I don’t see Cassie.
“Where is she?” I ask the nearest stagehand who is mumbling into his headset.
“Who?” he asks, covering his mic.
“Cassie. Cassie Everard. I’m performing with her!”
“Oh, she comes on from the other side of the stage.” He points across the vast wooden stage. I follow his finger and then see, opposite me, hiding in the side curtains, is Cassie.
I stop breathing.
There she is.
I swear there shouldn’t be a light on her as she’s waiting in the wings. But for whatever reason, Cassie stands there facing me, illuminated.
She is a vision in all white. A white dress that is more form-fitting than her usual style, and shorter too. Its hem kisses the middle of her thighs, and while it has a modest neckline and her sleeves are long, there are also long white tassels hanging from each arm that give her look more edge than I would have expected. She’s still Cassie. But she looks different. More confident. More poised. More aware of both herself and the world around her.
It’s when I take in her trademark golden waves, flicked out from her face, that it seems like she has a halo around her. Like an angel.
A memory hits me out of nowhere.
Asponsi, the Buddhist angel-spirit my mother would talk about and set up shrines to in our two-bedroom Stockholm apartment. Half-woman, half-lion, she was a protecting figure. My mother called upon her to watch over us when money got tight, when the winter snow didn’t let up for days, when it was our birthdays, and for weeks and weeks before I left for Amsterdam.
I never paid my mother’s praying, shrine-making, or offerings much notice growing up. It was one of the many ways she was different from all my Swedish friends’ mothers. It was embarrassing. It made me feel even more othered than I already did.
But now I wish I had paid attention, because I swear, I am looking atAsponsiin human form, here on Earth. For as beautiful as Cassie is, as feminine and womanly as she is, she is also fierce and brave and strong. That halo of hair framing her beautiful face could just as easily be a lion’s mane.
As a small smile is crawling over my face, Cassie looks up and catches my eye across the stage.
As our gazes lock, everything else fades away. The people bustling around me, the muttering in my earpiece, the awards’ host at the front of the stage warming up to introduce us, the stagehand starting a countdown next to me.
It all disappears. There’s only her, looking at me while I look at her.
Her expression creases into one of uncertainty, like she’s holding her breath. Like she doesn’t know what to expect. And I can’t blame her, which is why I try to ease away some of that fear.
I raise my hand in the smallest, most out-of-character wave I’ve ever offered anyone.
As I do, her shoulders straighten and then fall. A sigh of relief, perhaps. Just as small and subtle, but its power has my stomach flipping.
She lifts her hand too, but it’s not in a wave. She has her two middle fingers folded down with her thumb out.
“I love you” in ASL.
I copy her and sign “I love you” back.
I can’t stop my smile. And neither can she.
But then I’m nudged forward by someone, and so is she. We both start to walk towards each other and each step gets easier and easier, lighter and lighter, until we reach the platform and stand up on it together. Temptation has me wanting to keep walking past my microphone and straight into her arms, but the stage curtains are opening and there’s a roar of applause, and in my earpiece the opening bars of our song start to play.
Cassie turns to the audience just before I start to sing, but I don’t. I keep looking at her. I sing my words straight to her pretty, English rose face.
Blonde hair, big blue eyes
You look good in a bed of lies.
Truth hurts, don't ya think?
I'm ready to fight. You ready to sink?
