The Star

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Wilder keeps repeating as they find a bus stop bench to sit on.

“Please do not talk to me right now,” Artemis replies with her eyes closed.

“Miss, are you okay?” a stranger says to Wilder—such intentional kindness and unintentional cruelty.

“I’m fine,” comes out like red-hot spit and they fucking mean it. What kind of stranger wants to talk to another stranger at a time like this? Absolute fucking insanity.

“Jesus, I was just trying to help.” The stranger stalks off. Wilder hears it in Spanish and English simultaneously and turns their head away from their own boots just in time. They ralph again, a horrible yellow stream.

“They were like this when I found them!” they can hear Quibble defending himself to Artemis. “I swear!”

“So you took them inside There?”

“Their choice! They’re ready to talk!”

“What were you even doing—no, you know what, one thing at a time. Run into one of these places and get me paper towels. Like a roll, not individual napkins.”

Wilder finishes puking and puts their head between their legs. Soon, they can hear Artemis muttering to herself as she cleans her shoes off, pulling the ribbons from them and throwing them in the nearest trash can; Wilder flushes with shame at realizing an appropriate waste receptacle is feet from them. Mere. Feet.

Quibble sits next to them at the bus stop. He lays a hand on their back. “You okay, bud? I’m sorry, I should have maybe warned you. It gets a bit bumpy in there.”

Wilder privately acknowledges that any which way they got here would have been just as bad for different reasons, and probably they would have upchucked anyhow. They focus on Quibble’s hand, trying to breathe and come back to a state of equilibrium. They’re not sure if it’s unconscious or purposeful, but Quibble is making small circles with his palm right where their back arcs forward and it’s reminding them to take each breath low, slow, and deep.

Artemis’s laceless boots, half-scraped clean of sick, come into view. “Apartment,” she says to Quibble. “I need to wash them properly.” Then, to Wilder, who still hasn’t looked up because they would rather fucking perish, “It’s just around the corner when you can walk again without booting.”

“I can do it, I can do it,” Wilder insists.

“Take your time, bud.” Quibble places his other hand on their shoulder. “We don’t get extra points for going fast.”

The first thing Wilder notices about Artemis’s apartment is the pink, mostly because they are trying not to meet anyone’s eyeballs with their own. It is very, very pink. Not Artemis’s entire apartment, of course. There is some texture here—white crown molding with gaps at random, like a child’s front teeth. A dark, circular table with shoddy varnish and its fair share of nicks and mug rings; above that, a chandelier of knock-off crystal, clear as country creek water; the floors are dark and creak like old bones. But everything else? Magenta and coral and blush and a soft millennial shade of pink, pink, pink. Each hue is different enough so as not to overwhelm; the effect is one of unending warmth in the evening’s golden hour, so early in the winter and coming up so quick as to flat-tire the afternoon’s metaphorical shoe heels.

Artemis smiles a different smile as she enters. Easier. Something of honest relief as she lets go of her bag. “Shoes off,” she says, and Wilder quickly complies. The smile lingers as she says, “You’re taking mine off, too.” And Wilder finds themself on their knees removing Artemis’s barfy boots; they suppose it’s only fair, but they’re also surprised this is something they’re doing for a near-stranger.

When they set the second boot outside the open apartment door and turn around, Wilder has the chance to notice the apartment is occupied already. The table is piled high with schoolbooks—high school, by the looks of it—and on the couch lounges a scrawny, long-limbed girl with a face full of flawless makeup buried in her phone, wearing the whitest sneakers to which Wilder has ever borne witness. Artemis turns that raised eyebrow toward the teenager, exasperated. “You, too, Mary Margaret,” she says—sternly but also warmly. “Shoes off. Same as literally always.”

“That ruins the whole narrative of the outfit,” the girl replies without looking up from her phone.

“Shoes. Off. I am not cleaning these floors in the middle of the week. And—where did you even get those?” She gestures to the sneakers.

