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It’s all wrong. It’s all wrong.
The little bottle slips from Cass’s hand and spills all over the wood floor of Bruce’s room. Cass lets out a wail, sinking to the ground. Her shoulders curl in on her body and she clutches the thin fabric of her tank top.
It’s wrong. Why can’t she get it to look right?
This was supposed to be a good day. Cass was supposed to be happy, supposed to be spinning in a tutu, toes pointed, arms-like-wings, pirouette, arabesque, perfect. Cass was supposed to be perfect.
But she’s on her knees, her toes folded underneath like they always are when she’s sad and her eyes closed so that she doesn’t have to see her reflection in the mirror.
Cass has watched Barbara put on her makeup what must have been a hundred times. Moisturize, prime, foundation, conceal, set. Paint the lines onto her face, the shadows around her eyes, the black lashes that accent the green of Barbara’s eyes. So, Cass knows how to do makeup. But on her skin, it looks chalky and pale, the parts with makeup standing out from the parts without no matter how hard she tries.
That’s where Bruce finds her, crying on the floor of his room, hunched over the bottle of foundation. “Cass?” Cass turns to Bruce and reads the bewilderment in his stance, the tilt of his face, the—
She looks away. She doesn’t want to read Bruce right now. This day was supposed to be about her, about the focus of the moment and the curve of her spine and the tips of her toes. Her body, her mind, her spirit. Herself, with the audience shrouded in the background. No weapon. Just Cass.
And here she is, trying to paint over her scars, and it just looks—
“What’s wrong?” Bruce asks, crouching down next to her. His hand hovers over Cass’s shoulder, right where one of the bullet scars lies, and she shrinks away.
“Wrong,” Cass repeats. She doesn’t know how to explain this, how she’s doing everything right but it’s not working. She’s sure she’s doing everything right. She watched. She learned. Cass doesn’t make mistakes. “I—it’s wrong.”
“Are you trying to do your makeup?” Cass looks away. She’s sure that if she could see him, there would be pity. She doesn’t want pity. She wants to do it right. “Maybe…” Bruce swallows. “Maybe this could wait until after your performance?”
Cass shakes her head. This is for the performance. Ms. Landeau told her to cover up the scars for the stage. It needs—Cass needs to be perfect. She’s not perfect, so she has to make herself perfect. It’s so simple. Why doesn’t Bruce understand? Cass’s body is screaming not enough, fix me, make me perfect, and Bruce doesn’t see it. No one sees it except Cass.
So, she cries out again, hunching even further over and wrapping her arms around her stomach.
“Need to…” Her words are failing her. “Fix it. Fix me.”
“Cass, you aren’t bro—”
“No!” Bruce isn’t understanding. He thinks she means fix mind, fix self, but she means fix vessel. Fix body. She needs to look perfect for the stage, so the scars don’t distract the audience. Because Cass isn’t just dancing for herself—she’s dancing for them, too. She’s performing.
Just another kind of tool.
“I need—for the.” Her lips don’t form performance. Cass knows the word. It’s there in her head. But the coordination isn’t. “For the dance,” she tries, and thankfully, it comes out.
“You need makeup to dance?” Bruce asks. “For the stage?”
Cass nods, staring at the ground. The puddle of foundation is spreading. She should pick it up. She should—
“Okay,” he says. “Let me help you. What’s wrong?”
Cass throws up her hands. If she knew, she could fix it. But she doesn’t know, so it’s hopeless.
“Can you look at me?” Bruce asks.
Reluctantly, Cass turns towards Bruce. The care in his face is too much, so she quickly shuts her eyes against the storm of love. She can’t hold it in her chest. She’ll overflow. She needs a dam, and that dam is her eyes.
“Oh,” Bruce says. “Were you trying to use my makeup?” Hesitantly, Cass nods. “It’s too light for you,” he explains. Cass doesn’t understand. “Do you understand?”
Why does Bruce need to ask? Why can’t he read her confusion?
Cass shakes her head.
“The foundation needs to match your skin tone,” Bruce says. “This one matches mine, not yours. You’ll need a different foundation.” Oh. So Cass wasn’t doing it wrong. The makeup was wrong. Or—Cass was doing it wrong, because she was using the wrong makeup, but her mind hasn’t failed her. She had chosen Bruce’s makeup because he told her she could always go in his room unless it was locked, whereas her brothers might get mad. But she hadn’t realized that she couldn’t just use Bruce’s makeup—how was she supposed to know? “I’ll get Alfred to pick up some new makeup, alright? And then you can get ready for your performance. We’ve got time.”
