emeray

It took all of a week for the Darkening to draw to a finish. Norax has had me stay in a free room at the Reformation Center, where I've been taught and tested by Zoya on my new job requirements. I have quite the plethora of paths to take, she told me, and it all depends on what I wish to do with my Famoux status. If I fancy theatrics, they'll pull me onto a set and make me an actress. If I've a taste for music, they'll begin recording my album as soon as the power comes back. And if I possess no talent for either, they'll snap a few pictures and make me a model. This isn't even the half of it, either. I can choose to become a full-time public speaker for charities, or join a sports team, or start my own talk show, or do absolutely nothing at all. The seemingly infinite possibilities, coming all at once to me, were utterly overwhelming.

"This is all, essentially, your choice," Zoya had told me. "It's all a matter of which road you see yourself venturing down. Any ideas?"

We were sitting on the couches in the lobby, a wreath of black candles in the shape of the Famoux sign resting face up on the coffee table to provide illumination. Zoya held her clipboard in her hands, a thick packet braced by its metal clippers. Beside me was Norax, who never stopped holding my hand and giving me reassurance the whole way through.

I was immensely grateful she cared so much about me; in any of the broadcasts I got to watch, she always looked quite pragmatic and a bit too severe. I never once thought that behind it all, she would be so kind and maternalistic to me. Yet again, I never once thought I'd meet her, either.

"I--I don't really know what I can do," I admitted. "I've never really gotten any chance to, well, do anything."

"Understandable." The sound of pen scribbling on paper echoed in the open area. "I trust your home environment was not too welcoming of you pursuing any kind of personal, recreational activities?"

"Basically." Definitely.

"I think we'll just have to put you down for model at the moment, until you can figure out if there's anything else you'd like to do," said Zoya. Her lips tilted into a smirk. "At least we can be positive you'll look flawless in whatever photo you're in."

My eyes shifted to the floor, a smile creeping up on my own face. Compliments. I couldn't get over them.

"I hope you're right about that," I said bashfully.

"Why, of course I'm right! Norax, tell Emeray she's ruddy mad if she believes she wouldn't look good even in the most unprepared of photos."

"If she's so unsure, we should prove it to her," Norax decided. "Let's prove it, right now, right here."

Zoya's eyes widened. "Oh, no, we can't possibly. We've no power, remember? None of the devices would be able to load any photos onto the system. It'd be like we took no pictures at all."

"I don't want you to turn the power in the glass house off again," I said. "I don't like the idea of making everybody scared about that kind of stuff because of me."

"Power? Dear, that's no matter," Norax said. "We don't need any power to take a couple photos. Em, dear, stand with me."

I expected to hobble to my feet, but I rose with a fluidity I've never felt before, causing me to pause and gape with wonder at my new body. Every muscle in my body felt like it'd been dipped in gold, if dipping something in gold made every piece of it more smooth and refined and lovely.

The best part is that this was mine. I ran my hand along my arm, and that was my skin, not a doll's. I blinked, and I felt my eyelashes against my brows, not some extensions of another's. I stood, and felt my limbs support me. I was nothing new--I was myself, just with the new hair and the new name. If that made me new, and no longer Emilee Parvenu, then the rules of the world must read like this: Only the exterior matters; lose weight, change your hair, or adopt a new label for yourself, and you are no longer the organs and fibers and emotions ticking just beneath your skin. You must be something new if the only thing you have changed is what's outside.

Somehow, I don't think the rules of Delicatum would read like that, no matter how egoistical the world can be.

"How do you plan to make Miss Essence a model today," Zoya asked, "if there are no working computers to manage this during a Darkening, and our little Emeray over here doesn't want us to steal a little electricity?"

"Well, who said we needed any of those fancy cameras?" Norax retaliated. "I'm telling you, Z, we don't need any of that to make Emeray a model. I'll show you . . ."

She disappeared down a hallway, leaving me standing and Zoya shaking her head.

"Sometimes I don't understand the way her mind works," she told me. "She's got no vision for complications--it's like she believes every choice she makes is going to work out for the better in the end."