Mary Margaret has a body, like the rest of them, but thoughtfully curated in the way teenagers thoughtfully curate their bodies with a little extra edge. A little more understanding of her own taste, her own projection. She is driven not by the crushing weight of fitting in—something she never will do and doesn’t much care about—but by knowing exactly what she wants. She has a puckish face that she doesn’t hide with that makeup, but rather accentuates. Mischief. Her cheekbones are high and her brows are thin and arched. Her visage is the result of effort, and she doesn’t mind showing it. Her hair curls around her head like clouds and she is missing one tooth—a canine. The other one looks especially sharp, as if to compensate for the loss of its compatriot.

Had she her druthers, she would have this exact look—light jeans, knit shirt, long purple nails and beautiful, brand-new white sneakers—with solid white eyes standing out against her deep brown skin. She considers stealing some strange contacts, maybe from one of those beauty shops in Koreatown? They’re always up front by the register, but she never, ever gets caught. Regarding Artemis’s remark about her sneakers, she arches one of those perfectly sculpted eyebrows as if to say, Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.

Instead she says, “Who’s the new one?” And she gets up off the couch. She cuts through the air fast, as if unaffected by normal things like gravity and aerodynamics. Her gawky youth doesn’t betray her raptor’s grace until she moves. A swift, beautiful bearing, lethal and practiced. Wilder is surprised by it until they see two bulging backpacks propped against the wall and notice the bed pillows piled against the couch-arm. Of course she is like a honed blade. Her life, in its short amount of years, has been difficult.

This is the child Artemis thinks of as the Magpie, though she never says that aloud, least of all to the child in question. It is a big deal to have a title like that; not just Awakened, but Ascended. Someone stronger, more adept than the average witch. Most will never see that kind of Power. But Artemis suspects that Mary Margaret, who shines brighter in her Sight than the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, will be one of them. And so she watches, waits, protects. Does her best to impart a value system, encourage Magical Practice, and make sure Mary Margaret finishes twelfth grade.

Artemis never anticipated semi-parenting a houseless teenager. But she continues to choose this life every day.

Mary Margaret circles Wilder like they are prey, her eyebrow still raised, and Wilder gulps. They aren’t sure how to behave around people of any age and teenagers are particularly terrifying—an entire group hyper-trained in the art of finding cracks in a person’s sense of self and tapping them once, sharply, with a shining conversational hammer to shatter the whole human being. Wilder senses, rightly, that this trait is super-functional in Mary Margaret. They wonder if she can see magic like Artemis. They wonder if Artemis and Mary Margaret are related; they will find out soon enough the answer is no. That Artemis located Mary Margaret shortly after the teen was kicked out of her parents’ house for her queerness, her transness—then her Power Awakened and surged. That it took years to coax her into this living room, years of building trust and no sudden movements. Like getting a skittish bird to eat from one’s hand.

“This one’s nervous,” Mary Margaret says. And it is one of the milder things she might say. There are so many to choose from. “What does it do?”

Artemis snorts. “Don’t be an asshole, Mary Margaret. Stop playing.”

When she gets back around to the front of Wilder, she looks into their face. “Well?” she says as she grabs a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket, taps them against her palm. “What do you do?”

Wilder’s figured out what she’s actually asking. “I speak a lot of languages.”

Mary Margaret sucks her teeth. “That’s not Magic,” she says. “That’s regular.” She twirls around to face the group. “Are we having dinner?” She slams the pack against her hand and a cigarette appears between two fingers like magic. “I’m hungry.”

“Give it back,” Artemis says, her own eyebrow arching even higher than Mary Margaret’s, a veritable eyebrow-arch-off.

“Give what back?” Mary Margaret answers as she puts the cigarette between her lips. “They’re my cigarettes.”

“I know they are,” Artemis replies with beleaguered, practiced calm, “and you know that isn’t what I mean.” Artemis holds out her hand.

Mary Margaret rolls her eyes and flicks her fingers. Something bright. Something fast. Something like a camera flash and her hand disappears for only a second. Wilder stares open-mouthed as she hands them their wallet back. She plops back down on the couch, pouting. The uninitiated, like Wilder, might not notice the performance in it. The ritualistic playing out of a Thing.

