It was 7:30 PM.
For the first time in a thousand years, there were guests in the foyer, masked and glittering and resplendent. But Chauvet could not be found in the Astrarium, nor the Foyer or the Gallery--instead, she sat on a lounging chaise in a locked office curled up a flight of stairs and away from the world, biting her lip while the ghost of Genevieve paced. They had thirty minutes to produce a squire Chauvet to the gallery, but she sat criss-cross in the tents of her page skirts and stared blankly at the floor instead.
“I don’t understand,” Genevieve frowned, crossing her arms. “You’re sure you sent five hundred invitations?”
“Positive, boss,” Chauvet replied, brushing her bangs over her eyes while she pouted. She hoped there weren’t five hundred people in the foyer--she might just have a heart attack.
“And you arranged for there to be suitable food along with the refreshments?”
“Yeah, I picked it up with the bartender.” She also picked at the edge of her gloves.
Genevieve huffed, continuing to pace just a few inches off of the ground, like she didn’t quite remember where reality sat and was only putting up appearances. “You should have booked a Neptunian quartet, it’s honestly not that hard to send a few letters and trade for an audience or two--”
“--Oh, what, I was supposed to just, I dunno, hitch a ride to Neptune? It’s space, no big deal, am I right?”
Genevieve’s gaze leveled on Chauvet. “Watch your tone with me, Page. I’m not the one who failed to curate enough of a scene to earn our gallery’s favor.”
“Oh, shut up, you’re like fifteen,” Chauvet snapped back, sitting up from the cushions. She gulped, tears pin-pricking at her eyes, but she shook them aside. “You might have been some fancy a*****e in another lifetime or whatever, but your name this go-around was Gwen, you were a sophomore at Meadowview High and you were in the journalism club because you wanted to write about how aliens were saving us rock monsters. You were the first person who ever painted my nails, it was some tequila sunrise color and we laughed so hard that we poured half the bottle on your mom’s carpet and she almost s**t a brick. Carol had that carpet folded up by the back door to throw out but then you went missing and it never made it to the curb.” Chauvet chewed on her lip. “You have two siblings, Ashlyn and Beau, and they miss you--I miss you, Gwen, does none of this ring a bell at all?”
For a minute, Genevieve form flickered and split, like she was cracking from head to heel by slivers of light. “I--I don’t--want...to…”
”Helphelphelp--please--”
A light flashed, and Gevenieve returned, fully formed and combing her hair. “I’ll ask you not to further exacerbate my condition,” she huffed, her nose held high. “Whatever...your version of me did, it’s left me vulnerable to deconstruction and I can’t help you if I get dismissed.”
Chauvet stared, nothing on her face to betray how her heart crumbled. This is how it always went--she tried to share something about her life as Katie Catigern, something to jog Gwen’s memory, and then the ghost would flicker and shatter or disappear. Whatever happened, Gwen didn’t want to remember any of it, any of them. It made her fingertips numb.
“Fine,” Chauvet whispered, clasping her hands so she would have something to hold. “******** it. Tell me what I need to do.”
Genevieve pursed her lips and tilted her head, waiting for a moment for any sort of attitude, but in the absence of a proper apology she continued on her path all the same. “Well. It sounds like this…other Genevieve has you all worked up because she went missing, so she’s been forgotten.” The ghost rubbed her nose while she thought. “What if...that’s the missing element. You should have made an exhibit for me!”
Chauvet glanced sidelong at the ghost, who clapped in delight. “So...you want me to go bring something of yours to the gallery? As like...a keepsake?”
“Oh, Cauldrons no!” Genevieve’s hands flew over her chest. “There’s hardly any time for that--you have guests at the door! Whatever you need to do to air all that grief will have to be on your own time--in the meanwhile we’ll just have to make do.” She walked over to a half-open wardrobe and peeked in, humming all the while. “Come here--no one’s going to know that you didn’t figure it out in time if you just...dress up a little, play pretend. It will all be just fine.”
Something unpleasant curdled in Chauvet’s stomach, but she stood all the same, looking at the open place in the wardrobe where half of an opal furred sleeve picked out. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just...tell people what happened? Like, it’s not a big deal. No one really cares about the...gallery, or whatever, they’re probably just here for free food and drama.”
“No, no no, absolutely not,” Genevieve turned, fussing around Chauvet’s skirts without actually touching them. “This is your shot--your one shot--to make an impression with all of these people, the ones that you summoned here on the occasion of your squirehood. Do you want to be a disappointment?” Genevieve batted her lashes, imagining how she might have looked in the mirror if she had a reflection. “Do you want them to know that you’re just the second string to some idiot page that died her first week? Do you know how bad that looks?”
”Shut the ******** up about Gwen!” Chauvet swung her hand back, pausing only when Genevieve flinched.
“Wait, stop--no no no, you can’t! Any sort of violence and the power of the Cosmos will reject you from the gallery!!” Small and shaking, Genevieve held her hands up until Chauvet lowered hers, then skittered back to the chaise to pretend to sit. “...There, now there’s no--no need to be so brutish. What I mean to say is that you’re right--nobody cares about what happens, so long as it goes according to plan. No one’s going to care if it’s sincere. Just put on the coat, put on a show, and then...this will all be over, and we can do some little memorial later, when it counts. But all of those people outside, they would be very disappointed if we didn’t at least pretend to play along. After all, it’s the party Gwen should have had. The one she deserves. Shouldn’t we at least give her that?”
Grappling with her expression, Chauvet stared at the floor. Genevieve or otherwise, she was right. It should have been Gwen getting ready for this gala, not her. At the end of the day, she was only here because something horrible had happened. Chauvet was an imposter. A total Chau-fake.
When she looked up, she saw her own mask on the desk, rough-clad gold on her eyes to cover anything she might be feeling. She took it, and then reached for the cloak in the wardrobe. It wasn’t her job to be sincere. She just needed to keep up appearances, and then she could go home and remember Gwen the way she was, before all this magic nonsense mucked everything up.
Just before she opened the door to descend down the stairs to the gallery, Chauvet reached up to her face and put on the mask.
