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I saw in the hungry way Henry sought Victor’s attention and favor that Victor’s love was rare, and rare things are always the most valuable. In turn, I became even more what Victor wanted me to be. Lovely. Sweet. Brilliant and quick-minded but never as smart as him. I laughed at Henry’s jokes and plays, but I saved my best smiles for Victor, knowing he collected them and secreted them away.
I had become this girl in order to survive, but the longer I lived in her body, the easier it was to simply be her. I was twelve, on the cusp of leaving childhood behind forever. But we still played like children. I was Guinevere to their Arthur and Lancelot, acting out the dramas Henry lovingly cobbled together out of pieces he stole from great playwrights of eras past. The trees were our Camelot. All our foes were imaginary and therefore easily defeated.
One day we were playing a variation of kings and queens. I lay in a magical sleep upon my forest bed. Henry and Victor, after much travail, had found me. “She is the most beautiful girl in the world! A sleep like death has claimed her. Only love can awaken her again!” Henry declared, raising his sword to the sky. Then he leaned over and kissed me.
I opened my eyes to find Henry looking at me in shock, as though he could not believe what he had done. I dared not look at Victor. I squeezed my eyes shut again, not reacting to Henry’s kiss.
“I thought perhaps it would— I thought it would wake her,” Henry said, stumbling over the words. He sounded frightened.
“She is not sleeping.” Victor’s voice was as brittle as morning-frosted grass. “Here, see? No life in her veins.” He lifted my wrist, which I kept limp. “She is dead. But we can trace the pathways her heartbeat would have used in life.” Victor drew a finger along the blue veins in my pale arm, up and up to where my sleeve started. My arm twitched at the contact.
“Be still!” Victor whispered, catching my open eye. “Here, I have my own blade, sharper and subtler than your sword. We will see if she bleeds now that she is dead.”
“Victor!” There was no laughter in Henry’s voice. My wrist was tugged away, and I was pulled out of my corpse character and into Henry’s arms.
“You cannot do that!” he said.
“Just a small cut, to see what is under the skin. Do you not wonder?” Victor’s anger this time was not a storm raging out of control. It was darker and deeper, like the bottom of the lake—cold and unknowable. It was a new type of anger, and I did not know how to soothe it.
“Elizabeth does not mind.” Victor’s knife winked in the sun as though it wanted to play, too. “She is always concerned with the beauty and poetry of the world, but I want to know what lies beneath every surface. Give me your hand, Elizabeth.”
Henry, on the verge of tears, tugged me farther away. “You cannot go around cutting people open, Victor. It is simply not done!”
I did not know where to look or how to respond. But I knew staying with Henry—on his side—would offer me no benefit in the long run. And I could not risk Victor’s anger. I had never been the target of it! Henry had put me there, and I resented him for it.
I extricated myself from Henry’s arms and placed a dainty kiss on Victor’s cheek. Then I put my arm through his and held his elbow as I had seen Madame Frankenstein hold Judge Frankenstein’s. “He was only playing. You are the one who ruined the pretend by kissing me without asking first.”
Victor radiated coldness, but his surface was as smooth and clear as glass. “I am done with your games for today, Henry. They are boring.”
Henry looked from one of us to the other, hurt and bewilderment on his kind face as he tried to understand how he had been the one in the wrong.
“Henry does not understand how to play corpse; that is all,” I said. “It is our special game. We are getting too old for it, anyhow.” I looked to Victor for confirmation—desperate for it. I needed to mend this. I could not lose Henry. He was such a bright spot in my life.
Victor nodded, one eyebrow raised dispassionately. “I suppose we are. I will be fourteen next month. We are going to the baths to celebrate. Did Mother tell you?”
I could not let him leave Henry angry. Who was to say if our friend would ever return? Victor did not let go of grudges lightly. The year before, the cook had served a meal that made him ill. Victor refused to eat food prepared by him for an entire week, forcing his parents to dismiss the cook and find another. I did not want Henry dismissed, even if he had complicated everything.
Laughing with gaiety, I squeezed Victor’s hand and beamed up at him. “Do invite Henry and his parents. Otherwise, I am afraid you and your father will go off hunting together and I will be left alone with little Ernest.”
“But you told Mother you love Ernest.”
“All he does is cry and wet himself. I will be miserable trapped with him! And miserable without you. If Henry is there, you will have a reason to tell your father no. And he can take Monsieur Clerval instead.”
The tight remnants of anger around Victor’s eyes finally disappeared. “Of course Henry should come.”
I turned my smile on Henry, and he nodded, relieved but still confused. “Go and tell your parents, Victor,” I said, “so they know to plan for the Clervals. I will see Henry to the boat.”
His anger shed like a coat, Victor calmly walked away.
I kept a distance between Henry and myself, though, as we walked back to the dock. We were nearly there when he grabbed my arm and forced me to stop.
“Elizabeth, I am sorry. I am not sure what I did wrong.”
I gave him a light, careless smile. I used smiles like currency. They were the only currency I ever had. My dresses, my shoes, my ribbons—they all belonged to the Frankensteins. I was a guest in them, just as I was a guest in that house. “You punctured Victor’s make-believe. You know
how sensitive he can be.”
“I am sorry I kissed you.”