“I would appreciate it,” Artemis says as she walks toward the kitchen, “if you stopped trying to liberate property from our guests.” She rests a graceful arm on Mary Margaret’s shoulder, gives it a squeeze. “Never change anything else, though. Do your homework.”

Artemis disappears into her room and returns in a caftan, silk and thin. Wilder turns a touch red; they do not expect the stuff of home to be cracked softly open in front of them. Artemis begins to busy—to fill a kettle and put it on the stove. It is an older building, gas, and when she clicks the burner on, she simultaneously slams a pan down on the one next to it, the only way it will ignite. Quibble moves up to the fridge without checking or asking any questions. He simply begins to chop celery, carrots. Wilder stands there, arms akimbo, staring. They are not quite sure what to do.

Artemis raises her eyebrows and it almost makes them giggle, how much both Mary Margaret and Artemis do that. As though their eyebrows possess their own individual consciousnesses. Wilder might laugh if they weren’t overwhelmed with embarrassment and fear. “The bathroom’s that way.” Artemis gestures with her chin. Wilder must look confused because she asks, “Aren’t you going to clean my shoes?”

“Oh,” Wilder says, turning even redder. “Yes.” They open the apartment door and reach out, grab the pukey boots.

Mary Margaret wrinkles her nose theatrically and shrieks, squeals, laughs. “You’re fucking gross, what?”

Wilder would like to die just a little bit. But they do notice that, bless it, everyone in this apartment is speaking English, and as much shame as they’re wearing on their face, they don’t feel like their colors are running. They feel more comfortable than they have since they Awoke.

When Wilder is done getting the shoes as clean as they’ll get and they’ve put them back outside, they—stand there. Not sure what to do as Quibble and Artemis do real things.

“You can sit down, you know,” says Mary Margaret in a way that suggests this is a trap, and Wilder, still nervous around the teenager, sits directly on the floor. “Jesus Christ, don’t be such a fucking mouse.” She flourishes her hand again and Wilder tracks it closer this time. They try very hard not to blink through the light-flash and can see her hand disappear into the air as though she’d reached into a pocket. She draws her hand back clutching a green plastic lighter. She leans over and lights a big candle on the coffee table. “What’s your name?”

“Wilder.”

“When did you pick it?”

She is forward. Shocking. It doesn’t give them time to react, to consider how they might answer or, truly, not answer. “Twenty-five.”

Mary Margaret scoffs. “Wow. So old.” Wilder wonders how many times they will turn into a pillar of dust and blow away on the wind during this conversation. Mary Margaret lights her cigarette, inhales. On her exhale: “Fourteen. For me.”

Wilder can’t imagine it. If they’d been honest about when they’d chosen their name, their answer would’ve ended in “teen.” But they hadn’t used their name, not then. Daydreamed about it, yes, but didn’t say it to a single soul. They didn’t know what it meant to want. They couldn’t imagine having the language for such a thing during—what was fourteen?—freshman year of high school, Jesus Christ. Life would have been so different.

They can’t picture having the bravery, either, to come out, even if they’d had the self-awareness. Mostly they’d tried to fit in; it never worked, but they’d tried. They feel, in this moment, the dissonance of being older and somehow knowing with certainty that this young woman has lived more than they have. They glance over at the “adults” nervously. They should be doing something, some act of care, some contribution. But they’re not. Instead they are sizing up a teenager.

“Hey,” Artemis snaps. Mary Margaret looks back toward the kitchenette. “Window,” Artemis says, pointing with her knife. Mary Margaret rolls her eyes and saunters toward the window, rattles-squeaks it open all the way. She sits, leans her back against the frame, dipping her leg onto the fire escape. She exhales the cigarette into the cold, now slicing through the cozy interior in a way that is not unpleasant, the prewar building’s uncomfortable heat turning the biting temperature into something crisp, a small pleasure.

