Grandmother’s rose garden was my favorite place to hide when I was a child.

Grandmother and Great Grandmother spent hours out there and still do, though I am too big and too old to hide there any more even if I wanted to, which I do not. I first learned to hide in the rose garden while they took their tea and gossiped when I was five years old.

I had escaped Esmeralda, my nanny, and was wandering in the sunshine, giggling to myself each time I heard her call for me, when I passed the garden, a garden I had seen so often, and formed a plan.

I crawled into a thorny little cave in one of the bushes, taking care of my dress, and sat there while Grandmother and Great Grandmother talked about the neighbors and their friends. They finished one pot of tea and moved on to another. Grandmother’s green scarf, a silk one, fluttered in the wind like the wings of a huge and lovely moth.

There had been a party the night before, which they discussed over tea.

“Pearl’s dress?” asked Grandmother. There was a teasing, goading edge to her voice.

“Hideous,” said Great Grandmother. She patted her short, black hair. Her scarf wrapped briefly around her face before the wind moved it and then set it back down around her smooth, white neck.

“The food?” tittered Grandmother, egging her further on.

 Great Grandmother raised an elegant eyebrow.

“Passable, if I'm generous.”

They both laughed and only then did the corners of their eyes crinkle even minutely, folding their lustrous skin.

I crawled out to scare them when I got bored of listening to the recitation of the many faults of the previous evening.

“Boo!” I cried, tumbling out of my hiding place, the hem of my dress ripping as it caught on a thorn.

Grandmother and Great Grandmother shrieked and jumped from their chairs.

“Susie! Susie! The child!” Grandmother screamed.

She noticed then that Great Grandmother was tottering, made faint by shock, and she took her by the arm. The lovely moth-like scarf cascaded in a fluid motion from Great Grandmother’s neck as she clutched at her daughter to keep standing and pooled at the heel of her expensive pump.

A tea cup, a very nice one with a blue flower pattern, fell to the ground, scattering like fireworks in the night sky. When I heard it shatter, I wondered for the first time if I might get in trouble, but I was not too concerned, really. Tea sets were plentiful, after all, even very expensive ones. Children in families like ours were rarer than the finest jewels, and as cultivated as Great Grandmother’s roses.

Grandmother and Great Grandmother never knew how to speak to me then, so they didn’t. They only kept on shouting for Mother and staring at me exactly as they would as if a giant insect, hideous with pinchers and many shining eyes, had crawled from the bush instead of their own flesh and blood. Instead of a beautiful child in a now tattered but expensive dress made of the finest materials. I stood there laughing, not even caring how dirty and torn my dress was. My loudness unsettled them, as did my smallness, my smile with its missing teeth, which they found profane. Wholeness and perfection were their lives and had been for centuries.

Mother came to fetch me, her long red hair still in rollers and her pristine feet bare, and told me half-heartedly that I was naughty as she carried me, still laughing, from the patio. She smelled of her lavender perfume as she had just returned from a morning with one of her sponsors and had bathed after as was her custom, and had been getting ready to go for a stroll with my father Vincenzo, who was visiting.

“Really, you silly girl, leave them in peace for a bit,” said Mother, halfheartedly clucking her tongue in admonition. But she kissed me and she smiled, winking secretly. Mother handed me off to Esmeralda with distracted gratitude and then went back to soothe Grandmother and Great Grandmother.

Esmeralda bathed me and got me clean clothes and later she brought me dinner in my nursery and read to me. I loved Esmeralda. Being so small, I did not realize fully that she was different from my family, though she looked not like any of us; a woman of just shorter than average height, with a soft stomach and a face not beautiful but very kind, and gray hair.

“You mustn’t scare them,” Esmeralda told me as she tucked me into bed that night. “You know your grandmother and great grandmother aren’t fond of children.”

This was true. They said about once a week, sometimes much oftener, that they couldn’t fathom why Mother had chosen to have me, but that at least it was a relief I had turned out well.

“It has been over a hundred years since there’s been a little girl in the house,” said Esmeralda. “Since your mother was small. Be good for them.”

My clearest memories of that day are these; Grandmother’s avian shriek when I popped from the rose bush (the thought of which still makes me laugh), my mother’s perfume, and being woken later by Esmeralda to be taken down and shown to Vincenzo, who had been at the house all evening but too busy to see me until then.

I was mostly asleep at first as my hair was brushed and then I tried to bite Mera as I woke properly.

“I hope you’re Undone!” I hissed at her, shrinking back while I flailed and gnashed. It was the worst thing I could think of, in fact I knew had my Great Grandmother heard that I would have been slapped. Had Mother heard, her disappointment would have stung so much more. We were alone in my nursery, however, sitting on my bed with its silk sheets, a breeze causing the curtains to sway in the wind. Mera was unfazed by my insult and patient as always, tugging me into a rose velvet dress and then giving my face a quick scrub with a cloth. She soothed me as she always could and then carried me downstairs, so that I was no longer such a wild animal by the time we got downstairs.

 “Here she is!” my mother called out gleefully when I was brought in. The air was thick with the smell of cigars and their smoggy haze. I tasted smoke in the back of my throat and coughed. Glasses glittered on all the tables, many with puddles in the bottoms, or half filled with colorful drinks.

“A Great Beauty for sure,” said my father, Vincenzo. He patted me on the head, ruffling my carefully, if hastily, done coiffure. I growled at him in a way I thought ferocious, and he laughed, reminding me of a dragon as cigar smoke escaped his mouth. I coughed again.

