“Let them fight,” Martine says. “Giselle has committed a taboo, and she deserves to be punished.”
“Lourdes planned it all along.”
“Well, Stefanie should destroy them both!”
With that, I pull away with such force, I knock three girls down. I aim for the fighting girls who are throwing punches, pulling hair, and are out for blood, skin blood. It isn’t supposed to be this way. We are sisters. Skin sisters.
I pull Giselle-in-Stefanie’s-skin away and dare the other two to hit me and have to deal with my mother. That works.
“Why are you protecting her?” Lourdes shouts. “You always protect her!”
“Because she carries the most pain in her flames and in her skin!” I shout back.
“And I don’t?” Stefanie-in-Giselle’s-skin asks. “Do you know what a curse that light skin will be? The men . . . the boys . . . And even the women with their jealousies so thick, I can’t even breathe around them. I eat them, you know. Before tonight, I consumed those jealous girls. If I’d known this was what you planned, Lourdes, I would’ve destroyed you, too!”
“You can’t harm a firefly, stupid girl!” Martine yells back. “I saw your flame. You are a weak soucouyant. Maybe now with Giselle’s black skin you can reach your full potential.”
“Ey!” I yell louder than all of them. “Stop it! Stop it now! This is a travesty! This can’t be good. Things are going to be bad-bad for us.”
“As if it hasn’t always been bad! Look at us! We are flames, yes, but this island throws us away like old coconut shells. Useless and ugly, they call us,” Giselle-in-Stefanie’s-skin says. “The world throws us away as if we are a muddied and soiled disgrace. If jealousy and the desire of men and boys are the hardest things to deal with in this skin, then I gladly accept. I will take pretty over ugly any day. Any day!”
“You were not ugly, Giselle,” I say, reaching for her hand that is not her hand. “Ugly is what the imbeciles on this island say. They all want to be drunk from the rum of the world—white beauty, wealth, shiny things that will choke them if they put them on too tight. You know that is not true-true. What is real is what we are. We are fire, Giselle, and this skin is what protects us, is what gives us our light, our life.”
It’s quiet for a long moment. This bit of truth settles over my sisters, and I know that I’ve reached her. But then she asks, “Do you like your new skin, Stefanie?”
Stefanie looks down at Giselle’s shapely body wrapped around her own firesoul. Even without ever getting close to the sun, Giselle’s skin is so beautifully dark, I’m sure it carries the memory of all the powerful soucouyant before her who have gotten close to the sun. “Take it back,” Stefanie says with disgust painted all over her face.
“I didn’t think so,” Giselle says, looking her old skin up and down as if she’s gotten rid of smelly trash. “And I dare you to try to take this skin, my new skin, away from me. All of you. Watch!”
With that, she descends from the hill.
Stefanie-in-Giselle’s-skin doesn’t move an inch, but I know she is plotting. And so is Lourdes.
I look around at all the deep-brown and black faces of my soucouyant sisters as they watch Giselle-in-Stefanie’s-skin walk away victoriously. From how some of their eyes stare with envy, with longing, with wishes, I know for sure that Giselle has won the game. The big-big game. She did not feast, nor did she kiss the sun. But with Stefanie’s freckled light skin and long, flowing hair, maybe, just maybe, she is the sun to them.
Next time we shed on the night of the full moon, more of my soucouyant sisters will aim for her, to kiss her, and inhale her firesoul right out of that sunny skin. And still, she will be their unrequited love.
THE ACTRESS
By Danielle Paige
“More tongue,” executive producer Michael Winthrop’s voice screeched through the mic of the PA standing over Reid Hamilton and me on the Hearts Eternal set.
By the time Rhiannon Heart was fifteen, she’d fallen down a well, fought and won against leukemia, shot a man in self-defense, spent time in juvie, fallen off the wagon, spent time in rehab, and oh yeah, discovered she was a witch and fallen in love with a vampire. But she had never been kissed until two seconds ago.
I wasn’t Rhiannon. I just played her on TV. I was Gamine Belle, and I had never been kissed until two seconds ago either.
“It’s supposed to be a kiss that makes every girl at home want to be her. That makes them want to drop their . . .”
The mic squawked again, and this time, Morgan the PA put her hand over it, preventing me from hearing the end of Michael’s comment. But my brain could fill in the blanks. I was getting notes about panty dropping from a sixty-year-old man in a glass booth a hundred feet away from me.
Reid shrugged his shoulders and squared his jaw, but thankfully his cheeks burned as red as mine felt. At least he understood the embarrassment, too.
I was a professional. I had been acting since before I knew what acting was. I had been in commercials for diapers when I was in diapers. I went on to soaps and then finally a primetime gig on the vampire teen drama Hearts Eternal, which had become the number one show for the prized demographic of eighteen to forty-nine.
The production assistant rocked back on her heels, clearly listening to her headset.
“I won’t tell her that. You come down here yourself.”
I glanced up at her gratefully, but as I looked from her to the boy I had kissed and back again, I realized everyone in the glass booth had heard what Michael had said, and the boy I’d just kissed had heard it, too.
Which was embarrassing for both Rhiannon Heart and me. Both my character and I had major crushes on Reid and his character, Wolfe. I’d had a crush on Reid from the moment I met him, even though I had always been skeptical of those girls who experienced instalove in books. But he smiled at me and I literally felt my pulse quicken, my eyelids flutter. I was smiling without the prompting of my mother or a director.
“Gam . . .” Right now, Reid said my name, reached for my hand, and squeezed it. I willed the tears not to come.
“Well, what are we waiting for? Reset. Go again.” I heard Michael’s voice over the loudspeaker. He’d given up on talking through the PA.
Before Reid and I could respond, Harris Radner blew onto the set, looking like he was one of the cast members’ older brothers. He was only a few years older than Reid and I, and he had piercing green eyes and chiseled features. He had chosen to be behind the camera as a writer-producer, and he was my favorite grown-up on set. He wrote the best scripts, including this one.
He put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Michael’s a jerk and a dinosaur. Just focus on Rhiannon and Wolfe. You’re young. You’re beautiful. You’re in love. You’re about to have everything you want . . .”