The Last Beautiful Girl

by Nina Laurin

  “Well, the gala is on, isn’t it?” Isabella says. “And you’re the featured artist. You should be over the moon.”

  Taylor’s face twitches. Isabella knows why: if she had provided those awful photos she’d be cringing too.

  All the photos Taylor took of the house she made into large-scale prints in old-fashioned black and white. The grainy quality of the prints brings out the cracks and the scuffs.

  Isabella finds it perfectly ghastly. “Can I go now?”

  “Isa,” Taylor says. “Hold it right there.”

  “What?”

  Isa measures her with a look of annoyance.

  “How’s school going?”

  “Fine,” she says mechanically.

  “Oh. Really?”

  Taylor steps closer.

  “I suppose you’re still working on your historical project.”

  “Yes.” Obviously.

  “Isa, knock it off. Enough with the weird costumes and weird accents. I got a call from the school. I talked to your teachers. I know there never was an extra-credit project on Isabella Granger.”

  Isa covers her eyes with her hand and heaves a sigh. “Can we not do this now?”

  “I can’t think of a better time than now, actually.” Taylor crosses her arms. “Your behavior’s been unacceptable—”

  Isa laughs. “Wow, what language. You’re really not that good at the whole mothering thing, are you?”

  Taylor’s face drains of blood. “You shut your mouth.”

  “And what are you going to do if I don’t? Your lack of practice is showing. Mom.” Isabella chuckles. Taylor opens her mouth and draws a breath for another angry tirade, but Isabella beats her to it.

  “Go to your room!” she snaps. Taylor springs back: Isabella’s lips are moving, but the words and the voice that comes out of her mouth is Taylor’s own, with that little Valley girl inflection she has. “Did I get it right?” Isabella asks, in Isa’s normal, sweet voice once again.

  “Why did you lie to me, Isa?”

  “It’s not Isa,” she snaps. “It’s Isabella, once and for all. And I lied to get you off my back.”

  “All your grades have slipped. Imagine my shock when I was told that, at this rate, you’ll have to repeat the year.”

  “So what?”

  “I just don’t understand. You…you were always such a good student! And, you and I, we’ve always trusted each other. So I just want to know why!”

  “Trusted each other?” Isabella exclaims. “Taylor, we didn’t trust each other. You patted yourself on the back for being one of the cool parents, and I told you just enough to make you feel like one.”

  Taylor slaps her.

  It’s a shock to both of them. Isabella doubles over, gasping for breath. This really happened. She just did that. Who does she think she is?

  “How dare you?”

  Taylor gulps. “We’re going to deal with this,” she says hoarsely. “It’s your luck that I have the gala tomorrow. After it’s over, we’re going to have a talk. A serious talk.”

  And Taylor turns around and runs down the hall, leaving Isabella with her hand pressed to her burning cheek, gasping, all alone.

  * * *

  Isabella wonders how much longer she can keep up the charade. Everyone at school wants to know where Alexa is. First Nick stopped showing up, then Ines fell out of the window, and now another one from the theater club who’s nowhere to be found.

  And now she’s been called into Greer’s office. She swans past the door, the hem of her dress sweeping the floor. Greer is sitting behind her desk, thin and pale greenish like a human string bean. To think she used to find this witch intimidating.

  “Isa,” Greer says, wasting no time.

  “Is my outfit inappropriate again?” Isabella asks, batting her lashes with fake innocence.

  “This is not about your outfit.” Her voice drops to a hiss. “I called you here to ask about your classmate.”

  “Which one?” Isa picks up a random sheet of paper that sits on the desk in front of Greer and fans herself.

  “You must have noticed that Alexa stopped attending school.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Alexa. She’s at my house.”

  “Why hasn’t she called her family?”

  “Oh, she said to tell everyone she’s just really upset and doesn’t want to see anyone. She’s broken up because the school play got canceled. Which you helped do, so…”

  Some of these things are technically not a lie. Especially the last part. Greer did cancel the school play, with two cast members unaccounted for.

  “If it were up to me, I’d have that whole theater department shut down,” Greer says coldly.

