Teen Phantom

by Chandler Baker

  She tapped on the glass and motioned for me to come out. Blinking to make sure I wasn’t stuck in a really weird dream, I quickly came to the decision that I had no choice but to go out there and confront her, even though the thought made my throat tighten.

  Things were getting a little too strange with Lena, weren’t they? And this. This.

  This I couldn’t ignore.

  I motioned for her to wait. I then slid my feet into a worn-in pair of sheepskin slippers and pulled a hooded sweatshirt over my bare chest. Tippy-toeing so as not to wake Aunt Mel, I carefully left my bedroom and unlocked the front door before stepping outside into the dewy predawn hours of morning.

  Lena stood stock-still in the middle of my aunt and uncle’s lawn like the first scary shot of a horror movie. From next door came the machine-gun whir of the neighbor’s sprinkler system starting up. It made my skin twitch.

  “Hi,” Lena said.

  I rubbed my arms instinctively against the damp chill of the air. “It’s the middle of the night,” I reiterated because surely this fact had to mean something to her.

  “I don’t sleep much,” she said. “Guess what?” she asked as if I came out to play games.

  “What?” I said, no longer trying to mask the whole annoyance thing because as far as I could tell, Lena wasn’t bleeding from the head or on the run from evil kidnappers or any of the other handful of appropriate reasons for waking me up at three o’clock in the morning.

  “Misty’s gone,” she said. I slid my hand over my face and left it over my eyes so that I was peeking at her only through my fingers. “My dad’s girlfriend. She’s not coming back. Isn’t that great?”

  I shook my head in a sort of disbelief. “Lena.” I was working to keep my tone gentle when what I wanted to do was scream at her that I didn’t care. Because honestly, I’d known Lena was odd since the day I met her. Girls didn’t eat lunch in the rafters of empty auditoriums because they had excellent social skills. I knew that. But when one is in desperate need of friendly faces, one overlooks some major red flags. One gives the benefit of the doubt. One is intentionally blind and nice and maybe, just maybe, a little naive. And yeah, okay, in that case this one was me. Be gentle, but firm, I told myself because I did still feel bad for Lena. “That’s great. Really, it is. But opening night is today.”

  “I thought you’d be happy for me.” There was a flat quality to the way she was speaking that raised alarm bells in my head.

  The next-door neighbor’s sprinkler was wetting an arc on the sidewalk beside us. How did I get here? This felt like a bizarre dream. I wanted back in the warmth of my bed. I wasn’t a morning person, so I sure as hell wasn’t a three-in-the-morning person. “I am. Really, I am. But you showing up like this? Honestly, it’s a little … creepy.” I forced myself to meet her eye because I wanted to at least offer her that much dignity.

  “You don’t mean that,” she said. “Is this about yesterday? About our argument?”

  “Lena.”

  “I’m sorry about our argument. That’s the other reason I came over. To say that. Sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry. “I don’t want to ever fight with you. That’s why I came to tell you about Misty, too. She was putting me in a bad mood and now that’s better so everything should be fine between us.”

  I looked up at the moon, resisting the urge to shout obscenities into the night sky. “I don’t mean to sound harsh, okay? I’m just thinking that maybe we need to set some boundaries.”

  “It’s not my fault that you shouldn’t be dating Honor.” Lena kept pinching the skin on the back of her hand and letting it go. I winced as she continued to pinch. “But the rules are there for a reason. You said so yourself. You told me. You tell me everything.” Finally, she stopped pinching, aiming all of her attention directly at me. “This is a bad idea, Chris. I have a bad feeling about this. She’s not good for you.”

  I was trying to remain calm. I didn’t want to yell at her. I was sure she’d had enough people in her life yell at her. There was more damage there than I’d realized. I saw that now. “Nobody wrote the rules in stone,” I said.

  “That’s not true!” Lena raised her voice and the muscle in my cheek spasmed. “This is her talking. This isn’t you.” She took two steps toward me and, without meaning to, I realized I was holding up a hand and taking two of my own back, away from her.