“Was there ever any doubt?” asked Mother. “We being who we are.”

Vincenzo shrugged.

“Well, you never know. It’s why applications are so often denied, why we are so careful. We’re not like the unpreserved, making ugly, stupid children for no reason only to have them drop like flies.”

Mother took Vincenzo’s cigar and had a thoughtful puff. Her face always lit up when she thought deeply, and she became somehow even more lovely.

“But don’t you think, dear, that there is such delicious freedom in that way? No one to say yes or no. Just doing as you wish.”

Vincenzo laughed indulgently.

“Oh Susie, you do say such scandalous things!”

He gave me another long look as he took his cigar back and nodded in approval as he took the final puff and let smoke stream out his nose. His cigar finally finished, he snubbed it out. My experience with men, living as I did with three female generations of my family, was not extensive, but I knew my father was a handsome man.

“None of your musical ability I’m afraid.” Mother lit another cigar for Vincenzo and he took it, inhaling with obvious gratitude. He leaned forward when he spoke, his hand on her bare knee. I remember that Mother’s dress was blue and that her white shoes had been kicked off.

“See, Susie. My point precisely. These things are so hit and miss. You shouldn’t be so nonchalant about her future.”

Mother responded by sipping from the nearest glass and rolling her shoulders in a bored shrug.

“But a Great Beauty, without a doubt,” she said.

“How old is she again?” my father asked.

“Five.”

Vincenzo turned my head so that he could see my right cheek. I stuck out my tongue at him.

“Be careful with her, Carrots. I see a bit of a scratch just there.”

“Oh, Enz, really. That little thing?”

And my parents laughed. Mother leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the cheek, right above the small scratch, before motioning for another drink and then for my nanny. Mera emerged from the shadows to take me back to bed.

After that day, when there was nothing to do, I would delight in hiding in the rose garden and surprising the venerable ladies. They grew used to me as I got older though and started looking like a person, like a future Beauty, and not a child and then the game was no longer any fun at all.

My nanny Esmeralda died when I was ten years old, by which point I hardly needed her anyway. It was still sad though. Mother had told me that Mera would die someday but I never quite believed her until it happened. In fact, I didn’t know at all what she meant when she mentioned it. I had never known anyone who had died and could not understand the concept. Everyone else in my home and life had been Preserved to ensure their everlasting life.

I sat in my room for days after the news was broken, bored and then throwing things at the wall when I remembered about Mera being dead and that that meant she not only would never come back, but no longer existed at all. How could it be that the world was entirely void of her? Of any person?

I knew of course why Mera never had the treatments, as she did not qualify for any sort of registration and hence to be Preserved, but I still thought it unfair that she would die and no longer be there for me. I thought back with a pang of guilt to when I had, in my ignorance, wished her Undone when I was small and had not understood that she was not like us. I had wished on her death, something which was a phantom to me but assured for her. I may as well have tried to insult a rose by saying I hoped its petals shed.

Mother had to come dress me herself for the funeral, but she was such a dear that she never complained. I wanted to tell her all that was going on in my head, but I sat and scowled quietly instead as she did the buttons on my dress and chose my stockings and arranged my hair in a sedate, flaxen braid. She would have been so disappointed if she knew what I had once said to poor, sweet Esmeralda, even if it had been when I was very small and knew no better, and I was terrified of losing her favor.

We sat in the hot sun and said goodbye to her. Mera’s family was there too, a wrinkled little husband and two children much bigger than I was, nothing special at all about them. Mera’s daughter had nice hair, glossy brown curls to her waist that any Great Beauty would have envied, but that was all I could say for her and nothing at all for the rotund and bespectacled son fidgeting and sniffling in his folding chair. I knew they would never be registered or Preserved and that they would die too. I got a chill and hugged my mother, not wanting to think about it. I still peeked at them from time to time though. At that point, I had so rarely been around anyone who wasn't a Beauty that I tended to stare a bit at ordinary faces, especially ones unpreserved and old, and Great Grandmother thumped me on the ear to make me stop.

“What a shame,” Great Grandmother said as we left the gravesite. She slid her handsome leather purse to the crook of her elbow and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “It makes me almost wish that being good help was enough to earn registry so that we aren’t always training someone new. Though it’s not like there are more children to look after.”

“But Vincenzo and I were thinking of having a second child,” joked Mother. Her hair was a warm blaze of red and she had on large, dark sunglasses, the sort she had recently modeled in a popular ad campaign. She turned to look at me with a mischievous arch of one eyebrow.

“What do you say, Hero? A little brother for you? Perhaps I will have twins!”

We both laughed. This exchange caused a flush of irritation to rise to Great Grandmother’s cheeks and she huffed.

“Jane Susanna, that is not even the slightest bit amusing. Twins! How vulgar.”

She shuddered at the thought of a Preserved person having more than one child, especially at once, as though a brood sow or whelping bitch dog.

I fell asleep in the car on the way home, but I woke to hear Mother, Grandmother, and Great Grandmother speaking of my future.

“Susie,” said Great Grandmother. “It’s time Hero had some instruction. She’ll be judged for registration in eight years. It’s a sure thing, we know, but she must comport herself. You've allowed her to run wild.”

“She’s right,” said Grandmother, always a parrot. “It’s time.”

I didn't want anyone new to come, I thought. I wanted my Mera! I shot up in Mother’s lap and proclaimed my intention to kick anyone who came in her place.

