my inner life
is a sheet of black glass.
if I fell through the floor
I would keep falling—
I don’t think of myself—consciously—as young.
Aeneas and I have been competing since the moment we were born for our fathers’ doting affection, my mother’s grim and serious approval. It is the same hawkish, almost antagonistic sense of rivalry that I see between the cadets my mother oversees, who spend all day side-eyeing each other as they vie for her attention and beat each other senseless when they get it. I don’t pretend to understand it; I just know it happens, and that some part of me feels genetically inclined to participate.
I don’t think of myself as young, because I don’t think of myself much at all; because all the people I spend my time with are older than I am; and because, somehow, I am already exhausted with the world.
But when I look at this girl, I remember all at once that I am teenaged, because the feeling I get is one I’ve never come close to feeling before.
I stare at her. My eyes are wide, I know, and in the flickering light that drips from the sconces on the wall they are probably bright and pale as summer sunlight. I don’t know if she can see it, but I know I feel heat blazing in my face. It pools in my cheeks, my ears, blossoms over my throat like a rash until even swallowing feels like effort. And in my chest, my heart is beating as fast and light as a hummingbird’s wings, so fast and so light that I feel almost dizzy: the speed of it, I think, might very well pull me off the ground and force me to float.
Or, I think, my whole body purring, I might be floating already.
When she comes toward me, it feels somewhere between a promise and a threat. Her eyes are cool and predator-bright. Where they cross me, I feel my skin prickle. And as the distance between us closes, I can’t say anything at all, too awed by her soft-toffee curls; the sooty cast on her lips; the wings that splay out behind her like an angel’s.
I freeze myself in place against the instinct to jerk back. Whatever feeling this is, it is close enough to panic that I have to deal with it the same way. Deep breath. Steel yourself. Don’t flinch—or if you do, don’t let them see.
“I’m fine,” I say softly. “I’m not hurt, I mean.” I can’t meet her eyes from this close; it feels too frightening. Instead I stare at the lines of gold painted on her shoulder that somehow manage to glitter even in the dark. And it’s true—I am fine. Nothing hurts, and Aeneas has knocked me over enough times that I’d grit my teeth through it if it did, anyway. I shift my weight from leg to leg to demonstrate nothing is out of place.
There is a moment of silence. Then two. The third is unbearable, and suddenly I blurt out: “It’s just that—that my mother is upset with me. So I… didn’t want to be in the castle.”
Already embarrassed, maybe half-cringing, I glance up at her and wait.
