by Ann Angel
“Okay.”
“That’ll give you some time to settle in.”
“Yeah.”
Dad heads back toward the stairs. “Why don’t you unpack while I’m finishing up some work,” he says, offering a smile that isn’t quite apologetic.
“My suitcase is kind of heavy,” I blurt out. My teeth clamp over my lower lip. I shouldn’t. . . . He’s already on the second step, but . . .
He glances back. Comes down and grabs it. Groans. “Oh, honey. I hope the cabbie put this in the trunk for you.”
I’m embarrassed to tell him I used up the last of my travel allowance in Miami. I didn’t have enough on my debit card to pay for a taxi from JFK. He’ll probably give me my summer funds tonight or tomorrow. If I had called him from the airport earlier this afternoon, he probably would have advanced me a bit of it to get home. Since he’s home, maybe he would have even come out to meet me at the curb and paid it in cash. I don’t know. But it would have been bothering him to ask, and I didn’t want to start off the summer like that.
Dad carries the suitcase all the way up to my bedroom on the third floor. By the time I take off my shoes and get up there, he’s back down in his office, right across from the master bedroom on the second floor.
“Thanks,” I say as I pass. He’s tapping at the keyboard, already caught up in his work again. Maybe he hears me, but I keep on climbing.
The first things I see in my room remind me of the old me.
The worn white tape measure snaking atop the bureau. I read somewhere once that the perfect size for a woman is 36-24-36, but I think that’s outdated. People are skinnier than that now. And you’re supposed to be short. The best I ever got was 36-30-42. Because I’m tall and this giant butt isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
The neon plastic crates piled in the corner. Empty now, but I used to hide my snack stash in there, beneath tucked mounds of laundry.
The Thighmaster. My nemesis. There is never, ever going to be a space between my thighs.
Popsicle sticks, because I never liked the feeling of sticking my fingers down my throat. In New York, your hands are never really guaranteed to be clean, because of the subway. It all comes back to the subway, somehow. The low, rumbling underground thing that once seemed invisible, but now that you’ve been away from it for a while, you realize how present it is. How even though you’re on the third floor, curled on the edge of your childhood bed, you can still feel it trembling the ground beneath you every seven to nine minutes. How what once was unnoticeable is now ever present and slightly disturbing.
I spread my hands out over the bed quilt, familiar and foreign at the exact same time. The tassels slip between my fingers. I close my eyes and try to remember that I’m someone else now. Someone happy, and 75 percent not-ugly. Someone who wears a two-piece bathing suit. Someone who hasn’t even thought about killing herself for something like half a year. Someone who can look in the mirror, most days, and smile.
For a moment, underground, some guy thought I was pretty. Yeah, he was old and creepy and I threatened to spray him, but I bet some girls never, ever get told they’re pretty. And then there was the handsome cop. He thought I was pretty, too. I know he was checking me out, from the corner of his eye while he pretended to go through my suitcase. Maybe I even leaned forward a little, so my boobs would sway in their sundress cups. That’s one good thing about not being too skinny.
Lying here now, I cup my boobs from underneath. They fill my hands, and then some. I let my thumbs skim over my nipples until they pop up out of the skin. Someday, maybe some guy will want to touch me. My hands slide down over the dainty linen sundress. My belly — God, it feels kind of big right now, actually, even though breakfast on the plane was pretty pathetic and I never got around to lunch. With the heels of my hands I try to push it down, smooth it out. But I end up cupping it like a globe. Last year at this time, my stomach felt more like a bowl. What the hell happened?
It’s so weird being back here. I used to imagine that the roller marks in the ceiling paint were invisible rainbows, with color hidden behind them. Now it just looks so freaking white.
Dad knocks on my door.
“Yeah?” I sit up as he pokes his head in. Swing my legs down over the side of the bed and smile at him. Maybe he actually wants to hang out now. Maybe he’s missed me that much.
“I —” Dad does a funny little double take. Just a twitch of his face, really, and his voice stalls. He opens the door wider, almost wide enough to come in.
