1

“Victoria Young!”

Tory stood, feeling acutely out of place in the clothes she wore. But the first rule of auditioning, she reminded herself, is that you are being evaluated from the moment you walk in the door. Your face, your hair, your clothes, the very way you walk into the hall can make or break a part.

Years of training were the only reasons keeping her from smoothing down the silk shirt she wore, or tugging at the hem of the vest over it. At least she had an excuse for not wearing a skirt-the rain that had been threatening all of the first four days at the retreat had finally made an appearance. Only the few newer girls wore dresses or skirts in the cold, and their shivering was certainly earning them no points.

Tory strode to the front of the class and stood with her arms resting at her sides, staring at a point just beyond the teacher’s head. After a moment, he looked up and nodded. “You may begin.”

Tory had gotten over stage fright ages ago. The six judges barely fazed her. “My name is Victoria Young, or Tory. Today, I will be performing ‘Mantra of Doom,’ adapted from Devi’s speech in Jhonen Vasquez’s I Feel Sick.”

The judges nodded. Tory closed her eyes, bringing her feet together in a ballet first position, and cleared her mind. This was why she loved acting…the way you lost yourself in the role of the moment, the way you completely became someone else.

Tory opened her eyes, put a hand on her hip, relaxed until her weight was on one leg, and began.

“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking. Memories...cavernous head wounds...you know, that sorta shit.“

She could see everyone in the room, but they seemed unreal to her. The imagined figures standing across from her, the doll painting on her right, the voice echoing in her head…those were real. “God...something’s going...bad, Tenna. In my head I mean, or in the world, or in the way I perceive it. Some vital cog clipping, but with the ability to right itself, you know?” She flipped a hand, twirling he wrist thoughtfully. “Something I can do to fix...this.”

Tory laughed. “I know it sounds weird, but...ugh! I can’t explain it! I can but you wouldn’t...oh!...you know what I mean.“ She crossed her arms and turned away for a moment with a tired, aggravated sigh. After a moment, she turned back again.

“I really doubt telling anyone will do much good, but...okay, I’ll tell you.

“I’m losing my mind.”

She won’t believe me. She’s got a stupid squeak toy, but she won’t believe I’m crazy. Devi’s thoughts leaked into Tory’s head as if they were her own. Her voice became mildly agitated, anxious to convince, but matter-of-fact. “It’s not because I’m working so much, either. ...I don't think I’m working enough. Not on my own stuff anyhow. You know I’ve been buried in crap since I started doing al the freelance work for Nerve. Doing artwork for sci-fi novels is cool and better than selling books, but I haven’t done any of my own stuff since.”

Tory glanced over her shoulder, the doll painting all but really there. “Right before the Nerve thing started, I started a painting just for me. It’s of a little doll. She’s got this empty, burned out, soulless look. You know...like an ice-cream man. I named her Sickness. But the Nerve work started up and I never finished her. A little while after that...it started talking to me.”

A laugh. Tory smiled vaguely back, as if aware how ridiculous she sounded, but her voice and the hard edge to her expression said otherwise. “Okay, no. I mean, it’ s my own voice. It’s me talking to myself, and I know that. It sound like a really tired, whispering...me. It’s pretty much like when you have your own internal conversations. That’s nothing unusual. I didn’t think so. But I couldn’t get me to shut up.”

For a moment, she nearly broke character. This was the hard part, the part where she had to be able to convince her audience that she was two people without being two people. Just a split second-but it was enough for Tory to catch a glimpse at the judges and remember where she was. “Like some involuntary mantra going off in my head.”

A turn of the head, a change in the voice. “The screws are coming undone, Mother.“

Back to the audience, as if nothing had happened. “What I know lovingly refer to as a “mantra of doom.”

Away again. “You can’t stop it.”

Tory pressed a hand to her head for a moment, as if she hurt. A moment later, she looked back up. Her voice was low, insistent. “But I can. If I work.”

She let the words hang in the air, frozen in place, as if time had simply stopped. One…two…three…four…five…now.

Tory brought herself back into her starting pose, and inclined her head. “Thank you.”

Amidst the applause from her classmates, she made her way back to her spot near the middle of the room, responding to none of the sounds of congratulations around her. Her attitude may have seemed robotic and rude to the others. To Tory it was simply professionalism.

“All right, Tory!”

“Nice job!”

“Dude, that was creepy as hell, man!”

“Tory, that was amazing. You were wonderful!”

Tory nearly choked, and settled for sitting down near Nell, instead. It took her a moment to get her breath back. “Thanks, Nell.”

Nell’s eyes seemed infinitely large, her smile beyond bright. “I wish I could act like that, I really really do. You’re so good at this, Tory! How do you do it? I freeze up and can’t play anyone but myself.”

Tory reminded herself to stay cool. Don’t talk to her much. It’s out of character for you. You never talk or respond to praise during auditions, don’t start now. It’s a performance. You’re still being evaluated, dammit!

It worked. Tory slid back into the cool emotionless state of earlier. “It’s just a matter of training and professionalism. You’re being evaluated right now.”

“I’m not up yet-”

Tory found it was harder to keep calm if she was looking at Nell, and pretended to study a hangnail on her ring finger. “You’re auditioning from the moment you walk in. I wouldn’t talk or start downplaying your ability until after we leave.”

Nell’s mouth snapped shut. Out of the corner of her eye, Tory could see how hurt the beautiful girl was as she looked away and stopped talking. Her heart ached.

