Argumentative, Antithetical Dream Girl
In a world full of unending work weeks and fleeting weekends, most people cherish the days that bring joy—birthdays, wedding anniversaries, new years, and the seasons’ change. They scribble their special dates in their pocketbooks or digital calendars, calculating countdowns for their next day-off, their next excuse to smile.
Ravyn Black, however, is her best self when she is frowning.
So, instead, she saves the dates of the tragic sort—the anniversaries of her greatest idols’ deaths, the world’s bloodiest battles, her fights with mother dearest, and the day she broke James Potter’s heart.
Today marks two years without him.
And, just as Ravyn predicted, despite that suffocating sense of rotting from the inside out, she has been productive and brilliant.
- She finished her essay on Derrida and gender, a week early.
- She met with her favorite professor to discuss her “promising” research project, in McGonagall's words, and didn’t blush once.
- She had not one but two successful meals with friends and made Lily laugh at least thrice.
- She did an ‘everything shower’ and even did up her hair.
All those victories should make her feel victorious, and indeed, Ravyn is nothing but a winner when the day concludes with a grand finale—a date. Adnan checks all of her boxes; hot, but not arrogant about it, smart, but not smarter than Ravyn, and sweet, but not a pushover.
“I’m so glad you agreed to come, Ravyn.” Adnan smiles shyly across the table.
“Well, you asked so nicely,” Ravyn purrs. The straps of her shoes are digging into her feet and though she loves this dress, this restaurant is terribly cold, and she itches to lay down and let her face fall into her RBF.
“You’re tired love, you’ve been studying all day, why don’t we have a night in? I’ll order some take out.”
Adnan runs a hand through his dark hair and laughs. “So my plan to sweet-talk you in German worked?”
German’s not a romantic language, in all sense of the words, but Ravyn was charmed when Adnan paused during one of their exercises in class and mumbled, “Wollen wir mal was zusammen machen? Außerhalb des Unterrichts.”
He butchered the pronunciation but that only made it all the more sweet, so Ravyn agreed. She picked the day, he picked the restaurant.
“God, Ravyn, you’re a work of art. Everyone’s staring at you wondering if you’re even real. Yes! They totally are! Here, I’ll ask them all right now—”
“So you said your sibling goes to UC Santa Cruz? That’s nice that they aren’t too far away.”
“Mhm.” Ravyn sips on her Shirley Temple and steers the conversation away from Santa Cruz and back to Adnan, back to his family in Lebanon.
“We don’t have to talk about it, Ravyn, we can talk about anything, you know, I’d love to listen to whatever you have to say. Literally anything.”
“I see what you’re saying, and Lacan’s focus on the psychoanalytic side has fascinating implications, but Althusser offers a theory with genuine praxis—”
They’ve unsurprisingly landed on a more academic topic, much to Ravyn’s delight, and she settles into the debate with vigor. “Althusser isn’t quite a Structuralist though, at least not in the French sense.”
Adnan nods. “Well those semantics are another discussion, albeit important, but…”
Ravyn’s attention snags on the window behind Adnan, and though he continues discussing one of her favorite thinkers, she loses her senses one by one until his words and the clamor of plates are unheard, the rigatoni in her mouth tasteless, the fork in her hand intangible, the man in front of her unseeable, the air around her unbreathable.
There’s a red truck parked outside.
“Ra—Ravyn oh god, someone is going to see us, or see the car—you know…bouncing. Why don’t we go inside or—or, no, yes we can fuck inside Ruby, whatever you want, ohmygod—”
“Ravyn?” Adnan says, probably not for the first time.
She blinks. “Sorry, thought I saw something…what did you say?”
“I was asking about your thoughts on Deleuze, I’m finally reading Difference and Repetition, and damn, he’s even worse than Hegel.”
It’s a testament to Ravyn’s macabre acumen, her unusual brilliance on tragic days like today, that she can articulate anything Deleuzian. She walks through the general premise with Adnan, and when he pulls out his copy of his book, she doesn’t bat an eye. They pour over the text together right then and there, pushing aside their dishes to mark notes in his margins.
