“That’s just sad, though, Tai,” she replies, and for once, I know she’s not doing it to be a judgmental bitch.

For once, I’m tempted to try to explain it to her, why I do this. Why I perform even in moments of despair. Because nothing feeds my soul more than the attention, the adoration, the affirmation I get when I am at my best, at my sparkliest, at my most special.

She called me a force of nature, and that’s exactly what I am. But I’m not a closed system. I need that cloying-sweet love to keep putting out what will make me adored.

I know Mama would have understood. But I don’t think Manon would—Manon who lives so deep inside herself, who must think, on some level, that what’s most special about her will never be and can never be on view to most of the world.

So I shrug. “Seems like that’s kinda what Mama did, too.”

“I guess Fleischman didn’t have the same ring to it as Foix for a queen of Viloxin,” she replies bitterly. We both flinch. In her eyes, I see the pain I feel, the pain of not knowing who our mother was. The only thing making it bearable is that she’s still out there.

We can still find her, and she can still explain.

I pick at my hair again, discovering a highlighted thick strand. I squint at it in the low light.

“Wait. Do you have … white hair?” Noni asks me. “Like White Fox?”

I freeze.

“How dare you, Manon Hammick.” I’m fragile enough as it is. “Come on,” I say, reaching for her hand. “We need to get ready for the retrospective.”

“Goddammit,” Manon whispers, and it’s the first time I’ve heard her curse—the first time she’s said something I agree with wholeheartedly—in years.

“Thaïs and Manon!” Mina says, greeting us in the foyer of Stökéwood, her panel a wash of graciously soothing blues and greens. “The car will be here shortly. It’s time to change for the retrospective.” She moves toward us on her thick, knobbed plastic legs, and hearts on wings fly across her panel. “I know you’ll both pick something elegant.”

“Bitch, please,” I say, cruising past her.

I wear Mama’s vintage corseted bloodred brocade gown with the thigh-high slit, because it’s Friday and according to Mama’s superstition I can’t wear anything new, and I drape a luscious ivory faux-fur wrap across my shoulders, because drama. Plus these over-the-top clear stilettos that Aunt Marion said would be best suited to the one-foot radius around a pole—but I have zippo cleavage (hi, Mama’s genes!), so I tell myself the effect is more sci-fi chic.