“Fascinating,” he says. “Exquisite! I can’t tell what’s real and what’s artificial.”
“That’s the point,” I tell Waldorf.
“So how are they staying on? Does the moss grip them?”
I smile. “No, sometimes we in the cosplay world just need to use a little hot glue.”
Waldorf Waldorf claps for the small joke, and I take what feels like my first breath since walking onto the stage. I don’t relax yet, though.
Someone offstage calls the judges, who nod in acknowledgment but never actually turn toward the cameras. The lady in the glasses is smiling deviously as Waldorf returns to his seat. May and I begin to leave the platform, but she stops us.
“Now, you said you both spent the summer on this build, am I right?”
“That’s right,” I say.
“Interesting, because I heard from another competitor that Raffy started these builds by himself, and you only teamed up a short while ago. Is that right?”
I feel that familiar choke in my throat. Did Luca tell the judges about us? Or Inaya? I’m about to try lying again when the judge says, “Raffy, we’ve heard a lot from you. Why don’t you give May a chance to explain some of her work?”
May goes still under her huge costume. She’s a confident person, but all the confidence in the world wouldn’t prepare a person for this scenario. The silence stretches on, and the crowd, seeing us pause, begins to titter.
“It was my greenhouse,” she finally says. “We used my greenhouse for all the plants.”
“How about the construction? Did you guys split the work?” asks Marcus the Master.
“Yeah, we helped each other get dressed.”
“No, not getting dressed. I mean building the suit. The props. Can you point out a portion of this build that you’re responsible for?”
I help May remove her mask, expecting her to be dumbfounded. But she’s got on her own natural mask. And I’m glad she let me glue that moss on her cheeks and jaw. She looks threatening.
She says, “We split the work. I’m a visual artist—I helped produce the concepts for this—but Raffy is the one who put it all together.”
Even this is stretching the truth, but it’s the right answer, and I can tell the judges are trying to create some sort of narrative for the cameras. I’m glad May lied, but as we walk back up the stage, all the goofiness is gone from our performance. May is nervous and knotted up.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers to me.
“Don’t be,” I say.
At the back of the stage, the people in headsets indicate that we should step up onto the top tier of some risers, then indicate we’ll be there for a while. And they’re not wrong. For the next hour, we stand and watch as the other couples enter from backstage, walk the runway to the judges, and get torn apart. Then they’re led back to the risers to wait with us and agonize over their performance. Some are crying by that time.
Waldorf Waldorf appears to be the expert on concepts and design. He’s the nicest. The lady in glasses is a master sewer. She is extremely harsh, but I am amazed by how much she can tell about a look just from inspecting the seams. I decide she is psychic. Yvonne is basically who I aspire to be with my own Ion channel. And then, of course, there’s Marcus the Master. I am thinking about him shirtless when May catches my attention.
“Finally,” she says, relieved. The coordinators are back, collecting all the couples who have been judged and arranging us in a single-file line as we exit the stage. The crowd is silent as they watch. Tired. A man is standing onstage with a clipboard, talking to the judges, who have been given sandwiches.
“Not a word to the other competitors,” says the coordinator as we’re led into the dark corridor. The final crop of cosplayers huddles backstage, silent, drinking in our defeated parade as we’re pushed past. They have no idea what’s coming. I remember Luca trying to warn me despite Inaya’s hushing.
Anyone would feel grateful for that warning. Faced with a person like Luca, anyone would feel grateful in general. But I don’t. This is my world. My competition. For him to think I need his help—it fills me with a cold blue fire, pulsing beneath the silicon gripping my skin.
I am not doing this for Luca. I am not doing this to spite Luca. I am doing this for me. This is my only opportunity to secure my future. This is my big chance to propel myself into my destiny.
And if I succeed, it will be because I am good enough alone.
Six
Then
Thirteen months ago
It takes me nearly an entire week to decide that my conversation with Luca in Craft Club must’ve been a hallucination. A very vivid hallucination, likely induced by the glue fumes I’m inhaling while I bedazzle Plasma Siren’s fins. And even while awake, the hallucination continues. Luca and I have two classes together, which I’ve always known. But now that I’ve spoken to him, it’s like his presence is all I know. I feel so dumb, so easily absorbed into this infatuation with a guy I barely would have acknowledged a week ago. And he makes it hard. So hard. When he stands at the front of the room presenting, or when he answers a question, his eyes always find mine, and his lips always pull together in a triumphant smile. It’s like he’s been waiting for me to watch him, because every time I do, he’s already watching me. But we don’t talk, which is good. We only talk online, when Striker9 asks me kinda flirty questions during my stream and I pretend not to know who my new admirer is.
How do you keep your hands from getting sticky? When you create a sewing pattern, do you leave a seam allowance in case you get a raging boner?
It is, admittedly, very strange to flirt with an apparently-not-as-straight-as-I-thought jock through the time/space chasm that is the internet, then to pine for him every day in real life like I’m the one doing the chasing. It’s like in person, we reverse roles, and maybe that’s why it feels like a hallucination. Outside of Craft Club and the internet, I don’t feel all that remarkable, yet Luca watches me anyway. It’s how I know I’m dreaming, and it’s why I’ll never make the next move. I don’t want to snap out of whatever this is. In fact, if glue fumes caused this hallucination in the first place, I might as well inhale all the fumes. Every fume. Not a fume in this town is safe from me, in fact.
Ironically, I am in the school’s art studio, spray painting beneath the spray booth, the next time I encounter Luca.
It’s late after school, the art wing totally free of students and teachers. Before me on a slab of cardboard, I’ve laid out a series of rough bangles. Or they will be bangles as soon as I finish painting them. Right now they’re just foam rings, carved and pocked to look like rough metal. All that’s left to do is Midas the whole affair with gilded spray paint, then apply some rust.