Great Grandmother raised an eyebrow at Mother. It said ‘see what I mean?’ for her. Then she pointed out that Grandmother’s pantyhose had gone baggy around her ankles.

A few days later, I woke to Phillipa in my room. When I opened my eyes, she was sitting in my big chair by the window and painting her fingernails. Sunlight fell onto her right side.

Oh, I loved Phillipa from the start! I loved her long hair that was as sleek and dark as a night with no moon, and her pretty, rosy cheeks and her large eyes. She wore a blue shirt and flowing loose trousers and a dainty white hat. I wanted immediately to wear just those things and not lacy dresses like a little girl.

“Rise and shine!” she called.

I ran from the bed and hugged her.

I had no faults, Phillipa said after spending a day with me and inspecting me head to foot. This was known. Mother, Vincenzo, and Grandmother were all Great Beauties too and knew as well as anyone what to look for. It was a relief though, I think, to have it said by someone not in the family. Besides an Undoing, a child who failed their inspection was not awarded Preservation was every good family’s worst fear. Unfathomable disgrace would follow, the child’s parents rating plummeting to disastrous lows.

Phillipa was the one to polish me, teaching me every day how to be. I copied her hairstyles and asked for clothes just like hers and everyone thought it was sweet! Even Great Grandmother commented on what a good influence Phillipa was and that she had been an inspired choice of my Mother’s.

Phillipa spoiled me to no end, taking me to have tiny copies of her outfits made and then dressing me up like a doll to meet her friends. I enjoyed their gossip, and the many scandals they acted out.

One day, not long after I turned thirteen, a boy Phillipa was friends with was in a terrible temper because someone had stolen away a girl, a well connected Beauty whose name even I at so young knew, that he had been accompanying out. We spent the entire afternoon persuading Phillipa’s friend not to start a fight with this Edward, a shameless Lothario of some reputation, and followed him as he roamed the streets, prowling for revenge as he got increasingly more drunk, his face blotched and rancorous sweat pouring from him.

We spotted Edward in the end, having an intimate coffee at a cafe with an excessively muscular and rather stupid looking red haired male Beauty who sat in front of him bewitched by Edward’s doe eyes and long eyelashes. Several of the jilted lover’s friends restrained him when he leaped to cross the street. He shouted out his threats and lashed all the harder to get free.

“He’ll be Undone one day!” the boy screamed. “You’ll see!” His friends tried to quiet him when people passing raised their eyebrows and started whispering at the fate he’d wished on Edward. It was not something done in polite society, but this boy did not care then for manners.

When Edward, small and porcelain Edward, noticed the commotion, he waved coolly and smiled a brilliant smile, causing a stream of shocking profanity to spill from the lips of the young man trying to get to him. His efforts to reach Edward and fight were doubled and he flailed at his friends with a terrible fury, like Odysseus tied to the mast of his ship when he sailed past the Sirens. What a thrill!

I was impressed, I must say even now, by Edward’s calm in the moment, his obvious enjoyment of the other boy’s ire. As we walked away, the red haired Beauty leaned over and kissed Edward on the cheek and adoringly stroked Edward’s soft black curls. Edward took the stupid ginger Beauty’s scarf in his hands and toyed with it coquettishly. He looked back to us one last time and then coyly up at his paramour. I am sure I was not the only one to ask myself what had happened to the girl that all this fuss had been over.

And that, more or less, was how I grew up.

A very important Gifted came once when I was around fourteen to see if there was any hope of Vincenzo’s piano playing or other musical ability being brought out before I was judged, but it was not to be. I pounded the keys wildly like a feral cat and couldn't make any music at all. The man who came did not feel bad for me though, as he knew by how I looked that I would be fine. He even slipped me a sweet and winked! Mother only laughed at my bad playing.

Great Grandmother was less amused. She had me and Mother brought to her in her opulent lounge. I shifted in place looking down at my feet as Great Grandmother in a bad mood could be fierce and I was nervous, but Mother stood tall and met her gaze, obviously bored already even as Great Grandmother began her lecture from her sofa as she poured herself tea.

“What was the point of looking for all those years and me paying for her to have a father who is registered twice if she’s not even going to be Gifted?”

“Be calm, Great Grandmother,” Mother said. “And be thankful. Hero is a shoo-in. Just think of all the children with no hope at all.”

Great Grandmother lifted her eyes from her cup of tea and fixed Mother with a stare that made me quake.

“Please, Jane Susanna,” she said. “I am not your mother, with her bleeding heart and bleeding pocketbook for one and all. You won’t induce shame in me that way.”

“I think it’s admirable of her,” said Mother. It was hard to imagine anyone else with the self-possession to not back away from Great Grandmother’s glare. “She does many acts of kindness and bravery I am not sure you see. Were I a better person, I would emulate her, but I am not. It has never been asked of me.”

There was a subtle shift in Great Grandmother’s expression, a flicker of her trying to cover a second of reluctant pride.

“You are honest, at least.”

Great Grandmother huffed and sniffed and looked at me again. I tried to stand straighter, to be as collected as Mother was, but in only a few seconds I felt a hot blush spread from my cheeks to the back of my neck. This set off an unsightly squirming that elicited a single disappointed tut from Great Grandmother, who turned her attention back to Mother.

“Vincenzo was very expensive,” said Great Grandmother.

“So was I,” said Mother.

