Running deft fingers over the collection of masks spread out like cards on a table, she mused.

Are they her tarot cards? Do they tell her fate, if she follows this mask or that path? Would she be the perfect daughter then? The popular friend? Would she earn enough money to continue calling this little apartment her own?

Or perhaps they are the cards her grandparents liked to play. Two’s, three’s, four’s. Gong-gong used to call her over discreetly, then ask her to peek at A-Po’s cards for him.

What did they tell her again?

Something about eyes?

She looked up at the mirror.

That’s not her, she realized with a shred of terror. That– that’s Ten. The fox.

She scrambled over to her dressing table. Clawed away her own faces. She ripped off the porcelain mask – that’s Linlin. The moon-silver, #2134, she flung on the ground. The blue one’s little WW the white one’s for funerals the flowery one’s for dates that one, the last one, where–?

She stared at herself. Peeled off the final skin of masks.