“What if she’s sick?” I said, but no one was listening to me.
I could no longer stay still. I left my post of waiting in the wings just offstage. I pushed my way through the maze of zigzagging bodies and panicked stagehands who were waving clipboards and yelling at a decibel level never over that of a whisper.
Arriving at Honor’s dressing room, I threw open the door. She wasn’t there. My stomach clenched. I knew she wasn’t there. I had just seen someone checking, but to see the emptiness for myself dropped a weight into the pit of my stomach.
“Honor?” I, too, whisper-yelled as I ran. Next stop was the backstage bathroom. “Honor?” I knocked softly, but when the door opened it was the actress playing Charmion, Cleopatra’s lady in waiting. “Have you seen Honor?” I asked. She shook her head solemnly, her teeth clenched as if she knew we were quickly veering into dangerous territory.
My pulse was climbing dangerously high. Meanwhile, the number of minutes to curtain was sinking lower.
“Last I saw her was right after Helen finished restitching the hem of her dress,” she confided. And then the actress whose name I really should remember considering I was supposed to be acting opposite of her in T minus four (I hoped?) minutes hustled off to take her own mark. Great.
Where was Honor? Where was she? This time I mussed up my hair before I could tell my hands not to. Something didn’t feel right. Honor should be here—no, she would be here. It didn’t make sense. I’d seen her. Her makeup had been done. She’d been dressed. She was ready.
But as I pushed from one end of the stage to the other in search of her, I knew with a sinking sensation that she was nowhere to be found. It was like my girlfriend—did I really just call her my girlfriend? Yes, I did—just vanished.
Worry needled me, making it impossible to stand still. Think, think, think. The pandemonium was no longer contained backstage. Audience members were rumbling on the other side of the curtain as the volume back here continued to rise. They must be sensing a problem. They were right.
Think.
My chin lifted from my hands. Lena. I had to find Lena. She knew every hiding place. She would know where to find Honor.
The idea spurred me to motion. At two minutes to curtain, I took the back corridor Lena had once shown me all the way up to the light and sound booth. I pushed the door to the booth open only to find it empty.
I glanced around the booth. Did Mrs. Fleury know that no one was manning the controls? I took one last look at the flickering lights of the sound board. Not a sign of Lena anywhere. Something wasn’t right. It was as though she hadn’t even been here.
By the time that I had rushed back to stage level, it was one minute to curtain. Beads of sweat had formed at my temples and more were rolling down my vertebrae inch by excruciating inch.
My heart, suffering a full-scale paralysis, stopped beating altogether. It was the opening number. I had practiced the choreography a thousand times. My first lines of the musical were flooding back to me.
I reached for the sleeve of a Scene Two girl. “Where’s Mrs. Fleury?” I asked. “I have to speak to her.”
“Not. Now,” the girl hissed. “Honor isn’t here.”
“I know, that’s what I have to talk to her about.” Honor wasn’t here. Lena wasn’t here.
The girl was scratching feverishly at her arms. Nerves. “Last time I saw Mrs. Fleury, she was going down to the orchestra pit but I don’t think she’s there anymore.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know, but she didn’t tell us not to start.”
And at that moment, the pianist started playing. The crowd outside the curtain was quieting.
“I need help. I need to go find Honor.” But no one was listening anymore. The music drowned out the sound backstage.
My heart jump-started as if by a defibrillator and for another beat, I stood torn between my gut, which was telling me that something was horribly wrong—Honor wasn’t going to show—and the performance and all the people waiting for me, counting on me to go on.
What if I was wrong? What if Honor was on her way to the stage right now and I was completely overreacting?
Then again, what if, more important, she wasn’t?
I didn’t have time to weigh the pros and cons. It was now or never and when decision time was thrust on me, I sprinted out of the theater just as the curtain was opening.
The cool air hit me like a reality check to the gut. I had left a crowd of hundreds behind. I would be letting everyone down. But I was going to have to put that behind me now. I’d abandoned the production for a reason and that reason needed me. At least I thought so.
Looking out from the sidewalk to the parking lot, I patted down my leather skirt and tunic. Keys. Wallet. Phone. None of them were there. Of course, they weren’t there. I was in costume.
I raked my fingernails over my scalp. “You have got to be kidding me!” I shouted.
There were a few latecomers that I was sure Mrs. Fleury would love the opportunity to lecture about the definition of “on time” when it came to the dramatic arts. Several of them stared at me as they walked by, sparking an image with sickening clarity of Aunt Mel and Uncle Joe seated in the audience waiting for my grand premiere that wasn’t going to happen anymore.
