“Perfect,” I tell it.
I tell May.
“You look pretty good, too,” she says from beneath the mask.
Whereas May’s Pinehorn cosplay emphasizes illusion, mine is a more subtle, though just as complex, build. My character—the Spring Keeper—is mostly human-shaped. But because I’m extra, I’ve fashioned prosthetics that give me a long, sharp nose, spiked cheekbones, and an overbearing brow. I’ve altered my exposed chest, too, creating tissue-thin, clammy skin over blue veins and spindly bones. The image of health.
Only the shine of my one black eye shows from beneath my hooded robe, which I’ve sewn and embroidered. It took ages to do, but the effect looks both whimsical and ghastly, as though I’m one blink away from being completely overtaken by nature itself.
We are unrecognizable. We are totally transformed.
We are for sure going to qualify.
“Remember the poses?” I ask her.
“Of course.”
“And the cues?”
“Yup.”
“And you can walk okay?”
“For a girl in a forty-pound costume, balancing atop four stilts? Sure. But Raff, next time can I be the one in the pretty mushroom dress?”
I barely acknowledge her sarcasm as I unfasten and refasten one of her straps for the eighth time. I’m afraid that the moment I decide we’re ready, everything will fall apart.
“Relax, Raff. Listen, this is going to go well,” she tells me. “We’re going to win, and we’re going to get you that sponsorship, okay? And then it’s only a matter of time before those fancy-shmancy art schools will be begging to review your portfolio, okay?”
I force a smile (a small one—I don’t want to risk dislodging my prosthetic cheekbones). I hope she’s right. Everything—every dream of mine, every winking whim—rides on proving I can do this without Evie. In spite of her, in fact.
“And listen.” May’s voice turns solemn. “I know you miss him, and I know it was supposed to be him in this costume and not me, but—”
“Stop.”
“Raff—”
“You know I don’t want to hear about him.”
“Yes, but Raff—”
I give her a warning glare, and she stops talking. There’s one last reason why I’m here, but I won’t let it be the main reason. I won’t even let May say the reason’s name. I only want to hear his name when the announcers award him silver right before awarding me gold.
“I’m just saying that you can do this without him,” May says.
“We can do this.” I give her a small nudge, and the Pinehorn armor shakes as we start our walk out onto the con floor.
“I’m doing this for you, but remember our deal? I get Sunday to set up at the Art Mart. There are some top online artists here, and I’m aiming to make some friends.”
The Art Mart is where all the artist booths are set up, a huge room that bustles with shoppers looking for custom prints, gifts, shirts, phone cases, comics, and anything else you can imagine. It’s a small nuclear power plant of creativity and bootlegged shit. It’s May’s Mount Olympus, and this year she’s got a chance to drop in at one of the amateur booths on Sunday, where she’ll be selling merch for her recently kinda-famous webcomic, Cherry Cherry. As a fellow art-trepreneur, I couldn’t be prouder.
“Of course.”
As soon as we hit the con floor, I know we’ve nailed our look. Within two seconds, people are calling out famous lines from Deep Autumn. Kids rush over, asking if they can take pictures with us. A circle forms around us, but at a distinct distance, like the moss on our skin is contagious, like its spores might float through the hot air of the con and lodge in skin, throats, and eyes, burrowing into bones and turning them soft with rot.
Perfect. May and I are ready. We get into our practiced stances, but before anyone can snap a picture, May turns on her stilts and lumbers off.
People are confused. I’m confused. I run after her.
“May, what’s wrong?”
“We need to go.”
“What? We just got here.”
“Yeah, well, it’s urgent.”
I grab May’s arm through the joint of the costume. We need to build up excitement now if we’re going to have a reputation by the time we’re onstage in front of the actual judges. I want people in the audience to know us, to cheer for us. I want to be recognized.
“Shit, I wanted to warn you,” she says, stopping short as a commotion begins in the crowd behind us. Whatever she wanted to warn me about, it’s too late. I track the shouts. Is it Evie, here to take me home? How did she get here so quickly?
But it’s so much worse.
A new couple has entered the room. The screams that go up are hysterical with excitement, people practically crawling over one another to see the latest looks. I hear a bellowing laugh over the racket; I see sunlight on the curve of a muscled back and the shock of white teeth in a broad smile.
No.
I see a girl slinking across the floor, stalking her prey. Not a girl—a deer. Arrows protrude from her back and throat, and blood streams down her lithe body in glistening ribbons that look fresh enough to paint with. It’s an expert job.
She is dressed as Bambi’s mother, shot dead and now risen with undead vengeance. I know this without even seeing her partner, because it’s my idea. Down to the bloody ribbons, it’s all my work. My drawings come to life, splayed out before me on the Controverse floor.
How could this happen? Who took this from me?
But I know who. I follow the eyes of the crowd to where her partner lies on the ground. His body has been completely airbrushed to resemble that of a deer, every muscle painted in soft browns and beiges. A bite mark on his upper thigh seeps blood, and the flesh around it is already zombified, the infection curdling his young flesh and turning his veins black.
He drags himself up and pretends to limp on the bad leg, desperate to flee the zombie his mother has become. But he’s laughing. His smile is what slaps me. A smile that wins everything and everyone over. A smile that won me over for a long time, too, until it vanished from my life.
He’s here.
Luca Vitale is here.
My biggest competition. My worst nightmare.
My ex-boyfriend.
Given how much TV I watch, I know tropes. Broken love is, of course, the perfect origin story for mortal enemies, so I guess that’s ours, but I’m still not sure who the hero is. We hurt each other. The hard kind of hurt that doesn’t heal up quickly.