That was the main one, I think, but they were all some version of true. I might’ve left with her but for Ella. My mother, incandescent with pride that her daughter was getting a high school degree. I’d squeaked my way to passing, did a couple of phys ed makeups, and picked up a starchy blue graduation gown from the front office that swished like a prom dress and fit like a habit.
It was an oppressively hot Sunday in June when I crossed the stage toward the principal and his stack of fake diplomas, because the real things came by mail. I had the oddest swell of feeling as I approached him: pride. I’d done it. I’d done something. Clawed my way free of a fairy-tale loop, put my head down, and achieved a thing that was never meant for me. I squinted out across the auditorium, looking for Ella in her black party dress and unseasonal lace-up boots.
I found her near the back, fingers in her mouth to whistle. I lifted my hand to blow a kiss, then saw the woman sitting just behind her. Close enough to reach out and touch.
The woman’s hair was as bloody bright as a redcap’s hat, and her eyes were hidden by the smoky circles of street vendor shades. She smiled when she saw me looking, leaning forward till her chin nearly grazed my mother’s shoulder. Then she put up a finger and crooked it. C’mere.
The air of the auditorium swelled a little as the two halves of my life met and repelled like inverted magnets. I stumbled heading back to my seat, feet suddenly stupid. I craned around once I’d sat but couldn’t see over the ocean of graduation caps.
The woman was Hinterland. Her name was Daphne, and she was the reason I’d been steering clear of the other ex-Stories for months.
Applause brought me out of my head. The ceremony was over, and my classmates were laughing and shouting like we’d done something real. For a second there, I’d agreed with them.
I sped to the lobby as soon as I was free, looking for Ella. I found her beaming at me from behind a bouquet of blue hibiscus.
“Hey, you,” she said, as I grabbed her and hugged her hard.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
“Am I okay? I’m amazing.”
She pulled back but didn’t let go. Even though I’d grown my hair out and dyed it darker, we still looked nothing alike. It’s funny the things you can ignore when you don’t want to see them.
“So what do we do now?” Her voice was almost giddy. “I’m in a dress, you’re in a—what do you have on under that robe?”
“Eh. It’s laundry week.”
She made a face. “Whatever that means, I am in a dress and I don’t want to waste it. Pick somewhere fancy, we’ll get lunch. We’ll get ice cream!”
I should’ve done it. I should’ve slapped on a smile and let my mom take me out for sundaes to celebrate the day neither of us thought would ever come. But I couldn’t. Because Daphne was here. She’d come close enough to touch. And needing to know what she wanted from me was a splinter beneath my skin.
“Tomorrow?” I said abruptly, scanning the room over her shoulder. When her face fell, I kept talking. “I’ve got to work today. I forgot to tell you. So, tomorrow?”
“Okay.” She pasted a smile over the expression that let me know she smelled my bullshit, and brought me in for another hug.
“Thanks for coming,” I mumbled.
She gave me a little shake. “I’m your mother. Don’t thank me for being here. Just come home after work, okay? We’ll get the good takeout tonight.”
She cupped my face, her hands cool. Then crisply she turned away, sweeping off through the crowd without looking back. That was a new thing, too: when she sensed herself clinging, she’d cut it off quick. It left me feeling bereft every time, wishing I’d hugged her longer. Wishing I hadn’t lied, and we were on our way to a fancy lunch. But I had, and we weren’t, so once she was gone I made my way to the exit, too.
I thought Daphne would be waiting for me, but I didn’t see her. Families dotted the pavement, siblings batting at each other and moms wearing summer lipstick and dads in khaki pants looking at their phones. I wound around them like a wraith. When I passed a trash can, I peeled off my gown and dropped it in. The sky was soft and low, in a way that made you feel like you were inside when you were out. And there was this feeling in the air, this waiting feeling. Like the square of city I stood on was a mouse, and a cat’s paw hovered just above it.
Things were different now, I reminded myself. Our lives had changed. If they hadn’t, I might’ve called the feeling by another name: bad luck coming.
* * *
Here’s a story I don’t like to tell.
It started on an ugly day last spring, frigid and murderously bright. I walked into a Hinterland meeting late, my fresh-washed hair frozen into pieces. When I first discovered the weekly gatherings of displaced ex-Stories, on the second floor of a psychic’s shop on Avenue A, I thought I’d been saved—from the loneliness of singularity. From being the oddest creature I knew. And the meetings did save me. But they messed me up, too. Kept me from trying too hard, I guess, to be normal. To stop being so damned easy on myself, because who could expect much from a girl created to live in a fairy tale, attempting now to fashion an unmagical life?
I was used to mixing with the same junk drawer of ex-Story oddballs. Even the ones I couldn’t stand were comforting as old wallpaper, drinking instant coffee and kvetching about something or other week after week. But that day a woman I’d never seen was standing at the front of the room. She had the hard, painted-on beauty of an Egon Schiele portrait: dark-lipped and paper-pale, with perfect heroine hair that flowed and bent down her back in flat red colorblock. She was sitting on a high stool with her knees pulled up, sleeves pushed to her elbows, talking. Her talk turned the room’s drowsy air into something crackling.
“We’re infiltrators here,” she was saying. “And we always will be.”
It was about eighty degrees hotter inside than out, and I was sweating through my layers, trying to shuck my coat while balancing a full coffee cup. But the fervor in her words stopped me cold.
“This world is a gray place. A place of small and scattered lives. Disordered. Ugly. Chaotic.” She brought a fist down on her knee. “But us? We blaze. We blaze against it like red ribbon.”
Her voice was a drug. Dense as fog, rubbing its back against your ears like a cat. Everyone in the place was angling closer, warming their hands by her ferocity. Even me: I hated to think about it later, but she tugged at something in me, too.
She’d looked at someone sitting by her feet, a boy I’d never heard speak. His head was always down and his lips were always moving, noiseless. I suspected most of his mind was still lodged inside his broken tale.
“What were you?” she asked him. “In the Hinterland, what were you?”
I couldn’t see the boy’s face, but I could see the panic in his rising shoulders. “I was a prince. Conjured by a witch of dandelions and blood, to fool a princess.” He darted a look around. “Sometimes I can feel the Hinterland sun on me again. Hear the insects whispering in the dirt. I don’t understand why I’m still a boy.”
The woman had looked at him with such ferocity. “You’re not. You are magic, through and through. We all are. Be proud of that.”