Nicola Lancaster is spending eight weeks at the Siegel Institute Summer Program for Gifted Youth, a hothouse of smart, articulate, intense teenagers. She soon falls in with Katrina (Manic Computer Chick), Isaac (Nice-Guy-Despite-Himself), Kevin (Inarticulate Composer) . . . and Battle. Battle Hall Davies is a beautiful blonde dancer, and everything Nic isn't. The two become friends-and then, startlingly, more than friends. What do you do when you think you're attracted to guys, and then you meet a girl who steals your heart?
There’s a knock on my door. It’s Katrina. “You’re not doing anything, are you?
I didn’t think so. Listen, Mom brought me a ton of new and exciting chemically processed snack products, and I feel the need to share them with my loved
ones, so come with me, we’ll get Battle, go back to my room, and have a women-
only riot!”
“Okay,” I say, contemplating whether I should bring the dog book with me to give to Battle. It will reveal that I was thinking about her, which could be bad, but on the other hand, she seemed upset before and maybe the book will cheer her up. And it’s a book, not a dozen roses, so it’s not like I would be making some big declaration of love. I put it under my arm and we head to Battle’s room.
“Who is it?” Battle calls through the door. Her voice sounds a little shaky.
“It’s the Procrastination Police! Officer Lancaster and I are here to make sure you don’t get anything done tonight!” Katrina calls back.
“I’m so glad it’s you!” Battle opens the door and crushes Katrina and me into
a hug. I can barely breathe, mostly from nervousness, but I can tell that Battle smells like lavender. My favorite scent.
“Who were you expecting?” Katrina asks, plopping down on Battle’s bed without a second thought.
My ankle only twinges a little when I sit down in the same spot on the floor as last time. “They said they were leaving, but I wasn’t sure I believed them,” Battle says.
“Your parents?” I ask. She nods.
“What was up with you this morning?” Katrina demands.
Battle shakes her head, and gives me a “don’t say anything” glare.
I wasn’t going to.
“They broke another promise,” she says. “I don’t know why I was even surprised. And then when Mom put my hair up—well, that’s the way she wants me to be, all the time. Perfectly in order, and completely confined.”
“What promise?” Katrina asks.
Battle shakes her head again. “They said it cost too much. I told them weeks ago that I’d pay. I told them how important it was to me. Money was just their excuse. It was really that it was inconvenient for them.”
“What was? Oh, by the way, Mom and Dad took me to this bookstore and, uh, I thought you might like this.” I hand the book to Battle.
“Thank—oh my god. How did you know?”
I gesture towards the dog-picture-covered wall.
“I mean about today—you didn’t know about today?” She flips through the pages, then closes the book.
“Spit it out, Battle. We need some nouns here,” says Katrina.
“The noun is dog. Plural, dogs. My parents promised they would bring Dante and Beatrice, and they didn’t. Instead, they brought that dress.”
The dress, I notice, is on the floor in a heap. It’s the only piece of clothing
I have ever seen on her floor.
“And not only that.” Battle gets up and walks over to her dresser. “Mom happened to let it slip that since I’ve
been gone, they’ve been boarding them. Dante and Beatrice aren’t even home.”
She puts the book down on the dresser, opens the top drawer and digs around in it. “I’m glad y’all are here, because I might need help with this.”
Something metal flashes in her hand. “Battle?”
A wisp of her hair floats to the floor. Scissors, she’s holding scissors—
“I’m shaving my head.” Another wisp.
“Stop it!” I hear myself say.
“I want to do this, Nic, I’ve thought about it a lot,” says Battle, cutting off a third wisp.
I go over to her, grab her wrist with my left hand, and take away the scissors with my right. “It can’t be all random like that,” I say, realizing that I’m using my stage manager voice. “You need to braid your hair first. Then you cut off the braid.”
Battle rubs her wrist. “That hurt,”
she says.
Katrina jumps up from the bed and says, “Rock on, Nic! I wish we had a camcorder so we could capture it all on the magic of videotape! She’s right, Battle—don’t you think she’s right?”