Sometimes Great Grandmother didn't understand things. She was only registered as Wealthy, something that was no longer even possible, and had never been judged. Only her bank account ever had to meet merit. She did try, though it was a bit hard for her. She was, despite being one of the very first people registered and approved for everlasting life, unable to begin treatments until she was thirty-five years old as they were not even invented until then, and so sometimes, she did not like to leave the house as she was afraid of being mistaken for an unpreserved. But Mother was so compassionate. She always remembered this and was kind to her as she was kind to everyone. I could not see why she had said she was not a good person.

We were dismissed, with special admonishment from Great Grandmother for me to practice music once per week for at least a year. I balked, but was surprised when Mother stopped my whining in its tracks.

“She is right, Hero. There is virtue in trying, at least, and in doing so with a good attitude. You never know when a skill will come in use. She made me pick a language to learn and while I only chose Italian because of the attractive tutor, look how useful it has been.”

“But I already know Italian.”

“Hero. You will do as Great Grandmother says.”

So it was. I was free to practice whatever instrument I wished and though I never achieved any kind of proficiency and in fact only showed myself to be the worst kind of clumsy oaf when given one, I learned to read music and discovered a passable singing voice, and felt a stirring of pride when I thought about my commitment. Mother often showed such wisdom and I learned to heed her almost without question.

I asked her, as I grew and wondered about these things, about her father. Our special time was late, when she was putting me to bed, and we spoke once or twice of him.

“Ah, you wouldn’t guess it,” she told me, a teasing glint in her eye, “but your Grandmother had the great love affair of her day. Ask anyone about it! Except for Great Grandmother. She had an historic tantrum by all accounts and still hates to talk about it, even though it all worked out. They hadn’t filed a scrap of paperwork for approval when Grandmother found out she was expecting. That was before the days of implants for all Preserved women, mind you, so they didn’t have to ask permission to have it removed and claimed my conception was an accident. Thankfully, the young man she loved was the most stunning male Beauty at the time, a perfect rating. Unheard of then. It’s why my rating is so high.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Apollo Winterbourne,” said Mother, pulling the covers to my neck. Her voice was soft, and her smile had faded, though she did not precisely look sad. “He is still often spoken of, you know, though he is living quietly now with his partner and no longer takes many sponsorships or commissions.”

I knew enough not to ask if Mother had met him as she had gone a bit wistful and I dutifully went to sleep. But when I saw Grandmother in the morning, it was impossible not to now imagine her as a young woman, newly preserved, and enticing the only perfect Beauty of her age.

 

The biggest scandal of my fourteenth year was a pair of fraternal twins from Ireland, a young man and a woman, who petitioned to be judged as Beauties and were awarded the opportunity despite having no lineage of registered persons in their family. Even more astounding, they were found to meet the criteria, except, of course, the one that required a history of registration in the family, which Ireland boldly waived. Parades were held in their honor, and protests too.

I listened in secret to the talk of it as spring began, waiting for the day when the twins would be discussed openly by my family. Privately, I loved when their pictures appeared in the papers. They were tall, the two of them, with wavy black hair and huge, blue eyes. How similar their faces were! I liked to imagine what would happen if he grew his hair and she cut hers. Florence and Cormac were their names. I longed to take a photo to my room and to experiment by chopping off the hair of Florence with my scissors and gluing it to her brother’s head, but dreaded what would happen if I was found out.

I was able to speak only to Phillipa, who confided that she thought Cormac one of the most exceptional Beauties she had ever seen. I, of course, knew not to tell anyone that she thought this. But I so loved having a secret to keep, especially one of hers!

Even my father was skeptical.

“What’s the point, Susie?” he asked at a lunch we had together. He leaned back in his chair and sipped from his coffee, sunlight shining on his lustrous hair. “What is the point of all our efforts and money put into Hero, not to mention the great risk of us having a child at all while being Preserved, if any person can just decide they’d like to be registered?”

“Enz,” Mother said. “Hero will never be just any person.”

She patted his hand and I think we both were happy with her response.

“It’s a dangerous precedent,” Vincenzo muttered, returning to his lunch partially placated. “A dangerous precedent indeed. There can only be so many of us, Susie. We’ve always known that. The rules are here to help us. We follow them, or we are Undone, and there is more for everyone else.”

Still, Mother continued to support the twins more and more openly as the spring wore on.

“Good for them,” she said at dinner about two months after the twins had first been treated. They were seeking entrance into all the spaces set aside for the preserved and that day a line of disaffected people had met them with signs as they moved into their new home. The twins had only laughed and taken what was owed them now. It had annoyed Great Grandmother into lamenting what she called this sorry state of affairs, prompting Mother to again declare her support.

I was so thrilled at Mother’s rebuke that I dropped my croissant onto the white tablecloth and stared.

Grandmother at this point nearly fainted with a choked wail. I waited eagerly for her to tumble from her chair, but she did not just then. Great Grandmother set down her fork with an eerie calm, crossed her arms, and addressed Mother sternly.

“You think they are in the same category as you? As your mother? As your own daughter beside you? You think that they should be allowed to use the resources that we will need in years to come? Jane Susanna, you are far from a stupid woman. You know why we must be so particular.”

“I’ve seen their pictures. They’re a handsome pair and I can’t see that two more people in our numbers make that much more of a difference, all things considered. Why, two people could be Undone next year, for all we know. And anyway, every good family has a first person to be registered and treated. You are ours.”

Another vocal fit from Grandmother, like the caw of a crow. Her fork fell to the table, hitting her plate with a clatter. Great Grandmother folded her napkin and stood.

“Excuse me.”

The heels of Great Grandmother’s shoes clicked loudly as she exited the room and in the silence, the closing of the dining room door boomed.

