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A tiny girl of eight in a pink tutu, standing in an empty corridor, ear pressed against a door.

.. Wait until she’s twelve? The Russians are puttin’ their girls in them shoes at eight!

She prays her teacher gives the right response.

But it’s wrong: Mrs. Cross, I can’t in good conscience put her en pointe at this time.

Tears blur the girl’s vision. She’s seen the other eight-year-olds, the Russian girls, online—she knows she can do it, better

even! I will go as early as eleven , her teacher continues, but her mother cuts her off: And I will go find my baby a new teacher, how ’bout that! The girl relaxes and imagines herself in a new studio, leaping and twirling on her toes.

John was hardly able to string a coherent thought when he was buoyed by an incongruous sense of elation, an echo of sentimentality, and the very welcoming, artificially cheesy scent of nachos and the pungent aroma of beer.

It wasn’t as wholly realized as the first memory he’d just a moment ago experienced, yet he could smell the nachos and beer as clearly as if they’d been sitting right under his nose.

There was a flash of an image, a screen: a First Family, a family of firsts, striding across a stage, the Obamas’ brown skin glowing under the lights.

.. And then it all pulled away like a tide, the exhilaration and mouthwatering scents replaced with the rattles and clangs and smoky haze of the arena.

A woman strode toward them with a handheld steamer and a rolling mirror, which she parked beside the wall before disappearing into a nearby door.

John caught sight of his reflection; he looked painfully confused. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “Have we met? Before tonight,

I mean?”

“We haven’t,” the girl replied, her voice earthy and full. “Do you want me to find someone for you? Um, one of your people

or something? You look lost?”

In his periphery, a movement flickered. He glanced at the mirror and saw nothing, but just before he turned his head, saw

another movement, something dark....

“What is it?” she asked.

He inhaled and recognized the smell: brackish water. He took a step closer to the mirror—inky fog billowed across the surface

of the glass. “Do you—?”

A groan reverberated through the hall and a weight settled over John’s chest, sadness and regret and self-loathing. He glanced

at the girl, who seemed oblivious, only to see tendrils of blue-black fog bleeding up from the concrete and snaking menacingly

up her calves, her knees, to hover above and around her.

A sharp crack sent him whirling. Two intersecting lines cut across the mirror, and where they met, a widening darkness. It

was as if John were looking down a narrow tunnel. Was his House, the way he’d seen it last time with Ruben, on the other end?

Fog poured from the glass, and in a moment he was inundated by it, his head swimming. A yawning emptiness, a vacant decay,

pulled at his chest from the inside and he gasped, stumbling sideways and bracing himself against the wall.

Bracing himself .

Shakily, he looked up at his hand and wondered at the coolness and solidity of the concrete wall beneath it. Another groan,

and he snatched his hand away.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

A smudge in the mirror grew larger. It was not his House, but a figure... and it was coming. The Grey Man had found him, was determined to finish what he’d started.

“What are you staring at?” The girl’s forehead crinkled into lines of concern as she stared at the mirror’s surface and placed

her fingertips against it.

Instantly the fog cleared, blasted away by otherworldly gales, as did the fog vines around her legs.

“I—I have to go,” he said hurriedly. He braved a glance backward at the girl and had the odd thought of being unable to determine

whether he was rushing to safety... or away from it.

15

“Excuse me, miss?” The security guard Persephone had encountered earlier came down the hall, a business-casual-suited woman

beside him.

Persephone tensed.

“Just wanted to know if my wife could grab a quick picture with your man?” He turned to his wife. “John’s girlfriend.”

Persephone shook her head. “Oh—”

The woman smiled. “Girlfriend. Oh, wow. Well, we’d love to talk to you when you get some time.” She extended a hand, gave

a name, and mentioned a prominent magazine that usually featured only very thin, very cool, and very famous artists.

“But I’m not his...” Persephone released the woman’s hand and stared back down the hall, John’s voice echoing between her

temples: She’s with me...

16

In less than half an hour, John was lying atop his bed. He had slept in the Grey House but lacked the ability to sleep outside of it, and so instead he contemplated what had happened in the arena. The memory, the Grey Man, touching the wall... He hadn’t imagined any of it.

Who was that girl?

