Everleigh

  Trapped but we were happy.

  TSB was everybody's favourite stagehand.

  And each night before bed,

  “I love you, Matteus.”

  “I love you, Everleigh.”

  I’d curl into his body and he’d play with my hair.

  Weeks upon weeks and my cheeks were rosy again.

  And then it started with a tug. A tickle.

  A contained cough I concealed with care.

  I looked in the mirror one morning and my face was sallow. I hurried across the court and into Zacharias and Avis’s wagon.

  They weren't home.

  I covered the circles under my eyes with Avis’s makeup. We used it for my scars. Like her, like her.

  TSB was still asleep in our bed. In our black wagon.

  Days upon days, and the blood came.

  A dance, a rehearsal with Sebastian interrupted.

  I couldn’t let him see, but still he saw.

  “It isn’t contagious,” I said, though he never asked. “I’m sick, I’ve been sick my whole life.”

  “Have you seen a doctor? We have an excellent one on staff.”

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  “They can’t fix this.”

  “So, what, then?”

  The agony of it all.

  Dying again, and yet I felt so alive.

  “I’ll die, I guess.”

  Sebastian ran a hand through his hair.

  Like him, like him.

  “Does Matteus know?”

  Did he know? He knew, but he didn’t know. I shook my head.

  “Everleigh…”

  “I didn’t even want you to know.”

  It was us alone in a grove of willows; he put his arms around me and held me tight. Sebastian, my friend, my mentor, my father.

  Hours upon hours I wept.

  Sometimes I wished we could do it all over again.

  But not like this, not like this.

  When I returned to our black wagon, Matteus wasn’t home. But he’d picked me flowers and put them in a vase with water on the table. TSB knew how to make every day special.

  Like him, like him.

  The card read, “I love you. Be back with dinner.”

  He brought back our favourites from the vendors around the grounds. I was feeling sick, and I’d lost my appetite again, but I ate anyway. Under the table, I pushed on my wrists until it hurt.

  “We need to find a way out of here,” I said. “We can be with the real Sebastian and the real Zacharias back home with our friends. Avis, too, if they haven’t destroyed her, I guess.”

  “It’s not like we haven’t been trying, I just don’t know know what more to do.”

  “You say we’ve tried, but how hard have we really tried, Matt. We’ve been so busy. I know you’re having fun. I am, too.”

  “I mean, yeah—it’s been fun. This place is…”

  “With you here, it’s perfect.”

  “Yeah.”

  We ate in silence. I still wasn’t hungry. It didn’t seem like he was either.

  “Ever, I have to tell you something.”

  “Okay.”

  A pulse. A panic.

  “I think if we leave, I think—I think It killed me. I think I’m dead on the other side. No, I’m sure of it, actually.”

  The anger of it all.

  The horror of it all.

  The injustice of it all.

  “Okay,” I said. “Then I have to tell you something.”

  “Anything.”

  “I’m sick again. If we stay, I’ll die.”