"I guess that's why she's the leader of the Famoux," I said. When she gave me a look prompting to elaborate, I added, "She takes a lot of risks with confidence, right?"

"You're quite right about that," she said. "If I were in Norax's position, I wouldn't make those members do half of the stunts she pulls for them. I don't know how, but it always makes them more popular than before. She's got a talent for that."

At that moment, Norax click-clacked back down to the lobby, a large square object in her hand and a wide smile on her face.

"Look!" she exclaimed. "A camera that doesn't need any extra technology!"

Zoya snorted. "That has to be ancient. How did you even find that?"

"Do you remember when the Famoux got to visit the rubble from the Prohibited Areas of Eldae, and we didn't even get to film it for media because it was verboten?"

"Norax, that thing doesn't take video."

"I know it doesn't," she said. "I just found it in the wreckage of what would've been an apartment, and thought it ought to be put to some use instead of sitting there collecting dust."

She handed it to me to look at. It had this perennial sort of pep, visible in its cream colored curves, in the faded stripes splitting down its center. There was a circle in the middle, and in the back a long, open extension. The base looked something like a mouth, its lips open ever so slightly, creating a thin line. The word to describe it struck me as vintage, but I couldn't quite recall where I heard it from.

"What is this?" I asked.

"They called it a Polaroid camera," Norax told me. "It develops its picture almost instantly."

"How is that possible?"

"Why don't I show you?"

She grabbed the camera from me and pressed the extension to her eye. Angling its lens toward my face, she squeezed the button before I got the chance to even smile, much less register she was going to take a photo of me. A bulb flickered through the dim candlelight, momentarily blinding my vision. It came back with splotchy black dots, which I swatted furiously in the air at.

"Wait!" I exclaimed, far delayed. "I wasn't ready for that!"

"Nonsense," Norax said. "Emeray Essence is always ready for a photo. Have you ever seen a bad photo of the Famoux?"

"I guess I haven't," I admitted.

"You haven't, because they don't exist. They couldn't possibly. Zoya and I made you so that you'd never look bad in anything."

A slip of thick paper spat slowly from the Polaroid, I watched with awe as Norax pulled it out, waving it in the air nonsensically.

"Shaking it speeds up the development," she explained. "Your photo will show up in just a couple of seconds."

"Oh, okay," I said.

"I'm still not sure why we're doing this," Zoya said. "What do you want me to do, make copies of low quality Polaroids and slap it on the cover of The X?"

"Maybe it's exactly what I want you to do, Z." Norax grinned down at the photograph like she discovered a breakthrough. She flipped it over so we could see.

Even I had to gasp. Somehow, my slightly startled, unprepared stare had translated into wide-eyed determination, focused nonchalance. I looked just as ready to book it and run away as I was to get up and shake the world. It's like I was childishly intimidated and fiercely prepared with equal measure; it could be acknowledged in the curves of my settled frown, in the glimmer in my eyes from the flash.

"Well damn," Zoya whispered. "I think I'll make a copy of that immediately."

"How . . . What . . . How did that happen?" I stammered. "I wasn't even ready to pose for the . . ." When I couldn't find the words, I gave up, lips splaying out into a smile. Confusion quickly dissolved into excitement; fear into wonder.

"Looks like you've no idea what you're capable of, Emeray Essence," Norax said.

I guess not.

"I certainly don't think putting you down as a model for the time being will be too bad a thing," said Zoya. "In fact, take more pictures this instant. We'll make the whole spread like an antique--photo stills, fun candids with the Famoux, a long sweep of personal questions and informal riposte, perhaps even yours and the members' handwriting spelling out embossed quotations from your interview. Oh, the people will love that."

"Is it what you want, Em?" Norax asked me. "We won't have you do anything you don't desire to do."

Such an idea struck me as foreign, getting the choice of something I'd desire. Regularly, I'd be sticking up my chin, bearing through things I've no drive nor energy to go through, telling myself a lie that it'll all be better someday. Somehow, someday happened. It's happening. I could feel my heart filling with the warmest kind of feeling, like drinking down a cup of hot chamomile tea.

