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To be honest, I had expected her to be less pretty. While I waited at the bus stop, I saw maybe a dozen screen-wasted introverts in hoodies, headphones swallowing their faces, trudging from the campus gate to the poorly-lit convenience store on a Friday night. All of them were likelier candidates than the girl with a thigh gap winking beneath her pleated miniskirt, except she was waving for my attention.

I waved back.

Of all the girls in the world, she was the one who knew the most about me, and I didn’t know what to call her. As she descended from whatever Eden attractive people flourish in when they’re not being looked at, I discerned the partial shape of my name between her lips, before she settled for a grin instead.

“How was the bus ride? Was it long?” she exclaimed. Her outstretched arms folded across my back, confirmation that she and I were real to one another. As she pulled away, I watched her absorb the details of my appearance, as I did the pieces of glitter mixed in with her lip gloss. “You look so nice!”

I had dressed ahead of time with the intent of reducing the number of unknowns. I didn’t know whether she had space in her closet for an extra dress or if one of her roommates, if she had roommates, would be using the bathroom to change, and changing with her in her room was unfathomable. So I prepared in the familiar environment of my own home and agonized over being overdressed for the entire bus ride. As it turned out, at the moment of truth, when she and I finally met, I felt plain. The straps of my bulky backpack cinched the fabric of my sleeves into damp knots beneath my armpits.

“How long was the bus ride?”

“Two hours,” I replied. In her excitement, she seemed to have forgotten that she had already asked.

 “I’m so glad you’re here. I know I’ve said it many times, but…”

We could find nothing else to talk about. She sat on her bed and I remained standing, pretending to examine posters I was already familiar with to fill our silence. Finally, Saki ventured to bring up one of our usual topics of conversation:

She made an effort to say Sakura the authentic way, though neither of us was of Japanese descent.

“Oh, thanks.”

“If there’s anyone that I trust to work her magic tonight, it’s you.”

“Oh, thanks.” Then, trying again: “I only do it for you,” although immediately I worried my response came across laughable, a sad imitation of intimacy. Saki blinked once, twice, and I began to think she had caught on to my inadequacy for normal friendships, but then she offered:

“For love and justice?”

***

“Careful,” I warned, but she wasn’t listening. Her eyes were trained on her shoes, how they caught the light and dazzled whenever she turned.

“Please,” Saki said, lifting her head toward the ceiling. “If we can make this work, I’ll never ask for anything again.” She caught herself on the edge of her bed frame.

 “Do you want to go over the plan one more time?” I offered.

“Right, right. Heels, check. Dress, check. Lipstick?”

She beckoned for her signature bullet of lipstick, which I grabbed amid the array of open vials, tubes, and shadows across her desk. She dabbed a small bud of color onto the inner rim of her mouth and pressed. The pink transferred across her bottom and top lips in half-moons.

“String?”

“And what about the camera?” she asked.

I eased it out of my purse for proof and tinkered with the settings, aiming the lens out the window and into the courtyard below. Through the viewfinder, I took inventory of the things that went into a college formal. White tent. Mini-fountain. Tables dressed in brimming flutes of champagne. Ice sculpture carved into an elephant. One by one, segments of strung lights began to illuminate the perimeter, unveiling nectarine roses in vases of stone and a garden of gilded instruments for the live music to come.

I forgot to turn off the flash settings before taking the test shot. White light obliterated the outside scenery. Behind me, Saki yelped, and immediately I heard a clink, like the sound of a coin hitting the bottom of a dried-up well. My vision returned in inky blots. I saw pieces of Saki crouched in her dress and heels, frantically trying to salvage her lipstick. The exposed tube of pigment parted from the floor misshapen, the smooth, clean surface soiled with tiny craters of rubble.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” I started toward her to help, but stopped short of doing so from the sharp awkwardness of her image, her exposed elbows and knees jutting out like brambles.

“Dammit!” Saki cried. She held out her hands: her fingers gleamed pink with lost lipstick. The mess bloomed in her panic.

