Mel dealt with similar issues. Customers at the music shop she worked at would ask where she was from, even though her father had a Canadian flag incased behind the front counter. One customer even said, “Mixed people are so fascinating,” when he found out that her father was white. It was weird. The world tried to fetishize and label people like us, they tried to keep us in boxes, but we were learning to break out.

“Remember that time we were on a date?” I asked.

“We’ve been on more than a few dates, Adrian,” Mel replied.

“No, no. The one where we were sitting on the waterfront, and those bro-dudes came up to us.” I sat up in bro-dude posture with my chest sticking out. “And that one dude was like, ‘So like, my friends and I were like, wondering like, what are you guys?’”

“Yes! I shut him down real quick.” Mel began to giggle while sitting up. “I told him ‘Clearly not a fucking dragon, because I’d set you ablaze!’”

“His face was so red! And I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t breathe!” I remembered.

We both broke into laughter. We were young, we were brown, and we weren’t going to follow anyone’s criteria. Loving Mel was an adventure that I never wanted to end. God, she was amazing.

She got out of bed and ate a bowl of cereal; I told her I wasn’t hungry, but she stuffed about five granola bars into her coat pocket if I changed my mind on the way to the grocery store.

“We should get the bus,” Mel suggested around noon. “It comes every half hour on the weekends, so we should probably be on our way.”

“Sounds good to me.”

We hustled to the bus. The grocery store that we were going to was called Cool Foods. It was about ten blocks away from my house, but the bus ride only took us five minutes. The C in the giant lit up sign hanging over the entrance needed some repairs since it read OOL FOODS. The store also didn’t look super busy from the outside — only five cars in the parking lot and it was beginning to get cloudy. I could also see frosty air coming from my lips. It looked like winter was teasing us.

“Let’s get inside, it’s starting to get cold.” Mel grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. When we got inside she grabbed a cart and said, “Wanna sit in? I’ll push you around.”

I laughed.

We skipped the fruit and veggie sections and went straight to the chips and chocolate.

“What do you want? All Dressed or Sour Cream and Onion?” Mel asked.

“You know I hate Sour Cream and Onion.”

“How can you hate it? It’s the best flavour. You’re weird.”

“No way. Sour Cream and Onion is very low in the hierarchy of chips. All Dressed is at the top, then it goes Dill Pickle, Ketchup, Barbeque, and then MAYBE Sour Cream and Onion.”