“What?” Valérie demands. She’s still on her feet, watching me from across the room. “What is it?”
I shake my head. I can’t speak. She rushes over and grabs the letter for herself before shrieking.
“You got in!” She pulls me into a hug. “You got in! You did it!”
“I did it!” I repeat, even as I start sobbing against her. “Me. I did it. I really did it.”
* * *
I godown to the Old Port by myself that evening. It still makes me feel itchy and off to go anywhere by myself, especially at night, but I’ve been giving myself little challenges to feel more okay doing things on my own. I don’t go anywhere that isn’t safe, but I do push myself to try things I never would have done before without dragging friends along.
I take myself out on coffee dates or go poke around in the boutiques on Boulevard Saint-Laurent, and I fight the need to fill the silence. I let the silence fill me up instead. I listen to my thoughts instead of drowning them out with whatever’s around me.
I got the idea from my psychologist. I still don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do or how I’m supposed to feel when I go see her. I always sit on my hands so I won’t start picking things up off her desk, and I get so nervous I start talking about my hair or the weather for twenty minutes. Sometimes I don’t even know if it’s making me any better, but she told me that’s normal, and I’m trusting that.
I’m trusting myself.
I walk by the bench where the little girl called me a princess. I hope she remembers the most important thing I said to her: that sometimes my hair makes mefeellike a princess.
It was her big, chubby-cheeked smile that made me start thinking about applying to Cheveluxe. I looked at her, at the moment of total joy just a bright splash of pink can bring, and I thought about all the other people whose eyes have lit up when I’ve told them it’s time to look in the mirror and see their new hair. That’s exactly what happens: they light up. They glow. They jump around and do a crazy dance and start high-fiving everybody just like I did after I got off the zip line.
That’s how powerful the right hair can be, and maybe some people would call me silly for saying hair can be powerful, but I believe it with all my heart. The right hair makes you feel like you can do anything, and if I can make other people believe that about themselves, there’s no reason I can’t believe it about myself too.
The sun has already set, and the violet sky is turning a deep, dark blue, the colour spreading like an ink stain on a purple envelope. I walk to the edge of the boardwalk and stand with my hands on the rail, watching the night set in.
The sunset always makes me think of Zach, of standing on the Jacques Cartier Bridge and hearing my heart get faster and faster in my ears as our bodies got closer and closer. I can still picture the look in his eyes just before he kissed me: like he’d been waiting his whole damn life for that moment, like he’d painted the sunset himself, just for us, because he wanted everything about that kiss to be perfect.
Itwasperfect. It was the kind of kiss that gets stuck in your head like a song you play over and over and over again. It was the kind of kiss you wish would last forever even as you hope it will end so you can have another one just like it. It was the kind of kiss that splits your life into two pieces: before that moment and after.
I still find myself pulling my phone out to text him every single day. I still see a funny ad on the metro or a meme on a website, and I’ll catch myself thinking, ‘I need to tell Zach.’ I look for him when the door of Taverne Toulouse swings open and I’m standing behind the bar. I put down whatever pint glass I’m holding or glance away from whatever customer I’m chatting with, and I search for his flannel shirt and goofy smile before I realize I’m doing it.
It’s never him walking through the door.
The July air is a little colder than usual tonight, and I shiver at the wind coming off the water. The zip line must be closed for the night because I haven’t seen anyone going down it, but there are still a few pedal boats in the bay and the Ferris wheel is turning around and around above me. The artist stands all have their lights on, and there’s live music coming from somewhere close by.
There are a lot of couples and families walking around, a lot of tourists in big groups, a lot of teenagers kicking around with their friends and looking to get into trouble.
Everybody hassomeone.
I start twisting my grandmother’s ring around my finger. I do it so often that I usually don’t even notice until somebody asks about it or tells me to stop fidgeting, but today I pause and bring my hand up in front of my face instead.
I run my thumb over the blue jewel, tracing the faces of the stone and the silver border around it. I’ve never taken it to a jeweler to find out, but I’m pretty sure it’s a real sapphire. I don’t buy expensive jewelry because I always seem to lose it—pink hair and piercings are enough accessories for me anyway—but I don’t even take this ring off to sleep.
I wear it for the nights I wake up in the dark with no one else in my bed. I wear it for the shifts when I have to walk home by myself, jumping like a frightened rabbit at every sound in the street. I wear it for all those hours I spent on my own as a kid, wandering the sidewalks of my neighbourhood looking for a friend. I wear it for when the memories of every person that’s left my life start hitting me like blows to the head.
I wear it so that when I’m wrapped in someone’s arms, saying ‘I love you’ to a person I know I don’t love, I can remind myself that anything is better than being alone.
I pull the ring off.
I lay it in my palm and stare at the white band around my finger where the metal has sat for so many years. I wonder how long that band will take to fade.
I want to find out.
As I tuck the ring into my pocket and go back to watching the water and the Ferris wheel and the lights coming on along the piers, I catch the distant strains of live music again. I still can’t tell where it’s coming from, but I hear a crowd cheering and singing along, and after a few seconds, I realize what song the band is playing: ‘Sweetness’ by Jimmy Eat World.
My hips start swaying, and soon I’m humming along.
I could stand here and dance on my own. I could have a little dance party for one, and I know I would be fine. I would smile and clap to the beat and maybe even drop my booty down low, but as I hear the chorus and remember him singing it in my ear in a sweaty little punk club with my arms around his neck, I know I’d rather be dancing with him.