Slowly, Cass nods. Bruce hands her some wipes to remove the makeup already on her skin, and she does so, rubbing the foundation away and taking that strange, awful texture with it. Bruce sits with her the whole time, telling her about how excited he is to go to her ballet performance and how he’s sure it’ll be amazing.
Eventually, Alfred brings a tray of brushes and makeups into the room. Cass sits cross-legged in front of Bruce, eyes closed. Slowly, he paints her face and neck and arms and shoulders and back, hiding Cass’s imperfections away. As he does her makeup, Bruce talks about getting ready for galas. Spending a summer at theater camp as a teenager, because Alfred wanted him to be more human. Learning to disguise himself as someone else with a few contours on his face.
“Okay, Cassie,” Bruce says. “You’re ready.”
Cass opens her eyes and stares into the mirror.
A girl stares back out at her. Smooth, scarless skin. Bold, red lips. Dark, long eyelashes. She looks beautiful. She looks perfect. She looks wrong.
Cass knows she should be happy to see herself perfect. If she can’t be perfect, she can’t perform. But she doesn’t see herself perfect, because that girl in the mirror is not Cass. That girl in the mirror wasn’t shot until she learned to move out of the way. That girl in the mirror has no weight on her shoulders and no scars on her skin and no bloodstains on her perfectly smooth hands. She looks like a Cass-doll. Smiling. Empty.
“No,” Cass says, tossing her head back and forth. Her arms wrap around her chest as she holds herself close, rocking on the balls of her feet. “No!”
“Cass—”
“No!” She wants to run. She can’t just—she can’t just flee. Now there are people, family. Bruce and Alfred. She has to explain. It’s not enough that she sees the doll. They need to see the doll too. Cass squeezes her eyes shut and focuses on coordinating her lips. The first time, no sound comes out; she’s forgotten how to force the noise. The second time, she chokes on her words. The third time— “It’s not me. I see…a fake. A doll.”
And then Bruce’s hands fall gently on her shoulders. He pulls Cass close, turning her so that she can’t see the mirror and her forehead leans against his chest. “You’ve worn makeup before,” Bruce says quietly. “Is there something different this time?”
Cass has let Dick paint her nails and Tim put blush on her cheeks and Steph do fancy eyeliner. But the scars were always still there. The past was always still there. “No scars,” Cass whispers. “She’s just blank.”
Bruce’s arms are warm around her back. Cass thinks she’s crying. The tears drip down her cheeks. The black eyelash paint is running. The makeup is turning to water. Cass is ruining everything. “We’ll do the makeup again,” Bruce says. “But lighter, and without the concealer. You’ll still see the scars.”
Cass shakes her head into Bruce’s shirt. She needs to look perfect for the stage. So her scars don’t distract the audience. So she becomes the perfect tool. So her body is not her own.
(Cass doesn’t know how to move if her body is not her own.)
“Ballerinas—” Cass practiced that word, over and over, so her lips could form it as easily as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘love.’ “Ballerinas have to be perfect.”
“Cass…This is a community group. It’s not a professional performance, they’re not paying you. You’re doing this for you and you’ll look how you want to look. And…” Bruce’s hand runs through Cass’s short hair. She can’t help but smile in spite of herself. “Anyone who says any different will have to deal with me, okay?”
“Yes,” Cass says.
So, she wipes the makeup off her face, and this time, she and Bruce do it together. She evens out the colors, hides a little spot of acne, adds in the contours and highlights to her face. But the scars stand out, raised and bright. They will shine in the stage lights. Cass can’t bring herself to hate them.
She goes back to her room and puts on her lavender bodice, and long, fuzzy socks, leaving the rest of the costume for backstage. “Ready, Miss Cassandra?” Alfred asks by the front door. The others will be there at the performance, but Cass has to be there early.
“Yes.” Cass smiles.
On stage, Cass dips and twirls and bends. Her body moves with her mind, and her mind moves with her body. The audience is dark. The stage is lit. Cass’s family is there watching her, but she dances for herself. Glissade. Relevé. Pirouette. Then arabesque—
Arms spread gracefully. A bird taking flight.