  “Whoa, Lena. Relax. I—look, we haven’t even known each other that long. This—this isn’t about school yesterday. Not really,” I said, watching the distance between us carefully. “If I gave you the wrong impression, I really am sorry. I’m not interested in you like that.”

  Her expression went dark. “You think that’s what this is about?” Her volume rose. “You think that’s what this is about?” Higher. Higher. I looked over my shoulder. Any minute lights would be going on in the windows of my house, of the house next door, of the whole damn neighborhood. “No. No!”

  “Shhhh—Lena, keep it down.”

  “I understand you, Chris Autry. I am your best friend. You said so yourself. I … I helped you.” Her voice had come down but only a little, and I was waiting to hear a shout that the police had been called.

  I retreated another cautious step. “Honor and I, we’re applying to a summer intensive in New York at a really prestigious studio. It’s a big opportunity for me. The show is important. To both of us. I’m using it for my application. So, I don’t know, maybe it’s best if you and I spend a little time apart. You know, until things calm down,” I said.

  “Chris, wait,” she called after me as I turned toward the door and for a heartbeat, I did. I turned with a small frown and looked at Lena, whose expression was no longer dark and whose voice was no longer shrieking at me. “This is about her. This is only about her.” She reminded me of a broken doll who’d been abandoned for better, newer toys. She’d been my friend in this place. But she wasn’t being a friend now. If she were, she’d understand how important the show was to me and to Honor. She would get it.

  “Goodnight, Lena,” I said and went back inside.

  It was late and I knew the first daylight would be seeping out from the horizon soon. But for the longest time after that I lay in bed waiting for the sound of Lena’s engine revving, so that I would know she was gone.

  Only it never did. And eventually I fell into a fitful sleep during which I dreamed that Lena was watching me through the window. But the next time I woke up, I split the blinds to see that at some point during the night, she’d left.

  * * *

  SURPRISINGLY, LENA OCCUPIED very little of my brain space over the course of the day. I had more important things to worry about, like not vomiting up the half a bowl of oatmeal I ate this morning. It was opening night of Antony and Cleopatra and I was not only one half of the title-character duo, but also as green as any lead actor had ever been in his life. How many show openings had I attended? And never had I fully realized that it was like this on the other side. All shaking hands and chattering teeth.

  At 3:45, it was time to head to the theater where I would either put forth a performance worthy of a spot at the Poncy Sebastian Studio or I wouldn’t.

  I left tickets on the kitchen counter for Aunt Mel and Uncle Joe. And upon arrival to Hollow Pines High School I learned something about the opening of a show and that was that even though I’d been inside Hollow Pines High’s auditorium dozens of times before, three hours before curtain call, the space could feel completely different to me, like it had undergone a transformation. I stood at the back, looking up at the stage. In a matter of hours, I would be up there singing and acting and suddenly I realized that there were so many audience seats that I couldn’t possibly count them all. The blood flowing in my veins felt as though it’d taken on a low-charged electric hum as I walked down the aisle and climbed the stairs to the backstage wings.

  Few of the cast or crew had arrived yet, but I’d heeded Mrs. Fleury’s warning that, as her Mark Antony, I should be there promptly at four. Since s
he had suffered enough so far to bring this seemingly cursed production to life, I reasoned that running late would be unnecessarily cruel. So I found the rack of costumes and the hanger with my name on it. This was the first time I was seeing the finished product and I admired the details of the Roman outfit and the painstaking amount of time it must have taken to turn me into Mark Antony.

  I got dressed quickly and nervously, sliding a short-sleeved tunic on over my head and then pulling a leather skirt up to my waist. For the first scene I’d also be wearing my armor, which was a cut-up plastic bodysuit painted a distressed copper. Once on, I knocked my knuckles on the chest plate.

  From somewhere in the theater bowels, I heard Mrs. Fleury’s shrill voice shouting, “Two and a half hours to curtain. This is not a drill; this is not a drill.”

  Right, then, this was it. I better get warmed up and run through a final bit of choreography with Mrs. Fleury. I’d gotten remarkably better in the last week alone. But first I wanted to go in search of Honor.