“What? You can come in.”
“Uh, well.” He shakes his head. “Eight thirty instead of seven thirty, okay? I need to take a call before we go.”
“Sure. Whatever.” I wrap a bedspread tassel around my finger real tight. It doesn’t matter. We’ll go to dinner, but he won’t really be there anyway.
“You’re the best.”
I give him the grin I know he loves. “Of course I am.”
Dad grins back and starts to close the door. But he doesn’t close it. He lingers in the open wedge, holding the knob.
“What?” I ask. He’s looking at me in a soft, strange way.
“Sorry.” He shakes his head again. “It’s just —”
“What?”
“God,” he breathes. “You look like your mother.”
I’m going to say something now. Something that’ll make him step inside. He’ll put a hand on my cheek, or sit along the side of the bed and stroke my hair and tell me he loves me.
But he tucks away at the exact wrong moment. The door clicks shut, finishing the wall between us. Leaving me with stinging eyes and words to swallow and a heaviness about my entire being.
Six stories below, the subway rumbles through.
My fingertip throbs from lack of blood.
I free it. Go stand in front of the mirror above my desk. If I stand far back, I can see myself down to the knees. Not bad. I turn and study myself. Not bad at all.
Close up, though, it’s different.
It’s not true, what he said. I don’t look very much at all like my mother. A little in the face, I guess, but only a very, very little. Mom was always shapely but quite thin. Especially thin in the time when I most knew her. In the end.
I don’t know what Dad thought he saw just now, but it wasn’t me. Not the real me, anyway.
My makeup pouch is easy enough to find, tucked in the suitcase, outside pocket. With light brushstrokes I darken my eyelids, my lips, my cheeks. I know how to do it, although most of the time I don’t bother at school. I mean, who’s going to see me except my friends? But when Dad takes me to dinner, I want to look just right.
At some point I learned how to put on blush in such a way that it makes my cheeks look slimmer. To convert their fullness into something more concave. Too bad I can’t do that to my stomach.
The food is really good up at school. Easy to eat and easy to keep down. Everything turned over when I got there. I don’t even know what it was that changed, but the minute I got there, I felt lighter.
My phone starts blinking. Sarah’s sent me a sad-faced selfie. Miss U already.
I snap a shot of my own frowning face, then thumb quickly: Me too.
Boarding school was my idea in the first place. I had to do something, you know? To get out of the circle I was caught in like a swirling drain. Popsicle sticks and Thighmasters. Weighing and measuring every day. I didn’t even bring any of that stuff with me to school, which is weird, now that I think about it. As if I already knew I wouldn’t need it.
But I’m back now. And the Popsicle sticks are here, so wide and so easy that they came in a box labeled “tongue depressors.” And I don’t know my measurements anymore, but I’m too afraid to take them. I rub my belly dome. (Do they make a Bellymaster?)
Molten chocolate lava cake. If I don’t eat at least two, Dad will be disappointed. He’ll ask what’s wrong. He’ll say, “You’re not yourself.” There’ll be a moment after that when he reaches across the table and takes my h
and, and I’ll wait a second, because I like how it feels to have him looking, and asking, and caring, but all I’ll be able to say in response is “Don’t be silly. Of course I want another.”
And we’ll stay out together longer while I eat it. Then right before we leave, I’ll slip into the bathroom and bring a Popsicle stick out of my purse and take care of it. All the heaviness will leave me in a blinding rush. I’ll walk back to Dad with Scope-minted breath and a smile.
I don’t know why it always seemed like the less of me there was, the more he would be able to see me. I lie on the bed again. Stare at the old ceiling, so full of whiteness and non-rainbows.
For a moment, far below and deep, the ground trembles from another passing train. The rhythm is constant, like a pulse. The bed and the walls shiver with the unsettling timbre of unspoken things. And I find myself wondering what else I’ll be eating — or not eating — for dinner.
What have I done?
