Chapter 2: The UniformThe crowbar in Skye’s hand made a dull, metallic clink against the carabiner on her hip as they walked toward the service entrance, but Dar barely heard it. Her eyes were fixed on the brick facade of the Dogwood Society, home of the cotillions of her youth.

  In the daylight, the bricks were likely a faded, stately red, softened by moss and time. But in the moonlight, stripped of color, they looked grey and abrasive, rough like the tongue of a cat, stacked in endless, judgmental rows. It was a texture Dar felt on the pads of her fingers without even touching the wall, a dry, scraping sensation that bypassed her skin and scratched directly against her memory.

  It was the texture of the dressing room wall.

  The humidity of the Georgia night seemed to vanish, repced by a bst of aggressive, over-conditioned air. The sound of crickets was drowned out by the generic, smooth jazz pying over a PA system and the distant, muffled thrum of a mall food court. Dar stopped walking. She wasn't in the kudzu anymore. She was ten years old. She was standing on a pedestal. And she was suffocating.

  Marietta, Georgia, Fifth Grade. Late August, 1997

  The location was the Men's Wearhouse, just down the street from the sprawling, consumerist mecca of Cumbernd Mall. What was one shiny and new many decades ago had been upstaged and repced by Lenox Mall. But it remained as a pce where you could find most anything. Dar preferred the Software Etc store where she could find shareware discs of new games coming out with the magazines, and the way the food court smelled. But she was far away from there, she was in a little department store deep in the custrophobic maze of the mall.

  The air in the shop smelled of new wool, sizing starch, and a desperate, chemical masculinity. It was a cocktail of cheap cologne worn by the sales associates and the acrid scent of dry-cleaning fluid radiating from the racks. To young Dar, then known to everyone, including herself, as Patrick, or just ‘Pat’ it smelled like a funeral parlor for the living.

  "Stop squirming," her mother, Hazel, hissed.

  Dar’s Mother wasn’t whispering, not really. It was that stage-whisper mothers used when they wanted to project the image of effortless parenting while actively wrestling their child into submission. She sat in one of the leather armchairs near the dressing rooms, her purse clutched in her p like a shield. She looked tired, despite the pots upon pots of bck coffee she drank. She always looked tired when it came to Patrick, as if the boy was a complex algebra problem she couldn't quite solve. Her other child was an equation that banced out nicely; not Pat, and certainly not right now.

  "I’m not squirming," Dar mumbled, though she was. She was itching.

  She was standing on a low wooden block in front of a three-way mirror, a device invented solely to destroy a person’s self-esteem. The mirrors were angled so that she couldn't escape herself. Every time she looked up, she saw three versions of a boy she didn't recognize—chunky, awkward, with cheeks that felt too round and shoulders that sloped downward in a perpetual apology. The tailor was a man named Mr. Henderson. He smelled of stale tobacco and peppermint gum he hoped would hide his pack-a-day habit. He moved around Dar with the clinical detachment of a butcher measuring a cut of meat. His mouth was full of pins, bristling out from between his lips like silver whiskers.

  "Arms up," Mr. Henderson grunted around the pins.

  Dar lifted her arms. The navy blue bzer, a 100% wool monstrosity that felt like it had been woven from steel wool and resentment, rose with them. It was stiff. It was heavy. It felt less like clothing and more like a crate she was being packed into for shipping.

  "Is it... is it the right shade of navy?" her mother asked, her voice tight. She was twisting the strap of her purse, a nervous tic Dar had cataloged years ago. "The invitation said 'Deep Navy or Midnight,' and I don't want him standing out. We can't look like... well, we can't look like we bought it off the rack."

  Dar, Patrick, in this moment, felt a flush of shame that had nothing to do with the scratchy wool. She understood, even at ten, the desperate, cwing hunger of the wannabe. Her parents were public school teachers living in a mansion they were paying for on trust money, and pying dress-up in a world that sniffed out new money like blood in the water. She watched her mother’s eyes scan the other families in the store. The ease with which the old money boys stood, slouching with an arrogance that said they owned the bzer, whereas the bzer owned Dar. Her mother wanted that ease for her. She was trying to buy it for 299.99 plus tax.

  "It is the standard, Ma'am," Mr. Henderson said, his voice bored. "The same navy as the Admiral's grandson who was in here yesterday."