  I found her alone in her dressing room, her back toward me. “Wow,” I said and she jumped, turning to me, her eyes wide with surprise.

  Her hand flew over her heart. “You scared me!”

  I grinned. “Sorry, but … wow.”

  Honor wore a cropped black wig with a gold headpiece. Eyeliner stretched from the inner corners of her eyes nearly to her temples. Thick lines of shimmery bronzer swept the bottom edge of her cheekbones, giving dramatic angles to her face that weren’t there before. She stood and the hem of a white flowing gown with a jeweled collar dropped from her knees to cover her feet.

  “What do you think?” She held out her arms and twirled. Everyone else may have seen Honor’s sister, the pictures, the cloudy mess of past that hovered around her, but I saw only her and I was glad that I’d been given that chance.

  “I think that you’ve certainly got the whole queen thing down.” I bowed low, and she rolled her eyes.

  “You don’t look too bad yourself,” she said. “No glasses, I see.”

  I closed one eye, then the other. “Don’t remind me. Still trying to get used to these contacts.”

  “Not too used to them, I hope. I kind of like the glasses,” she said conspiratorially. “Anyway.” She turned to slide on a pair of gladiator sandals that had been laid out for her. “I probably need to get into character. Don’t laugh, but I’m still working on my Method acting. I think if we get in this summer, that will be my main focus. We get to choose, you know.”

  I wasn’t laughing. “When,” I said. “When you—” I swallowed, realizing how badly I wanted the two of us to be in Manhattan this summer together. “—we, get in.” Honor Hyde looked every inch the actress that she was, and I had a crystal-ball vision of her getting ready for a Broadway performance someday not very far from now.

  “Thank you for believing in me.” I leaned over and pressed my lips to her cheek.

  She blushed a pastel pink. “Good luck.”

  But I was pretty sure I didn’t need it. I already felt like I had all the luck in the world.

  TWENTY

  Lena

  They think they can just ignore me? Now? After everything? They think they can send me back into the shadows? Pretend I didn’t exist?

  No. Not now. Not anymore.

  Last night on his lawn, Chris didn’t know what he was saying. It was her. It was the temptress. The siren. It was—she was—everything that was wrong with this place, and Lena Leroux no longer stood for such things.

  Lena Leroux mattered.

  It wasn’t difficult to infiltrate the skeleton of the theater, to navigate its dim channels in order to find her. I was an animal in my natural habitat. I could feel the warmth of my prey like a spot on my belly, smell her in my nostrils.

  And when I found her, she was a picture-perfect dumb bunny. Deserved to be caught. Survival of the fittest. And the rightest.

  From outside her dressing room, I watched her consumed in a childish game of make-believe. I stalked her as she held her eyes closed—so trusting—pretending to be someone else. A dark wig and face done up so that it belonged to a stranger.

  Honor recited lines under her breath and hummed quietly to herself. What she didn’t do was hear me. Not until the shadow of my body overtook her figure.

  And she turned around and the craziest thing came out of her mouth in that moment and it was “Chris? You—”

  Nothing came after that. Because I wound up my swing, twisting backward, hands clasped together like a golfer. I brought the crowbar down onto her temple. Her wig made a sloppy tilt sideways. And red began to bloom from the jagged cut left in the flesh before her body had even slumped to the floor.

  The bones in her neck seemed to liquefy. Her head fell forward first and pulled her shoulders down over her knees, folding her in two until she collapsed in a heap.

  The entire act of turning a person unconscious was a completely silent affair. I stared down at the jumble of girl and, was it just me, or was I getting better at this?

  Small puffs of air kept coming from her nose. I rolled the sheet and dolly I’d set just outside Honor’s dressing room to inside it and closed the door behind us.

  With the calm efficiency of a mortician, I laid out the sheet flat and then dragged Honor’s body to the middle of it, where I wrapped her up as though cocooning her in a funeral sheath.

  “There you go, Honor.” I patted the shapeless form. “Rest up.” I hoisted her mummified torso and then her legs onto the dolly’s platform.

