by Ryan La Sala
“For the hundredth time, it’s golem,” I say. “Sirastros creates golems from clay before giving them the breath of life. Not totems.”
“The subtitles said totem.”
“The subtitles are wrong. Golems are from Jewish lore. Read the manga, Luca.”
“You know I’m not allowed to have that in my house.”
I give him my best pitiful boo-hoo face, and he returns it with a sleepy grin, asking, “What time is it?”
Using the light of the TV, I spot my phone at the edge of the couch.
“Midnight thirty.”
Luca pulls the blanket over his head and lets out a scream. I muffle him as best I can, not wanting my mom to hear. She’s seen Luca coming and going but hasn’t really asked questions. However, if she knew we were still in here, she might check on us, and all my supplies are still out from the work I was doing before Luca busted in and demanded we order pad thai and watch cartoons.
Luca’s yells turn into laughter as his arms encircle me.
“Can I stay?” he asked.
“You’ve got soccer in the morning, and you know your mom would flip out if you didn’t come home.”
“She thinks I’m at Calvin’s with the boys.”
Luca and I are both hiding what we’re up to. I’m hiding my projects from my mom, and he’s hiding me, a whole-ass person.
“The boys,” I say, mocking the name he has for his group of guy friends. “Why don’t you hang out with them anymore?”
“I do. At practice. And at school. But that’s not what you’re asking, is it?”
It’s my turn to grin, but I don’t yell or anything. Luca is good at guessing what’s going on in my head.
“You’re really asking, why does Luca come here all the time and watch anime with me?”
“It’s ’cause they’d make fun of you for watching anime,” I deflect.
“I could watch anime at home on my phone.”
“So then why?”
Luca does this thing where every time I finally corner him into almost revealing something unspoken, he pulls me into a kiss. I’m not sure when I’ll stop being stunned or when the edge of excitement will wear off, but for now it’s a welcome distraction, and it works on me every time.
More screams from the TV pull us back down to earth.
“We have to start this one over,” he says, feeling around for the remote.
“No, no,” I say, pulling myself off the couch. Luca blinks up at me from beneath the blanket. He looks like a dejected nun.
“You need to go home and not act totally suspicious. And every time you’re late to soccer, you find a way to blame it on me.”
Anyone observing would see my point, but Luca knows I’m leaving something out. He raises an eyebrow.
“And,” I grumble, “I want to finish what I was working on before you showed up.”
“Work!” Luca flaps his hands at the ceiling. “Always with the work! Why can’t you ever just relax? Go with the flow?”
I feel my heart tighten a little bit.
“I’ve been going with the flow since you showed up. You are the flow. And now the flow is going home.”
While Luca finds his shoes, I descend from the loft and sit back down at my table. I’ve got the whole weekend ahead of me, but I’m not sure it’s enough time. Plasma Siren is looking pretty messy, which is how a cosplay always looks right before you put it all together, but I’m still anxious as heck. The fins are done, as is the bulk of the sewing. But the armor needs a ton of work. What makes her hard is the clustered barnacles and spiral seashells that appear to grow right out of her shoulders and hips. I could have used actual seashells, but that would have weighed a ton, and so I elected to sculpt them all out of foam. And it’s taking me five hundred years. Six hundred, now that Luca has derailed me for a few hours.
Still draped in the blanket, Luca drops down next to me. I expect him to hug me from behind, which he’s taken to doing when I’m set up at my station, but he waits until I’ve put down the foam clay I was kneading. He hooks his chin over my shoulder, slinks his arms beneath mine, and picks up the foam seashell I was working on.
“You haven’t done a stream recently,” he says.
“I know. I’m so bad.”
“You’re not bad. Tell me what you’re doing.”
I snort. I know he’s lingering here, and while it’s a little annoying, I also love it. “Like I’m streaming?”
He nods on my shoulder.
Jokingly, I begin with my intro.
“Hey, guys, it’s me, Raffy, and you’re watching Crafty Rafty. I’m back, working on Plasma Siren, and as you can see, today I’m joined by a special guest. Would you like to introduce yourself?”
After a beat, Luca says simply, “I am the flow.”
“And where do you hail from, Mr. Flow?”
Another beat, and Luca supplies, “I am from the beyond, the space between space, the world beneath the world. I am from the abyss.”
I throw a cheery smile at my—our—invisible audience.
“Great! So glad to have you on the stream, Mr. Flow. It’s not often that I’m joined by an interdimensional horror, but wow, am I glad you’re a hot one! Does every eternal creature from your dimension have dimples?”
“Just me. I’m the cutest.”
I twist, because I suddenly need to see his dimples, and I can feel him smiling. I kiss him.
“Keep going,” he whispers. He tightens his arms around my chest like a living parachute pack, leaving me to lift up my project to the big, empty windows.
“Well, right now, I’m using foam clay and EVA foam to create seashells. Once the foam clay is dry, I’ll be using a Dremel tool—”
“A Dremel?”
“It’s like a little rotary tool thingy with sandpaper on it, and I’m going to use it to give the shells definition and texture before soldering finer lines into them.”
“Show them,” Luca encourages.
