Chapter 32: The Sister of Sarah Star

   “Sarah, that goth bitch over there is totally casing you,” Qin Wanwan muttered in a catty voice, leaning in close.

   “Ew, and it’s another Ita in a knockoff from Taobaba,” Mega Miruku sighed, shaking her head. “You can totally tell she’s tried to copy your makeup.”

   “Oh, God, you’re right! I didn’t even notice at first,” Qin snorted. “It’s like she just finished walking herself through Sarah’s horror fantastique tutorial for the first time, and she wants to, like, come here and compete with the real deal.”

   Qin was Asian, and wore a skimpy tribal outfit of ragged leathers and a necklace of bones and animal teeth along with a shaggy white wig that featured large wolf ears. Mikuru, on her other side, was dressed in bloomers and an athletic shirt, like a girl who’d walked out of the track and field segment of a high school anime. She had large breasts that looked fake, and her shirt advertised her own cosplay alias, Mega Mikuru, in large letters.

   Sarah herself was wearing her Gestalt-version Sabel Princess cosplay, which incorporated ornate foam armor pieces—cut to shape, sealed with a coat of rubber spray, and carefully painted to look like tarnished silver—atop what looked to be the Victorian dress of a ruling monarch. The cloth portions were perfectly sized to her body and hemmed with lace, while the armor was ornamented with white trimmings and decorated with vine-leaf patterns. The Gestalt-version costume had taken her over four months of work to complete last year, and it was now simply one of the nine costumes she had prepared to wear on her rotation this weekend at AnimeCon.

   Curious, Sarah Star turned with a slight smirk and looked over her shoulder to see just who was out to get her this time. As a well-known local cosplay idol, she was the undisputed star of their area—maybe even their whole coast. Her Nibbler followers numbered in the millions, her cosplay makeup video tutorials were touted as prescribed curriculum for new cosplayers, and more than a dozen different conventions had offered to sign her as a guest rather than an ordinary attendee.

   So, it was a bit startling to her friends Qin and Mikuru when Sarah stopped walking and went pale at the sight of the girl they’d pointed out.

   No. No way, Sarah stared in open disbelief. How can SHE possibly be here? How can she be here like this?!

   “Uh… Sarah?” Qin whispered uneasily. “Are you okay? Is that copycat girl a stalker, or something?”

   “I’m not afraid to go tell off some Ita cunt for you,” Mega Miruku boasted, shooting a dirty look at the girl in the distance.

   Ita was derogatory slang in Gothic Lolita fashion, taken from a similar-sounding word in Japanese that meant ‘ouch.’ Few subcultures were as elitist as Lolita fashion, and newbie Lolitas with mismatched co-ords, Lolitas wearing too much tacky lace, or those wearing knock-off brand counterfeits from Chinese sites like Taobaba were all sneeringly referred to as Itas.

   Sarah’s lip twitched. There was nothing Ita about the dress of the beautiful young woman looking in their direction—if she didn’t know any better, she’d say it was an authentic Noblesse Oblique, somehow. And, the idea that that girl, of all people, copied her makeup was even more preposterous.

   “You don’t recognize her?” Sarah sighed. “You guys… you better go on ahead without me. She’s, uh. She’s an old friend from a couple years ago.”

   “Yeah, sure. If you say so,” Qin said, giving the girl one last dubious look before leading Mega Mikuru away.

   As soon as they had gone on ahead, Sarah took a deep breath and slowly approached the girl with trepidation.

   “What are you doing here, Kelly?” Sarah asked bluntly.

   “Nice to see you, too,” Kelly said in a quiet voice, putting on a weak smile. “It’s been—”

   “What do you want?” Sarah cut her off with a scowl. “How did you even get here? What are you wearing? Why are you here?!”

   “I came to say goodbye to you.”

   “Okay, then. Goodbye,” Sarah snorted, crossing her arms. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

   “This time… this time it’s for real goodbye,” Kelly said. “Forever goodbye.”

   “Don’t fucking—” Sarah realized how agitated she was getting and looked around, lowering her voice, “Don’t you fucking dare tell me that now. Do you have any idea how Mom’s been since you left? Where have you been?!”

   “Royally fucking up my life,” Kelly answered honestly.

   “Of course you have,” Sarah spat, trying not to lose her cool and mostly failing. “You’re so fucking goddamn stubborn. Fuck, both of you are. Fuck.”

   “Sarah…”

   “Shut up. What do you need, money? A place to stay? If you’d just apologize—”

   “Sarah. I’m not apologizing to her. And, I’m not going back,” Kelly said with finality. “I didn’t come here for money, or as a cry for help, or anything like that. I came here to say goodbye to my little sister.”

   “You—stupid fucking fuck,” Sarah cried, eyes watering. “Well, don’t. I don’t want to hear it, so just fucking don’t. Don’t fucking bother.”

   “Sarah.”

   “What is it? Drugs? Are you—what, out of cash to shoot up, or snort, or whatever the fuck drugs you’re on, now?!”

   “Sarah.”