Every so often, Ravyn glances at the red truck outside, a little newer and a little darker than Ruby, but still terribly familiar. The sharp tug in her chest only makes her focus harder, only makes her thoughts that much more clear.
“You’re going to be a brilliant professor one day, love. No—don’t look at me like that. I know you haven’t even started at Stanford yet, but I think your students are going to worship you. Almost as much as I worship you.”
“It’s kind of intimidating how clever you are,” Adnan says after they order dessert.
“I get that a lot.”
“You’re not intimidating, love, you’re otherworldly. There’s a difference between being scared and being amazed.”
“I—I’ve wanted to ask you out since Beginning German last year.”
Ravyn smiles, she also gets this a lot, confessions of feelings and nerves, ultimately ending in one heroic act of bravery. Adnan keeps stumbling over his words and it’s cute, it really is, but she can feel the red truck looming behind his head, a scarlet symbol of the past daring her to move on, and why wouldn’t she?
Two years. It’s been two whole years.
She came to this date prepared to take Adnan home, ready and willing to rekindle the sex life she has so sorely neglected ever since—
“Does it feel like this with everyone, Ravyn? No, I didn’t think so.”
The thing is, Adnan’s good conversation, charming, respectful, really, Ravyn could make an entire list…
But he’s not James.
So at the end of the night, Ravyn doesn’t take Adnan’s hand and press close to him, she doesn’t bother inviting him back. She walks up to her front door and waves goodbye.
When the door shuts, she slumps to the floor and breaks into tears.
******
James always claimed that he fell first. Of the one hundred and eighteen days of their friendship, and three-hundred and ninety two days of their relationship, he wrongfully assumed that he liked Ravyn before she liked him, and later on, that he loved her more than she loved him.
Loves him.
Ravyn never saw the point in comparing something unquantifiable, and still abides by that principle, but when it comes to James—well, when it comes to James, the unimaginable, the inconceivable, and above all, the impossible occurs.
She understood that from the very first moment she laid eyes on him.
“Sirius, I swear to god if you don’t fucking hurry up I’m going to burn this house down with you in it.”
“For fucks sake, I’m coming,” Sirius shouts as they run down the stairs, hair sopping wet from a shower.
They only arrived a few hours ago and Sirius had already run into the ocean like a madman, Ravyn instead opting to unpack her things and call Uncle Alphard to tell him that they arrived safely.
It was Alphard’s idea, actually, that they meet the next door neighbors. He insisted that the Potters would take them in and be annoyingly persistent about including them in any and all neighborhood events. Ravyn was not Sirius, she didn’t need to make friends in Santa Cruz, but her sibling would slowly perish if they didn’t have constant social attention.
“Let’s go.” Ravyn spun on her heel and slid open the door. Like Alphard’s house, or rather Sirius and Ravyn’s house now, the Potters’ real front door was on the opposite side of the beach, but from the shoes and doormat, it was clear that the back door was the most beloved
Sirius skipped up first and knocked on the glass. “Hello, Potters!!”
Ravyn sighed.
The first person to appear behind the glass was a short woman, her hands covered in paint and hair tied in an unraveling top bun. She pulled Sirius in for an enthusiastic hug but offered Ravyn only a warm smile as if she knew what each of them needed.
“It is a pleasure to finally meet you both. My name is Euphemia, but please, call me Effie.”
Effie went on about all her many attempts to endear a grouchy Alphard, and how after years of effort, she got him to talk about Ravyn and Sirius, his niece and, to quote Alphard himself, “genderstrange relation”.
Alphard accepted Sirius and Ravyn’s pronouns without protest, but like with most things, he huffed and puffed about how eccentric their family was. Ravyn couldn’t disagree, though she thought her and Sirius’s gender queerness was much more palatable than their parents’ inbreeding.
“Let me go get Flea and James, oh they’ll both be so excited to meet you!”
Sirius and Ravyn were ushered into the house, which was quintessentially Santa Cruz, an ode to the 70s and ocean life amidst numerous bright, abstract, and vaguely erotic paintings.