The golden light of the fire flickers over my pale, shaking hands without warming them. Icy sweat slithers slowly down the taut ridge of my spine, dampening the elaborate silk and brocade layers of my dancing kimono. This opulent chamber, larger and more luxurious than anything I have ever seen in my life, looms around me like a threat. I do not belong within it. This is all a mistake. I should never have come here.
My own chamber is small. In just the right light — light that I am careful to arrange so that the effect is as forgiving as possible — the flaking gold paint, faded patterned-silk screen, and chipped bowl that I always fill with fresh flowers manage to achieve a certain . . . elegance. Just as long as no one looks too closely. I take care that they do not. When I am in that room, all eyes must be on me.
And that, of course, was my downfall.
It was just a foolish, reckless jest. How was I to know that he would take it seriously? How was I to know that he would succeed?
What have I done?
“Tell me how I may prove my regard to you, my dove,” Lord Minamoto had demanded, sitting beside me in my small, gaudy chamber. There was a tiny water stain on the woven mat by his foot, and I absently hoped that he had not noticed it. “I adore you! I must possess you! Tell me what I can do!”
Nothing, I thought then, stubbornly. There is nothing a man who wishes only to possess me — like a thing, like a prize — can do to gain my heart.
But I could not say it. Who would believe that a creature like me even had a heart?
This was my job. To entertain. To dance, yes — dance the role of the young, beautiful maiden, enchant the theater’s audiences and make them all fall in love with me so that they would return again, yes. But also to win patrons from that audience. Rich men who would pay for my time after my performances. Who would pour gifts of gold into the Owner’s hand in order to secure my favors. This, too, was a dance. To flirt and seduce, to tantalize while remaining out of reach for as long as possible. To draw out their courtship and draw out their wealth.
I was very good at it. Too good. The ardent look on Minamoto-sama’s face made that obvious.
Lord Minamoto was rich, and the Owner expected a certain return. If he did not get it, I would have to pay. Pay in tears and bruises. The Owner owned the theater, but he also owned me. The contract my parents had signed when I was eight spelled it out. Until I paid him back the purchase price he had given them for me, I was his to do with as he willed. I had started dancing when I was twelve, four years ago. Four years of strained muscles, sweat, tears, of folding illusions so close to my skin that no one ever saw the real girl beneath the mask. I thanked the Moon every day for the shadow-weaving that allowed me to pull threads of light and color and darkness from the world, and change or enhance my appearance. At sixteen, I was the most celebrated dancer in this quarter of the Perfumed District.
I had barely earned a third of the money required to buy my freedom.
Minamoto-sama is not so bad, I told myself. So his skeletal hands touched me as awkwardly as a child prodding at a dead toad with a stick, and his breath stank of fermented beans. I had endured worse. Much worse. What did it matter?
I made sure that my shadow-woven face — enhancing my beauty and concealing every hint of disgust — was firmly in place, and turned to him. Braced myself to endure his kisses, endure whatever else needed to be endured. . . .
Then he spoke again, his breath slithering into my ear like a moist slug plucked from a swamp leaf: “You are more beautiful than any woman, Kano-san.”
Not a ripple showed on my face. Inside, I flinched as if he had thrust a dagger into the soft, vulnerable heart of me.
I hated him for it — hated myself for it. He did not know me. Why should I let his words hurt me? But just for a moment, in that piercing pain, I wanted to scream at him. To command him from my presence. To tell him that I was a woman like any other, with a woman’s heart and a woman’s soul that could not be bought, for any price.
And I knew that I could not, would not, let him lay those hands on me that night.
Stall. Put him off. Just for now. Just for tonight . . .
Slowly, subtly, I dragged radiance into the threads of my mask. I met Lord Minamoto’s eyes, watched as awe, blank adoration, and something that trembled on the very edge of fear dawned across his face. My beauty was fierce. Unearthly. Inhuman.
I whispered, “Let me dance at the Shadow Ball, my lord. Let me dance for the Moon Prince. Then I shall be yours.”
An impossible request. I had wanted only to disconcert him, buy myself a reprieve. Someone like me would never be invited to dance for the Moon Prince.