***

Even so, I thought she could perform the part of a well-adjusted girl in the party scene. She could toss greetings back effortlessly, like a football player practicing throws with the team. Meanwhile, I fumbled with words that were slow to come to my mind, no longer relevant by the time they were ready in my mouth. The more aware I became of my own quietness, the slipperier my words became with worry. I couldn’t follow rich college kids’ rituals of talking systemic structures of oppression one minute and chanting “chug, chug, chug” the next.

Saki teetered in her heels toward a group, one arm out to balance her drink and the other to balance herself. She introduced me.

“This is my plus one.”

“Baby,” Cupcake’s boyfriend interjected. “Don’t pity Casey. A guy knows better than to object when his girl wants to bring another girl into the picture.”

“Ey,” the other guys cheered.

“Baby, no!” Cupcake slapped her boyfriend in playful chastisement.

I looked to Saki, who refused to meet my eyes, glaring instead at Cupcake who was giggling, the three of us lingering, waiting for the boys to finish congratulating each other on their humor.

“Is there something implicit about dances that says I have to go with Casey?” Saki challenged. She raised her voice over tizzy chatter, the clipped, hollow sound of a beer pong game, the rap blaring from someone’s laptop haphazardly placed on the edge of a cheap coffee table.

“Of course not,” Cupcake exclaimed breezily.

I could tell that Saki had been waiting for something like this. Her face was flushed. There was a dark glint in her expression, an iceberg in the haze of tipsiness, suggesting that this conflict wasn’t spontaneous, that it had, for some time before the alcoholic burn in her stomach gave hot air to her words, been slowly crystallizing in a corner of her thoughts.

“We’re all friends, aren’t we?”

“You shouldn’t even need to ask!”

“Then shouldn’t we be able to dance with anyone? Casey can dance with you, and we can switch things up.”

“Okay, you don’t have to be so extra about it,” Cupcake replied with a laugh, the choice weapon for a nice girl who feared being otherwise by making a big deal out of things.

But Saki was set on making a big deal out of this. Her hand shot out, snatched my arm, and pulled me close. Her body could hardly contain her excitement. I could feel her conjured indignity trembling and hot against my skin.

“Why? Is your love so fragile that you have to be together, all the time?”

Said aloud, all of that lost its currency.

Yikes, I saw one of the boys mouth silently, felt his alcohol-stung breath up and down my neck.

My chest buckled under embarrassment, my chin folded so that I could see only my plain flats against the whirlpools of old floorboards. I couldn’t bear to see the others see me or Saki next to me.

“Come on. Cut it out,” Casey finally said. It was the first time I heard him speak, but I knew it was him from the way he said her name, her real name, like it was the rose Tuxedo Mask throws upon his scene entrance: aimed yet delicate, familiar with all its thorns.

The rest of the group buried the confrontation with more shots. Time passed and eventually, Cupcake spoke up: “This was so much fun, but we should get going, shouldn’t we, babe?” She shifted away from her boyfriend’s touch, and I noticed the camera strap exposed across her shoulder.

I could tell that Cupcake was looking to get something out of this night as well. But I knew Saki too well to bring it up to her. When Puella Magi Madoka Magica first aired, we had disagreed on the allegorical relationship between witches and magical girls in the show. I hypothesized that the archetypes were merely two sides of the same coin, an arbitrary distinction carved by some confluence of societal forces. But Saki was stubborn on believing that the difference was endogenous.

Months later, when it was revealed that witches were in fact what magical girls inevitably became, Saki still stuck to her theory. She had me convinced with a series of in-depth scene analyses. I never brought up the conversation again, in case she didn’t remember, but when I rewatched the show, I realized that she had made up certain details.

If Saki didn’t like Cupcake, there was nothing I could do to change her mind. She would never admit to being wrong: Once she came up with her interpretation of something, she was married to it, full religion, blind faith and all.

***

“She didn’t tell me she was bringing you,” Casey finally said over the din.