As per usual, Sirius did most of the talking when Flea joined his wife in the kitchen, and while Ravyn wasn’t overjoyed to be socializing, she wasn’t uncomfortable or bored. In fact, Effie and Flea were fairly interesting, well read and quirky, a granola-outdoor couple with surprising substance.
When Ravyn excused herself to the bathroom, Flea pointed up the stairs to the right. She surveyed all the framed photos lining the walls, a shrine to some only child with big brown eyes and an even bigger smile. By the time she moved all the way up from infant to pre-teen, she smacked into someone on the top of the stairs.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” The boy pressed his warm palms into Ravyn’s arms, steadying her.
“It’s my fault, I wasn’t looking,” Ravyn said simply.
He smiled, letting her go. “You’re one of our new neighbors, I’m guessing? Sorry it took me so long to come down, I was on the phone with a friend and I didn’t want to rush her and…”
Maybe Ravyn wasn’t looking before, but fuck, she was looking now.
The boy continued rambling, going on about some friend’s breakup and helping her through a rough spot, but Ravyn wasn’t listening; she was looking. More than that, she was memorizing the shape of his face, the slight curve of his neck to his shoulders, the round arch of his nose and the firm indents of his stomach beneath his shirt.
He was more than just beautiful, no, there was something impossible about the brightness of his eyes and the way he leaned towards Ravyn, a complete stranger, with absolute trust and warmth…
“Oh god.” His smile turned sheepish. “Sorry, I’m oversharing.”
Ravyn tilted her head, feigning coolness. “You apologize a lot.”
“I’m…sorry?”
“You sound unsure,” Ravyn said with a smirk. He fumbled for a bit, and she gave him a few more seconds of suffering, penance for all that beauty, then introduced herself. “I’m Ravyn. Ravyn Black.”
“James,” he sounded relieved to have something to say.
Downstairs, Sirius screeched, a noise somewhere between a battle cry and a goat’s bleat. Ravyn sighed. “That’ll be my sibling.”
James bounced on his heels. “I’m excited to meet them.”
“Contrary to how Sirius appears, I promise we’re not psychotic, that honor goes to the rest of our family. We’ll be good neighbors.”
“Me too!” James blurted. “I mean, I’ll be a fantastic neighbor.”
Ravyn was dangerously close to smiling, and not even a fake one, so she brushed past him in the direction of what she hoped was the bathroom. She felt James watch her walk away, felt the high of his attention all the way until she closed the bathroom door.
Then she looked in the mirror and slapped a hand over her smile.
Of course, Ravyn knew how to play things cool. She might have been ridiculously endeared, entirely besotted by the boy next door, but she wasn’t going to be pathetic about any of it. She had game.
So she kept James at a distance and invited Barty to the summer solstice, all the while waiting on the chess board for James to make the first move. Only then would she attack, take him for herself and feast.
But despite Ravyn’s patient plan, she couldn’t help but flirt, sometimes touch, just to make James blush scarlet red; it was so satisfying to see such a beautiful creature undone by a silly little nickname.
Jamie. Jamie. Jamie.
To this day, Ravyn can’t think about that word without shivering.
Jamie. Jamie. Jamie.
To this day, Ravyn can’t think about that word without dying a little.
The game came to an end only at the end of a perfect summer, one hundred and eighteen days of beach and sun and James. Plus Sirius.
It had been three months of waiting, and Ravyn was losing hope for her Jamie. She contemplated doing the damn thing herself, but then one day at the Boardwalk, a hat changed everything.
“I have to ride the Giant Dipper.” Sirius’ eyes were glazed over, their smile wide. “That thing looks like it’s one thunderstorm from falling apart.”
James wrapped an arm around Sirius, looking at the wooden roller coaster looming above them. The white scaffolding was lined with a winding red track, with a slow ascent at the beginning, then a deep plummet into curves and bumps.
“This beauty was built in 1924,” James said proudly, as if that weren’t entirely concerning.
Ravyn spoke from behind them. “Go on then. I’ll wait here.”
“You don’t want to come?” James looked back with puppy eyes. It was almost endearing enough to make Ravyn fold, but at the smirk on Sirius’s face, she held her ground.