"I can't imagine anything more perfect," I replied.

"Let's get to it, then."

The rest of the whole Darkening week was spent taking dozens and dozens of Polaroid photos for The X. Norax and Zoya bring in new outfits each day for me to sample, each varying in length and color, and slowly I can feel myself growing more and more comfortable as the new me, as Emeray Essence. Time passes like a reverie, slow and stupendous, beyond any kind of reality I could've ever imagined. It's like I'm living daydreams I never considered daydreaming about; fantasies I never even dared think about fantasizing. Everything out of reach feels like a magnet to my hand. Every bad day feels like a distant memory.

Plus, I can fall asleep at night. I can dream again. They aren't full visions, just flickers, like a picture show in my mind. I always dream the same couple things--a dress, dripping in bright golden beads; a crystal chandelier, its light casting silhouettes of illumination against its own shadows, like a lumerpa; a train, far off in the distance, racing along a track like it could break from its lane at any second; a pair of ruby red lips, curving up into a challenging, nearly bellicose smirk; and a white C, like a scar, on the wrist of someone I can never see the face of. And then, of course, the same notes of a piano.

xxx

When the time comes for me to leave the Reformation building, I wish to greet it with an open mind. Today is the day everything changes the most; today is the day I will be going to meet the Famoux. The Darkening is over, and it's time they know who I am.

I try with everything I have not to feel as shatteringly nervous as I've the great potential to.

They put me in a black striped dress. I mean, they call it a dress. To me, it looks like it's a men's shirt, on account of how it's got buttons up the front and a pointed collar, and how the sleeves are long, rolled up at my elbows. It's also shorter than anything I've ever worn, barely reaching halfway down my thighs. A men's shirt--and for me, they call it a dress. Hours ago, when I first slipped it on and turned toward the mirror, I'd half expected to squirm, frown, suggest a more comfortable option. But somehow, in some serendipitous way, I didn't feel insecure in it. Over the few days, I've quickly gathered that Emeray Essence doesn't get those kinds of negative feelings about her body, because Emeray Essence's body isn't meant to project insecurities. It's meant to create insecurities, for the people around her. After being introduced to such a way of thinking, I don't know why I never thought like this in the past. How'd I ever let anybody drag me down for so long, I wonder, when this has always been hiding inside me?

"I like it," Norax says for just about the one-hundredth time. For the entirety of this car ride to the Famoux's city apartment she has looked over at me, has grinned widely, and has given me the same slew of compliments. I appreciate each one, every single time. Compliments have always been like rare gems to me, and it looks like Emeray is irrevocably adorned in such jewels.

"Thank you," I whisper.

"It really shows how you could pull off just about anything, don't you think so?"

All I can do is smile.

This smile lasts for the rest of the trip, which isn't long. We've been in the car for what seems like an eternity, traveling from the RC to the infamous hub of all celebrity life, where nearly every important event takes place: Colburn, the capital of bright and beautiful Betnedoor. It'll be the first time I've ever left Eldae, but that doesn't even make the list of things I'm nervous about.

Before I can even so much as get my bearings, the car is pulling into a discreet lot underground, and I'm being ushered into a narrow elevator shaft. It doesn't seem too tapered in comparison to the Fissarex, but my breath catches all the same. I don't exhale until the lift has settled on the eighth floor of the building, and gives no notion of moving or contracting whatsoever.

When the doors finally reopen, the first thing I see is a man in a crisp salmon suit. From behind his magnificent ivory desk he tosses me a curt nod and a wide smile. It's so welcoming and contagious that I join in almost immediately.

"Evening, Johnson," Norax greets.

"Norax, always a pleasure." Johnson's voice is like a clatter of spare change hitting the floor--melodic without any certain melody. He points to me. "This must be the one Zoya notified me about? Miss Essence?"

"Indeed it is."

"Look at her! She is magnificent!"

