Page 1 of The Stars and the Stage
1
Diego Figueroa was no princess.
Despite all the times they’d played the part, as glittering homecoming royalty and swishing bridesmaids, as Cinderella and Juliette and Giselle, those roles had never been more than costumes. Standing before their full-length mirror in the Celestial Club’s dressing room, wearing a costume that finally fit, that fact was clear. They flashed their fangs and gave a heel-turn, watching the long, loose flaps of their dark suit sparkle with silver as they twirled to the radio’s top ten. It was as if they had stepped out of the pages of a fairytale, half elven lord, half gothic rogue, all dark blues and twinkling night skies that paired perfectly with the sapphire stones in their ears.
That was what the Celestial Club’s decisive mix of theater dramatics and sensual, live-action role play offered people: a fantasy, curated, inoculated and beautified.
The club owner was incredible at transforming faded and tattered clothes into immaculate outfits with a few alterations and some tender loving care. Serina had worked personally with Diego on this piece, taking measurements around their chest binder, and adjusting the lines to accentuate Diego’s shoulders and taper down their hips. They looked long and lean beneath the fabric, as regal as the part they were meant to play in the club’s new event series. They could already imagine the faux jewelry that would ornament their androgynous black bob.
Diego gave the outfit one last satisfied hum before shrugging out of the jacket. “It’s perfect, Serina! You’re a miracle.”
No response came from across the cluttered dressing room.
It was easy to lose oneself in the backstage of the Club, with its convoluted dressing and storage rooms of old paper panels, costumes mounted on every rack and shelf, extra props and lights and furniture stacked between. The superfluous number of mirrors, all old or cracked yet utterly beautiful, only served to visually multiply the already chaotic space. Some days when Diego stepped back here, they felt like they’d walked into a dream.
If only they had known ten years ago that this was the life their pain was leading to—one of love and magic and drama, even if the heart-pounding romance from their teenage years had all but dried up.
Diego turned the radio down, cutting off Green Day halfway through a line oflisten to me whine. Without the music, it seemed strangely quiet.
“Serina?”
The club regularly built off outfits and fabrics compiled from estate sales and business closure buyouts, and last Diego checked, Serina had been preparing to stock their mound of half-folded cop uniforms in a storage room until their blues could be reused in far better ways, but now the pile sat unattended. Damn, wherewasshe? Six months ago, they wouldn’t have worried, but since the threats started, it was better to be safe than sorry, and better to be sorry than dead.
Diego prepared to call for her again, but as they stepped toward the hall, they caught a rising sound from the club’s side entrance: a near-shouting that included something much like their name.
It was not actually their name—not their nameanymore—and hadn’t been since they’d fled San Salud three months away from a high school diploma, with nothing but a backpack, a black eye, and a fresh pair of fangs that marked them as a second-class citizen. But that had been nearly a decade ago. No one in Los Angeles knew where Diego had come from or who they’d been—no one would have asked them to dig up that trauma. All the fangs at the Celestial Club had a past they would rather forget. Homesickness was their disease and this place was the cure.
Their old homes weren’t supposed to comeback, though.
But here was Diego’s, speaking their birthname with a ferocity that shuddered down their spine and a tone that ripped through their chest, clawing up the pain and love they had long since buried.
Their heart pounded, as though their dark, vampiric blood was fighting to break free of their veins. Run, their mind screamed, and they didn’t know which way it meant:tohim orawayfrom him. Which way was their safety anymore?
Once it had been his arms, clutching them close when they lost a lead role in drama club or holding them back when the nastier kids had insulted them for their heritage—as though many of their ancestors hadn’t lived in California longer than any of these preppy white families—with whispers that this wasn’t the time, that vengeance would be sweeter if it couldn’t be traced back to them. He had been the safe haven who’d helped them paint everything from dicks on the expensive leather of those bullies’ sports cars to the elaborate stage sets that only he and Diego truly appreciated. His were the screams that had echoed their own across the school halls and the hands that had pressed them against the lockers with every ravaging kiss, the only person who avidly agreed with them that the highs and lows of their teenage love was a thing the whole world had to play audience to. He had been the boy who never tried to tame their fire, but always managed to stoke it in a better direction.
Then he’d torn that protection down in one terrible night.
Their safety was here now, Diego reminded themself: it was this club that had offered them a job despite the fangs in their mouth and their lack of experience, its owner who’d taken them in for the first few years, and the platonic love they’d discovered in the process.
They could hear Serina at the door, replying as calmly as her name implied. “I’m sorry, but as I’ve told you, there’s no one here by that name.”
Diego numbly wrapped a dark gown over their outfit’s brilliant shimmering and slipped down the hallway. As the darkness took over, their vampiric vision shifted to monochrome.
“Please.” His voice was strained and pleading, deeper and smoother than it had been. And worn. Like he’d aged from a preppy high school theatre kid into the weathered, silver-tongued prince who’d seen the war and come home a pacifist. Or maybe that was just Diego projecting. “Just tell her that Maddy’s here. Tell her I’m sorry.”
Diego might have cringed from the accidental misgendering, if not for the swell of other emotions crashing through them at the private nickname Maddox had allowed only for them.
“Maddox? What’s that supposed to be—rugged and pretentious? Did your mom justknowyou’d grow up to be a fancy motorcycle boy, or did you do that to fuck with her?”
“Hey, at least I’m not a tiny, spiteful gremlin like you.”He’d only laughed when they’d smeared their ice cream on his cheek.“What would you call me, then?”
“Maddy,”they’d hummed.“Sweet, but wild. And mine.”
Their Maddy.
After all these years, somehow he’d found them, and he wassorry.
The anger that rushed forth shocked Diego—how dare Maddox be sorry, ten years too late, now that Diego had finally beaten back the darkness, reshaped their life into something they genuinely loved, and patched their heart back up until it felt nearly whole again. Whole, but for the shape ofhim.