“I’m not interested in losing brain cells. I’ve lost enough having to live with Sirius.”
“You’re such a loser.” Sirius scoffed. “Come on, Prongs.”
They tugged James under the red arch, James using his stern voice to tell them off. “Don’t call Ravyn a loser, it’s not nice—I don’t care that you’re kidding! Ravyn deserves better.”
Ravyn watched them go with a secret smile, then spun on her heel in search of something salty, and maybe something sweet for Jamie. She barely took three steps before a hand grabbed her shoulder.
“Ravyn!” James panted, breathless from running after her. “Can you watch my hat while I ride the Dipper?”
“Course, Jamie.” She pulled the faded blue cap off, his dark brown hair sticking up in its wake.
“You’re the best.” James took the hat from Ravyn’s hands and tucked it onto her head.
And then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, he pecked her on the lips.
He was gone in the next moment.
Ravyn stood there, frozen, watching James disappear into the line, her lips tingling and heart racing. She had to press two fingers into her neck and count the beats because she was sure that this feeling wasn’t right, that something inside her was malfunctioning and that was why she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
Oh god, James Potter kissed her.
And he didn’t even realize he’d done it, the idiot.
Ravyn’s feet woke up slowly, grumpy from her persistence to move the fuck away from the death-trap roller coaster. Her soles stung with every step, the reverberation shooting up her heels and straight to her racing heart.
“Stop that,” she hissed at her favorite organ. “It was literally just a peck.”
In fact, it was the most innocent kiss of her life, a children’s bedtime story compared to her R adventures. Honestly, Ravyn was being ridiculous. Her body was being utterly dramatic.
She found a bench and let her legs give out, tilting her chin up to glare at the sun and the puffy clouds. One kiss and James nearly killed her.
It was a bad fucking omen, a giant red flag…but then, why was Ravyn smiling?
“You look happy,” James said, sitting beside her.
Ravyn jolted. “What—you’re supposed to be on the roller coaster!”
He gestured to his hair, a true rat’s nest. “We just finished. Sirius is grabbing us churros, and popcorn for you.”
Ravyn nodded, stunned. She had meant to do that herself, but she had barely gotten her motor skills back, she wasn’t certain she could handle a real social interaction. And wasn’t it just a few minutes ago that James kissed Ravyn? How long had she been staring into the sun like a lunatic?
“So?” James nudged her shoulder and she sucked in a breath. “What’s got you smiling like that? Did you see a pretty cloud?”
Ravyn hadn’t realized she was still smiling, and promptly forced her lips into something less foolish. “I saw a pigeon shit on a kid’s head.”
James bit the inside of his cheeks, trying not to laugh, but like usual, he caved eventually. Ravyn’s heart did that thing again, pounding in her chest like it wanted her to sprint across the boardwalk, over the sand, and dive into the water. James laughed and laughed and Ravyn died and died.
“God, Ravyn, you’re so fucking funny.” James shook his head.
Clearly, he had not intended to kiss her and clearly, it wasn’t memorable enough for him to even realize he’d done it. But the fact that he did it at all…
Ravyn wanted to roll her eyes. This summer with James had made her feel like a stupid, pining mess of a girl, sneaking looks throughout beach days and tossing and turning every night with dreams of James’ hair. His fucking hair.
But she had promised that she would wait to do anything until he made a move. Surely a kiss qualified?
James pressed into Ravyn’s side, humming to himself as they people-watched the afternoon rush of the Boardwalk. Ravyn quite disliked amusement parks, too many small humans and too much processed sugar, but this place had grown on her, not unlike all of Santa Cruz. That was all Jamie’s influence, his unfailing belief in the world made anything and everything seem a little brighter, even a grimy boardwalk.
“Oh—” James sat up, pointing to a mom pushing a stroller on the other side of the fountain. “She just dropped her wallet.”
Ravyn squinted. “Why would she keep something like that in her back pocket? She’s begging to be pick-pocketed.”
“Aw, that kid is going to give it back to her.”
Ravyn followed James’s gaze to the teenager clad in a black hoodie, despite the 90 degree weather, crouching to pick up the wallet.