“Oh,” I replied lamely because, as he suspected, her invitation was not a last-minute decision. My presence unsettled him, I understood that. I was the baggage that came with his girlfriend, just as his friends were for Saki.

“What was that?” he cupped his ear.

“Oh,” I repeated louder.

“Right,” he said. Then: “How did you two meet again?”

“We started as online friends.”

“Just friends,” he echoed.

“How did you two meet?” I asked, only because reciprocating his question felt like the easiest route of conversation I could manage. The truth was that I already knew the story.

“Coffee Meets Bagel.” When I didn’t respond out of confusion, he added: “You know, the app.” Saki had not told me that.

Before Casey, the boys Saki and I discussed were poreless, chiseled figures, flat and harmless against the screen. If they were flawed, they were flawed in ways that made sense: they had dead mothers or fathers or oftentimes both. Casey had uneven eyebrows and soft features and a bloom of boyish acne that shone along the underside of his jaw as he craned his neck to keep tabs on his friends in line.

“Do you believe that people are meant to be together?” I asked. My voice sounded thin, strange, and disappointing to my ears. But he paused and altered the course of his attention back toward me. I rambled: “Like, not that they are perfect together, but they make each other the happiest they will ever be even if it means giving up some expectations and even if it’s not equal, what they give up,” then trailed off, miserable in my incoherence.

“So like, settling? Is that what you mean?”

“Yeah. Like settling,” I echoed helplessly. I didn’t know what I had meant anymore. My body quaked as he considered my clumsy proposition with a frown.

“I don’t worry about that kind of stuff. All it does is makes things difficult.” He left to join his friends in line.

Maybe for another girl, any one of those girls who existed in the movies, the YA novels, the songs sung by the free, young, and white, that would be fine. If Saki didn’t like that Casey went to dance without her, she could get a new boy easily. But Saki was like me in that respect: cloistered by worries of getting it right the first time, turning to fantasy to vicariously live romantic dramas she was not built to handle. A fangirl. If a fictional breakup could dissolve her into tears, imagine what a breakup in real life would do to her.

When Saki reached the final landing, she saw me alone and had a strange bent to her expression – if I had encountered it in a manga or anime, I couldn’t have thought there was anything wrong. But I suppose that’s the criticism people have with those types of media.

 “Let’s dance,” she proposed airily. But I knew I was miscast for her partner.

***

She looked for Casey the entire time. We held hands and swayed and she arched her neck toward others who seemed to be doing a better job of enjoying themselves. A few times her ankles buckled and I yanked her back onto both feet. Our dance warped time to a thick, listless beat. Every time we thought the music would heave to a stop, another instrument would pick up the tune in miserable determination.

“This is like, the best night ever,” Saki exclaimed after a long period of silent body-swaying.

“Exactly. Fuwa fuwa,” she resolved.

I saw the lights over her shoulder. The bulbs winked and the string dipped in the middle like a thinly wrought smile. I knew that in addition to the spell, Saki had invited me in part out of retaliation. To show that, just as Casey could choose to hang out with other guys, she could easily choose the company of other girls. That was another similarity Saki and I shared: We preferred to pass for whole rather than genuinely filling the holes in our lives.

So when Saki did see Casey on the dance floor, I offered to go and set up for the spell.

“You should stay. We could just hang out,” Saki halfheartedly suggested, but looked grateful when I declined.

I didn’t mind. I could be Saki’s Moon Stick, Sealing Wand, or whatever magical scepter used to fight the evil she was set on casting as such in the plot she had scripted. I reveled in imagining myself a weapon brimming with potency. I wanted to be indispensable, impregnable. No one knew how much I was capable of.

***

I settled for a standing table a little ways from the dance floor. It was already taken by Cupcake and her boyfriend, but we were curtained by darkness. I knew it was them from the yawn of their phone screens, which captured the fuzzy contours of their noses. Their eyes were black and reflected tiny, cold squares. I took out the camera, snapped on the lens, and through them, made out the lights underneath the tent, adjusting until Casey came into focus.

