The strain in her voice finally gives. I can see the exhaustion in her. I see how tired she is from trying so hard to looklike she doesn’t care, like she’s only mildly annoyed by most things instead of emotionally drained by everything.
And I’m part of it. Maybe not me personally, but I am a part of the notion that San Francisco gay culture has been spearheaded by white people. I run the GSA at our school with another white person. I’ve made Being Gay my entire thing the way that only white people can, because I’m not reconciling multiple marginalized identities.
I was freaking out earlier over Gilbert gatekeeping the treasure hunt from outsiders, but the truth is…people with intersectional identities are treated like outsiders all the time.
“I hear you,” I say quietly. “I hear you, and I’m so sorry. You’re right, Sunny. It was dumb to talk about not being gay enough before. I wasn’t even thinking about other people’s experiences; I was being selfish. And I did act like an asshole when I realized the library had changed. It doesn’t actually matter if we’re inside a library or an art museum; these clues are just as fragile. If the treasure hunt falls apart with this next step, it’s not the museum’s fault. Sometimes things just…break.”
We wind through two more gallery rooms before Sunny’s face lights up.
“Hey. Come look at this.” She walks over to a softly lit glass case with several displays of golden-painted pottery.
“It’s kintsugi,” Sunny says.
I step closer and peer at a pale blue serving bowl. I’ve seen pottery like this before, but I had always assumed the gold lines were painted over the top. Up close, it’s clear that thepieces of the bowl aren’t quite perfect. They’re aligned, but not exactly. The gold isn’t just a decoration, I realize—it’s what’s making the whole thing function.
“Is it soldered together?” I ask.
Sunny shakes her head. “No, it’s an incredibly strong lacquer made from tree resin. And then it’s gilded with gold leaf after, to make the cracks pretty. It’s part of sabiru, or wabi-sabi. About celebrating imperfection.”
She turns to me. “Japanese tradition tells us that we’re supposed to look at bowls like this one and imagine the cracks as signs of aging, which is nice. But sometimes I see the cracks, and I just think of me and all the times I’ve felt broken or messed up. And the gold reminds me that even though I’m not perfect, there is so much beauty in survival.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. That’s probably stupid.”
“No, it’s not,” I say quickly. “It’s not stupid at all. I get it.”
I look at the gold spider-webbing across the ceramic. For a moment it’s like I can see hands holding the original bowl, cradling it across a room, stumbling, and letting it slip through their fingers. I can feel the impact of the ground, the way a whole thing instantly becomes a fraction. I know the heartache of it, the feeling of brokenness Sunny’s talking about. But then, just like she said, I can see the beauty in it too. The hands gathering up the pieces. The artist lining each section back together like a puzzle. The brush dipped in gold, marking each repaired crack like it’s an achievement. Because it’s not nothing, to fall apart and come back together. The piecesmatter. Survivalmatters.
We’re not stepping back into a time machine with this hunt. We can’t see it the way Gilbert Baker did when he hid the pieces. But we’re stitching it together through our lens. The library is an Asian art museum. The bookGay Treasurescame out so long ago that it’s old enough to have a midlife crisis. And it’s okay. The only way forward is to celebrate the cracks.
I look away from the bowl and smile at Sunny.
“Thank you for sharing this with me. All of this.”
Chapter Twenty
Sunny steps back from the kintsugi display and glances around the room. “Well, I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary around here.”
“Yeah,” I say. I gaze at the glass cases lining the walls. “Me neither.”
We walk out of the Japan wing and into a strong afternoon light. We’re adjacent to a large, open hall with windows that go from floor to ceiling. The windows are lined in an intricate checkered pattern. Marble columns with rolling spirals at the top mark each corner of the room. Julia and Gabriel walk through doors on the opposite side.
“This is cool,” Gabriel says appraisingly. He tilts his head back and points his camera at the ceiling, which has the same honeycomb pattern as the foyer. I stand next to Gabriel and study the carvings along the crown molding.
“Into Architecture?” Sunny asks.
I snort. “For our current visit? Obviously.”
“No.” Sunny holds out her phone. “I just found this page in our digital guide.”
INTO ARCHITECTURE?
She reads to us directly from the screen:
“Take a tour through the past of our beloved 1917 Beaux-Arts home, which was designed as the city’s original main library. Highlights include both the Wilbur Grand Staircase and the dramatic, intricately styled Samsung Hall, which held the main library’s catalogue until 1996.”
Sunny looks up. “This is it. This is the room where all the books were kept.”
“Hey, check this out,” Julia says. She’s looking at something framed near the doors Sunny and I walked through.
