It was a beautiful Monday morning and Camille Haidara found herself contemplating just how awful everything was. 

It is important to note that Camille was not a fan of Mondays. She had been born on a Monday, sixteen years ago in a cramped Paris apartment, and had never forgiven her mother for it. It was in the middle of a thunderstorm and her grandmother had declared that she would be a difficult child. Camille disagreed. She thought she was perfectly amicable, easygoing even. She was talented, if a little spacey. She was a rock n’ roll drummer in five different bands – her favorite being Senegal Boombox – and did well enough in school to justify the quite large amount of time she spent daydreaming about being a teenage detective cruising the streets of Los Angeles. If she ever came across as demanding or rude, it was simply because she was a very particular person. Why did her grandmother care if she spent her money on an impractical and expensive coat? So what if she broke up with her boyfriend because he told her not to argue about how American crime movies from the seventies were better than French New Wave classics while out to dinner with his parents? Although in hindsight, the moment that led to the relationship’s demise was probably when she called his father – who she later learned was the recently appointed Minister of Culture – an ignorant and uncultured idiot unworthy of discussing art with someone of her caliber. If she were a plucky teen detective on an American TV program, they would’ve said she had gumption. But this is Paris. And in Paris, Camille is a bitch. 

On this beautifully gray Monday morning, Camille Haidara sat on a Montmartre balcony, dreaming about how much better her life would be in California. She contemplated the quickest way to get there. Camille’s father had moved to California several years ago after his dreams of Parisian afternoons – filled with philosophical debates and beautiful women – ceded their way to

a middle management position at a consulting firm. That, plus an enfant terrible wife whose successes in the Paris jazz scene made him feel insecure, and a mother-in-law who never lost an opportunity to remind him of his ever present Americanness. 

Camille’s father made his exit from her life remarkably smoothly, accepting a position writing about French Financial News in the LA Times, before his college pal Dave Grant hired him as the Financial Editor at the Sacramento Bee, the fifth largest paper in the state of California. He just had to take the job, he told his wife and daughter one Monday afternoon. Camille stared at a postcard her father had sent her: a geometric painting of a cowboy with a lasso ensnaring the “C” in California. 

Happy Birthday Camille, wishing you an incredible sixteenth from everybody in the Golden State! Would’ve loved to be there, but work has been crazy lately. See you soon, 

Dad 

Accompanying the postcard was a bright yellow package. Enclosed within was a faded blue Dodgers cap, a pair of glossy black Ray-Bans in a crocodile leather case, and a first-class ticket to LAX. Camille pressed the hat low on her head and slid the shade high up her nose, sitting back against the cool glass of her bedroom window. She pressed the ticket to her chest, closing her eyes, imagining the gray skies and cobblestones melting away into the sunny Santa Monica boardwalk. 

CRACK! Before she could react, Camille felt the window give out behind her and she tumbled backwards, slamming her head on apartment threshold and sending the Ray-Bans flying off.

“We’ve been looking for you for hours, Cami! What are you doing out here?” Camille’s grandmother gave her a concerned look. “A baseball cap? Your hair will be a mess for the photos!” 

“Who cares about my hair? It’s just a birthday, it happens every year.” 

“And every year you will look presentable in the photos. Now get cleaned up. I bought a cake.” 

“Fine.” 

Camille tore off the blue hat, tousled her hair, and glared at her grandmother. They had never gotten along; her grandmother was a very pragmatic person and simply did not tolerate Camille’s particularisms. This was quite unfortunate, since with her dad running off to California, her mother always out, and her friends being largely non-existent, Camille spent a large portion of her life squirming under the thumb of her grandmother. Looking at the chicly-wrinkled spectacle-adorned face currently shooting her a look that ought to have stuck at least four inches out of her back, Camille found herself, as she often had before, wondering how exactly she had come from that. Over the last sixteen years, Camille had come up with plenty of theories. A common complaint of her grandmother’s was how Camille spoke in commas, like a heavy novel. Perhaps her grandmother was resentful of the infinite complexities of Camille’s lonely genius and the particularities it spawned. But her mother was a real genius, and her grandmother loved her mother. Too eccentric perhaps? But did her mother not also reject her grandmother’s way of life? Is running around the world playing piano in clubs on each and every continent much different from Camille and her two post-post-punk bands performing in dingy spots in Lagny-sur-Marne? In scale perhaps, but certainly not in intention.

