“Oh no! Stay all you want! I just think you need to tell him the truth, yeah? How you’re an orphaned, friendless little worm whose father was a loser geek who liked weird space crap more than his family!”

Amara’s eyes widen and she freezes. Her mouth falls open. “Wha—what?”

The crowd begins to thicken, murmur.

“Oh come on,” the girl says with a laugh. “Your dad was weird and you know it. He was the cream of the crop in weird! He treated you like you were so special, just because you were bizarre like him. Like you were his only daughter. But did we hold that against you? No. And what do you do? You steal my dress. I worked hard for that!”

Amara snaps. “Liar!”

“You stole it! I’m sorry if you messed up your life, but don’t mess up everyone else’s. And now you think you can get with Darien Freeman?” She snorts. “Dream on, Elle. You’re no one.”

Elle?

I stand in the crowd, growing cold.

Her name is Elle?

The text message, Amara’s puffy eyes, the costume—oh man. She can’t be my Elle. She can’t.

“And,” Chloe adds, advancing on Elle, who, like a flower in winter, curls up, shrinking, “you never will be anyone—”

“Stop it.”

Chloe turns a wide-eyed gaze to me, not believing I’d take her side. Elle’s side. A part of me can’t believe it either, but not for the same reasons.

I remember the nights talking with Elle—my Elle, the Elle in my head, the one who apparently doesn’t exist. Wanting to text her. Waiting for her to text me. The first time she called me ah’blen. The nights we stayed up late, and how little we really knew about each other, and how much I wanted to know about her.

Me and her—that girl. That Elle.

Us.

How could I ever mistake Elle for someone like Brian? Think they were the same person? I was blind and stupid and she had been here all along.

“Don’t you want to know who she really is?” Chloe asks. She’s horrible, just like I imagined Elle’s stepsisters. She described them perfectly. “She’s just some weird little geek.”

“I know who she is,” I reply. Elle glances over to me. I can see her tears. I can’t take back that text message, but I can give her what she gave me over these last few weeks. I was such a doofus. “She’s kind, and she’s smart, and she’s stubborn and very, very passionate. But not in a bad way. In a good way. In a way I aspire to be. She grew up in a universe without anyone to appreciate her—and what gives you that right? What gives you the right to treat her like she’s no one?”

“I—I—” Chloe looks from me to Elle and then back to me, as if trying to puzzle out why I’m standing up for her stepsister. Do people really think I’m that selfish?

I grab Elle’s hand and squeeze it tight. It’s assurance that I’m not just saying that. I mean it. Because if she’s the girl I think she is, she’ll understand. She deserves to know who I really am.

“Oh, and her father?” I say. “He started this convention. This cosplay ball. So if you think he’s a weirdo, then I think you’re in the wrong crowd.”

And with that I give her the promise-sworn salute.

A Torturian beside me mimics my salute. And a Nox. A Jedi. A Vulcan. A Dark Elf. The entire Fellowship of the Ring. Everyone, in their different-colored hair and costumes and masks, lifts their hands in promise-swears to show that underneath the robes and breastplates and Spandex are people whose hearts beat together. We might all be different—we may ship different things or be in different fandoms—but if I learned anything from twenty-three days in a too-blue uniform playing a character I thought I could never be, it’s that when we become those characters, pieces of ourselves light up like glow sticks in the night. They shine. We shine. Together.

And even when some of us fall to different universes, those lights never go out.

Finally, Elle gives her salute. And I squeeze her hand even tighter.

“We’re all geeks here,” I say.

CHLOE WHIRLS AROUND. NO ONE IS dancing, even though the music keeps spinning. Everyone has a promise-sworn outstretched, even cosplayers who aren’t dressed in Starfield regalia. Chloe chews her bottom lip to keep it from wobbling, her nails digging into her starchy dress. I don’t know how she got it, or how she got in here, and my heart twists because I know this isn’t how she wanted things to go.

“I hate you!” she cries. Then she pushes her way out of the room. The crowd begins to applaud as she stumbles up the stairs and disappears, chased out by a roar of hoots and hollers.