I got my wish at that point and Grandmother became unconscious and slid to the floor.

That night, I sneaked out of bed after I thought everyone was asleep. I found a newspaper with a picture of the beautiful twins and tore it as carefully as I could from the page.

I had every intention of conducting my experiment with the scissors and glue, but I was so tired. That night, I slept with the picture under my pillow, but in the morning it was wrinkled. The thrill of the scandal was gone now that there had been a confrontation and fainting.

A few months before I was to be judged, Mother started bringing me to parties to properly introduce me.

Most of her friends were Great Beauties, but at these events, there were others as well, though everyone who attended was registered and Preserved, of course.

It was at one of these parties that I met Angel.

I knew he was not a Great Beauty, one look told me as much, but I could not stop staring. The party had a red theme and everyone was in various shades. Across a room of maroon and rust, there he was. His outfit was navy, but someone had put a rose into his jacket pocket.

Angel was tall, but not very tall, with messy hair cut badly, almost like he did it himself. His shoes were dirty, absolutely filthy. To wear dirty shoes to a party! To have such a horrible haircut! To forget the theme and dress in navy! I was smitten! I stared at him all evening, though he did not come to speak to me even once and stood in a corner looking down at his perfect, dirty shoes.

Mother noticed and that night when she came to my room, we spoke as she helped me take down my hair, pulling out all of the many bobby pins and massaging my scalp.

“I saw you looking at Evelyn’s son.”

“Are you shocked, Mother, that I'm interested in someone not a Beauty?”

“No, no. Angel is a fine young man.”

“What sort of Gifted is he?”

“A Genius, like his mother. Very highly rated. Evelyn paid a scandalous amount of money to obtain such a highly rated father, but don’t ever repeat that.”

I giggled, happy to share her confidences. She laid aside the bobby pins and began to brush my hair.

“It would be a good match, if you wanted to apply after you are registered. Should you ever choose to petition to be married or even for a child, it would stand a good chance of being approved, though you will be registered differently. Our family is very strong, but his isn’t, so I imagine that would help.”

“Has he had his first treatment yet?”

“Soon, I think. You know how men take their time, especially when they’re not Beauties.”

I started to dream of it then, of what it might be like to make a match with Angel one day. I love my Mother. She arranged for Angel to visit and spoke to Evelyn about us. Evelyn did not like the idea of Angel with a Beauty, but she consented to visits as Mother was a dear friend.

We took strolls in Grandmother’s garden and he told me about his studies, which involved something to do with ensuring that there was always enough food and everything for all the Preserved as years went on. I told him about my family and our trips and parties. He was fascinated by Vincenzo. His mother, like many registered women who wanted children, especially the Gifted who are often so practical, only applied for an anonymous donor and paid the apparently exorbitant fee to use his materials.

“What’s your father like?” Angel asked.

“Oh, he’s lovely. He's six feet three inches tall and has black hair and a beautiful nose, which I inherited.”

I turned to display it and Angel grinned.

“He's very kind as well. Vincenzo just sent me a card the other day, asking how my plans for registration are going.”

“And he is Gifted as well as a Beauty.”

I beamed as I confirmed and watched how impressed Angel became. Mother had chosen so well! It made me feel that for as smart as Evelyn was, Mother was in some ways much more so. I could not help but carry on speaking of Vincenzo.

“You see, Mother decided to have a child and Grandmother and Great Grandmother thought it was a bad idea. Our family was already strong and neither one thought it wise to add another generation, but Mother held firm. They decided that the best thing, if she insisted, would be to find someone registered twice and make it really worth it. Mother combed the registry for ages before she settled on Vincenzo. No anonymity for them! Mother flew over and met him herself to make the deal. They conceived me the same day they were approved. Now they’re like a house on fire!”

Angel blushed a little and was just the color of a rosebud.

I wrote to Vincenzo and told him about Angel. He didn’t write back, but that was fine.

Angel left for the summer to go study with a friend of his mother’s. Part of me wondered if this was a ploy concocted by Evelyn to keep us apart, but if it was, it didn’t work. If anything, the distance made him all the sweeter. We spoke on the phone a few times while he was away. He used such large words when he described his work, but he always cut himself off before he became boring.

“What about you?” he asked without fail.

In August, he wrote that he had had his first treatment. How happy I was for him! Registered and Preserved and in love with me.

I asked Mother if I could go see him. She was fine with the idea, as was Angel. Evelyn was the problem, insisting I not distract him. Rumor has it that she said something about how I might have all the time in the world since my only concern was choosing what to wear each day, but that some people were busy.

To make me feel better, Phillipa took me to get a cat. When Angel returned, pale and thin from a summer of studying indoors, he proclaimed the cat as adorable as I was and immediately began to play with her, and it endeared me to him even more.

The first thing I did when Angel was home and settled was take him for a fine haircut, since it was obvious nothing at all had been done for his hair since he left. He had thick, soft curls that fell over his eyes, causing him to always push them away, and while the effect was charming, it was messy. I couldn’t bear to think about him cutting his hair himself again and I knew just what to do.

I watched, drinking tea, while my favorite stylist, a middling-rated but charming Preserved man, brushed dark hair back from Angel’s forehead and wet, heavy locks fell to the floor. A pair of very nicely shaped eyebrows were revealed! His eyes, which I could see clearly now surrounded by the longest lashes, shone. And the clarity of his skin was well on display. In fact, I was shocked I had not noticed how perfect his complexion was. And he did nothing to care for it! Angel indulged in a moment of staring at himself when the haircut was finished, obviously admiring his reflection, if embarrassed to be doing so.

