And then the mist turns to drizzle. Great, so much for my perfect hair, but at least the hat will cover up the top, which looks terrible when it’s frizzy. Then the drizzle turns to rain. Not, like, a deluge, but undeniable water from the sky. The women shriek and seem to be enjoying it, Erebuni included. I wonder if it’s good luck for it to rain on the solstice. I’m cringing at what my hair is going to look like, how it’s going to ruin my whole look. Then Erebuni will see I’m just that dorky girl from middle school, and that’ll be the end of us. My body shrinks into itself.
“This is incredible,” Erebuni shouts, because over the music and the cheers it’s harder to hear now.
She raises an eyebrow at me and my non-dancing body, and I can’t help but tell her. “I’m not a huge fan of rain.”
She looks up so the rain patters right across her face. Whatabout her mascara? I could never. She says, “Why not? It’s clean. This is the purification we’ve been waiting for.”
A wind gusts so hard my beret flies off. God. All I need right now. I am chasing after it, sand swooshing up so high some of it gets in my eyes. And as I’m blinking furiously, trying to get that grinding sand out from under my eyelids, I close in on the hat, but a nearby seagull casually hops over, snatches my beret in its beak, and flies off. Mother-effing demon birds! I make some type of guttural noise of anger.
“Nar,” Erebuni shouts behind me. “Did that just happen? I wish I had my camera out. I could have become as internet-famous as you.”
The rain is pouring down, and my hair is slimy against my face, and I can feel the drops rolling down from my scalp, and I hate it, I hate it. I’m transforming into her again, my seventh-grade self with frizzy hair who’s totally unsure of herself. I haven’t changed one bit. Before I know it, I give a huge sniff and wipe my face. Erebuni approaches me, her eyes huge with concern. “Are you okay? Did you love that hat? I’m sorry I was insensitive about it.”
She wraps me in a hug, and she is so warm, though she’s wet, too, but instead of forgetting how upset I am, I at once feel her comfort because she’s so kind about it. Still, I can’t help but think what a catastrophe this is. I wanted my first witch get-together to be perfect. I can’t handle a little rain; I turn straight into a baby. She’s dumping me tonight, I know it. I sob a little more.
Through tears I manage, “That’s not it. It’s not the hat.”
“What is it, then?” She gently pushes some hair out of my eyes. Her voice is soft.
I am aware I sound like a petulant child, and I’m trying to reinit in a little, but I say, “I know this is stupid, but my hair is all messed up. I never wear it natural. I haven’t even seen it natural for years. I always blow-dry it immediately.”
“Oh, Nar.” She squeezes me. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I bet your natural hair is gorgeous, and I’m glad I get to see it.”
I remember what Richard said that one time I wore it curly to work: that it was unprofessional, untamed. “It’s not. It’s wild. It makes me look like a lion.”
She cocks her head. “And that’s bad? Sounds inspiring to me. I want to be a lion.” Despite myself, I laugh. She appears so earnest. She touches her curls, which are also sticky-slick with rain. “My hair’s curly, too. I’ve learned it’s all about the cut and how you feel in it. Trust me. I know it’s easier with straight hair, and that people call it professional, but I’m sorry, that’s just bullshit.”
I realize I’ve never heard her swear before, and it yanks me out of this doom hole I fell into.
“Listen, you can be upset right now. Mourn it for a second.”
My crying earlier seems to have mostly cleared out my sadness, so I joke, “My blowout. RIP.”
“Excellent.” She brings her face close to mine. “Let’s see Nar the lion.”
We rejoin the group just as the rain returns to a light drizzle. It’s already happened; my hair is already not what I imagined, and Erebuni truly doesn’t care. This is not eighth grade when I first got my hair straightened and everyone—including my parents—told me how amazing I looked and that I should do it all the time. This is me, as I am now, and this woman I am super into, and we’re on the beach together. Also, didn’t I say I don’t want to be Marissa anymore? Huh, the pagan gods listened. I’m dancing on a rainy beach with a coven of witches, with my hair about asunflattering as it can be. It’s been only a week and a half since Trevor left, and my life has turned upside down, but in a curious, inviting way. Wonderland.
A new song starts with a dirty buzz of bass that zips through my skin. I throw my hands out to the sides, lift my face to the sky, and sway, sway, sway to the rhythm.
16
Warm a frozen serpent, and it will sting you first.
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—Armenian Proverb
I’m late, duh,but that’s because I made the harrowing journey from the Peninsula to the East Bay during rush hour. I know Southern California hoards all the infamy for its traffic, but they don’t have bridges. Nine-mile-long bridges where you can be stuck. With no exit. A terrifying prospect if you’ve been chugging water all day without a bathroom.
It’s the Wednesday night after the bonfire, and now I’m jogging along UC Berkeley’s campus, approaching the building where Erebuni’s genocide lecture is taking place. I had to stop and look at a map at one point because college campuses are the most confusing places in the world. I’ve had to do, like, ten news stories at Stanford, and I still don’t understand where anything is or how you can get around that place; every building is made up of the exact same tan brick, every outlying street huge and winding, popping you onto an unknown corner.
I parked off campus, and while walking through a tunnel ofshops to get to Telegraph Avenue, I passed a dim sum place that advertised sixty-cent bao. I was super tempted to stop and get some but was already way too late, so now I have only the memory of hypothetical sticky buns in my head.
Berkeley’s actual campus is very different from Telegraph’s head shops and white-kids-with-dreads vibe. It feels highly academic, and since it’s a university, good job. As I’m on the cobblestone steps I can’t help but wonder: Had I gotten into Berkeley, would I be different now? I mean, of course I would be, but how fundamentally? Would I have actually gone to their queer alliance club and become a member? Would that have bolstered me to come out, to be comfortable with that part of myself? Would I have actually dated women?
The campus is mostly quiet at six p.m., but a group of blond girls wearing sorority logos on their clothes pass me by, a couple of them linking arms, giggling to themselves. Hmm. Who am I kidding, I probably would have done exactly what I did at Davis. Walk up to the club meeting, peer inside, see that everyone looks much older and more confident in their gayness, and turn right around and go back to the dorms. But who knows.
I enter the building I’m targeting, Dwinelle Hall, and my footsteps echo across the empty lobby. I wind my way through the hallways, realizing I took the longest route possible, and finally find room seventy-six, a lecture hall that holds about fifty people. It’s about three-quarters of the way full, which is good for a lecture on a topic as thrilling to the masses as the genocide of a race no one cares about (William Saroyan’s words, not mine).
