by Ryan La Sala
Inaya’s vlog starts with a sleeping shot of me, zoomed in on my curls. Then it jumps to her opening the shower door and Luca yelping at her to get out, get out! He throws a tiny bottle of shampoo at her, and they dissolve into shushed giggles. Then it’s back to me, sleeping through it all. Eventually, they’re down in the lobby, getting breakfast, and lo and behold, they did go to Dunkin’. Luca is on his phone behind Inaya as she talks to the camera about what they’re up to.
“We should probably be getting dressed, but my prejudging isn’t until this afternoon, and I kinda don’t want to put on that corset until I have to. Plus it’s warm, and there’s no way my makeup is gonna last more than a few hours. So for now we’re killing time. We’ll probably pop into Blitz for a bit before taking a break to get into gear. Right, Luca?”
Luca almost misses the question, he’s so absorbed in his phone. Then he catches on, and the clouds clear from his eyes.
“Yeah, you got it,” he says.
The video moves on, but I don’t. What Luca was reading—it must have been a continuation of that fight with his family. I know those clouds. And I know that overbright smile shining through.
Inaya’s vlog takes her through the morning. Turns out they were inside the Omni, an attached hotel, meeting up with a few of Inaya’s friends. Luca is on his phone in the background of every shot until he’s not there at all. Then Inaya’s inside the con, holding up some prints she scored at the Blitz Art Mart.
“I know,” I say to May, handing her the phone. She pushes it back into my hands, saying, “Just keep watching.”
We speed through Inaya’s shopping, and then there’s a jump in time. At least a few hours, because the next shot is of the hotel room, and the early morning light has been replaced by midday gray. It must be a while after I left. Inaya is getting ready, her camera propped up on the bed. And in the background, picking through the pieces of the costume I ruined, is Luca.
My grip tightens on the phone with each second as I watch. Luca helps Inaya get into gear. She’s got some spare red contacts, and he puts them in, otherwise staying in his regular clothes. They head to prejudging, and Luca acts as her handler. She films him trying on wigs at Arda and posing with a DBZ display while flexing. They spend almost all day goofing around, and then Inaya heads into the competition. At that point, Luca vanishes from the video. Inaya wins runner-up, and the last clip is a zooming close-up of pizza.
I know I’m breathing, but I don’t feel like I’m getting any air.
“He went back?” I say. “Why did he go back?”
“I asked Inaya that, too,” May says quickly, launching into a prepared balancing act. “She found him when he was trying to leave and got him to talk it out with her. I guess she even talked his mom down on the phone, saying she convinced him to go. You know how good Inaya is with parents. They ended up letting Luca stay for the day.”
I kind of hear this. A rushing fills my ears, sweeping me into a sickening dizziness. I hold on to my seat, pushing May’s phone away. This just confirms what I’ve always suspected: The dark secret of Luca’s life was never cons or cosplay. It was me. The boy who brought him into that world but could never be seen standing beside him. All it took for him to stay was replacing me with Inaya.
May hugs me while I cry. I have no choice but to cry. I just wanted to be enough for this one person, and for a long time, it seemed like I was. I got used to it. I got used to the way he looked at me. I got used to the joy of creating with him. And seeing this, knowing he can be in this world without me and be just fine? It makes the last year feel ruined.
I pick up May’s phone again, looking at the slew of videos of Inaya and Luca. The commenters are infatuated with him, of course.
Who is that boy?????
A wild Luca appears!
What did she use to summon this BOY? A baseball bat carved with sigils?
I stop when I get to a comment from Inaya herself, responding to all the questions.
omfg Luca is NOT my bf, gross………but you guys did convince him to join ion. world, meet @StrikerCosplay. He’s new, be nice. xx.
@StrikerCosplay has no posts. But he does have a picture (of him in those stupid contacts), and he’s already got 189 followers.
For doing nothing.
I find myself opening up a comment, still on May’s account.