“Well,” I joked, “we might have to have you judged again.”

Angel blushed, brushing stray hair from his nose, which he wrinkled as if to ward off a sneeze.

“It’s very nice,” he eventually mumbled. “Thank you.”

“What the gentleman needs now is a suit to match,” suggested the stylist, half inspecting his own face in the mirror as he spoke. “You should visit the shop of my friend.”

We did so, and Angel spent a quarter of what he had earned in his work over the summer on a gray suit that made him look so distinguished. We strolled for an hour before seeing a few of my friends and joining them in a new restaurant that had recently opened. I sent Angel home more than a little drunk, but looking so precious my heart swelled as I helped him into the cab.

Evelyn called Mother to complain when she saw what we had done; his hair cut, his money gone, himself inebriated well past the point of silliness, but I didn’t care at all and neither did Angel. Or, at least he didn’t care much.

We wrote each other love letters and secretly planned what we might do when I was registered and preserved; a wedding, a trip to visit Vincenzo, a house of our own. When we went out, we held hands and pretended like it was already done. We whispered ‘dearest’ to each other over long lunches and looked at fine clothes, imagining they were ours for our honeymoon. I had to prod Angel toward things that would suit him, but the benefit of being in love with a Gifted was that he picked up on my tips right away!

Once I dragged him into a bridal shop for the registered and their lineage and we told the attendant we would be married in a month! This was a horrible lie, but we were pampered for hours and I twirled in so many dresses and looked so beautiful that people stopped at the windows to watch.

“You are a lucky man,” said the attendant to Angel, placing a cup of complimentary champagne in his hands.

Angel became a bit flustered at times as going out into the world with a Beauty (or future Beauty!) always brought a lot of attention that he was not used to. He stammered thank you and smiled at me. My whole body was light with happiness. I wished so much then that my lie was true, but knew I had only to wait.

I had so many talks with Phillipa about it, showing her what Angel had written to me, telling her about our talks. Like a true friend, she was happy and embraced me.

“Of course he loves you, Hero,” she said.

I thought she might not see as much why I loved him, but there were no critiques from Phillipa ever.

In late September, around a month before I was to turn eighteen, Vincenzo held a concert and invited me and Angel to attend. I was sure Evelyn would have said no if not for all the Gifted that would be in attendance, if not for the cultural benefit. But in the end, she said yes! I thought she did not know until it was too late that Mother would not be accompanying us, which was a favor Mother did for me and Angel. Sometimes I really thought Mother should be judged to see if she was Gifted! How smart she was!

Angel and I stayed in Vincenzo’s huge flat for a week. There was a party each night. Vincenzo was pleased to show me off to all his friends, all of his friends of many kinds of registry, who clapped when they found out how well I spoke Italian.

“A real investment!” his oldest friend, a composer named Gregory, proclaimed. He was very drunk and sloshed his wine onto my shoe but I said nothing. “When she's registered, you’ll have a chance at a perfect rating, I'm sure!”

He narrowed his eyes, looking very much like a rodent, and studied me more, as if waiting for some piece of information to make its way to the front of his mind. Eventually, he grinned lasciviously.

“Why, of course! How could I forget? You’re one of old Erin Porter’s brood.”

I sniffed with cold condemnation, channeling my Great Grandmother, the very woman just mentioned, to show that I thought his comments distasteful.

“We’re not a brood,” I said. “The women in my family aren’t dogs creating litters of offspring.”

The corner of Gregory’s mouth lifted in another mocking smile. He was a weedy little blond man, hair yellow and greasy as butter, in an expensive but poorly cared for tuxedo. He had already dribbled wine on himself, and had grease stain down his front. I would not have been speaking to him at all if he had not been connected to my father.

“Yes, surely,” Gregory said. “Through four generations must be difficult to support, even with all of Ms. Porter’s money. How many sponsorships do your mother and grandmother have again, currently?”

Smiling calmly, though enraged at the insulation that a sponsorship was dirty, I said, “More than enough. Though if people keep ruining our good shoes, we have to adjust the family clothing budget.”

This prompted a raucous laugh from my father, who dismissed Gregory with a wave and turned to me with a conspiratorial grin.

Vincenzo was so proud of me then! He ruffled my hair like he had when I was a child and poured me another glass of wine.

“I’ll get you new shoes,” he said with a wink. “And don’t mind Gregory. Everyone knows he’s horrible when he’s drunk.”

I glared at the man in question over my shoulder.

“He’s horrible all the time.”

This made my father laugh again.

Angel had a lovely time too, I thought, taking many pictures of himself with my father and the other notable musicians for his mother and buying armloads of gifts when we went out on hot afternoons. He was nervous at the parties at first, but some kind person always drew him into a talk about something clever, so he eased and made many friends.

At this time, Edward, the self-styled Casanova, was in Italy as well. I half expected the reprobate to crash the party, and was in some way looking forward to it, but he never made an appearance and we never saw him on our outings. I listened to hear if there were at least any fun stories of his mischief to bring home, but the Gifted did not pay much attention to such things and there were so very many there that I didn’t hear anything.