  Her mother visibly rexed, her shoulders dropping two inches. "Good. Good. Just... make him look like that."

  "Shoulders," Mr. Henderson muttered. He grabbed Dar’s shoulders and wrenched them back. "Don't slouch, son. You're colpsing the chest piece."

  Colpsing the chest piece.

  Dar stared at her reflection. The bzer was huge, boxy, designed to create the illusion of a triangur torso that she didn't possess. The gold buttons gleamed under the fluorescent lights, mocking her. They were stamped with fake crests, symbols of a lineage and a heritage that felt like a lie. "He's a bit... husky through the middle," her mother offered from the chair, her voice tight with that specific upper-middle-css anxiety about appearance, especially when it came to her overweight child. "Will it button?"

  The word husky hit Dar like a sp. She looked at the boy in the mirror, the carbon copy of the other boys, but a copy that had come out smudged. Warped. The other boys at school, the ones who pyed football and didn't cry during dodgeball; they were lean. They were jagged angles and scabby knees. Dar felt soft. She felt like dough being squeezed into a mold that was too square.

  "We can let it out," Mr. Henderson said, removing a pin from his mouth. He crouched down, his face uncomfortably close to Dar’s hip. He tugged the fabric at her waist, pulling it tight. "Suck in, young man."

  Dar sucked in. She held her breath until bck spots danced in her vision. He spped Dar’s hands. "Don't cup your fingers. A man doesn't cup. Hands ft at the seams. Ready for action."

  Action. That was the word they loved. Assertive. Chivalric. Stoic. The words bounced around Dar’s skull like loose rivets. She felt her body stiffening, locking her joints. It was a manual override of her natural softness. She imagined gears grinding in her elbows, pistons firing in her knees to keep them locked.

  "Better," Mr. Henderson said. He jammed a pin into the fabric. Scritch. "Chin up, Henderson barked, tapping her jaw with a cold, chalky finger. "You look like a whipped dog. Stand like a man, now. Feet apart. Ground yourself."

  Dar moved her feet. And then, the pain.

  The shoes were the worst part. They were bck, hard-soled oxfords, fresh out of the box. The leather was stiff as pstic, unyielding and cruel. The heel dug into her tendon with every shift of weight. The toe box pinched her toes together into a singur, throbbing point. They were shoes designed for boardrooms and courtrooms, for stomping and striding. They were not designed for a ten-year-old who wanted to run into the woods and never come back.

  "They hurt," Dar whispered.

  "They're leather," Mr. Henderson said dismissively, standing up and checking the break of the pants. "They need to be broken in. You have to show them who's boss. wear them around the house."

  "They pinch," Dar insisted, a whine creeping into her voice.

  "Patrick Michael," her mother warned. "Do not start."

  Dar looked at the mirror again. The pins glinted in the fabric, silver teeth biting into the blue. She looked at the boy. He looked ridiculous. He looked like a child pying dress-up in his father’s nightmares. "I look weird," she said.

  "You look handsome," her mother corrected, though she didn't sound convinced. She stood up and walked over, reaching out to straighten the pel. Her hands were cool, smelling of vendar lotion. For a second, Dar leaned into the touch, wanting comfort, wanting her mother to realize that this was wrong, that she was wrong, that there was a mistake in the paperwork of her existence.

  But her mother just smoothed the wool and sighed. "You look like a LeMonte," she said. "Your Great-Grandfather would be proud. A fine young man."

  Mr. Henderson spun her around to check the back. The motion made Dar dizzy. In the kaleidoscope of mirrors, the boy named Patrick shattered. He split into infinite reflections, front, back, side, all of them trapped in the navy blue cage.

  "Patrick was far too formal," Dar thought, the internal monologue of her ten-year-old self surfacing with sudden, crystalline crity. "Not that I cared for the name anyways... but Patrick is gone now. I am Mr. LeMonte from hence on."

  It was a survival instinct. It was the first true dissociation. If she was Patrick, the pain of the shoes and the itch of the wool and the shame of being fat and slowly growing more mannish was unbearable. But if she was Mr. LeMonte, if she was a character then it didn't matter if it hurt. Robots didn't feel pinched toes. Shields didn't itch.

  "There," Mr. Henderson said, stepping back. "A perfect fit. He'll grow into it by Christmas."