  “But it’s not up to you,” Isabella sums up. “So, if that’s all, I’m going to go.”

  As she walks down the hall, Isabella can feel everyone looking. It’s probably her favorite sensation—like taking a champagne bath. All those gazes riveted on her in fascination, wonderment, adoration, and even a smidgen of fear that makes it all the more delicious, like that final dash of spice in a dish. She doesn’t care that the play was canceled. She doesn’t need the play, or the theater club, or Kendra, or Alexa, or Nick, or anyone. She has waited for so long for this, and her patience paid off. Now she doesn’t have to do anything. All she has to do is just exist.

  And she can be sure that everybody is looking.

  Thirty-Two

  Eve arrives in town on a postcard-pretty, Norman Rockwell–esque Saturday morning. Last night it snowed, and the town of Amory looks like the inside of a snow globe with that historic charm that the tourism website boasted about. But Eve, clutching the steering wheel of her car, barely notices it. She’s jittery like she had too many energy drinks before rehearsal.

  It really doesn’t help that she’s only been driving for a month or so. The road is slippery, and the snowbanks everywhere are huge. Which probably explains why most of the cars she encounters are SUVs, hulking over her compact little rental. What’s worse, the GPS on Eve’s phone seems to have lost the plot. She only realizes she missed her turn when the slightly annoyed voice of the GPS announces rerouting. When she chances looking away from the road to glance at the map, the GPS can’t seem to find her at all: the blue dot that represents Eve’s car darts like mad all over the screen.

  Oh, well. Hopefully the town’s too small to get lost in. She drives up to the university, which looks like some romantic castle shrouded in snow, a sight straight out of a Disney movie. She circles the campus over and over but can’t for the life of her figure out which way to go. As she passes in front of the gates yet again, she sees someone, probably a student, idling by the fence.

  “Excuse me,” Eve yells, rolling down the window. Her breath immediately billows in a puff of steam, and ice-cold air rushes into the car’s toasty interior, making her shiver. “I’m looking for the Granger House.”

  Even before she speaks, she realizes something’s not right. The knot of foreboding in her stomach tightens. First of all, the girl’s dressed way too lightly for the weather. She stumbles through the snow in high-heeled stilettos, huddling in a sweatshirt that she wears over a ridiculous dress. Theater costume? It must be. She turns around slowly, and Eve recoils at the sight of her face. It’s streaked with tears that freeze in the cold air. The eyelash extensions on her right eye are coming off, which makes it look like her eyelid is drooping. Her lips are obviously fake, swollen from injections, with a ring of bruises around her mouth. Her hair is matted, but it’s her skin that makes Eve instinctively recoil. It looks like some sort of Halloween costume a few months too late: her face is crisscrossed with a web of badly healing cuts.

  “Are you okay?” Eve asks, feeling like a complete idiot because she’s obviously not okay.

  The girl doesn’t answer. She raises her arm and points to som
ewhere behind Eve.

  Eve shudders.

  “What you’re looking for,” the girl rasps. “There it is.”

  Eve whips her head around and gives a start. How could she not have seen it? It’s right there, across the expanse of snow-covered lawn. It stands tall and proud, less like a palace and more like a fortress. She recognizes the Venetian arched windows right away.

  The Isabella Granger house.

  “Thank you,” Eve chokes out. But, when she turns around, the strange girl is nowhere to be seen.

  Not a great start.

  The road leading to the entrance of the house is snowed in. Eve’s car manages only a couple hundred feet before getting hopelessly stuck. She supposes she really should have gone for a model with all-wheel drive when she had the chance. But, as it stands, the wheels spin pointlessly in nothingness with a loud whine, and the car refuses to budge another inch.

  With a groan, Eve opens the door and climbs out. Her winter boots are barely a match for the deep snow, and so she begins the slow, painful trudge to the front doors of the Granger house. The cold creeps inside her coat and under her scarf. She wishes she’d worn a hat.

  When she reaches the steps that lead to the majestic double doors, she’s had just about enough. Snow has gotten into her boots but also behind her collar and under her sleeves, and her teeth are chattering. Still, she momentarily forgets about everything when she finds herself face-to-face with these doors. They loom over her, majestic yet ominous. The gilt number 6 at the top glints painfully bright in the cold sunlight.