A girl serving drinks at one party caught my eye. There was something about her gentle nature and friendly face that reminded me of Esmeralda, the nanny of my childhood, and a cloud of sadness dampened my mood briefly. I missed her again and got distracted because whenever I saw the girl smile softly and hand over a drink, I remembered that her smile would not grace this world forever and thought of Esmeralda’s funeral. Though very ordinary, I saw much beauty in the waitress’ eyes, and in the charming delicacy of her profile. It made me wonder if Esmeralda had been a cute woman in her youth as well, and if she had had fun. I sipped champagne and tried to be happy, but the joy failed to really reach me.

I vowed never to tell, but one night, Angel and I both got very drunk. It was the night of the biggest party held in Vincenzo’s honor, a black-tie event. I had gone to bed as it finished and Angel crept into my room some time later, still wearing his rumpled tuxedo. How uncommonly daring! He stumbled making his way across the room. His hair was in his eyes and he showed no hesitation or shyness as he took me in his arms and kissed me. He was so handsome then to me that no Beauty could have ever rivaled him.

It was the darkest part of the night, and without even turning on a light, we undressed and were nearly intimate! The bed soon smelled of sweat and wine. I discovered when kissing Angel that he had smoked cigars, several apparently, but it was pleasant to taste them on him, even to smell them on his dark hair and his soft skin. Angel was a gentleman though and we stopped ourselves before anything serious occurred. I was as good as registered, but not so just yet, and Angel was a boy who knew right from wrong. We both dressed and shared a last kiss and just before dawn, Angel put his tuxedo back on and sneaked back to his own room.

“I am so lucky,” he said before he left. He stared at me hiding myself under the covers.

Oh and I thought just the same.

I returned from Italy to a sickly hush over the house.

Only echos greeted me when I came in. I went to my room on my own to unpack and get ready for bed. Not even our servants showed their faces. I was annoyed that there was no one to speak to about my week away. I stomped a bit as I made my way up the stairs, hoping to wake someone or draw them out like a fox from its den. It did not work.

How quiet the house was! It made my stomach hurt lying there in it. I eventually slept, but woke with a headache.

In the morning, I found out what had happened.

I, having never been around a woman who was going to have a child, did not recognize the signs in Phillipa. Mother, Grandmother, and Great Grandmother did though. They confronted her while I was away, having waited for that moment, and she confessed.

The father was an unpreserved.

I spent several days more or less on my own as everyone else skulked around and would not tell me much of anything. I was too old for tantrums, so I lay in bed. I just knew that I would never see Phillipa again. Such things were whispered about and sometimes on the news when they were confirmed, especially when a Preserved man was proven to have numerous children by unpreserved women who might have to one day be acknowledged and given everlasting life, but never had I thought I would know anyone who would do such a thing. But somehow I could not think of her as bad. Angel was the only one I could speak to about it, when he came to comfort me at my bedside. He assured me the man, the father, had been arrested. About Phillipa and the child he knew nothing.

“Will Phillipa be allowed to keep the baby?”

“I don't know, Hero.” He took my hand.

“What about an Undoing? Could she be Undone?”

Angel shivered thinking of it, shivered so hard I thought he was trying to physically shake the idea from himself, but he would not answer me.

“This makes me happier than ever we exercised such restraint,” he whispered, his eyes on the door, like he was nervous someone would come in and hear him. I nodded solemnly.

Late one night about a week after returning home and finding out the news, I woke to the light in my room being turned on. It was Mother. She was in her robe, her hair falling all around her. I feared that she was drunk from the wildness in her eyes.

“I am sorry that you’re paying for this,” she said. “And I am sorry for Phillipa. Luckily, you’ve learned all you needed to from her.”

Then, she shut the light off and left.

Phillipa named the baby Theodora and sent her to a place where she would be safe.

I knew this from snooping in Grandmother’s room. I found the box where Grandmother kept her secrets buried in the back of her closet and the key to that box in her dresser. The papers she had hidden were neat, folded many times. There, along with those few pieces of paperwork carrying the child’s name, were receipts from Grandmother’s personal bank account, sent to the place where Theodora was kept. My Grandmother was supporting an unregistered child, a child of scandal? My Grandmother acting without the approval of her mother, my formidable Great Grandmother? How strange the world is sometimes! But perhaps she was remembering herself and the gorgeous man Apollo, and how love had once made her do something foolish as well.

I did not know what to make of it and never got to ask. I didn’t hear at all where Phillipa went, but I thought of her often, and the halfway little girl all hidden from the world. Since her mother was registered, Theodora would qualify to be judged one day. Maybe I would see her at some party in the future. I thought that would be nice.

I resumed seeing our group of friends without Phillipa when Angel was busy. We followed all the gossip, secretly thrilling that Edward the cad was back from another long trip. Rumors of his romantic liaisons had preceded him and he was now creating scandals with people’s partners at home. One young woman nearly clawed his large, dark eyes from his head at a party, I heard. I laughed along with everyone else at this story, but somehow it did not really reach me. I enjoyed myself, but often I was blue out of nowhere. I missed my friend but no one so much as spoke her name anymore. I had heard the gossip circulating that she had been Undone, but no one dared to speak to it to my face.

Maybe it was best to think of other things, I told myself. And I tried to do just that.

The day I turned eighteen, I was judged and qualified for registry as a Great Beauty. What a morning! The panel were all Great Beauties; three men and three women and they were icy cold, not like Mother and Grandmother and Vincenzo and my darling Phillipa. But I was strong and stood under their scrutiny. They all squinted at me and peered as I turned around after I was made to undress, which I was prepared for. My hair was unbraided and lifted from my neck and one of the women plucked a strand right from my head!