  Dar, no, Patrick, no Mr. LeMonte stared at the reflection. The boy stared back. His eyes were dead, ft, safe. He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart. He didn't squirm.

  "Thank you, sir," Mr. LeMonte said, in a voice that was already deepening, already performing.

  "Hey."

  The voice was sharp, cutting through the fluorescent haze of the memory.

  Dar blinked. The smell of wool vanished, repced by the damp rot of the Georgia woods. The three-way mirror dissolved into the dark brick wall of the service entrance.

  Skye was standing next to her, one hand on the door handle, the other resting gently on Dar’s shoulder. Skye’s face was illuminated by the faint moonlight, her expression tight with concern.

  "You went somewhere," Skye said. "You back?"

  Dar let out a shuddering breath, her hand flying to her neck, scratching at a phantom colr that wasn't there. She was wearing a soft cotton cardigan. There was no wool. There were no pins.

  "Yeah," Dar croaked. "Yeah. Just to the Men's Wearhouse."

  Skye mockingly shuddered and let out a low, dark chuckle. "The seventh circle of hell."

  Skye turned back to the door, jamming the ft end of the crowbar into the seam near the lock. She worked with a practiced efficiency, the muscles in her forearm flexing as she applied leverage.

  "I remember your old suits," Skye said, her voice strained with effort. "When you finally moved out of that little studio in Riverside to Murray Hill…God, was that four years ago?"

  "Five," Dar corrected, wrapping her arms around herself.

  "Five years since we met,," Skye grunted. The wood of the door frame groaned. "I remember hauling those garment bags when you moved in 2 years ago…You had kept them all. Like... six of them. Different sizes. From the little kid ones up to the prom tux."

  Dar nodded, looking at her boots. "I couldn't throw them away. They cost so much. My mother would have killed me."

  "They were heavy," Skye said. "I don't mean physically. I mean... I remember picking up that garment bag and feeling like I was carrying a body. I remember thinking, 'How did she carry this around every day?'"

  Crack.

  The door jamb splintered. The lock popped with a sound like a dry branch snapping.

  Skye pulled the door open. It swung inward into the pitch bckness of the service corridor. A smell drifted out—The air in the service hallway was stagnant, smelling of old grease traps and the metallic tang of industrial cleaners. "Cssy," Skye whispered, kicking a discarded mop bucket out of the way.

  "It's the backend," Dar murmured, her programmer brain flicking on. "The front of the house is the User Interface—marble floors, chandeliers, the illusion of effortless wealth. This..." She gestured to the stained concrete walls and the exposed pipes sweating in the heat. "This is the spaghetti code holding it all together."

  She ran a finger along the wall. It came away grey with dust. Dar looked at the narrow corridor. It was designed to make the people inside it invisible. To be silent, efficient, and unseen. It was exactly how she had been taught to treat her own emotions. Keep the panic in the kitchen. Keep the smile in the ballroom.

  "You kept them in the back of your closet,right?," Skye continued, looking at Dar. "Hidden behind the dresses. Like you were afraid if you let them go, you’d float away. Or maybe you were afraid they’d come alive at night."

  "I was afraid I’d need them again," Dar whispered. "I was afraid the money would run out and I’d have to apply somewhere as a Mr. Again…or the hormones didn’t work… or... or everyone was right. And I’d have to put Mr. LeMonte back on. I kept my ghosts on hangers."

  Skye stepped closer. She reached out and touched the top button of Dar’s cardigan, her thumb brushing the pulse point at the base of Dar’s throat.

  "You burned those suits, Dar," Skye said softly. "Remember? We took them to the beach, drove out there close to midnight."

  "I remember."

  "Mr. LeMonte is ash in St. Johns," Skye said. She gestured to the open door, to the dark maw of the building. "This is just his tomb. We're just here to make sure he stays dead."

  Dar looked into the darkness. She could smell the floor wax. It made her stomach turn, but it also woke something up. A cold, hard anger. The boy in the mirror had been terrified. He had stood still because he was paralyzed.

  Dar wasn't paralyzed. She shifted her weight. Her Doc Martens didn't pinch. "After you," Dar said.

  Skye grinned, clicked on a heavy-duty fshlight, and stepped into the breach. Dar followed, crossing the threshold, walking out of the memory and into the belly of the beast.