May snatches the phone away from me as she pulls into a parking spot. She kills the engine and rushes from the car, then pulls me out of the passenger seat. We’re in Davis Square, near May’s bubble tea place, Boba Yoga (it’s Baba Yaga themed, and yes it’s part of a yoga studio). She must have called ahead to order, because she doesn’t even let me come inside. She just ducks in and grabs two drinks, hands me one, and then we’re walking behind the old movie theater, where a small park provides just enough privacy for me to fully lose it.
May lets me go on and on for about twelve minutes—extremely benevolent of her, to be honest—before winding me down.
“I created him. And I can destroy him,” I say. I slash the words into the dusk, a violent phrase with a violent meaning. No matter how much I talk, the hurt just keeps coming.
“Maybe you enabled him, but he’s always been Luca. Stop talking like an anime villain.”
She’s right. I didn’t create him. At most, I showed him it was okay to be himself. For a long time, I thought he was doing the same for me, but now I don’t know. Being with Luca was great, but it was also disruptive. It changed the way I worked and lived, and it gave me a new form of happiness, but it also cost me things. Was that worth it? Right now, it doesn’t feel like it.
“I miss him,” I say. It’s all I know for certain. I am angry, maybe, and probably broken, but those feelings flash in and out of my heart like flitting butterflies. What stays, what sticks, is loss. I miss him. I miss us.
“I’m sorry, Raffy. The whole situation is bad, and I’m sorry it ruined Blitz.”
I shrug. I have a lot of shrugs for people these days. It’s an easy way to evade the expectations that people try to place on your shoulders.
“I’m sorry, too,” I say. “Thank you for showing me. I didn’t know about any of that. I haven’t touched Ion.”
“You’ve got a lot of people asking about the build you were doing leading up to Blitz.”
“I guess they’ll never know.”
May chews a tapioca pearl. “You could talk about it, you know. You don’t owe Luca anything anymore. You get to tell your own story and do whatever you want with it.”
I think this is an odd thing to say. Would she actually support me going off, on camera, about Luca?
“What would you do with this?” I ask her.
May answers right away. “I’d draw it.”
She would. I know that about her. May has always had a gift for processing things with her hands. The worst tangles comb to threads when she picks up her pens. I guess that’s true for me, too, but I don’t know what to do with this knot. It feels too alive to pull apart. It has a pulse. When I try to unravel it, I feel a powerful grudge radiating from it, and the bad part of me isn’t ready to let that go, either.
“I’m not sure I could turn a bad breakup into a cosplay,” I tell May.
“I know, I know,” she says. “But you can turn it into something better.”
“What?”
“Time. You were always saying you felt like you had to pick between spending time with Luca and spending time making stuff. Now you don’t need to choose.”
It’s so dumb, but this helps me a ton. I blink away a few tears that have sprung up on me. It’s a pitiful consolation prize for a broken heart—to have all the time I need to sit and mend other things. But May is right. If creating is what I do best, creating is what I must do, and now I have nothing but time to do it.
“So.” She puts her hands on my knees. “What are you making nex
t?”
I answer right away.
“Absolutely not another gay bird.”
“Oh, thank you, Jesus,” she sighs dramatically, falling over me in mock relief. Her breath smells like strawberry matcha as she lets out a celebratory whoop that fills the park. “Oh, thank you, cosplay Jesus. My boy is free.”
I’m laughing as May tumbles over me, and I nearly drop my bubble tea. But behind my smile, I’m thinking: Free?
Free is what I felt when I was with Luca, when I finally stopped worrying about the end and just focused on the creation. Freedom is what I glimpsed that day we were in Craft Club, just exploring, before Evie showed up and ruined it all.
Maybe free is what I am, but I don’t feel free right now. I just feel alone.
Thirty-One
Now
Luca and I look at my buzzing phone. Evie’s name stares back at me.
Not Mom. Not Mother. Evie. Just Evie. And a skull emoji.