  Outside the dressing room, the preproduction bustle was beginning to build. The larger set pieces were being carried and placed by crews of backstage hands.

  No one paid me a second glance as I rolled their star away, out of the auditorium, out of the school, and into the cramped trunk of my VW bug.

  The bright-red blood had seeped through the sheet leaving a more russet-colored stain that I noticed when I unfurled the fabric. The pigment had drained from Honor’s face leaving behind a wax doll beneath the smeared stage makeup and parted chapped lips.

  I reached roughly for her hands, holding them together to lash zip ties first around her wrists then her ankles. Her eyelashes were starting to flutter. And just as her eyelids opened, the pupils in her eyes dilating like a hunted animal’s, I closed the trunk over her head.

  I felt a small smile creep up the corners of my mouth as I went around front and turned the ignition. Everything would be okay. Everything would be better now. I was the best best friend that anyone could ask for and I knew Chris would see it, too, when he was ready. The things I had done for him.

  And as I drove down the road, away from the sparkle of the opening night of Hollow Pines High’s Antony and Cleopatra, the pounding that came from inside the trunk of the car proved to be only a minor bother.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Chris

  “Five minutes to curtain.”

  I rubbed my palms together wondering exactly how much sweatier they could get in another five minutes. Deep breaths. I bobbed on the balls of my feet, trying desperately to remember my first line of the musical. But my mind had gone blank.

  I pressed my fingers into my belly. This can’t be good; this can’t be good.

  Beyond the velvet curtains, the sound of voices grew as the uncountable number of audience seats filled. When I listened carefully, I could catch the rustling of programs. The squeak of chair backs. Breathe out, I commanded.

  Backstage it was amazing how much panic and chaos could take place with very little noise. The cast and crew moved like a swarm of moth wings, fluttering around in the dim light.

  I jumped when a black-clad stagehand tapped me on the shoulder. He leaned in close to my ear. “Hey, have you seen Honor?” he asked.

  I blinked at the question. “A couple hours ago. Why?”

  His jaw was tense. He shook his head. Then he looked over his shoulder and shook his head to another stagehand waiting with a clipboard. The first guy in black took his place at th
e side of the stage, curling his fingers around the cords that would soon pull back the curtain.

  I stopped myself from nervously running my hand through my hair given that it’d already been shellacked into place by the costume department. “But … it’s only five minutes to curtain,” I whispered to him.

  “They’ll find her.” He frowned, as though he’d seen it all before. But with all due respect, he didn’t have to go out there in front of a few hundred people in five minutes.

  The stagehand turned his wrist to check his watch. “Four minutes now.”

  My mouth went dry. I craned to search around, nervous to leave my spot. Where was she? With my nerves going haywire I knew just the sight of her face would act as a balm, but the absence of her? It was beginning to cause me to short-circuit.

  I was pacing back and forth when Zayn, dressed in a knee-length tunic and holding a plastic sword scurried past. He jerked to a stop when he saw me. “Have you seen Honor?” he asked, holding on to my elbow so that our voices would carry only as far as they needed to.

  “No, what is going on? Someone else just asked me that.” I nudged my head in the direction of the stagehand.

  “I don’t know, man. She’s MIA. Mrs. Fleury is over on the other side of the stage blowing a gasket.”

  “She was here earlier. I saw her. She was getting ready.”

  “Well, she’s not here now.” He patted my shoulder. “She’ll turn up. How are you? You all right? You look like you’re going to puke. Mrs. Fleury will kill you if you puke.”

  But the agitation behind stage grew. I watched as cast members opened dressing-room doors. People made hand gestures to one another. I knew what they were about now.

  “She’ll turn up.” Zayn put his hand on my shoulders. “Preshow jitters, that’s all it is.” He glanced backward. “I need to join the other chorus members. See you out there?” He winked.

  I was swaying. Was I about to puke? It was hard to tell. Still no sign of Honor. Honor wouldn’t get preshow jitters, though. At least not the kind that would keep her from curtain call.