My Dremel tool is within reach. I pick it up and grab one of the dry shells, a smooth cup that will soon be etched with wavy lines.
I demonstrate a few strokes. I don’t want to do much, because I should really be wearing my respirator for this.
I end with, “And that’s how you make a fake seashell out of foam! Any questions?”
We both wait expectantly, longer than we need to, aware that this is absurd, resisting the urge to break into laughter. I crack first, but Luca’s been waiting on my cue, and he bundles me up in his blanket. Under it, I can barely see him, but he’s warm and close.
“You work really hard. I like seeing you chill out.”
I lean into him. It’s easy to need something like this, and it’s hard to tell myself I need to stop. This is fun, but I’ve got hours to go before I can rest. I need to work. I can’t fully turn into this person he wants me to be.
“I’d be a lot more chill if I didn’t have so much to do,” I say.
“I can help,” Luca insists. “I don’t want to stress you out.”
He rocks me back and forth, back and forth. I note the difference between his words and his continued distraction. I know he’s slowly making his way toward some sort of point. Why else would he be stalling?
“I was thinking we could do this together,” he finally says. “Not just making stuff. I mean, like…”
“You want to cosplay? I thought you said this was the nerdiest thing in the world.”
“Yeah, I mean, it’s fucking nerdy, don’t get me wrong,” Luca says. I can hear the smile on his face as he rocks me. “But you love it, and I…”
“What?”
“…want to go with your flow.”
“I think you love it, too,” I say. “You’re, like, much nerdier than me, you know that? You’ve seen every anime. You’ve played all the games. It
’s incredible that you’ve kept so much of this a secret from people for so long.”
Luca’s grip loosens. He unlatches from me, stands, stretches, then sits down besides me at the table.
“My mom hates this stuff,” he says, gesturing at the cosplay materials. “She thinks it’s for kids.”
“Because it’s arts and crafts?”
He shrugs. “It’s just not what guys do in my family. She worries about me.”
“She worries about you wearing costumes?”
Luca’s cheeks puff up, and he blows out a breath. He’s wrestling with something inside him, and I give him time to say it his own way.
“My parents don’t know a lot about me,” he says. “I tried to talk to my mom about maybe being bi a few years ago, and she freaked out. Not ’cause she’s homophobic or anything. But I think she knew my dad would have an issue with it, and she said we shouldn’t tell him. I kinda feel like he knows something is up, though, you know? Anyway, after that, she got all sensitive about what I was watching and reading and doing, especially when it came to anime and video games. She’s old-school. She thinks doing this stuff influenced my sexuality or brainwashed me or something. Whatever it is, it was easier for her to focus on than the actual issue, so I hid all that stuff away. And I got really into soccer instead. And working out. Which she was much happier with. I like that stuff, but it’s also part of proving to my folks that I’m still the person they knew.”
“So does your mom still think you’re bi?”
“I think so. I don’t know,” Luca says, picking up some felt and running it between his fingers. “But I don’t care, either. I’m not going to live there forever. And I can watch all the anime I want here with you, right?”
“Right.”
We sit together in the golden light of the lamp. I hook an arm around Luca’s back and push my temple against his shoulder. He’s always so warm.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want, and you don’t have to be anyone you don’t like.”
“I want…” He stops. He puts down the felt and picks it up again. “I want to make something amazing, too. I want people to see me the way I see me.”
“You’d really cosplay?”
After a moment, he slips back into the boyish, elusive persona.
“Sorry, no can do.” He puts on this smug masculinity that he knows annoys me. It’s an act, but being dismissed this way still makes me itch. “I’ve got soccer, remember? Can’t spend the night drumming up seashells.”
“Dremel,” I counter, but the switch hurts. Luca is Luca until you push him to a point just past his comfort zone, and then this version shows up. Bored, boyish, brooding. And as much as I hate being shut down, I know I need to work. This is a flow I go with whether I want to or not.
“Right, soccer. Ball play. Very masc,” I say, picking up my next shell like I’m about to get back to work.
“You know it.” He puts a hand on the back of my neck, pretending to headbutt me like he and the boys do. I think they think it looks tough, but it’s a strangely gentle motion that always reminds me of young rams learning how to charge. It’s extremely homoerotic.
I haven’t told him this, because he’d stop doing it.
“You sure I can’t stay?” he checks one more time.
“Luca, you already told yourself no in the past. You made me promise to tell you no in the future. The future is now. It’s happening. Your no is here to send you home.”
He pulls back and makes a big show of grabbing his bag, then his jacket. He fishes out his keys and jangles them at me, all angry. I turn back to my work. But then I feel him watching me from the door. I know from experience that he’ll watch until I finally relent and look up. Then he’ll grin like he’s won a bet with himself. As far as contests go, it’s a pretty cute one. After a beat, I look up from my crafting.
“Maybe,” he says.
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe I’ll dress up. Just for you, though.”
I roll my eyes. There’s no way he’s serious about cosplaying.
“We’ll see,” I tell him.
“You’ll see, but only you,” he tells me back before slipping into the night.