“Want me to send her to voicemail?” Luca offers.
“No, I can do this,” I say. I take the phone from him and move away from the makeshift Craft Club to where it’s quiet. I take too long to pick up, and the call goes to voicemail, but Evie just keeps calling.
I pick up. Before I even say hello, Evie’s silky voice bites into my ear.
“So you’re not dead. Fantastic.”
“Hi, Mom. I’m alive.”
Anything could come next. A diatribe, surely. A sermon, certainly. I can even picture my phone erupting into snakes, such is the dark dread coursing through my whole body. I begin to shake. I find a wall and lean on it, doing my best to survive the excruciatingly long pause Evie makes me wait through.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” I begin. “I’m sorry for not showing up for the trip. I value the chance at a great opportunity, but something really important happened for me today, and I couldn’t say no to it. Another opportunity. I don’t expect you to understand, and you don’t have to, but—”
Evie’s voice is distant when she butts in.
“I said sparkling. This is tap. I can taste the Delaware Watershed.”
“What?”
“One moment, Raffy, we’re ordering dinner. I’m with Tobias. Here, talk to him.”
I burn a new, inventive shade of red. Did she not hear a word I said?
“Raphael! We’ve been watching the stream. Congratulations!”
Tobias has a profoundly rich voice. It sounds like I am talking to a dragon. A gay dragon who finds new vowels in the middle of every world. CongratulaaAAaAaations!
Then I register what he said.
Wait.
WAIT.
“You watched the Controverse Championships?”
“Well, not all of it,” Tobias says. “Just the final few hours. You were spectacular! I haven’t seen the show you referenced, but what a garment. You’re just as talented as your mother says.”
“Thank…thank you.”
In the background, Evie can be heard haggling with the waiter about watercress.
“Your mother says you may one day make a great designer. I was just telling her I think you’ve got way more going on than that. I can’t remember the last time I was allowed to incorporate PVC pipe into a fashion collection. But you really did get me thinking. And those wings. What wonders! Your model is lucky.”
Ha. Luca, my model?
“Thank you,” I agree, leaving the blithe compliment intact.
There’s a scuffle, and then Evie is back on the phone. I straighten up.
“Raphael. Raphael, are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Listen, I can’t talk long. You called at a bad time, right as we were sitting down.”
I choose to ignore the fact that she called me—six hundred times, probably.
“But I wanted to check in. And…I wanted to congratulate you. Tobias has been telling me all about his own cosplaying pursuits. I’ll admit, it’s not something I was really interested in learning more about. But I trust Tobias. He’s a man of great taste. And talent.”
I don’t know how to respond to this. It’s an endorsement of Tobias, after all, not of me.
“And…” Evie slows, which I enjoy. She’s never this careful with her words. “And I should have trusted you. If this is your creative path, then it’s your path. I apologize if I made you feel less than…” She pauses again. “You know what I mean, I’m sure.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I say, smiling.
“I assume you’ll need space to keep working on your…projects?”
“You mean my arts and crafts?”
“Raphael, do not push me. I’m trying.”
“Fine, projects.”
Evie sighs. “Well, we have guests in November, so we can’t have you in the studio. How about the basement? I’ve been looking for an excuse to gut it.”
I glance up. Luca has come to find me. May is with him. They look positively horrified to find that I’m still on the phone with Evie. It’s fine, I mouth to them. I turn the phone to speaker.
“That sounds good,” I say to Evie. “Listen, I have to go. Luca’s family invited me over for dinner.”
Evie doesn’t immediately hang up. I sense her waiting for something else, so I say, “If that’s okay with you?”
“Why wouldn’t it be okay? Are they cannibals?”
“We’re Italian,” Luca blurts before May gets a hand over his mouth. I hang up the phone as quickly as I can. I scream when I get a text a second later:
Have fun. Good work today. See you next week. Mom.
Luca and May read the text.