Battle nods, slowly. “Yes—but there’s
a problem.” She seems embarrassed.
“I can’t braid my hair myself. You’d have to do it, Nic.”
Katrina starts to say, “I can—” and
I interrupt, “Fine. Get me a brush and a rubber band.”
Battle hurries over to her dresser again, grabs the brush from on top of it, snaps open a small square tin and extracts a rubber band. She hands them to me like she’s the nurse and I’m the surgeon.
“Sit at your desk chair,” Stage Manager Nic commands. Battle does.
I move to stand behind her. There’s her lavender scent again. Keep it together, Nic.
Her hair is silk. Heavy silk. Silk you could weave into a rope to cling to while you climbed a mountain.
The lavender makes me dizzy. No more stage manager. No more surgeon.
I am a lady-in-waiting, and she is the princess. No, the empress. The empress of the world.
“Your Imperial Highness,” Lady-in-Waiting Nic says, “do you truly think that shearing your golden tresses will foil the evil schemes of your deceitful parents, may they reign for a thousand years?”
“Nay, I fear not,” the Empress Battle responds, picking it up immediately. “I wish only for them to see that I am not a doll to be dressed and played with.”
“Indeed, you are no child’s play-
thing, lady.”
Divide it into three. Over, under, over. Gather more hair. Over, under, over. Finally, the rubber band. “Do you wish to inspect my handiwork before we proceed, Your Imperial Highness?”
Battle raises one hand regally to her head and carefully feels the braid. “It is well done. Now cut it off.”
“My lady, wish you not to wield the blades yourself?” I pick up the scissors from the desk.
Battle shakes her head, just barely. “Nay, I do not wish it. Do me the honor of performing this service, and you shall be well rewarded.”
“My lady, I wish no reward but to continue in your service.”
I open the scissors, holding Battle’s braid with my left hand. It takes me several cuts to get through the thick mass of hair. When I finish, I hold the braid in both hands for a minute. Then I go back around, still being Lady-in-Waiting, and kneel in front of Battle’s chair, holding the braid out to her. “What is your will for this, lady?”
“You may keep it, if you desire. I have no further use for it,” she says.
“Thank you, my lady!” We smile at each other.
“God!” Katrina says. “Would you guys get over yourselves? Isn’t it time for the clippers yet? I can do that part, unless you would prefer that I just leave.”
“No, no, that’s fine—I mean, of course, you should do the clippers—um, they’re in my dresser, I’ll get them,” says Battle all in a rush.
I have no idea what to do with Battle’s braid. I don’t want to throw it away, but I don’t have any place to put it.
“I’ll be right back,” I say. “I’m going to get some soda. Want anything?”
“Coke, of course!”
“Sweet tea, or whatever they have that’s closest.”
“Okay. Don’t cut off too much while I’m gone.”
I go to my room and shove the braid into the bottom drawer of my dresser, underneath a sweater Mom made me bring in case it got cold. Then I get the drinks and come back.
"Both controversial and long-awaited, this helps to fill a need that is painfully obvious and introduces a wonderful new voice." -Kirkus Reviews
In 1991, when I
was at the Clarion Writers Workshop, Kate Wilhelm told me: "Write what you would most want to read." It took me a long time to take her advice, but when I did, Empress of the World was the result.
I wanted to read about the kind of teenagers my friends and I were. Smart, sarcastic, melodramatic, endlessly analyzing ourselves and everyone else within range—we felt simultaneously protean and pathetic.
I still have all my old journals, and I often reread them to remind myself of who I was. All through junior high and high school,
I would not only reread them at regular intervals, but also make comments in the margins. (Many of the comments condemn me for having the bad taste to have had a crush on whomever I had convinced myself I had gotten over.)
My journals helped a lot with Nic’s voice, and because I am a geek, I looked at a lot of people’s online journals, too. For the other characters, I shamelessly plundered the vocabularies and speech mannerisms of my friends. And also, like a lot of writers,
I eavesdrop all the time.
I hope readers of Empress feel like they’re eavesdropping, too.
—Sara Ryan, February 2001