Eleven
Now
I basically kick my front door closed as soon as I get into my house. The driver walked me and my big, dumb suitcase all the way to my stoop, like I might make a run for it. I’m annoyed. I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m confused, I’m a mess.
But I’m still in the competition! I’m still in!
Take that, universe! Take that, Evie!
My thoughts are overly loud in my mind as the waves of anxiety drift away, returning me to my usual high-octane focus. Or maybe it’s the adrenaline of being in my foyer in full cosplay, which is basically asking for Evie to arrive home suddenly and smite me. But the house is still around me, and her car isn’t in the driveway, so I think I’m good.
I finally relax. And I finally think.
There is something so unrealistic about this that it feels like a conspiracy is maneuvering me around. Great mechanics working with me or through me, like I’m the needle operating at the very tip of a sewing machine, totally oblivious to the power that controls my motions.
Which, okay, fine. That’s how life feels for a lot of teenagers, and I get that. But I feel like I’ve just glimpsed something I shouldn’t have, talking with Irma. I’ve seen the outline of someone else’s project with just enough perspective to realize I’m one of many materials being used to create something wondrous.
I shrug this off as I bundle up my robe. I don’t really care about conspiracy theories. I care about arts and crafts. I guess I also care about winning. I care about proving Evie wrong. She won’t be home until tomorrow afternoon, and by then I’ll be back at Controverse, competing in Primes. I’ll be in a new costume. I’ll be a new person. A new Raffy.
Right now, though, I’m still a priest covered in mushrooms, and I’m falling apart. My whole body has begun to itch as the silicon cracks and breathes. I’m desperate to shower and change clothes—even to just undress. I consider going straight to the studio to change, but with Evie home tomorrow, it’s probably safer to leave the studio in the pristine, blameless condition I left it in. My room is safer.
This means marching through my house and up to my room in full cosplay. A perilous task. If I leave a mess, Evie will find it. If I leave a single petal in the foyer, Evie will know, because her house is a world of industrial artsiness. It’s a utopia of sleek gray planes, tastefully kitschy clutter placed just so, frosted glass walls, lumpy pillows the color of lips upon transparent chairs and low mustard couches, and so on. We basically live in one of Evie’s galleries. And like every gallery my mother controls, it’s all her. Everything has been perfectly determined by her taste. Dressed as I am, I’m the part that doesn’t belong.
I heave my suitcase up the stairs. At the top, I check behind me for detritus, see a single fallen mushroom, and scoop it up. I’ll have to incinerate this entire costume at some point, but for now I’ll just hide it in one of my gargantuan plastic bins until Evie’s next trip. In my room, I pull a bin free from its hiding spot under my bed and tip the robe off my shoulders. It pains me not to hang it up, but I try not to think about it as I begin undoing my underclothes. Eventually, I’m just in my underwear and exoskeleton, silicon prosthetics forming unnatural peaks along my collarbones and ribs. I spin for myself in the mirror, and because I look like a very fashionable larva, I pull my limbs into my best high-fashion pose. I am on my third pose when I notice something in the mirror.
The studio lights are on, and inside the studio, there are people. Many people. They press against the tall windows, watching me.
My legs collapse under me, and then I’m on my rug, digging through my bag for my phone. It’s almost dead, but of course there are a million texts
from May. I punch at her name and call her.
“It’s us, it’s us!” She laughs. “Jesus, did you just do a death drop?”
“A what?”
“Never mind. Listen, I know Evie isn’t here, so I came here to wait for you ’cause you weren’t picking up your phone. And then a few people wanted to meet up, so I told them to come over. But I knew you’d freak if I let people into your house, so I broke into the studio.”
“The studio is, like, still my house, May.”
“Not according to your mom.”
“How many people are there?”
May doesn’t immediately answer, so when she says, “Like a dozen,” I know it’s a lie.
“Is Luca there? Or Inaya?”
“What? Why? Should Luca be here? I thought he was with you. And what happened? You didn’t answer any of my texts, and the next thing I know, you’re flailing around in the window like a rehearsing TikToker.”
“I’ll explain later. Just…don’t make a mess. Evie is coming back tomorrow. I’m gonna shower, and then I’ll be right down.”
I hang up. My heartbeat is stifled beneath my prosthetic ribs, but I can feel my pulse in the small of my back and the back of my knees. I put a hand on my chest, the fake skin warm, and I can’t feel anything at first, but then I feel the smallest vibration hidden below my false flesh. Me, underneath it all.
I let my breathing even out. I think of my mom. I think of her seeing me as I am now, and I think of her disappointment. She wouldn’t see that I scored high or earned a save by Irma Worthy. Technically, today was great. But I can’t see it either, lying here envisioning her critical stare. In my mind, I hear her intone for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time that above all else, art is about being authentic, that imitation like this is a form of cowardice, and that in this house, we do not abide cowards.
It’s just in my mind, but it’s enough to make me claw my fingers below my rubbery flesh and rip myself apart.
* * *
I can hear music from the studio as soon as I step into the backyard. The second I open the door, a loud WHOOP! goes out, and the studio vibrates with cheering, as though I’m a hero who has not only returned from war but who has clawed back up the dunes of death to survive another day.