Break Character

The hook behind my left shoulder would not open.

I could reach it with two fingers. I could pull the fabric tight enough to make the seam creak. I could not get the one specific angle needed to separate one cheap bit of metal from another.

The costume committee had put it there because the original fastening looked too modern. At the time, I'd approved.

This was the problem with exercising judgment: sometimes you had to live with it.

I tried standing by the bed. I tried sitting. I tried pulling the whole robe over my head and discovered that its collar had been designed by someone with no interest in emergency exits.

My arm got stuck in the lining.

I sat on the floor.

Then I laughed. It was an ugly little sound. Too high at the start. Gone almost before I recognized it.

I pulled at the gold braid.

The laugh came again and broke into something else.

I wanted the robe off.

That was all.

Not a strategy. Not a return working. Not a kingdom to make my lie defensible.

I wanted to stop wearing the thing.

The door opened.

I stood up too fast, caught the hem under my shoe, and hit my shoulder on the bedpost. Pain went down my arm like a lit fuse.

The girl in the blue jacket stopped just inside the room. We looked at each other.

I took a breath.

"Don't," she said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Whatever voice you were about to do. Don't."

She shut the door behind her.

Up close I could see the worn places on her jacket. A broken zipper tooth. A patch inside the cuff. Under the unfamiliar leather belt and the practical boots it was still, unmistakably, a piece of clothing bought in a world with department stores.

Her eyes dropped to the braid clenched in my fist.

"Stuck?"

"The fastening is defective."

"Turn around."

"No."

"Then enjoy being a curtain."

I ran through the remaining alternatives. Turned around.

She freed the hook in three seconds. The robe slid off my shoulders.

For a moment I just stood there in my school shirt and trousers while the weight of it went away.

Aoi held the fabric.

"Oh," she said.

Very small.

I looked down. There was stage makeup on my collar. A little pale rectangle of adhesive where somebody had taped a microphone wire during rehearsal.

I had forgotten about the wire. I had forgotten so many ordinary things that seeing one of them nearly finished me.

She laid the robe across the bed.

"Craft foam," she said, pointing at my head.

"Yes."

"Plastic gems."

"Yes."

"And that hem."

"In the seamstress's defense, she had two examinations that week."

"You were actually in a play."

I took off the crown.

The room felt colder without it.

"Yes."

She pressed a hand over her mouth.

I waited for the contempt.

What came out was laughter. Sudden, disbelieving, almost painful.

"You got summoned in the middle of a school play."

"That appears to be the sequence."

"And you just kept going."

"I failed to identify a preferable alternative."

"You told a king to explain his foreign policy."

"He had brought it up."

That made her laugh harder. She sat down on the hearthstone with her shoulders shaking.

I should have been offended. Instead I sat on the edge of the bed and found I no longer had the strength to be offended properly.

Her laughter faded.

She was looking at my hands.

I folded them.

Too late.

"Hey," she said.

"I am all right."

"Your shoulder's bleeding."

I looked.

A thin red line had appeared under the tear in my sleeve.

"Oh."

She found a cloth by the washstand and held it out. I took it.

For a while the room was quiet except for the guards shifting outside.

"The crown's from our supply closet," I said.

She glanced up.

"I thought you might like the provenance established."

"Very royal."

"The good foam, apparently."

"You can tell. Cheap foam creases."

I looked at her.

"You know costumes."

"Festival committee. Two years. Mostly because nobody else wanted to deal with the sewing machines."

"An institution sustained by the reluctance of the capable to watch others fail."

"There it is."

"What?"

"The voice. You're doing it without doing the voice."

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

She looked pleased with herself.

An irritating development.

Also, somewhere under the irritation, a relief I had no intention of admitting to. Somebody had noticed there was a person in here.

Then she asked, "Were there people watching when it happened?"

"The gymnasium was full."

Her face changed.

"My mother was supposed to be there," I said.

I hadn't meant to tell her that.

I pressed the cloth against my shoulder.

"She said she might be late."

Aoi picked at the broken zipper.

"I was alone," she said. "Walking to the station."

I waited.

"I keep thinking that's worse. Nobody knowing. Then I think about somebody seeing it happen and not being able to--"

She stopped. Neither of us finished it.

Outside, one guard asked the other whether supper had been sent up.

Supper.

Somewhere in the world I'd left, it might still be afternoon.

"What time was it?" I asked.

"When?"

"When you arrived."

"After school."

"No. I meant--"

I didn't know what I meant. What time was it now? How far had the light carried me? Was my mother still in the gymnasium? Was Miyata still reaching?

I lowered the cloth.

"Never mind."

Aoi didn't tell me it was a stupid question. That was the first kindness she gave me that I knew how to recognize on the spot.

After a while she leaned her head against the stone beside the hearth.

"I'm Aoi."

A name from home. No title attached. No explanation required.

I said it back, quietly enough that it sounded strange in my own voice.

"All right," I said. "Aoi."