I appreciated the chance to be alone with something I was good at. I had a knack for executing spells in all the right angles and lighting. Most of the time, my talent made up for what I lacked: I froze at the prospect of risk. I struggled to make friends. I couldn’t have that one thing all the other girls seemed to carry naturally like invisible dolls, cradled in the nook of their every bound and breath. Adults at block parties used to compliment my mother for how still and quietly I could sit when in reality, I imagined running barefoot, making flower crowns, and braiding hair. It wasn’t until the Internet came into my life that I came closest to grasping what was forbidden to me. I discovered anime. I discovered the Japanese word ai. I discovered that girls like me were numerous and far-flung across the corners of the world, moored by lonely circumstances. It was a miracle that we were able to find each other, shape a real language none of us really knew into a secret, fragile language that gave our aberrations common sanctuary—recognition rippled through deep channels of my body. So this was homecoming.

As Saki approached Casey, I steadied my finger and locked the frame into focus. She guided one of his hands to her hip. I knew what to look for. I watched her fumble with the thread she had nestled in her palm, trying to untangle the knot she had tied earlier to slip onto his pinky. Once she managed this, she took one step back and the light-limned line of red unfurled between them like rope cast into sea. I felt the inner-workings of my camera react, the shutters swallowed by the bellow of a horn solo, capturing their unity for no more than two or three rapid blinks before Casey’s end of the thread drifted out of frame. I looked up, recalibrated my sight, and found them in the crowd, smaller and no longer dancing. We had never planned past the spell. Most likely, Saki was casting some kind of sugarcoated lie to deal with the aftermath. If she betrayed our identities, would anyone have taken us seriously? Both of us knew it was better to take our dignity with our own hands. But watching her figure move to a frivolous explanation, watching her awkwardly bend over, her bare arms scrambling at the ground—even from afar, my embarrassment swelled to a tender breaking point. Casey was shaking his head. Without the camera, it was hard to make out the string. It looked as though Saki were collecting air.

I felt a manicured finger tap my shoulder.

“Do you mind taking a picture for us?” Cupcake asked, presenting me her camera with both hands, as though it were something to be entrusted.

“Sure.” In spite of Saki’s criticisms, I couldn’t bring myself to deny Cupcake’s request. I looked sideways as she maneuvered her disinterested boyfriend—girls who were forthright about their desires were always embarrassing to me—I didn’t know any better. I obliged because it seemed like satisfying proof that I was, if there existed a scale that weighed the grand total of our characters, the more palatable girl.

“It’s for fun! Not a big deal. Just do as I say. Okay, now.”

I handed the camera back over for her to see. She tilted the screen toward her boyfriend.

“Aw, look how cute we are!”

***

Saki never came for me, so I had to look for her. At this point, there seemed to be more people lingering in the dark than dancing beneath the tent; their dark expressions stared wistfully at the dance floor between disjointed conversations, as though waiting for something more to happen. I waded through them, a stranger to everyone, before I found Saki collapsed on a lawn chair. She was tearing the shoe straps off her ankles. Glitter bounced off her toes in tiny, galactic explosions.

“We broke up,” she said curtly. “But that doesn’t matter. We can get back together again.”

“Like tonight never happened,” I reassured. “Do you want to see the photos?”

“Later. I’m tired, I’m heading back up,” she eventually said. She didn’t seem to mind that I followed her and slipped in before the door locked shut behind her.

“So, so tired,” she repeated up the stairs to her dorm room, a longer way up than it had been down, over and over, as though reciting a mantra, until she fell backwards onto her bed. The soles of her feet were black. She looked up at the yellowing ceiling to avoid crying. “I’m sorry I had you come. I’m just so tired.”

“It’s alright,” I responded, awkwardly standing at her bedside. My shadow loomed over her body. “I’m here for you.”

Saki didn’t respond.

After a long bout of silence, she told me, “He said that I only like the idea of him. How could he say that when he’s the one who asked to fuck me in the heels I bought? I chose to forgive him for that.”