   “Shut up! What happened to Dale? Did you know Mom actually tried visiting him? To find out where you were—”

   “Sarah,” Kelly interrupted with a pointed glare. “You’re making a scene.” The surrounding crowd in the lobby had gone silent as everyone turned to look and see what was going on, and her two cosplay friends had hurried back over, looking like they wanted to interject, but unsure of what to say.

   “Uh… Sarah?” Qin finally asked. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

   “I…” Sarah looked around in embarrassment and collected herself. “Sorry. Is Cosplay Makeup empty right now?”

   “Yeah, it should be,” Qin nodded, looking uneasily from Sarah to Kelly and back again. “Everything we need for the panel is all set up, and we still have another half-hour before it’s time.”

   “Come with me,” Sarah demanded, taking her sister by the wrist and leading her down one of the hallways branching off the main lobby. Bewildered, Qin Wanwan and Mega Mikuru followed after them.

   “Your makeup looks great,” Kelly said, obediently letting herself be pulled along.

   “Don’t start,” Sarah warned.

   “Of course her makeup looks great,” Mikuru snorted. “She’s Sarah Star, she’s like the queen of makeup. Every single freaking one of her tutorial videos has more than five hundred thousand views?”

   “You do videos, now?” Kelly asked, interested.

   “Yes,” Sarah hissed through gritted teeth. “I made a few videos, so what?”

   “Makeup videos?”

   “Yeah, she does makeup videos,” Mikuru said in exasperation. “She’s fucking famous for it. Aren’t you wearing her exact horror fantastique look? Who the hell do you think you are?”

   “Horror fantastique?” Kelly blinked in surprise. “That sounds retarded, I never called it that.”

   “This is... my older sister Kelly,” Sarah grudgingly admitted to her two friends, not turning to look back at either of them. “She... taught me how to do makeup. Forever ago.”

   “She… what?” Mikuru asked in disbelief, slowing down and dropping back a bit as they headed down the hall towards their panel room. “I thought she said her sister was dead?”

   Arriving in the empty panel room for Cosplay Makeup, Sarah yanked her sister inside, and after Qin and Mikuru had followed, closed and locked the door.

   “Okay, you need to explain everything,” Sarah insisted, crossing her arms and standing to block off the door. “Start talking.”

   “Everything? That’s a lot of explaining,” Kelly smiled, glancing at Qin and Mikuru. “You must be my little sister’s friends.”

   “We’re professional cosplayers,” Mikuru huffed, crossing her arms as well. “They invite us to cons as headline guests, they pay us to be here.”

   “Of course they do,” Kelly gave her an unimpressed look. “Isn’t that cute.”

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   “Everything, Kelly,” Sarah demanded.

   “If that’s what you want,” Kelly rolled her eyes and turned to face all three girls. “Alright, I’ll start from the very beginning. Before either of us were born, my mother—well, our mother was a cosmetologist—”

   “That’s not what I fucking mean!” Sarah hissed. “They don’t need to know any of that. Where have you been? How did you get here? Why are you wearing brand? What the fuck happened between you and Dale?!”

   “Wait, wait,” Qin interrupted, motioning Sarah back. “Sarah—you never mentioned that your mother’s a cosmetologist? That’s kind of a big deal. I thought you said she was a nurse?”

   “It is a big deal,” Kelly agreed. “Our story doesn’t make any sense if you don’t know that part.”

   “And, Sarah—you said your sister was dead?” Mikuru chimed in.

   “She’s been dead to me for a long time,” Sarah elaborated through gritted teeth.

   “Yeah, fuck you too,” Kelly snorted.

   “So, your mom’s actually a cosmetologist?” Qin pressed the issue. “Was she the one who—”

   “Mom is not a cosmetologist,” Sarah insisted. “She’s a registered nurse now. Kelly, can you just for once—”

   “Let her talk, I want to hear this,” Mikuru said.

   “Of course she’s not a cosmetologist,” Kelly shook her head and sighed. “Not anymore. But our mother was a cosmetologist, and she was good. A little… too good, in fact. As you might guess from looking at Sarah and I... our mother was, once upon a time, very, very beautiful.

   “And, being a makeup expert, she was of course very, very, very beautiful,” Kelly continued. “More so than us sisters are now, still. Which drew the eye of a certain man, and… well, suffice to say that’s how I was born. Sarah, too. Physical products of her narcissism, manifestations of her vanity.”

   “Don’t even start with that, again,” Sarah scoffed.

   “Anyways, popping out first one brat, and then two of them, she doesn’t have as much time to invest in her appearance—our mother puts on weight, stops wearing makeup, lets herself go a bit. Big mistake, I guess, and daddy exits the story, stage left.

   “Well, our mother takes it hard. Ends up swearing off cosmetics, wants to make sure her little girls never wind up like her. No learning makeup, no fancy haircuts, we’re supposed to study and be smart like good little pawns, so we don’t make her mistakes. All the while, she’s dating her way through guy after guy, trying to find a father figure for us, I guess.

   “I get a little mouthy one day with one of them, because I have a mouth. John, this big creepy guy who was probably going to molest us one day—”

   “He was not,” Sarah argued. “There was nothing wrong with John. He just wasn’t going to put up with your shit.”