“No, Jamie, he’s going to steal it.”
James pursed his lips. “He’ll give it back.”
They watched together, Ravyn and James, two antitheses expecting the opposite, one assuming the worst, the other hoping for the best. Ravyn wondered if her cynicism ever exhausted James, if her constant doubt and distrust was growing tired even for Mr. Sunshine himself.
If there was one thing Ravyn could hope for, it was that James Potter would never get tired of her. Argumentative, antithetical and all.
The teenager stood up, tossing the leather wallet in between his hands, and called out to the woman. “Hey! You dropped this.”
As the kid returned the wallet, James turned to Ravyn with a shit-eatting grin.
“It’s not often that I’m wrong,” Ravyn said simply. “Enjoy it while you can.”
Somehow James managed to press even closer to Ravyn, the line of his body melting into her from her shoulder to her ankle. Ravyn took a breath, steadying her heart, and pulled his hat off her head.
“You can have this back now, Jamie.”
“Oh! Yeah, thanks.”
But Ravyn didn’t let James take it from her hands, instead, she placed it on his head with the same tenderness he did her before, then slowly, her hands slid down to cup his face.
This kiss was not quick or fleeting. This kiss was not innocent or forgettable.
No, Ravyn took her time leaning forward and pressing her lips to James’, nudging, tasting, tugging his bottom lip until he gasped, mouth parting, and their tongues met, warm and wet, gentle and fevered.
“Jamie,” Ravyn murmured onto his lips.
James groaned, hauling Ravyn into his lap as if they weren’t in the midst of toddlers and teens, as if they weren’t in broad daylight on a public bench. Ravyn straddled him with a small smile, happy to bring this side out of him, to coax unashamed affection from his lips, his skin, his hands. Fuck, his hands.
Maybe a minute, maybe an hour, maybe an era later, Sirius found them and shrieked, “What the fuck?!”
Ravyn sniffs, glaring at the hat sitting in her lap. She kept it after their first kiss, and never returned it after their last.
It’s hers.
Every inch of it—the faded cotton, the bending visor, the embroidered patch with Santa Cruz in big, bright letters—all of it is Ravyn’s. Everything else she has managed to part with; the old truck, the song, the apartment, fuck, the man himself.
But this hat is her last remaining artifact of whatever she and James once were.
“You wear that hat better than I do, Ravyn. Consider it yours forever. Just like me.”
Ravyn slides the hat over her hair still curled from her date with Adnan.
The damn thing has seen so much; it was there when they turned on the radio and decided “Pocketful of Sunshine” was theirs, it was there every time Ravyn kissed James in the club, testing his PDA limits, it was there when they met Remus for the first time, the four of them saddled up in a diner laughing about bullshit. It was there for it all.
Even the end.
“Oh, Ravyn.” Lily opens the bathroom door. “I’m sorry, I had to stay long at rehearsal. We’re trying to nail the last bit and the flautists are totally incompetent.”
Ravyn looks up, tears dripping from her eyelashes. “I only just got back.”
Lily sits across from Ravyn, her red bun pressing into the sink cabinets. Two years they’ve been roommates and Ravyn still hates that Lily has to see her cry. That she needs Lily on days like these.
“Deja vu, huh?” Ravyn sniffs.
Lily’s smile is lopsided. “A little.”
This day last year found them on another bathroom floor, the walls thumping from a speakers’ bass, Lily’s red lipstick smudged from shots. Ravyn was drunk too—drunk enough to dial James’ number on Lily’s phone because even though she blocked him to prevent that sort of idiocy, Ravyn had never forgotten the string of numbers that meant Jamie’s voice, Jamie’s attention, Jamie.
James had picked up, said “Hello?”, and Ravyn just sat in silence, listening to him breathe, until Lily found Ravyn and hung up for her.
Ravyn hasn’t had another drink since.
“How was your date?” Lily asks, the tips of her oxfords press into Ravyn’s uncomfortable heels. She ought to take them off, now that the date is over, but her hands reach for the hat instead, feeling the worn out, loved fabric.
“The date was great,” she answers weakly.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Adnan’s nice.”
