The Queen of Fêtes

Gianna Camara knew she was glowing before she even stepped through the gates. The bass of the DJ's latest soca remix vibrated through the soles of her stilettos, and the humid Cascade night air wrapped around her like a familiar embrace. This was her kingdom, the all-inclusive fête, where the alcohol flowed freely, the trendiest wear sparkled under strobe lights, and every eye inevitably found its way to her.

She moved through the crowd like a current, hugging friends, air-kissing acquaintances, and tossing her perfectly curled hair over her shoulder as she reached the VIP section. She didn't need a ticket for VIP; she simply was VIP. People gravitated toward her. They wanted to be near her laugh, to catch her eye during the drop of a chorus, to have her pull them into a wine-and-groove session that would inevitably become the highlight of their night.

"Gianna! You look best!" someone shouted over the music.

She smiled, wide and practiced. "I know, darling. I know."

By midnight, she was the center of a swirling circle, leading a conga line that snaked through the crowd. By 2 AM, she was crowd-surfing, because of course she was. By sunrise, she was the last one on the dance floor, barefoot, mascara slightly smudged, hair a wild halo, but still grinning as the clean-up crew started packing away the speakers.

She lived for these moments. The feeling of being wanted. The feeling of being seen.


But Monday always came.

And Monday meant the fluorescent lights of Camara & Sons Financial Services, the family business she'd been "temporarily" working at for the last seven years. Gianna sat at her desk, which she had decorated with photos of fêtes past, and stared at the spreadsheet on her screen with the same enthusiasm one might reserve for a root canal.

She sighed loudly. No one looked up.

Her colleagues, boring, beige people with beige ambitions, clicked away at their keyboards and sipped their lattes. There was Marvin, who wore the same navy polo shirt every Thursday. There was Patricia, who talked about her cat's digestion issues during lunch. There were the new interns, wide-eyed and eager, who actually enjoyed data entry.

"Don't you people ever want to live?" Gianna muttered under her breath.

"It's a spreadsheet, Gianna," Marvin said without looking up. "It's not meant to spark joy."

She rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. The truth was, she'd had big dreams once. Photography. She'd been good at it, too, her eye for composition, her ability to capture a moment of ecstasy at a fête. But that required work. It required emails, and pitch meetings, and rejection. It required effort that didn't come with an open bar.

So instead, she stayed. And she blamed.

She blamed the boring colleagues for draining her creative energy. She blamed her father for "trapping" her in the business. She blamed the commute, the air conditioning, the beige walls, the sad office plants that looked as demoralized as she felt.

If she wasn't moving forward, it wasn't her fault. It was this place. It was these people. It was the universe conspiring to keep a star like her stuck in a cubicle.


One Friday evening, just before Carnival weekend, Gianna was packing her bag to leave when Patricia stopped her.

"Gianna, the Forbes account reconciliation is due Monday. You haven't touched it."

Gianna smiled, bright and dismissive. "Patricia, darling, it's Carnival weekend. You expect me to reconcile anything while the savannah calling my name?"

"I expect you to do your job," Patricia said quietly. "But I suppose that's too much to ask."

The words hit harder than they should have. Gianna opened her mouth to fire back something sharp, something witty but Patricia was already walking away, her sensible flats lightly squeaking against the tiled floor.

For a moment, Gianna stood alone in the empty office. The silence was deafening. No bass. No cheering. No one clapping for her.

She looked at her desk. The photos of fêtes. The unused camera in her drawer. The half-finished portfolio she'd started three years ago.

She was the center of attention everywhere she went. Except here. Except in her own life.

And maybe that was the problem. She'd spent so long being the center of everyone else's night that she'd forgotten how to be the center of her own.

She shut off the light and walked out into the Trinidad night. The fêtes were calling. They always were.

But for the first time, Gianna Camara wondered if the noise was drowning out the only voice that mattered, the one that knew she was capable of so much more than being the life of the party.


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