He didn’t want her to be anyone important. Being someone important meant being someone required . But her presence brought forth memories; it allowed him to feel; it drove away the Grey Man. Obliviously, she’d saved him.

And he resented it greatly.

A knock sounded at the door. “It’s me.” William.

“Come in,” John groused, hardly in the mood to chat about John the Brand.

William used his own key, stepped inside, and exclaimed, “Just wanted to tell you that finding your fam? Hannah’s figured

it out! She’ll explain in the morning on your way to the True meeting. Also, Vanity Fair sent over a preview of the spread and it looks amazing.” He grinned and simply stood there.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just...” William took a breath. “It means a lot, John. The first person to come back from the dead, a Black man?

Like, undeniably Black?” He shook his head. “I’m not saying all the sudden there’s no world hunger or war or racism or homophobia

or all the bullshit. But it means a lot. To the world, but especially, well, to me .”

Again, John was faced with his being not a man, but an idea—worse, an ideal , a Black ideal at that, and this meant he wouldn’t be afforded the luxury of not being dissected to death. Hannah should

figure out a way for him to find these people who knew him so he could get back to his House already and be done with this

charade. There would be a miracle.

“It’s OK, John. People see themselves in you, but you don’t have to solve world hunger or cure cancer. You just have to be

human.”

John grunted.

“OK,” William said brightly. “You should get some sleep. Or, you know, lie on your bed. Meditate.”

After William left, John walked to the windows and tried not to think about the Grey Man, which meant all he could think about was the Grey Man.

Another knock.

“It’s fine,” John said irritably. “Come back in.” When William didn’t respond, John marched to the door. “William?”

John checked the peephole. He drew back. If he had a heart it’d be racing with fear... and with an inexplicable hope.

He looked again.

It was her .

The lumberjack-flanneled girl.

17

If there was one thing Persephone couldn’t stand, it was the thought of being Someone Who Could’ve. Someone Who Could’ve finished

her time at the School of American Ballet as one of its best, enough to make Balanchine himself proud. Someone Who Could’ve

been one of the greatest principal ballet dancers the world had ever seen. Someone Who Could’ve had it all. Someone who had

been so close but just didn’t make it.

Persephone had read somewhere that the only way she’d be considered nail-in-the-coffin-finished-for-good, the only way she

would truly be a failure, was if she gave up. It made total sense, and yet other times it seemed absolutely delusional. But

if she didn’t accomplish something greater than her original goal, or at least something just as great, there would be no

point in showing her face back home. It was why she hadn’t phoned in three years, why she’d ignored each of Parker’s calls.

At least, that’s what she’d been telling herself all this time.

Dang, you’re tough , Parker said to her one day, as she peeled off her ballet slippers and began unwrapping her toes.

Me? You’re the football player. But she’d worked hard to suppress a grin.

She’d seen her big brother get trampled and tossed all over the field, and he thought she was the tough one.

Well, Parker said, sucking down a blue Slurpee, for starters, you don’t get to show it when your body’s screamin’.

You gotta take the pain with a smile. And a tutu.

Tough. Maybe she was. Somewhere beneath the chickenshit.

It was this question, this desperate hope, that had brought her here.

As she walked through John’s huge hotel room, she cracked her knuckles. Her mom always said it would make them bigger but

the snap-crack release of tension was calming and kept her fingers busy, a better alternative to slipping something into her pocket. John’s

security guard, who was even more gargantuan in person, had escorted her into the room before leaving, and it made her more

nervous, like she was being formally presented and the expectation that had already been built on her end was now sitting

on John’s, too. Also the whole security guard thing reminded her of being nearly kicked out of backstage, so there was that.

Either way, now it was do or die. She placed her purse in the corner of the sofa chair, sat, and looked him squarely in the

eye. “I have a proposition.”

He didn’t speak right away. And then: “I may as well tell you now. It’s impossible for us to have sex.”

Persephone blinked. “Ew.”

“I said it was impossible. I didn’t say it’d be disgusting.”

“No, I mean—” Persephone rose from the chair and walked over to the open space near the desk. “I mean, you’re cute, yeah,

which I’m sure you already know. But sex wasn’t what I had in mind. Although you’re, you know, sexable, whatever.”

“Thanks,” John said flatly.