Lily snorts but tamps down her smile for Ravyn’s sake.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ravyn whispers, picking at her black nail polish.
“Do enlighten me.”
“You’re thinking that most people move on after two months and it’s been two years. And given my gift for exceeding the general population in efficiency and efficacy, I really shouldn’t care at all.”
“Wrong,” Lily says. “I’m thinking my best friend is human. Besides, just because I don’t date doesn’t mean I can’t understand. You’re grieving, in a way. That’s not linear.”
“No, I tend not to be linear.”
Lily rolls her eyes and Ravyn chews on her bottom lip. She doesn’t have to smile here with Lily; Ravyn can slump and fidget and hurt and Lily Evans would never judge her for it. Neither of them fit neatly in this world, what with Lily’s aversion to romance or sex, and Ravyn’s genderdefying womanhood. But that’s not why they’re friends.
“Besides, you dated James Potter.” Lily laughs. “I know how persistent he is, even if just in memory.”
That is the reason Ravyn trusts Lily. Because long ago, she knew what it was to be loved by James. She held that honor, that pain, and survived it.
Ravyn wants to survive it too.
“Should I get the letter?” Lily says after a minute.
Ravyn sighs. “Go on then.”
Lily leaves the bathroom, the sounds of her footsteps across the apartment like a countdown. Three, Lily opens the drawer. Two, Lily walks back. One, she sits beside Ravyn.
Then Lily unfolds the lined paper and reads:
Dear me,
If you’re reading this letter, that means you’re weak, so listen up. Actually, it will be better if Lily reads it to you, because she will hold you to your principles. Thank you for that, Lily.
Lily smiles to herself and says, “Why you’re so welcome, Ravyn.”
“Just get to the good part.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Lily picks up from where she left off.
I’ll keep this simple. Don’t be a fucking coward, Ravyn Black. You broke up with James for a reason, and a goddamn good one at that. If you call him, text him, or godforbid, show up at his apartment (not your apartment!) in Santa Cruz, you will be shattering an unbreakable vow. It would be the most selfish thing you’ve ever done, returning to him. Stay the fuck away, Ravyn.
Love,
Yourself
Ravyn nods along to the words she wrote years before, Lily’s voice soft and soothing.
“I just need to say this one thing,” Lily begins, folding the letter closed. “Maybe you needed this letter two years ago but now? Come on, Ravyn, both you and James got the space you needed—”
“How do you know?”
Lily freezes. “Hm?”
“About James, how would you know?” Ravyn’s hands, for some reason, begin to shake. It would be good if James was doing well, doing great, that would mean all of the pain wasn’t for naught.
But the thought of James forgetting Ravyn makes her whole body tremble, storm clouds and lightning shooting through her skull, because how dare he forget—how dare Ravyn have to remember.
It would be fitting, however. After all, James never did remember that he kissed Ravyn first.
“Did you see him when you visited your family this summer?” Ravyn’s voice is shaking now, whether from excitement or dread, she isn’t sure.
Lily was James’ first crush, someone Ravyn was jealous of long before she even met her. It was quite the shock then, when Ravyn ended up Lily’s roommate at Stanford.
Ravyn had been taping photos of her and James on the dorm walls when Lily recognized James from junior high in Santa Cruz. They ended up at different highschools, but they had a whole childhood of friendship together, and at least on James’s side, first love.
Ravyn had been determined to hate Lily for that.
Evidently, she failed.
“No, I didn’t see James in Santa Cruz.” Lily’s lips twitch down. “I’m only guessing that’s he alright. He’s the type of guy to bounce back.”
Ravyn knows that’s just for show though. She knows that while James is a terrible liar, he’s great at feigning happiness.
“Also, I follow Sirius on instagram,” Lily adds with a guilty smile.
It takes a lot for Ravyn not to demand to see every single photo on their sibling’s instagram, to pick apart James’s smile and body language and figure out what he’s been up to, if he’s happy, if he’s moved on—
But there’s a reason that Ravyn doesn’t have social media anymore. There’s a reason that she doesn’t talk to Sirius about their friends anymore.
“Do you want to see?”