She wished she dared explain everything. It would make this all so much easier on them both…

“Nell Manala!’”

Nell stood, and walked briskly towards the front. “My name is Nell Manala, and today I will be performing one of Lady Olivia’s soliloquies from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.”

Tory pulled herself out of the daydream violently, horrified at herself. This was not the place to be thinking about that…and she had no right in the first place…

2

Jasmine looked at Tory curiously, and shifted her instrument bag onto her right shoulder. “When will you know what the plays are?”

“It depends on who gets the full spots.” The girls’ feet crunched loudly in the near silence after the rain. “If it’s a girl, they’ll have a play with a major female lead. The opposite goes for a guy.”

“Well, everyone knows you’ve got the spot nailed, Tory. What’s the girl play?”

“They don’t tell us, Jazz. They won’t tell us the minor play, either. We’re not supposed to be able to pick an audition piece for a specific part.”

“Oh, fine, then. Be that way.”

Tory started to snap back, noticed the smile on her friend’s face, and realized it was a joke. “Right. Ha, ha.”

“Tory, you need to lighten up.” Jasmine patted her shoulder. Tory winced away from the friendly gesture involuntarily, alarms going off in her head.

Jasmine didn’t seem to notice. “We’re having a party this weekend, kind of. Since we don’t have a curfew Friday, we thought a bunch of the girls could get together in the rec hut and have a little shindig.”

“Jazz, no one says shindig.”

“Bite me.”

Tory laughed, and hoped it didn’t sound too forced. How come I never noticed before how even innocent little sayings can be so full of meaning?

“Jennifer’s going to do that planchette thing of hers. Have you ever seen her do it?”

“Planche-what?”

“It’s some fortune telling thing.” Jasmine frowned thoughtfully. “See, what she does is, she puts this brush with ink on it inside this triangular thingie on wheels…I don’t know what it’s called, I’ve never asked…and you ask a question, and the triangle is supposed to move and guide the brush to write letters. Jenn says she can only get it to do three words at a time, but she can’t wait to show it off. She’s never shown you?”

“No,” Tory answered absently, a little hurt. She tells me everything…I never knew Jennifer liked fortune telling, or knew how to do anything like that. She never told me. She kept it from me.

Then, her own voice inside her head, reproachfully: You’re doing the same to her, and you know it.

Tory resisted the urge to clap her hands over her ears, to just run away from everyone and leave Jasmine standing there perplexed in the chill afternoon. Mantra of doom…maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m not in love. I’m just going insane.

Nell’s sweet smile during her monologue popped into Tory’s head, and she closed her eyes. No…it couldn’t be that simple. I’m not going mad. I have no excuse. I am in love with another girl. And if I’m going crazy, it’s still not the reason I love her.

“Tory?” Jasmine looked at her closely, eyes narrowed. “Are you all right?”

Tory’s eyes flew open, and she answered too quickly. “I’m fine.”

Jasmine frowned, and touched her arm. “Tory…”

“I knew it!” she cried a moment later, when Tory involuntarily winced back. “There is something wrong! Jennifer said you were all bruised and banged up…what’s going on, Tory?”

Tory pulled away. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You touched a sore spot, that’s all.”

Jasmine’s expression fell, and her voice was low. “Oh. Right. Sorry, Tor.”

Tory smiled, faintly, distanced from the world. If what it takes to be invisible is the same distance I used to have… “No problem, Jazz.”

The two girls continued walking back to their cabin.

3

As she watched the six students through a crack between the lockers, Tory wondered why everyone seemed to tell her their deepest secrets. Adam laughed at something, throwing back his head and running and hand through his beautiful hair when he stopped. Jasmine, Claire, and Nell were clearly enthralled with him. Jennifer seemed to barely care. Charlie just shook his head, grinning with the look of the man who had just made a joke of epic proportions, and went back to dealing cards.

Tory could barely hear anything through her headphones. She could just see. No one knew she was back there. She hadn’t come back from rehearsal on time. They probably thought she was in the red hut, or studying, or practicing, or…something. She didn’t care what they thought, as long as they didn’t know she was there. She’d snuck in through the locked back door in the bathroom.

She’d let it open that morning.

Nell’s mouth opened in a melodramatic sigh of defeat, and she dropped her head into her arms as she lay down her cards. Jennifer poked at her mockingly, and the boys leaned forward, teasingly, clearly laughing at her. Tory wished she dared join in.

The music played loudly in her ears, and she was grateful the buds kept outside noise to a minimum. How silently the springtime breezes sing, how deeply the distant mountains breathe, there are so many things to show you…

Tory wanted to show Nell everything…the wonder of fully turning into another person, the beauty in everything ever created, the darkness of fear before turning it away and revealing protection in all it’s glory…

She put a hand up next to the crack, and froze as she looked at it’s skeletal, long shape. So big…so thin and long…Nell’s hands were perfectly formed, tiny, sweet, like the rest of her. Tory…Tory was a skeleton.

Tory pulled her hand away and ran it over the front of her shirt, feeling the slight ridge of her ribcage, the slightest hills of her breasts, the flat, plain valley of her belly, the wiry tautness of her left arm. I’m so…different. Than all the girls. It’s not just Nell. I’m nothing like the rest of them, small and pretty and soft curves and exotic looks…I’m like something out of a Johnny Depp movie, a caricature or a stick figure, or…

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