Or so I thought.
They’ll kill me. What have I done? What have I done?
I held myself motionless as I knelt on the edge of the tatami mat behind the stage at the Moon Palace. My posture was perfect, my hands clasped tightly together. Only I would know that my skin quivered and my hands trembled as my eyes passed, unseeing, over the seething, colorful mass of other dancers that swirled around me.
The finest performers from all over Tsuki no Hikari no Kuni, the Moonlit Lands. They would perform before royalty tonight, before the nation’s richest and most influential noblemen, at the Kage no Iwai, the Shadow Ball. Tonight, Tsuki no Ouji-sama, the Moon Prince, divine ruler of the Moonlit Lands, would choose his Shadow Bride.
The bride was selected by the prince himself, from all the unmarried noble young women of his nation, for no other reason than her outstanding beauty. She was considered a gift from the country to its ruler — a lovely, gently bred virgin, offered up to be the Moon Prince’s lover, to bring him joy and delight. A sacrifice. For although Shadow Brides seldom stayed with the Moon Prince for more than a year, they could never afterward have another lover or marry. In times past, when the Moon Princess had failed to provide the country with an heir, the son of a Shadow Bride had sometimes been named prince, or their daughters married to a suitable royal candidate who ruled through them. No possible confusion could be allowed to taint the birth of a potential future ruler.
The Shadow Bride was second only to the prince’s wife, the Moon Princess, in rank, and her family gained enormous political influence from her position, which meant that the future of the whole country was affected by Tsuki no Ouji-sama’s choice. The Shadow Ball was the most public and important of all our country’s official events.
And now I was to dance at it. To entertain the prince and his princess, and all those untouched, virginal, noble young candidates for the place of Shadow Bride who laughed and smiled and mingled in the palace beyond the stage curtain.
I. Kano Akira. Daughter of a common tile-maker and a laundress. One of innumerable undistinguished children, sold like a sack of firewood, and made to dance before the baying crowd at just twelve.
What am I doing here?
A small hand came to rest on the vivid scarlet silk of my sleeve. I started violently, holding my shadow-woven mask — the illusion of my own face, fixed into an expression of perfect serenity — in place with a
n effort.
There was a girl kneeling politely at my side. She was young, no older than fourteen, and her face was pretty but unremarkable. Nevertheless, I recognized her, and the fact sent a jagged claw of terror scraping through my insides. Does she know who I am? Will she expose me?
“You are Yoshi-san. I have seen you dance,” I said, hoping that my voice sounded as falsely composed as my face. “You are very accomplished.”
“I have seen you dance also.” She removed her hand from my kimono and bowed deeply, her forehead almost touching the floor. I stared in surprise. What in the world?
“You are Kano Akira-sama,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “The owner of my Okiya takes her most promising dancers to your theater to watch you dance, so that we might learn from you. I hope one day to have a tenth of your skill.”
“My dear . . .” I said hurriedly, my eyes darting to the other dancers and their owners clustered around us. Was I imagining things, or did some of them watch me from the corners of their eyes? “I am honored by your regard, but please —”
She sat up, the movement quick and graceful. “I just wished to know how it was that you came to be here. Surely you cannot mean to dance?”
I swallowed — my throat clicked drily — and nodded.
“Why?” She breathed. “It is forbidden! If the Moon Princess, or anyone, were to guess —”
“My patron . . . My patron sent me here.”
Her eyes widened with dismay and disbelief before she bowed her head.
“He is a fool,” I said grimly. I am a fool. “But not a complete fool. I am to dance anonymously. He thinks that no one will find out . . . who I am. What I am.”
“We will not betray you,” Yoshi-san said fervently. “None of us. I promise it.”
“Thank you.” Impulsively I leaned forward and pressed my papery-dry lips to Yoshi-san’s forehead in the traditional kiss of good luck. Her skin was salty and damp. She gasped with surprise, her eyes searching my face. Then she smiled.
“Good fortune always, Kano-sama,” she whispered. She rose gracefully to her feet and fluttered away.
