New Blue muttered something to herself as she smeared another layer of rose gold lipstick across my lips. She tilted my head back and balanced her palm on my cheek, coming at me with something that looked like a black eyeliner pencil. I told myself not to panic as she rimmed my lid with the creamy cosmetic stick. It’s not like I could have convinced her to let me do it myself.

She leaned back, sweeping her hand toward the mirror to make sure I admired her handiwork. The makeup made me look even less like myself than the dress, but the two went together in a strange way to create a story. The woman in the mirror was a treasure, a curvy goddess. I was a girl from the Midwest who’d bombed her last anthropology test.

New Blue didn’t seem to take note of my minor existential crisis. Her eyes darted over my shoulder toward Blue 3 who, much to my chagrin, had spent the last few minutes taming my frizz into submission. I didn't need to know their language to feel the tension in the air.

I didn't realize what the two of them were so nervous about until Blue 3 pulled me to my feet and guided me to the exit. The other girls from the Room were already in the hallway. Their glamazons, Blues 1 and 2, exchanged nasty glances with Blue 3 as she moved me into line.

The blonde girl wore a dress dyed a vibrant red that almost distracted from the fact that the material was transparent. Her lips had been stained to match her dress. She pressed them together and looked away when our eyes met, but the tears from the Room were nowhere to be found. I knew that act. I invented that act.

She was tall and slender, the perfect figure to pull off such a daring dress. In fact, both of the other girls were smaller than me. But you only had to look at her to tell that she hated it. I couldn't see the young red-haired woman from the back of the line, but I could hear her quiet sobs. Her hunched shoulders shook every few seconds.

"You look nice," I said to Blondie as if something like that mattered in a place like this. Why would any of us want to look pretty for some hairy alien?

But the blonde didn't look at me like I was stupid this time. She glanced over her shoulder at me, a tiny smile on her lips. Blue Prime clapped her hands and started walking before either of us could say anything else.

I looked at Blue 3 and found her staring at the red-haired girl with something like pity in her eyes. Somehow, I knew in my gut what she was thinking. If that poor girl had gone with her, she wouldn't be so afraid. She wouldn't be hugging herself and crying in fear. She would already know that the only way for her to make it through the night was to be brave.

But the only reason I knew those things was because Blue 3 had pulled me out of line. The realization that everything I'd felt that night depended on something so small struck a chord in me like nothing else had.

Every moment from the time I left the Room to when I stepped into the hallway flashed in my head. Was either of the other girls allowed to wash themselves? Blue Prime didn't seem like the sort to let a little thing like personal space muck up her schedule. Blue 2 wouldn't do anything that might make her look bad to Blue Prime, including wasting a few seconds on a traumatized human.

It was such a simple detail, a completely random chance. But I knew in my gut that it had made all the difference. Or it might have, if I hadn't put two and two together. How much of my life in this place would be determined by little details? Until then, I hadn't realized I was one of the lucky ones. Now, I couldn't think of anything but when my luck would run out.

Would I be one of the girls who went back to the Room or one of the ones who never returned? Which answer was the lesser of two evils?

My shoulders started to tremble as the line moved out of the hallway into a dark room. I did the only thing I could think of to feel in control again. The same thing I had been doing since the night I got there.

My name is Ella Browne. I’m from Western Springs, Illinois. I don’t belong here.

The blues marched us onto a black stage that had three gold squares painted on its surface. A gauze curtain separated the stage from the rest of the room, but I couldn't see any details about it from the room. Blue Prime pulled Blondie toward the far end of the stage. She pressed her lips together until the skin around them went white, but I could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes.

Blue 2 grabbed Red by the arm and tried to tug her toward the center square. But Red braced her bare feet against the stage and leaned back, whimpering loudly. The two women engaged in a brief tug of war, Blue 2 dragging the human into position and Red determined to move anywhere but there. She fought hard, but the glamazons were taller and stronger and hadn't been getting by on a diet of gray water.

Spotlights in the ceiling clicked on, raining a cascade of light down on Blondie and Red. Blue 3 took me by the hand and led me to my square. She whispered something, and in that moment, I wished like never before that I could understand her.

I couldn't let go of the idea that she was trying to be nice to me. For some reason, she gave enough of a damn to try to make a shitty situation a little bit less so, and I couldn't even thank her for it.

And I knew in my gut that the second I let go of her hand, the entire situation would get a lot scarier.

My spotlight clicked on just as Blue 3's hand slipped from mine. I sank my teeth into my bottom lip, tasting the slick oily salve and fine bits of precious metal on my tongue. Everything beyond the bright light was a field of inky blackness with no shape. I couldn't see the blues. I couldn't see the aliens in the theater. But I knew both were there.

A disembodied voice echoed across the stage, rattling something in the clipped alien language. The tone was different from the glamazons’ voices. More guttural. Male. The men who’d grabbed me from the party sounded almost the same. Did they still have me? Were the glamazons, with their sweet baths and personal fittings, just a way of lulling us into a false sense of security?

My name is Ella Browne.

The voice kept talking. I looked around the room for something else to focus on. Anything else. My eyes landed on Red. She was just as slender as Blondie but had a small stature like mine. Her dresser chose a loose skirt for her, with bells strung from woven threads. Each time she sobbed, the bells jingled softly.

Ella Browne.

I closed my eyes and listened to the mingled sounds, the deep grunting alien language, Red's sobs, and the gentle tinkle of bells. Even with my eyes closed, I could still see the black makeup dripping over Red's cheeks. The angry blotches on her skin were almost as red as her hair.

She didn't have Blue 3 or New Blue looking over her, worrying over whether she looked good and felt comfortable. Nobody remembered to tell her to be brave. And now it was too late. It wouldn't mean anything. Now, she was miles away from everyone and everything she ever knew, standing under a spotlight while alien men she couldn't see decided her fate.

Now, she was just like me.

But that wasn't who she really was. This wasn't who any of us really were. I reached out to touch Red because the least I could do was let her know she wasn't by herself. As long as we were all on that stage, we were all still together. But at the edge of the golden box, my hand collided with something invisible. I only had a split second to wonder what had happened before an electric shock ran down my arm.

I screamed and stumbled backward, barely catching my balance before I fell into the other invisible edge. My stomach burned. Hot blood flooded across my chest and cheeks. This wasn't the first time I'd felt anger this intense. It wasn't the first time I couldn't do anything about it either.

Who I was stopped mattering back on Earth. Nobody on whatever planet that was about to become my home cared what I wanted. If my time so far was any indication, precious few people would care how I felt.

The only thing I could do, the only thing any of us could do, was stand in the box and wait to see what came next.