“Aw, Raff, she’s tryyyyyying,” squeals May.
“She’s certainly doing something.”
Luca flips through the notifications in my phone. Most are from Ion. He stops, pointing at a few.
“Do agents typically reach out to you through DMs?”
I grab the phone. I scan two lines of the message, finding the words representation and opportunities. Then I black out, probably. I don’t know. I’m scrolling, ignoring the voicemails from my mother, and digging into a few other DMs from people with official-sounding titles. People with check marks next to their names. People asking what’s next for me, where I’m going, what I’m doing. Businesses asking to work with me and other hobbyists just asking for advice.
I turn off the phone. There’s time for the future in the future. I look up, and May and Luca are gone. No, they’re right behind me, reading the notifications over my shoulder. Their eyes are wide.
“So. Dinner?” I ask, suddenly shy.
Luca loops an arm around my waist. “You sure you want to come over? It’s a big family.”
I definitely don’t want to go home to an empty house. Not yet. Even with Evie’s change of heart, home still feels haunted with the person I was before this day transformed me. Before I let myself change, I guess. I feel older now, but also brand new, like I can handle anything. I can handle this new evolution of Evie. I can handle my own ambitions. And I can handle my heart, knowing now how much stronger it is after I put it back together.
But I don’t dwell. I’m not worried about handling anything right now. I’m just happy.
“I’m sure,” I say.
“I, too, am sure,” says May, with an air of magnanimous invitation (to herself).
“Inaya’s busy, but she said she’d catch us later for karaoke, if you’re not too bitter.”
Luca and I share a smile.
“We’re not,” I assure May.
“Then it’s settled.” Luca claps his hands ceremoniously. “Let’s go!”
And we do.
Acknowledgments
I’ve always loved to make stuff, and I’m incredibly grateful to the many people in my world who have taught me about crafting, making, morphing, transfo
rming, and so on. Thank you for helping me create on my own terms.
First, I want to thank my family, and even before that, you should know my own mother is nothing at all like Evie. She’s loving and supportive and, alongside my step father, provided me tons of space of resources to figure out my art. Same with my father, who let me draw sprawling fantasy maps on x-ray boards brought home from the hospital. I’ve been fortunate with three—and now four! Welcome, Mary!—parents who have raised me to be curious and brave, and I’m thankful for this above all else.
Same toward my siblings, Blase, David, and Julia, all equally supportive across the many realms our family spans. And same to the rest of my loud, always-laughing family. Especially my cousin Douglas, who gave me a genius artist right in my family tree to follow behind.
Art has always provided a larger family for me, too. This book wouldn’t have been impossible without the ingenious, bafflingly creative community of cosplayers that tirelessly turn every con into a crafter’s heaven. Creating is one thing, but making creation accessible is another, and I am indebted to the many makers who work tirelessly on tutorials, how-tos, streams, and panels. You make making possible, for everyone. Thank you for letting me play in your world.
For this book, I spent a considerable amount of time watching Kamui Cosplay tutorials. Svetlana and Benni, you don’t know me, but I adore you (and your dogs). I also got to witness several patterning and corseting lessons by Cowbutt Crunchies Cosplay, all of it used in this book. Finally, my biggest thank-you goes to my friend and idol, Jacqui, of Alchemical Cosplay. Thank you for taking a chance on the random writer who showed up in your life after seeing you on stage at NYCC. And thank you for letting me cosplay as your handler in Boston. You made Raffy’s story possible. You are his idol.
I also went to many cons and want to thank my own little con fam. Sal, you get the first thanks for obvious reasons. Christina, May, Brian, Jen: you all taught me that cosplay is a team sport. I can’t wait four our next, best cosplay outing.
Elizabeth Graham, you’re a vision, and I am so grateful for your friendship and insight into the world of elite art, curation, and galleries. For anyone wondering, Elizabeth is a gem with exquisite taste and shares none of Evie’s acidic points of view.