  Eve picks up the heavy knocker and knocks. The sound is deep and powerful, resonating in her very bones. But, if anyone inside hears it, there’s no way to tell, because the doors stay closed.

  “Isa?” Eve yells out. All that gorgeous snow seems to absorb all sound, and her voice, which carries so well in a theater, fizzles out, weak and powerless. “Isa! Open the door!”

  She reaches for the phone in her coat pocket. Her hands are freezing, and her fingers are stiff and barely move. The screen, too, seems slowed down by the cold, shimmering weakly under her touch. She tries to dial Isa’s number, but, just as she finally manages to hit the call button, the one bar of signal she has out here disappears, and the call disconnects.

  Cursing, she tries to stick the phone back in her pocket, but her cold hands fumble. The phone slips out, goes flying, bounces off the stairs, and vanishes in the snowbank.

  Eve curses and dives after it. She feels around in the snow with her hands until she loses all sensation.

  “Who are you?”

  The voice comes from above her, and she shoots to her feet. But in the doorway isn’t Isa. It’s some girl Eve doesn’t know but who looks vaguely familiar. She’s dressed in a strange period costume—or more like someone’s idea of a period costume. The result is an anachronistic mishmash of Jazz Age, art nouveau, and frilly Edwardian fashion. Her dress is short and tasseled, with Victorian low-heeled boots, a lace shawl over her shoulders and a giant brimmed hat garnished generously with feathers. With all that, plus saucer eyes in dark kohl and so many strings of (fake?) pearls it’s a wonder how she holds her head up.

  “I’m Eve,” Eve says. “Isa’s friend? I was supposed to come visit. I don’t know if Isa told you—”

  “Isabella didn’t tell me anything,” the girl says coldly.

  “Well, if you tell her it’s Eve, she’ll let me in.”

  “Why should I?”

  Eve takes a small step back, baffled. It finally clicks who this girl is. She saw her on the Project Isabella account.

  “Out of my way,” Eve says, and pushes past her. The girl’s indignant yelp follows on her heels.

  Eve bursts through the doors and can’t help but stop cold. She’s both amazed and overwhelmed. The photos and Isa’s stories can’t hold a candle to the real thing. It’s enormous. Dust and echoes swirl under the high ceiling. The chandelier is lit, but the cobwebs that shroud it mute the light, tinging it dull yellow like an old photograph. The staircase looms at the far end of the room. From upstairs, soft music wafts down, mellow jazz full of the scritch-scratch of an old record. Eve hears voices and laughter, and, without thinking, races up that giant staircase.

  Once she reaches the second floor, she stops, trying to get her bearings. She peers into the hallway, but it’s empty. Only one or two wall lights are on, projecting a cold, otherworldly sort of light onto the walls. She goes up another flight of stairs—how many floors does this place have? Who needs that many rooms?—but the third floor is another disappointment. When she gets to the fourth, the music grows louder. Eve understands right away that she found what she was looking for: the tall double doors at the end of the hall are wide open, and that’s where the music is coming from. The same cold light falls through the doorway in long beams onto the parquet floor.

  Eve takes step after step toward those double doors. Her heart hammers. Finally she can see inside: another oversized room, one that used to be a ballroom. The walls are covered in paintings from floor to ceiling. All paintings of Isabella.

  At the center of the room is a long fainting couch surrounded by mismatched end tables, armchairs, and ottomans. Like someone raided an antique shop. An honest-to-god ancient gramophone sits on the floor, and that’s where the scratchy music is coming from. With all the voices and laughter she heard, Eve expected to find a whole party, so she’s a little shocked to see the room empty except for Isa, who lounges on the couch. In one hand, she’s holding a tall glass, and in the other, her phone. Eve stands there awkwardly, wondering if she should say something, because Isa is wholly absorbed in the screen. She scrolls, her face bathed in the light, the screen reflecting in her eyes, which makes her look unnerving and robotic but also weirdly angelic. She smiles at something she sees, then scrolls on without wasting a second.