I think to go after her but then stop myself. Chloe wouldn’t go after me. She wouldn’t even try.

Beside me, Darien sighs. “Man, that was a pain.”

“You humiliated her,” I say.

He squints at me. “She humiliated you too.”

“I know but…” I glance back to the ballroom door. “I’m used to it.”

“And that makes it okay?”

“No…”

He sighs, and slowly the crowd begins to go back to whatever they were doing before. Dancing, mingling, eating those delicious finger foods I have yet to try. Maybe I should at least eat a puff pastry before they’re all gone. He rubs the back of his neck. “Listen, I—I think I need to tell you something.”

“That you’re a serious fanboy?” I try to joke, but my heart is still racing from the argument. I can’t get the watery look in Chloe’s eyes out of my head. We really destroyed her. Maybe she’s like that, but I’m not.

“Well, that too,” he says, laughing, and then turns my hand over in his. “But really it’s about—”

The ballroom doors swing open with a deafening groan. A blue-green haired girl sprints inside, followed by a pair of door attendants, shouting about how she needs a ticket.

“Sage?” I let go of Darien’s hand as she reaches me. “What are you doing here?”

She bends over, hands on knees and trying to catch her breath. “Jesus! Haven’t you been checking your phone? I’ve been looking everywhere for you! We need to go!”

“What? Why—oh god, the time!”

“Yeah, Cinderella, the time!” Sage grabs my wrist and yanks me toward the exit.

“Wait,” Darien says, attempting to come after me. “Elle—”

“I’m sorry,” I say, but I let Sage pull me away. A hundred thousand possibilities of what Catherine will do to me are running through my head. And all of them give me a vomitus feeling.

Please let me get home in time, I think as we thread our way through the ballroom. I don’t look back at Darien. I can’t. I push his look of hurt—actual, gut-wrenching hurt—out of my head.

Because I’m as good as dead.

“What time is it?” I yell to Sage. She cuts through the crowd like a knife, her grip so tight I know it’ll leave a mark.

“Nine o’clock!” she calls back.

“Nine?” Panic grips my chest. Even if we gun the Pumpkin to 80 M.P.H., it’s at least a four-hour drive. “We’ll never make it!”

She shoves open the ballroom door and we flee into the golden-hued lobby, across the plush carpet and toward the revolving door. The Magic Pumpkin is idling outside. In a no-parking zone. And there’s a cop heading toward it from across the street. Cal leans out the passenger window, motioning us to hurry. Footsteps follow behind us, and just as I careen out of the revolving doors, I spin back to see who—

Darien.

“Wait, please!” he cries, slamming his way to the revolving doors. His mask has fallen off and I can see the shiner on his nose, dark as a rainstorm, and the alarm in his eyes. The kind where you’re afraid you’ll never see someone again.

“Wait—ah’blena!”

Ah’blena?

I stumble, and one of Mom’s shoes slips off.

“What are you doing?” Sage grabs my hand when I bend for the shoe. “Come on! We have to go!”

She’s right. We have to go. I have to go. Pull myself out of this—this—whatever this is. This dream. This moment. A shoe is a shoe—it’s not worth the wrath of Catherine.

I take off at a run just as Darien rounds out of the revolving doors. Jumping into the driver’s seat, Sage slams the truck into gear and I grab ahold of the handle bar for the passenger foothold. The truck heaves forward as I swing open the door and climb inside, next to Cal.

In the rearview mirror, he’s still running after us. But as we pick up speed his feet slow to a stop and he doubles over, resting his hands on his knees, my name on his lips a moment before he disappears behind a building. I turn to face the road, chest tight and head pounding.

He’ll get over me. All we had was a moment. Just a moment in an impossible universe waltzing that beautiful, impossible waltz.

I’M ABOUT TO VOMIT.

My lungs burn with every breath, but I right myself, looking down at the glittery slipper. I swipe it off the ground. I’ll drop it off at the hotel desk. Maybe they can hold on to it until Elle can pick it up. Or I can tell her.

A knot forms in my throat.

I almost did—I almost told her who I was. I was so close. Tapping the bottom of the shoe against my palm, I turn back toward the hotel.