The driving rain of early spring pattered against the sliding doors to Kenzie and Maria's apartment balcony. The wind rattled the doors in their casement, making it feel as though a truck had just driven by the eleventh floor. The shifting light left shadows on Maria's otherwise perfect cheeks.

This was their favourite place to look out on the world, standing at the balcony doors in bad weather. They shared an obsession with light. Maybe it was that they were both trained as museum curators, thinking about displaying things to their best advantage, but Kenzie thought it went much deeper.

Even though Maria's back was stiff and her hands trembled, Kenzie still enjoyed looking at her beautiful thick eyelashes and eyebrows. She was stunning, even when she was angry, a mixture of high cheekbones and soft curves, and body language that spoke of hard-chiselled masculinity. Kenzie put a hand on Maria's back, half expecting an elbow to push her arm away. None came.

"Did you see a box in the bedroom closet," Kenzie said, her voice soft, "labelled 'Kenzie's Private Stuff?'"

Maria sighed, raising her chin. "Hall closet, top shelf. You couldn't see it because you're too short." She turned from the window and headed for the hallway with heavy steps.

Kenzie followed her, feeling useless as Maria reached up high, pulled the box down from the shelf, and held it out to her.

Kenzie crossed her arms. "Why was it up where I couldn't reach?"

"Because you hadn't opened the box in two years and I needed space for the dehumidifier," said Maria. "For something labelled 'Kenzie's Private Stuff' it sure doesn't seem like you thought about it a lot. So, what is it? Still too private for me?"

Kenzie fled into the bedroom, where suitcases and boxes had bred like rabbits over the past few days. Maria followed her and set the 'private' box down on the bed. She gave Kenzie a quizzical look, as if waiting for permission to open it.

"Go ahead," said Kenzie, "It's just the stuff I saved from art school. The little worth salvaging, that is."

Maria opened the box, reached in and brought out a lopsided 3D print of a cartoon duck. She turned the figurine over in her hands, then read off the bottom: "Canooie?" she said, giving the first smile Kenzie had seen all day.

"Yeah," said Kenzie, busying herself in the closet. She picked up an armful of clothes, hangers and all, and brought them to the bed, where she began folding them into the suitcase. "That's his name."

"Just yeah? No artist's statement?" Maria teased, grin growing wider.

"I'm not an artist," said Kenzie, "I'm a curator. I just want the pencil that's in there. The one with the special grip on it."

Maria's smile faded. "Oh. Okay. Here you go." She groped in the box and held out an old, weathered pencil extender, the kind with a little slide mechanism to grip the pencil nub so that you could draw until your pencil was down to a centimetre or so. Painter's tape held the slide onto the wooden handle, which had been dyed a variety of colours and shades by dirty fingers.

Kenzie took it, unprepared for how sour her stomach would turn at the feel of it in her hand. She put it in the shoe pocket of her suitcase, trembling as she did so. A long silence passed between her and Maria as she folded clothes.

Maria burst forth on her like one of the rain clouds scudding by the windows. "This is still a shit idea! After everything you've been through, I can't believe you'd even consider...I mean...uuuuurgh..." Sometimes, when she was really worked up, Maria's English failed her. She gesticulated and accidentally struck the box of art school stuff, knocking it off the bed.

Kenzie pushed the box aside with her foot and tossed a dress into the suitcase, where it crumpled. "They're offering me the curator position, and it's not a small museum either. It's my only job offer with potential. If I can stick with it for a year, I'll have my pick of jobs back here."

Maria sat on the bed and crossed her arms, bouncing a little. Her big brown eyes begged for no bullshit.

"And where have I heard this one before? This is what you said after co-op, and with the start-up, and you were probably whistling that same tune when you sailed into grad school, although I didn't know you then."

Kenzie tossed a hand in the air and went for another armload of clothes. "Those things should have resulted in a job. One of them, at least. Co-op worked for everyone else. It worked for you." She gestured at Maria's T-shirt, with its screen-printed logo of the South American Museum and Cultural Centre.

Maria blew a strong breath out of her nose and stood up from the bed, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. Kenzie knew she was sick of having this conversation, but it had never been settled.

"I wanted better for you. You know that. But I can't force people to like you. I have no idea why others react to you the way they do, and even if I did, would it help our relationship for me to tell you?"

"You were always hanging out with people from our year in grad school," Kenzie said. "They must have said something, sometime that would indicate what the hell their problem was with me."

"We've been over this," Maria said. "It was just hanging out. It wasn't all about you. 'Oh yes, Maria, let me spill out my deep philosophical differences with your girlfriend while we prepare dioramas for design class.'"

Kenzie felt her cheeks flush. She paused in the center of the room for a moment, her toes digging into the carpet, swaying and holding her bundle of clothes. The closet looked so empty. The room would be so empty when she left. How could Maria not want to fill that space with someone else?

"I think I'm cursed," she said.

Maria came over and took the clothes. Kenzie felt the warmth of Maria's skin for just a moment, and longed for her before even leaving. Kenzie's eyes teared up again. Maria put an arm around her and pulled her close. Kenzie sniffled, in spite of herself.

"If you've got any bad luck, it's all radiating out of that family of yours," Maria said. "They never let you live. You're just catching up to everybody else. You have to stay away from them. They'll just fuck you up, and this time, it could be permanent."

Kenzie's tears flowed thicker. "Why shouldn't they give me a hand up?" she said. "And what's my alternative? Stay here and live with the consequences of having failed. Keep running into the same old people and tell them I'm not working, or worse, working in retail or some call center?"