  Eve looks her over. She’s a little shocked to see in person just how much her friend changed. Sure, photoshopped pictures are one thing—everything on Insta is fake, anyway, everyone knows that—but to see it with her own eyes is overwhelming. Isa’s hair is down past her waist and auburn again, and her face looks different. Like Eve is looking at her through a filter. Her features are sharper and more angular, and her skin tone is perfectly even but flat, like she’s wearing three coats of full-coverage foundation. For all Eve knows, she is, but it didn’t used to be her thing.

  And that crazy outfit. It reminds Eve of a late Edwardian tea-gown with its excess of satiny fabric, lace, and ruffles and its loose lines. Except Isa is wearing sneakers with it. Pale-blue Converse high-tops that peek out from under the skirt. Eve remembers buying them with her back home.

  Eve is so taken aback that she doesn’t notice that Isa has looked up from her phone and is now staring right at her. When their eyes meet, the knot in Eve’s stomach tightens.

  “It’s you,” Isa says in mild surprise. “I didn’t invite you.”

  Thirty-Three

  “Taylor invited me,” Eve says. “So here I am. So sorry you’re not happy to see me.”

  Isa shrugs. “Taylor can’t invite anyone. It’s not her house to invite people to.”

  “Then whose house is it? Yours?”

  Isa rolls her eyes and giggles. “The university’s. Duh. I know it’s not my house. What am I, crazy?”

  “Then maybe you can stop pouting and say hello to your best friend since first grade, Isa.”

  “Isabella,” she corrects, almost mindlessly. “And, fine, if people seem to think it’s okay to just pop in unannounced, I’ll play along.” She gets up and stretches languorously. “Hello, Eve dear.”

  In that moment, Eve hears hurried steps behind her, and spins around. It’s the girl from the entrance. She’s panting from racing all the way up here, and she looks lost. “Isabella, I’m so sorry,” she exhales. She crosses the room and stops cold in front of Isa, a few respectful feet away, and lo
wers her head. Like she’s Isa’s actual maid, Eve thinks incredulously.

  “I didn’t want to let her in! She just—”

  “That’s all right, Sara,” Isa says in a honeyed voice. “Don’t you see, this is my old friend Eve. How kind of her to spare some time from her fabulous life in Brooklyn to come down and visit little old me, out here in the sticks.”

  That stings. “I know I should have come sooner,” Eve mutters.

  “No matter, no matter. Call the others, Sara. Let’s have a little celebration in my friend’s honor. After all, the rest of the world may have descended into chaos, but I still have my manners.”

  Who the hell talks this way? Eve thinks. Sara takes out her phone and starts texting, the only element in this strange picture that reminds Eve that she is, in fact, still in the current year.

  Isa sashays over to the gramophone—if that’s what it is—and turns up the volume. The music grows louder and, if it was at all possible, scratchier. “Drinks!” Isa exclaims. She swans over to a vanity that looks a little out of place—How did they manage to drag it up here? Eve wonders—and pulls open drawer after drawer. Glasses appear, followed by dusty bottles. They look like nothing from this century, Eve thinks in alarm.

  “Isa, you don’t drink,” she finds herself saying. “At least, you didn’t used to.”

  “Exactly. And now I do. I’m a big girl, Eve. Now, do you want a cocktail? Aviation, White Plush? I’d make you a gin fizz, but I don’t have any eggs.”

  “I’ve never heard of any of those.” And neither have you.

  But Isa ignores her. She busily mixes the contents of those scary bottles in two highball glasses and stirs with a long spoon. “Here,” she says, holding one glass out to Eve. Its contents look alarmingly green. Eve takes the glass.

  “Santé, santé,” Isa is saying, clinking her glass aggressively with Eve’s. Then she drinks. Not a ladylike sip either. She gulps from the glass, emptying half of it in seconds. Eve pretends to drink, dipping her lips in the liquid while keeping an eye on Isa. She doesn’t want to leave her out of sight for a second. Whatever is in that glass has a smell so eye-watering it might as well be gasoline. “Eve,” Isa says, and claps her hand on Eve’s shoulder. “You know what? You’re just in time.”