Mary Margaret keeps an eye on Wilder, too. She, in turn, has no concept of what it is like to feel old and young at the same time, to feel elderly but not like an elder—she has a frame of reference for what it is to feel tired, that’s for certain. She pulses with the energy and understanding that she is not only on the bleeding edge but is also both the knife and the flesh in that metaphor. And she can read on them a similar tear-in-two feeling. She wants to tell them it’s all right, that Quibble and Artemis are basically mom and dad, that it’s futile to try to butt into their adulting dance. She also wants to slap them a little. In the furthest reaches of her emotional landscape, she doesn’t feel like she can tell them anything at all about security—it’s so tenuous, and she understands maybe more than anyone what it means to feel perilously on the outskirts. This is confusing, because she is living in her safe era. But if pressed, she would say that she doesn’t believe in true safety. Only in safer.

Wilder jumps when they hear a bellow. “Ay!” They think for a second the voice is Mary Margaret’s, but she whips her head around, smiling. She balances her cigarette between her fingers and holds it as far out the window as she can while she leans back.

“Artemis! It’s Rico!”

For a second Artemis doesn’t move, just laughs and keeps cooking. “That fool,” she says, in the kind of way that doesn’t sound at all like the words in the sentence. It’s quiet enough that Rico, three stories down, wouldn’t be able to hear. Just everyone in the apartment.

“What are you waiting for?” asks Mary Margaret, and Artemis sets her knife down, turns, and blushes as she leans back against the kitchen counter, taking her time, stretching. This is the first time she’s looked her age, Wilder thinks—Artemis can’t be older than mid-thirties, and if Wilder had to hazard a guess, she is younger, even, than that, with the toll of responsibility and capitalism accentuating the frown lines by her mouth, often (though not always) artfully concealed by her beard, the forehead wrinkles that bely a frequent snapping-shut of the eyebrows like a bear trap with a hairpin trigger. She walks over to the window to look out, her gait more skip than any way she has yet moved in front of Wilder. She looks girlish, exactly the sort of person who would have this pink apartment, and Wilder understands her just a little bit better.

When Artemis stands back, still, Mary Margaret stamps out her cigarette on the black iron of the fire escape and leans her whole body onto the structure, which shudders under the weight of her enthusiasm. “Hey, Rico!” she shouts, and giggles.

“Is she up there?” Rico’s voice is husky, crackling. So explicitly a trans voice on testosterone, it makes Wilder come to the window as well. They stand to the side and crane their neck to catch a glimpse of this mysterious man, who they then recognize from Jacqueline’s.

“What do you think?” Mary Margaret shouts.

Rico laughs. “I think she’s standing just out of view, smiling.”

Everyone erupts, including Wilder, because he is so exactly correct. And the laughs are like a chorus of church bells announcing something to the city, though Wilder isn’t sure exactly what.

Rico is on his way to dress rehearsal for Adam and Steve. Which means his eyebrows are drawn in thick and dark and his hair is slicked down, tight to his head. His lips are hot-rod red. Peeking out from underneath his silk shirt, unbuttoned almost halfway and very inappropriate for the weather, is his chest hair, exaggerated, painted on. The vaguest sparkle of a titty tassel in the winter evening streetlight. He carries a thick garment bag over his shoulder with roguish contrapposto, pulls a wheeled suitcase, and wears a top hat crested with the most enormous feather Wilder has ever seen. He takes a deep breath, fills every inch of his lungs with air, and lets loose: “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East Side and Artemis is—”

“Stop, stop, stop!” Artemis bustles out the open window like a moving G train. “You’ll wake the dead in Green-Wood like that, sweet fucking lord.”

Wilder steps back into the center of the room and hugs themself, admiring Artemis, a silhouette against a fire sky, gently resting her elegant hands on the railing, silk caftan catching the setting sun. Mary Margaret is still leaning out, and her breath condenses and curls, steams, whirling into the last rays of light streaming onto the side of the building, into the quickly darkening room.