I nodded. The best I could do was to be a witness. Best friends, I understood, kept catalogue of one another’s love stories. I wanted to keep Saki’s even if I had no such narrative of my own to offer. Instead, what came to mind was the love story my parents would tell me in a different language, one in which love was a matter of survival, was not spoken of but acted upon. In that language, my father was around Saki’s age when he walked barefoot in snow to fetch kindling for his sickly mother, and my age when he left everything he had ever known for a better future, one where my mother and I could prosper.

That was real hardship, they would say. Before magic and the Internet complicated love, people worked diligently then attributed their success to luck out of humility. But I thought whatever Saki was experiencing, lying on her back, still so as not to spill anything from the brims of her body—it was hardship, too. I wanted to tell her this, that she was braver that I could ever be, bargaining her pretty fantasies with the real world. But ours was not that kind of relationship. Instead, I sat at edge of her bed, arms in my lap, silent as she drifted to a vegetative state of disappointment.

Saki’s bed provided a different view of her otherwise fairy tale bedroom. I could see Casey’s sweatshirts pulled inside out at the foot of the bed frame; a tangled mess of black video game controllers in the crevice by the nightstand. The corner of a poster peeled from the wall like a yellow tongue. I collected the makeup strewn across her desk and arranged them into neat files.

Below us, the door to the dorms clicked open and footsteps crescendoed along the stairs. I felt Saki’s attention narrow on the clamor of keys, then slacken as the door down the hall opened and slammed shut. A few more times this happened, until I finally asked:

“Could you show me back to the bus station?” I was bad at directions and it was getting late.

I tried to listen for Saki’s pattern of breathing. I was certain she had heard me. Another group climbed the stairs past the landing of our floor.

“Yeah. Of course,” she agreed, her voice clipping the muffled music, the passing footsteps. She slipped on a pair of sneakers, pink but worn gray along the edges, and we went downstairs. We turned away from the melting ice sculpture, the pale legs and black suits. I didn’t recognize the path Saki took us. I followed silently behind her and behind me, the band announced their last song for the night, cymbals receding into the peaceable hum of street lamps and the occasional passing car. The bus stop was empty. She waited with me until the bus came, bending her knees to keep warm in her dress. She was shorter than I was without heels.

The last thing I told her was that I was sorry; I couldn’t manage anything else. We hugged and, once I climbed onto the bus, became small to one another, then invisible once more.

***

What I should have said was that I had a nice time. As though to revise this error, I said it aloud to no one in particular—“I had a nice time”—amid the empty rows of bus seats. Perhaps I was riding the adrenaline of having been somewhere new. Tomorrow, I would return to my job at my local library, water the houseplants, and prepare dinner for my parents—but tonight, I could still be golden and light-filled, like the fresh dance floor. I was still just a magical girl, after all.

I brushed off lingering flecks of eyeshadow from my backpack and took out my camera. I hooked it up to my laptop and skipped past the photos of Saki and Casey. The loading icon spun and stirred up a solid gray photo taken that same night. I toyed with the settings to distract myself, but the more the shapes eluded clarity, the more I became invested in salvaging them: two figures, barely there, outlines ghostly with mistake. No matter what I tried, they wouldn’t come into focus. 

@SakiStillinBloom @SumireByNight

WELCOME TO OUR SISTERHOOD. If you are reading this, then you have been inducted into our circle of magical girls! You have sworn to the same pact our pre-Internet predecessors made: to keep our tradition of magic and the magical identities of your fellow misfit sisters a secret.

[2] Published by admin.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT. Anime, manga, fanfics, fanart, cosplay, essays, cute outfits, date ideas, themed friend challenges, and of course, spells are all encouraged. Be cute. Be passionate. Be intense.

[3] Reposted by SumireByNight.

@SakiStillinBloom. If you ever want a story written about you, LMK.

YOUR PARTNER IN JUSTICE. Do you know her M.O.?

