Be Dazzled - Ryan La Sala Page 0,1

touch up some of my toadstools. There’s a lot to do. I don’t want anything hitting social until we’re perfect.”

Typically, you show up at a con ready, but with all this sneaking, we have to get ready on the go. Not ideal, but necessary. Lucky for us, the bigger cons now have changing rooms so people can suit up on location. This is why I have a rolling suitcase.

“But the moss—are you sure I need to wear it? It’s itchy, and besides, my mask nearly covers my whole face.”

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s all about being fully in character. The judges will appreciate the detail if they ask you to remove the mask, which they will. You’ll see.”

May scrunches up her eyebrows.

“Fine, fine, you can mold me,” she says. “Sometimes I think you get off on these things, Raff.”

“May, gross. I’m gay. And so are you.”

“So what? Gay people do all sorts of things. They wear, like, harnesses and leather straps. Just out and about.”

“So do horses, but no one kink-shames them. Now drop it.”

She murmurs, “Oh, you can bet I’ll drop something. And I’m sure you’d love to watch me pick it up real slow.”

May basks in my discomfort. She is doing me a huge favor this weekend by competing with me; putting up with her weird jokes is the least I can do. If I weren’t so anxious, I’d be laughing and joking around, too. But I am anxious. I’m always anxious about something, but on competition days, I’m anxious about everything. And usually, I have ways of calming myself down, but this is the biggest show I’ve ever competed in. This is Controverse. It doesn’t get any bigger than this, so nothing is going to calm me down. Not listening to music. Not meditation. Maybe tranquilizers, but probably not. Only winning.

Once I win, I’ll relax. Once I take home the top prize, it won’t matter that Evie will probably, eventually find out that I’m not camping (and have never camped a day in my seventeen years of life). Once I become the youngest person ever to take best in show at Controverse, I’ll be a legit award-winning crafter, and Evie will finally have to admit that this whole “arts and crafts obsession” of mine is not a phase.

Or…

Or she’ll promptly fake her own death out of embarrassment and then start over in Toronto or something, but that’s okay. Because if I play my cards right—which I will, which I am by showing up in this sickening look—winning Controverse is going to come with something even better than my mother’s approval.

Sponsorship! In the past few years, Craft Club has been giving major sponsorship deals to the crowd favorites at Controverse. And other businesses are starting to tap into the young, influencer-driven craft market, too. The cosplay scene at Controverse has become a hotbed of recruitment and sponsored content. And if I want to have a future after high school that isn’t passing mini Bellinis at my mother’s shows, I need to make it happen.

Put simply, I need money to pay for art school, because Evie is not about to waste her wealth on that shit. She doesn’t believe in formal arts education at all. She says that any artist worth their paints is guided by talent and instinct. She didn’t need college to be a success, after all. And it’s a major point of pride for her. (She has many points of pride; she’s a sea urchin of prideful points.)

I’m less prideful and far less pointy. I know I need to go to art school. And I will need money to pay for art school. And, to a lesser degree, I will need money for food and Crunchyroll dot com.

I’m not just here to win a competition or my mother’s respect. At the end of the day, I’m after one thing: a future, on my terms.

“Name?”

We’re at the tables where they give out the badges. I pull my ID from the pocket I smartly sewed to the inside of my robe.

“Raphael Odom,” I say.

The lady looks at my ID, then at me. My ID says that I am seventeen, that I am five foot six, and that I have brown hair and brown eyes. In this moment, though, I am an ancient spirit of the forest, a druid, wearing six-inch platform heels. My face barely shows beneath a hooded robe clotted with fungus and ferns. One of my eyes is pure black due to the scleral contact lens I