Wilder doesn’t realize they have stopped breathing until Quibble says, “I know.” They glance left and Quibble, yikes, has stepped up next to them and is witnessing them fall in love (though they of course wouldn’t call it love and it is, of course, not a romantic love). They scowl even as they try to take a photo with their mind. Try to remember it exactly as it is, the soft light and the way cold breathes around the two warm women, holding them in a perpetual inhale. Wilder can feel the buzz of Quibble’s arm, so remarkably close to theirs. A real snapshot would not recall the intense longing on everyone’s part: Quibble for his family, Artemis for Rico, Mary Margaret for happiness, and Wilder for a sense of secure inclusion. Only memory can do that.

“Come to Jacqueline’s,” Rico asks. Quieter than the full-throated Shakespearean caterwauling, but still loud, public. Performative yet earnest.

“It’s a school night,” Artemis replies, and Mary Margaret’s teeth sucking is loud enough to reach all the way to the street.

“I don’t need you, damn,” the teenager says, quiet.

“Yes, you do,” Artemis says just to her. “If I leave, I know you’re leaving, too.”

Mary Margaret pouts.

“You do not attend school, Artemis,” Rico shouts up to the window. “Come on, come out. You work in nightlife. This is like a business dinner. Come just you. No offense, Quibble.”

“None taken,” Quibble shouts back.

“I only technically work in nightlife,” Artemis grumbles. Then, out the window to Rico, a smirk on her face, “I am raising a child, Rico. You would have me leave my sweet little baby on a school night?”

“I am literally smoking next to you,” Mary Margaret says.

“Does she want to?” Wilder whispers to Quibble, instinctually leaning toward him until their arms brush.

“I can’t actually tell,” Quibble answers. “I think so.”

In truth, Artemis does want to go. Artemis always wants to spend time with Rico. And who wouldn’t? Rico is one of those magic people—not in the sense of Awakened Power, of course, but in the sense of everyday magic. The way he moves through the world seems to spawn sparkle somehow. He sees double rainbows on rainy days and streetlights turn on when he wanders underneath them. Once, when he was very young, a flower even bloomed while he watched; he tapped his pencil excitedly against his school desk and his teacher accused him of telling lies. Artemis Sees Power; she also knows magic when she feels it sitting on the barstool next to her. And she does not trust herself around such magic without a chaperone. If she goes on a date with Rico, it will be a slippery slope, this she knows. She will start to feel feelings (or notice the feelings she is already feeling), and then where will she be? And in the version of the world where she chooses, in this moment, to give in to her desire? That is exactly what happens.

She shakes her head. “I’ll be there for the actual performance, Rico. I don’t need to watch you rehearse it.”

“Girl, he is asking you on a date,” Mary Margaret says loud enough for Rico to hear, hoping to use embarrassment to exact pressure in that common teenage way.

Artemis smiles at Mary Margaret, gentle and sad and with closed lips. “I can’t do anything with Rico, Maggie.”

Mary Margaret clicks her tongue, looks down at Rico, and wiggles her eyebrows. “If I promise to do the homework, will you go out?”

“Oh, my sweet sparrow,” Artemis says, and she lays a hand on Mary Margaret’s cheek. “I very much do not trust you to do that. Besides, I have things to do tonight. I brought them home for a reason.” She looks out over the railing. “Maybe another time, Rico,” she calls down. She turns to come inside while Mary Margaret rolls her eyes.

“Artemis?” Rico calls. His voice cracks, more than usual, which makes Artemis turn around.

“Yeah?”

“Am I wrong, here? Just say the word and I’ll never bother you again.”

She pauses. Another, different small smile rests on her face; she looks so tired. She is carrying something heavy, and she hasn’t yet put it down. But she blushes up under her beard, all the way up to the hollows of her eyes. “You ain’t wrong, Rico,” she says quietly, but still it rings like a bell, carrying clearly to the street below. “No, you’re not wrong at all.”

“Okay, beautiful,” he says, “I’ll keep trying.” Then he is gone and the sun disappears behind the building across the street.