Her origin story: Destined to be a magical girl by birth

Her manifesto: “Reclaiming Sailor Moon for Feminists”

Her power: DIY décor

[4] Published by SumireByNight

“Destined.” Syaoran x Sakura. Romance/Angst. Synopsis: Syaoran and Sakura have never met one another except in shared dreams. Then, a red thread appears on both their fingers.

[5] Published by SakiStillinBloom

“Reclaiming Sailor Moon for Feminists.” ...About this classic tagline: it’s important that Love is cited as the first justification and Justice the second. It shows that Sailor Moon has the bravery and capacity for love, and that love makes her no less heroic than her male counterparts. Furthermore, I believe this declaration implies that honest love has the power to better the world around us. In that sense, Love is Justice...

[6] Published by admin

RULES FOR SPELLS. Make them beautiful. But be discreet. Please post all spells no later than 23:59 for effects the following day and tag them appropriately.

[7] Reposted by SakiStillinBloom

@SumireByNight. Recreating this outfit for the formal!

TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE. Every magical girl needs a signature outfit to fight evil in. Describe yours!

Dress: Petal pink dress, chiffon skirt with a ribbon at the waist

Makeup: Kat von D in Lolita II

Shoes: Heels à la Sailor Scouts in rose gold

[8] Reposted by SumireByNight.

@SakiStillinBloom. I think this is what you’re looking for, but are you sure about this?

THE RED STRING CHARM. Unite two pulses to irrevocably fasten their fates. Defy chance.

[9] Reposted by SakiStillinBloom.

@SumireByNight. Brace yourself.

NIGHTMARE LABYRINTH. Magical girls are only as powerful as the fears they’re willing to face. What are you facing?

Making friends with my bf’s friends’ gf’s. Imagining them sucking cock while talking to them. Imagining they’re imagining the same thing with me. Smiling and saying we are all friends like we didn’t say that to the last girl who was dumped and who we never saw again. None of the girls in our shows have to deal with this. They’re always friends first. Everything is so much more natural. If only life could be anime.

[10] Reposted by SakiStillinBloom

@SumireByNight. This is who we’ll be up against at the formal.

YOUR ARCHENEMY. There’s no story without one. Who is she?

The gf of my bf’s friend. A literal cupcake that lives for being eaten up by guys. She and her bf act like they belong in a hentai series, the PDA is that bad.

[11] Reposted by SakiStillinBloom

@SumireByNight. Of course I am. Look, I get that as fangirls, we romanticize the idea that love is something that just happens outside of our control. But I’m also a magical girl, and so are you. We have to be suspicious by nature. Nothing has come easy for us. The odds are against us. What good is our magic if we won’t take command over the direction of our lives?

Reposted by SumireByNight

@SakiStillinBloom. I think this is what you’re looking for, but are you sure about this?

THE RED STRING CHARM. Unite two pulses to irrevocably fasten their fates. Defy chance.

[12] Reposted by SumireByNight

@SakiStillinBloom. My favorite romantic. I’m planning yours for you, right?

DESCRIBE THE PERFECT WEDDING IN 3 GIFS.

1.      The opening scene to Cardcaptor Sakura, when spring is in full bloom and the skies are raining cherry blossoms.

2.      The French ballroom where Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask dance for the first time in episode 22.

3.     Madoka’s white dress billowing like angel wings, from the scene in the season finale when she transforms into a goddess.

[13] Reposted by SakiStillinBloom

@SumireByNight. You’re the best love story writer I know. Please, please, please help me rewrite mine.

YOUR ULTIMATE QUEST. No magical girl can exist without one.

The Quest: To reclaim love and order

The Villain: Cynicism

Your Recruits: My best friend

[14] #fuwafuwa. 3.1M results.

A picture of a slice of white cake topped with clouds of cream.

A picture of kittens nestled in a pink blanket.

A picture of bubbles suspended and sparkling against the sun.

Joan Li is an MFA candidate at The Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her work has appeared in The New England Review, The Rumpus, CARVE, and elsewhere. You can follow her on Twitter @Joan_J_Li.

This piece was originally published in Salt Hill 43.