Maria kissed her forehead.

"Or, you could stay here with me, work part-time, and volunteer for museums and historical societies until you get something permanent. Lots of people in lots of programs have had to do that. You wouldn't be the first, or the thousandth."

"Those people usually have connections," Kenzie said. "I can't think of one person, other than you, that I can count on to recommend me for a job. All the hotshots look down on me, and the people that are struggling would try to take it for themselves."

Maria let out a breath which played across Kenzie's cheek, making the trails of her tears go cold.

"And how impressive is it going to be when your only two references are Mom and Dad? They want you to go to that little town and work with them, so you'll stay forever," Maria said.

Kenzie pushed away then, her indignation stoppering her tears.

"You don't think that I might make an impression on one or two people before I'm done there? Or maybe you don't think my work can speak for itself?" She pitched a felt cloche hat into a nearby box labelled 'fragile', hearing the tinkle of glass underneath. Her heart had sped up.

"Oh come on, don't do this," said Maria. "You know that's not what I meant! New grads need mentorship and guidance. How are you going to grow as a curator when you're wading through the muck of your past, with the same old people and the same old problems? You've worked so hard to get here, in school and in therapy. Don't throw this away."

Kenzie trembled. "And you don't think, for one minute, that I might be able to make things right?"

Maria threw up her hands. "You know what? No, I don't. But not because there's something wrong with you, like you seem to think. It's because you don't have a fucking time machine. Or a mind control device. Or anything that can make your parents be anything but what they are. People are going to be how they're going to be, Kenzie. All you can do is choose how to react to them. This obsession you have with rewriting your childhood, with taking it all on and making it work, is what's going to take you far away from anything you want in this life."

Kenzie slammed the lid of her suitcase. She clamped down on the urge to say something hurtful.

"I'm not trying to rewrite the past! I just want to think that the future can be better, all right? That change can happen."

Maria went to the nightstand and picked up the photo sitting there in a decorative metal frame. She looked at it, sadness playing across her features.

"No, you want to think that you can force change to happen," said Maria. "And yet, you've barely given me a second thought in all of this. How often am I going to get to visit you? And even if I do, am I just going to be a 'friend'? Did you even think to ask me to go?"

Maria plopped back down on the bed and held out the photo for Kenzie to pack. Kenzie didn't even need to look at it. They smiled goofily at the camera as they lounged on a crocheted throw Kenzie had made. It was summer, and the ground was strewn with a picnic basket, a wine bottle, and a variety of sandwiches.

She had met Maria at the campus LGBT club, at Halloween in first year archival studies. She had been dressed as Rambo and Kenzie as a gingerbread woman, complete with sparkly foam jujube buttons. Kenzie had showed up there, despite her nerves, despite being terrified of being seen by her classmates, out of hope that there might be one place in the world where she could live without her secrets.

Maria had been honest. Blunt, even. Maria's blunt honesty had struck the hard rock of Kenzie's defenses and brought forth a refreshing spring of authenticity. Soon, Kenzie was answering questions that she never thought she would answer truthfully and falling in love with someone that she swore she never would. In the beginning, she'd dated around, dabbled with a few guys, but it soon became obvious that Maria was her person. They'd moved in together in third year and built a harmonious life of cozy couch time and forever making new pictures to put on the walls. Kenzie might have trouble with other people, but she'd never doubted Maria.

Kenzie took the picture from Maria. She buried it under her socks, deep in her suitcase where not even Mum would snoop. She felt a surge of nervous energy run through her as she assessed what it would take to keep this photo hidden.

"You're not making this any easier for me," Kenzie said.

Maria rolled her eyes and tossed her head, turning away. But even without seeing her face, Kenzie could tell that Maria was blinking back tears.

"You expect me to make it easy for you to leave me?" she said.

"I'm not leaving you."

"Yes, you are." Maria's voice was low. "And I like you as you are now. Big, bold and bisexual. If you throw that away, you're an asshole."

"Judge me all you want. It's hard to stop loving your parents, even when you know they don't love you," Kenzie said quietly, out of tears now.

She felt the mattress shift as Maria got up.

Her lover's voice rose steadily as she said, "You know what? Go. I see it now. You've got to just keep repeating the past until it destroys you. You don't love yourself, Kenzie. I thought I could fix that, but it looks like someone else holds the key."

Kenzie searched for a reply but found none. Instead, she sat frozen as the door slammed and Maria's angry footsteps faded down the hall.

The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, the one that made her feel broken from stem to stern, crept outward until it consumed her whole body. She walked around to the clear side of the bed and collapsed onto it, her back to the door. She was tired, so tired, of fighting. Going back would just be easier. She wanted everything to be easy and simple again... No more tough choices, no more emotional anguish about whether she'd done the right thing. Just black and white, approval or exile.

It seemed like everyone else around her took care of themselves effortlessly. They paddled through adulthood like ducks through water, navigating situations that would break Kenzie in two.

Enough with the pushing of rocks uphill. Everything was going to be easy again for a while, because after all she'd been through, she deserved a rest.

And rest she did, eventually, as rain tapped against the windows. In her sleep, however, a much deeper part of her felt great regret to be leaving this cozy place and the woman who understood her. That part, which had only just begun to breathe properly, felt a great fear and trepidation at the return of the past. And so it was, under such tension of the self, that Kenzie embarked upon the strange and terrifying journey that would define her life.