   “Okay then, as she says, one day John doesn’t put up with my shit, and I earn myself my first black eye. Real beauty of a shiner, on ten-year old little me. Eleven-year old little me? Sometime around then. I fight back. Mom comes home and freaks out on both of us, sends him packing. Sarah runs and hides in our room like she does.

   “So, my Mom breaks out this big kit that I guess she’d kept hidden behind shit under the bathroom sink, and sits there with me showing how to cover it up with makeup so I can go to school the next day. All the while explaining why, when I’m at a certain age, I shouldn’t ever make myself too good looking, because of what can happen if I’m not careful.

   “When I finally look in the mirror, it’s like fucking magic,” Kelly whispered. “Gone like it’d never been there. Couldn’t even see there was fucking makeup there. It was fucking magic. Naturally, all I want to do then is learn how to do that, and of course, every day she catches me with makeup on, she goes into a fit and makes me wash it off. I wake up and practice putting on makeup, she makes me fuckin’ scrub it off, then I go to school and apply it all over again.”

   “She let you buy makeup?” Qin asked.

   “No, of course not. It was contraband. But I had friends. Our mother was just so fucking determined that neither of us made her same goddamned mistakes—”

   “Yeah, and guess how the story ends?” Sarah taunted, shooting Kelly a glare. “You making those same goddamn mistakes.”

   “I guess so, fine,” Kelly gave them a helpless shrug. “But, it’s my fucking life. Not hers. You’re not shying away from a little makeup now, either, I see.”

   “That’s different,” Sarah growled. “You still haven’t told me what happened. Where you’ve been, what’s fucking going on. Why you’re wearing fucking brand lolita—where’d you get the money for that?”

   “Do you like it?” Kelly did a slow pirouette for them. “It’s the Calamity Queen set, by Noblesse Oblique. I’m modelling it for a friend, it’s for sale.”

   “Friend, what friend?” Sarah huffed. “You don’t have any friends who’d buy brand. You don’t have any friends.”

   “...How much?” Mikuru asked, looking at the dress with interest, now. Qin was already tapping the name into her phone.

   “Make me a good offer,” Kelly shrugged.

   “You said Calamity Queen?” Qin Wanwan asked, looking up from her phone in shock. “The whole set? What size is it, exactly?”

   “How much is it?” Sarah asked.

   “The full set goes for a hundred and thirty thousand yen,” Qin said. “That’s like… what, a grand?”

   “A little over a grand,” Mikuru said. “Like, uh… eleven hundred some dollars?”

   “...What?” Kelly blinked.

   “Kelly—don’t lie to me, is that stolen?” Sarah asked, bewildered. “Where did you find ‘a friend’ that trusts you to run around in over a thousand dollars worth of brand?”

   “Just... some people I met,” Kelly deflected with a laugh and a shrug. “It doesn’t concern you.”

   “Cut the shit,” Sarah snapped. “Where did you get it?”

   “Listen kiddo—I don’t fuckin’ answer to you,” Kelly gave her little sister a mocking smile.

   “Jesus Christ,” Sarah’s shoulders rose in frustration and she forcibly turned away, letting out a bitter laugh. “And to think, I used to wonder why Mom and you always fought.

   “Because she’s a hypocrite and a liar?” Kelly guessed.

   “There you go again— do you even listen to yourself?”

   “Have you ever listened to our mother? Really listened?” Kelly challenged. “How many times did she warn us not to wind up like she did, not to make her mistakes?”

   “Millions of times?” Sarah snorted. “Uh, ‘cause she cares about us? You know, actually gives a fuck? Unlike—”

   “Hello?” Kelly waved a hand in front of her sister’s face to get her attention. “So, you were never actually paying attention? When she says not to make her mistakes, do you even know what she’s fucking talking about? Us. Me and you. We’re the mistakes.”

   Sarah’s mouth fell open at the shock and realization. She closed it, opened it again, as though unsure of what to say before she managed to find the right words again.

   “So, that’s it,” Sarah chuckled, shaking her head. “All this time, you thought she was really—what, denying your existence, or something? Is that what it’s all always been about? All this time?! You’ve just got something to prove?!”

   “...You can’t begin to guess my thoughts,” Kelly said slowly, in such a menacing tone that Sarah found herself shrinking back.

   Years of hate showed painfully in Kelly’s eyes, and for the first time in her life Sarah felt like she’d begun to understand the reason her sister’s path had diverged so significantly from hers. That endlessly confident, rebellious sister that for years she’d secretly looked up to like the sky appeared so dark and distant to her now that it was like a veil of dread had fallen over the room.

   She just couldn’t stand being thought of as a mistake that needed correcting? Sarah clenched her jaw, horrified that this sentiment she’d never thought of might have defined Kelly’s every action for so many years. How long has Kelly been thinking this?

   “But. Whatever,” Kelly shook her head. “I’ve got my own life, and you’ve got yours. It’s whatever. I’ll be here at the con the rest of the day. Message me if you want to get together for dinner one last time, or something. I guess. Bye.”

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