertime, there’s a meteor shower?”
“The Perseids, yeah,” Breha says. The pepperoni is salty, chewy and hot. “In August.”
“When August comes, will you show me?”
Breha barely wants to think about August, because that’s too close to the end of the summer. She’ll think of all the days in between, and maybe the Perseids will be like shooting stars, granting wishes. Bringing change.