I put my signature at the bottom of the paperwork when it was over. I was registered! I had my first treatment that same day. I took my certificate to the clinic and glowed as I showed it. Mother sat with me, holding my hand, though it was a pleasant experience and nothing at all frightening. Great Grandmother took us for lunch at her favorite restaurant, where a large cake was brought out in my honor. The entire dining room clapped! For a moment, I forgot all my worries.

There was a huge party in my honor that night. I invited Angel, of course. Mother said that I could speak to him tonight about a match if I wanted to, but I was not rushed, not then. I was preserved after all!

Being lucky to have a rather festive birthday, my party was a masquerade. I went as my sweet cat, wearing a dress of shimmering gray and a tiny mask with whiskers. I dressed Angel myself as his namesake; he wore white trousers and a white shirt with pearl buttons, complete with a small pair of wings. He looked darling, though he kept tugging at the wings. The Gifted can often be so shy! When he was dressed, I kissed his ear and put a small dot of my perfume behind it to remind him of me.

We danced until sunrise. There were registered of all sorts to celebrate, the Great Beauties shining like jewels all night while the Gifted held stimulating conversations and impressed us with their knowledge and talent.

 We danced with each other all evening long, pairing off over and over. Tropical birds swirled around the room with knights. A Greek god took a turn with Robin Hood. How much fun it was at first, the swirl of colors and fabrics and catching in the light. The room smelled of a hundred different types of perfume. I thought once of Phillipa with a pang of sorrow. She had been invited of course and had already planned her costume. Now all that was there of her were rumors of her Undoing. Perhaps if she had been at the party, things would have turned out differently for me.

I thought nothing of Edward and Angel’s dances, even when they became numerous, even though most of the Beauties danced with each other and no one else and for Edward to take interest in a Gifted was unusual. But Edward was very fun and looked lovely dressed as Peter Pan. He was a very well-known Beauty and it was natural that my guests should gravitate toward him. I danced with him many times myself at the start of the evening trying to take my mind off things. The wretched snake of a boy. Everyone knew that Angel was mine.

I went to bed at dawn, as happy as could be, tipsy and ready to put the past behind me.

Three days passed. I had heard nothing from Angel but I didn’t think much of it, chalking it up to his mother’s interference. I sent a message to his house and did not hear back. Still my only thought was to pout to Mother about her friend.

Mother woke me on the morning of the third day and was uncommonly solemn as she pulled back the curtains to let sunlight fall across my bed. I was nervous from her entrance as she never came into my room any more. She was long ago dressed too, despite the early hour.

“What is it?” I demanded immediately. At first my mother’s pity did not register as I had never seen it directed at me. She finally lifted her eyes and took a step toward the bed.

“It’s about Angel.”

Mother handed me a card that had just been delivered announcing their engagement. My stomach flopped like a fish out of water and the room went wobbly as I stared at their names. I ripped the card up then and there.

I pouted spectacularly, I admit it, for a few days. I heard the story of them kissing for the first time the night of my party, not sleeping at all before going to petition to be married the same morning it ended. I heard that Edward was in love for the first time ever, that he was overwhelmed with affection. I wrote nasty letters to both of the boys which I now regret. At least the ones to Angel. Edward’s were more than deserved.

Angel came around to see me several times but I only stood at the top of the stairs and threw things down at him until Mother came and escorted him from the house. He looked devastated as he gazed up the stairs at me, and I think he cried when Mother showed him to the door with gentle firmness and finally told him he should not come back. Edward came by once, to gloat I imagine, but Great Grandmother ran him off and I gave her a large hug for it. She was never an affectionate woman, but she allowed a long embrace then.

My friends were, at first, full of compassion. I had a string of guests and gifts and Mother suggested I go away to see Vincenzo, which I agreed to, and we began to plan the trip. I thought that all of the attention and anger on my behalf would be a balm, but it only soothed for a moment. I was told, eventually, not to wallow. Everyone spoke only of my heartbreak over Angel, and seemed to forget altogether the so very recent loss of Phillipa, which I never had. Another heartbreak was simply too much.

A Beauty I had known for years, Matrim, gave me a rose and told me he loved me. I tossed it aside and said to him, “Leave me alone”. The hurt look on his face did wonders. The only other solace came unexpectedly one afternoon. I heard crying as I passed the parlor and peeked in to see Evelyn sobbing on my Mother’s shoulder, distraught over her son’s elopement. I was heard despite how quiet I thought I had been and when she looked up and met my eyes, there was understanding at last. I was grown now, a registered woman, and Mother beckoned me inside and poured me tea and Evelyn and I talked as equals.

I packed for Italy. The day before I was to leave, I sat in Grandmother’s garden. It was an overcast day and windy, the tiny rose buds shivering. How nice it would be, I thought, to see the sun, and to be far away from my problems. I planned to be gone until after the scandal had died down.

I looked up at the sudden sound of shoes on the stone walkway and met eyes with Phillipa. I gasped, feeling dizzy at the sight of her. I could tell that she was no longer one of us. She had been Undone.

She was too thin and her clothes were not in fashion, but otherwise she was the same as I remembered. Mortality had not dented her beauty. Her face as she approached the garden was a study of many emotions; eyes tired but conveying a fiery resolve, her mouth initially twisted up in anxiety, but then lifting into a smile when she saw me. How shocked I was that she still looked so much like herself, that she was still capable of joy. I ran to Phillipa and embraced her.

I hated to know that even while we stood there, life seeped out of her and as the seconds ticked by and my friend died minutely with each, I cried.