"Isn't she?" Norax beams. "I've been telling her that all day long now."

"A face like that deserves constant reminders! You really outdid yourself with those eyes--they're just perfect. I didn't even know the Fissarex could make that color."

"It doesn't!"

"It doesn't?" Johnson raises a brow. "How'd you manage it?"

"I've always had these eyes," I tell him. Somehow, my voice isn't as small as I expected it would be.

"Always?" he asks. "That's just amazing. They're remarkable, really."

"That's really nice of you to say." I shift my gaze to the floor. "Nobody I knew ever thought so."

"How old are you? Sixteen?" When I nod, he shakes his head. "Blandest generation in the whole lot of them. They hated you because they were damn jealous of those eyes."

"And now, the whole rest of Delicatum can be," completes Norax. "But that's only if we have a proper place for Emeray to settle. Is everything ready for her?"

"Just as ordered," Johnson says. "We've swapped the couch in the sunroom for a featherbed. She can stay there until Bree's things are sorted and cleared away."

"Excuse me?"

He blinks. "Is something wrong?"

"That's not how I ordered it," Norax says. "I ordered that she stay in Bree's room, not the sunroom."

"But that doesn't sound like a good idea--"

"She's famoux now. She should have a proper bedroom."

Johnson shifts uneasily. "I'm just not sure if the other members will take that the wrong way or not, Norax."

"I don't want to look like a replacement," I blurt.

"No, dear, you're not going to be a replacement. You're going to end up in that room some time or another. I feel doing it now is better."

"Really, I can just stay in the sunroom. It'll be easier."

"Nonsense," she says. "It's easier to get it done now, so that everyone gets used to you being here quicker."

I feel myself beginning to protest, but I stop the words before they come. Beside me, Johnson does the same. He gives an exhale and a nod.

"Okay," he says. "You obviously know best--you're the head of this entire institution. I'll call for the bed in the sunroom to be disassembled immediately."

"Thank you, Johnson." She gives him her beaming smile. It's so toxic, he can't help but mimic it.

"Just doing my job. If you need anything else, just call."

"I will," she assures. "Now get back to work."

Johnson laughs and gives her a bob of his head. He takes one last glance at me, and his expression becomes intense.

"Welcome to the Metropolix, Miss Essence," he says. "You're free now. Do whatever you wish, but I wouldn't recommend it."

Before I can even ask him what he means, Norax puts a hand on my shoulder and leads me past the desk and through the adjoining door.

We're immersed in complete darkness. Instantly my pulse soars, and a yelp lodges in my throat, anticipating something like the Fissarex. Norax gives my arm a squeeze to remind me she's here, I'm okay, and we're safe.

A stark, almost robotic voice slices through the silence.

"Name?"

"Norax." Her voice is steady, like she does this all the time. It slows my heart rate astoundingly.

"Identification required for 'Norax.'"

In front of us, as if on cue, materializes a glowing red keyboard. She taps out the letters to her name with nonchalance. I can't help but notice the X on its proper key is enclosed in a circle. The board dissolves into a control pad with a hand outline. Norax places her palm down on it and waits for a beep. She has me do the same.

"Emil-Eh-um, Emeray," I fumble.

A part of me expects the system not to recognize who I am, but apparently I've been all set up. It even recognizes my handprint.

"Fissarex," Norax explains. "We got your prints during the Reform."

"Access granted for Norax and Emeray," the voice drones. "Have you any other residents or visitors to check in?"

"We don't," replies Norax.

"You have reported no extra residents or visitors. Ready for entrance. Stand clear of the sliding doors."

At the sound of that, I want to take a step behind Norax, but she holds me tight beside her. I have to remind myself there's no reason for Emeray Essence to be hiding behind anything--she's in the Famoux.

There's a pause, and the room fills with the clanking noise of locks unbolting. Gives me enough time to take a breath.

Inhale.

This is happening.

The doors are going to open, and I'm going to meet the other Famoux members.

This is real.

This is your life now.

This is happening.

Exhale.

The final lock unfastens. The doors slide open.