“No, Lily!” Ravyn stands up with a sneer. “What the fuck are you doing, you’re supposed to hold me to my principles.”
“Remind me what your principles are?”
“You know very well why James and I broke up,” Ravyn says hoarsely.
“And I’m saying what if that reason no longer applies?”
“Fuck you.” Ravyn spins on her heel and runs to her room. “Fuck you, Lily Evans!” she repeats for good measure.
Lily laughs and calls out from the bathroom, “I’ll be in the living room rewatching Princess Diaries when you’re ready to talk!”
Ravyn slams her bedroom door in response.
Her hands are still shaking when she goes to take off the hat and tuck it deep inside her closet, never to be touched again.
At least until next year’s anniversary.
******
Ravyn has long since accepted that she will never be understood, perceived, loved on her own terms; this world is a mess of ideology, competing subjectivities, and she is but one breathing thing in a web too tangled to master.
What she can control, what she will control, are three things:
- The material truths of her appearance.
- The words she gives or withholds.
- The person she tries to be, for herself.
If Ravyn were to articulate that dysphoric, euphoric sense of gender, she might call it transcendence, not a superior condescension, but a limitless pretense. Transwoman, Ravyn calls herself. A beingness unbound by the linear purgatory of modernity, or so it seems.
But there are things even Ravyn can’t articulate or explicate; she lacks the words, but she has the name, and all the gender queerness wrapped up in it:
Ravyn.
Of course, her name used to be Regulus, a companion to Sirius’ starlight. She holds no grudge against her celestial dead name, in fact, it remains her second-favorite star, but she needed something new to mark her transition—a choice, finally, in her own identity.
Ravyn never wanted surgery, she resented medical validation in any form; instead, she wanted and wants that pocket of trans. Trans for transcendence. Trans for transition. Trans for translation—Ravyn’s head spins with all the possibilities, and sometimes she gets seasick from her own acumen.
What Ravyn does know is that she will not hide within a binary, will not cower before anyone’s perceiving, prejudicing gazes. There is a simple joy, however, in an affirming pronoun, affirming hormones, affirming existence.
So though the diploma in Ravyn’s hands stands for an institution she does not believe in, for a society she will never belong in, she can admit that seeing Ravyn Black beneath the Stanford emblem is more than just mere academic validation, it is a recognition of the woman she is.
“I believe in you, Ravyn Black.”
“RAVYN!!!” Sirius screams from across the lawn.
Ravyn watches her sibling shove past celebrating families, dart under an arch of spraying champagne, until they bodyslam into Ravyn.
Sirius wraps their arms around her graduation gown and spins Ravyn around until they’re both woozy and laughing and maybe crying a little.
“Congratulations, you bitch!” Sirius holds Ravyn’s cheeks.
“Thanks.”
“Siriusly—” Sirius winks. “I mean, you graduated from Stanford in fucking three years. God, I’m so tired of you outdoing me!”
Sirius rants and raves, hopping between pride and dismay until Lily and her family joins them, making Ravyn a victim to a whole scrapbook worth of photos. By the time they finish the celebratory dinner, Ravyn’s cheeks are sore, and she’s leaning half of her weight onto Sirius.
“I’ll carry you like a princess. Honestly it would be my honor, Ravyn. Please?”
Ravyn opens the door to the apartment, and Sirius shuffles in behind her, both of them collapsing on the couch in sync. Lily’s still out with her family, which gives Ravyn some much needed time alone with Sirius.
She would never say as much out loud, but she misses them. Sirius hasn’t been able to visit Ravyn as much this semester since it’s their last year too, the past few months full of exams and senior celebrations back in Santa Cruz.
“Santa Cruz is my home. I was born here, I’ll graduate here, I’ll get married here, and one day, I’ll die here. I hope you’ll join me?”
Ravyn is not thinking about him today, she tells herself. She’s not letting Jamie’s voice through.
“You could never ignore me, Ravyn.”
“What’s that look for?” Sirius says, face pressed against a throw pillow.
“Just tired,” Ravyn lies. She unstraps her heels and throws off her graduation hat. “Next week you’ll be the one dressed like a medieval scholar.”