Pressing her new shades high up her nose clutching the postcard tightly, Camille whipped around and stormed past her grandmother down the hall, slamming the bathroom door. She turned on the faucet to wash her face and imagined the sounds of the water were waves of the Big Sur falling gently behind her as she drove down the coast. She fixed her hair, folded the sunglasses over her collar, slipped the plane ticket and postcard into her pocket, and tapped nervously on the grainy stone countertop. Camille always felt guilty on her birthday. Each one marking another year of her particular brand of alienation. Maybe her grandmother was right. Why couldn’t she just fit in? What right did she have to stand out? Why couldn’t she just sink into the city like everyone else, melting into the rhythm of slow days and quiet, candle-lit cafes, finding contentment in the same conversations about art and politics that floated around her whole life? But that was the problem: Paris, for all its history, beauty, and smoky allure, felt stifling. It was a place of limits, where everyone seemed to know exactly what to say, how to look, who to know. Where her mother had carved out a reputation in the jazz scene and where her grandmother’s pride lay in a lineage of perfect afternoons and respectable company. But what about Camille? 

California, though. She knew her dad was there, of course, tucked away in some editorial office. It wasn’t about him, though. Maybe it was foolish to base a dream on the neon-laced scenes of old movies or the lyrics of her favorite Lana Del Rey songs. But there was something freeing in the idea of the wholesome Americana, the sun-soaked highways stretching into deserts and mountains, like some great map that was waiting for her to fill it in. She liked to imagine L.A. as a place where people remade themselves. It was the kind of place where someone like her, a girl whose mind skipped and twisted and was rough around the edges, could finally

breathe. Maybe she built it up in her mind, maybe she’d land and see through it in a second. But for now, it was something to tear after. 

Her grandmother had taken her to a psychiatrist once. She was seven years old at the time and it had been the first Monday of the school year. Camille had taken up the habit of leaving school early and wandering around the neighborhood, and then gaslighting her parents into thinking that they had written her a note excusing her dismissal and had simply forgotten about it. The Psychiatrist had asked Camille why she lied. She said that she lied now and then. See, sometimes she’d tell her parents the truth and they still wouldn’t believe her, so she preferred to lie. (She never actually did that; Camille had copied it from a movie her grandmother had shown her). The truth was that Camille didn’t know why she lied then other than to avoid going home. She felt out of place in Paris and no matter how much she searched she couldn’t quite find a place that felt like home. She didn’t know if she would feel normal in California, but she felt at home in her dreams of it, and if that were any indication she would be well remiss not to investigate the matter. 

So Camille fixed her hair and her grandmother was happy. She lit the sixteen candles and smiled. Each flame was a Los Angeles sunset burning just for her. She thought about saying goodbye to her grandmother, wondering if her mother would be angry if she left without telling her. But those thoughts gave way to excited Californian fantasies. She slid her sunglasses high up her nose and pressed her hat down low. 

“Is the hat really necessary, Cami? You look so American.”And more than anything Camille wanted to tell her “Maybe I am?” 

But Camille had, perhaps for the first time, ended a Monday with more things to be happy about than she began the day with. Tomorrow she would set out to find that home for herself, too far away for her grandmother to have any say in the matter. She tossed the hat on the counter but left the Ray-Bans on, reflecting the candles. The hat wasn’t going anywhere. “Much better Cami, but can you fix your hair again?” 

“Just take the picture.”