Sirius smirks. “Did I tell you I bedazzled my graduation cap?”
“What? In the shape of a dick?”
“No, something much more classy, it’s PADFOOT in cursive letters. Remus put MOONY and Jam—” Sirius stops.
Ravyn doesn’t even flinch; she’s used to half sentences from her sibling, all the almost mentions of him. It’s been nearly three years since she and James broke up but Sirius still walks on eggshells as if they know how much Ravyn is hurting.
Maybe they do.
“So what time should I come down next Saturday?” Ravyn asks, moving the conversation along.
“Oh—uhm.” Sirius bites the inside of their cheek.
“If we’re meeting up with Remus’ family beforehand I can make us a reservation at—”
“Ravyn,” Sirius cuts her off. “I don’t think you should come to my graduation.”
The words are so rushed that Ravyn almost can’t understand them. But she does. She’s used to the sound of Sirius’ panic. “What?”
“It’s just, I really want you there, you know I do, but if you go then it will become a whole thing between you and—” Sirius groans. “It’s his graduation too, you know, and if you’re there he won’t be able to focus on celebrating.”
Ravyn tenses. “Did he ask you to tell me not to come?”
“No!” Sirius blurts. “God no, we have a rule not to talk about you.”
Ravyn laughs darkly. “Right.”
“I’m really sorry, Ravyn. We can celebrate just you and me the next day? You can even pay for dinner!”
“Whatever you want, Sirius,” Ravyn says softly because that’s what she should care about right now. Not herself, not James, but Sirius. They deserve to be celebrated, to not be caught in James and Ravyn’s drama on one of the most important days of their life.
Sirius crawls across the couch and cuddles into Ravyn’s side like they used to when they were kids. “I hate that you can’t be there.”
“It’s alright, Sirius,” Ravyn lies.
Sirius sighs. “No. It’s not.”
******
Ravyn frowns at James.
“What? Mind Reading would be so cool! I could be like a spy or something.”
“I think it sounds exhausting, listening to people think imbecilic things all day. The average mind should not be heard.”
James laughs at that. “Then what superpower would you want?”
“Time travel.” Ravyn says simply. “That way I can collect the knowledge I wish without invading someone’s privacy.”
“God, you’re hot.”
Ravyn rolls her eyes. “In what world is that hot—”
James shuts her up, pressing their lips together and shoving her into the bed, sliding his body over hers. ”Everything about you is hot, even your inconsistent moral compass.”
“If you say so,” Ravyn’s voice comes out more breathy than she means to, her heart delirious with desire, pounding through her body as if it wishes to feel James for itself.
“Jamie.” Ravyn grips onto his hair, drinks up his stare, the evidence of his worship warm and wet across her neck, down her chest, and across her stomach, all the way between her thighs.
Ravyn wakes up with a start.
Fitting that on the day of Sirius’ graduation, James’ graduation, Ravyn’s unconscious screws her over. She doesn’t need to be a psychoanalytic minor to figure out what that dream meant, but since she is, the ramifications are all the worse.
She shoves aside the pain of the open wound, the relentless urge to pick up her phone and call him, tell him that she cares. She misses him. She loves him.
It’s so fucking simple, really; Ravyn loves James.
Then, now, forever.
But when she finds her phone on her bed stand, she doesn’t text Jamie. She texts Sirius:
Congrats. I’m proud of you.
They text back a few seconds later:
AHHHHHH I’M ALREADY A LITTLE DRUNK!
Ravyn rolls her eyes.
Don’t trip on the stage. And if you do, make sure Remus sends me the video.
She doesn’t acknowledge the tears pricking her eyes, the hollow hatred filling her up because it’s her fault that she can’t be there for Sirius today, it’s her fault that she fell in love and can’t figure out how to fall out of it.
The sound of Lily in the shower motivates Ravyn to move, to carry on like the rest of the world, like James hopefully is.
She checks her email absently, eyes still heavy with sleep, when she spots the sender.
UC Santa Cruz.
The subject title is to the point: History of Consciousness: PHD Program.
Ravyn lets out a screech when she opens the email, and finds “Congratulations!” at the top.