I tried to picture Honor with the same level of clarity, but it was as if the memory of her face was already blurring at the edges. Because a frenzied train of thoughts was bulldozing my consciousness. The pieces of a puzzle I didn’t know I was supposed to be solving were coming together, piece by bloody piece. Mrs. Dolsey. Drake. Honor.
And Lena.
A car drove up to the curb, sleek and black with an engine that purred like a house cat.
How had I missed the common thread between them? I guess because the only way I could have seen it was by staring directly into the mirror. I knew now that the common thread all along had been me. And that if something happened to Honor—if anything happened to her—it would be all my fault.
I made a split-second decision to abandon Rule Number Two and jumped out in front of the approaching sports car.
“Hey!” I shouted over the screech of wheels on asphalt. My hip hit the hood and I rolled over its top, landing upright on the other side. “Hey! I need your car.” I rubbed the bruising spot on my side.
The driver had popped open the door. He was bald with a shiny head and round spectacles. He stepped an alligator-skin loafer out of the car, his mouth caught between a question and a yell.
Inside the applause would be dying out. Confusion would be taking over. Everyone would be trying to hold their proverbial shit together.
And here I was.
The driver reached for the key fob that was sitting in the all-black leather cup holder. “This is my car,” he said, as if there was some misunderstanding on my part.
I didn’t have time for this.
“Thanks for the update.” I latched onto the man’s sweater and yanked him sideways out of the car. “But I wasn’t asking a question.”
He stumbled a few steps and when he raised his eyes to meet mine, which were now staring at him through his own car window, his rage shined from them like two wet stones.
I slammed the door shut behind me and clicked the lock button. “I’ll bring it back. Promise.”
He thrust his finger in my face, though it was blocked by the glass between us. “I’m calling the police,” he said.
I moved the gear from park to drive. “Good,” I said. “Can you send them to the Hollows? There’s a cabin there. Used to belong to a Leroux. And, uh, watch your feet.” I flitted my eyes down to where he was standing too close to the tires.
He jumped backward just as I jammed my foot onto the accelerator. The engine roared to life, and the car lunged forward. The power vibrated through the steering wheel. My seat tilted sideways as I swung into a tight U-turn and sped off down the road in the direction of the dark forest.
Rule Number One: No Girls.
>
Rule Number Two: No Fast Cars.
Rule Number Three: Absolutely No Trouble.
And each one of them fell away, disappearing in the rearview mirror until they were out of sight.
TWENTY-TWO
Lena
The only sound in the cabin was that of the legs of a chair beating an uneven pattern on the floor. Honor’s hands and ankles were still lashed together. They’d been tied to the chair, and she now pushed her toes against the dusty floor, lifting the wooden pegs before letting them fall fruitlessly to the floor. It was almost sad to watch how hard she was trying.
I chewed on the side of my thumb and spit a piece of dead skin on the floor before taking another sip from the tepid glass of water I’d run from the sink. I licked the trace of liquid from my upper lip and rounded the squat counter that separated my grandfather’s old stove top from the rest of the cabin’s interior.
Candles flickered on the carved wooden table, casting shadows off the rotting beams that were holding up the roof over our heads. Honor had finished screaming ten minutes ago. I’d let her shriek like a B-movie horror star until her voice got so hoarse it sounded like she was trying to yell over shards of glass in her throat. No one out here could hear us, and it had seemed like a losing battle to shut her up right away.
Now that she was finished, there were slug trails of snot running from her nostrils. The black liner and blue eye shadow of her Cleopatra makeup had smeared so that she looked like a weeping clown. Her bone-sharp shoulder blades stuck out as she slumped over, as fragile as a porcelain doll.
I walked slowly over to stand in front of her. The sound of my thick black boots shook the old wood boards beneath us. I folded my arms across my chest. “You know, I didn’t want to do this, Honor. You’re the one that’s made me.”
Her hair—the real, auburn, American-girl hair because the black wig had fallen off in the trunk—hung down over her face. “Not true, that’s not true,” she muttered at the ground. The knock knock knock of the chair’s legs picked back up. But she and I both knew she wasn’t going anywhere unless I said so.
I traced a circle on the floor with the toe of my boot. “Do you think Chris will still love you even if you’re not pretty?”
At that, she looked up at me reluctantly. Her lower lip quivered, and her clumped-together eyelashes left black marks on her lids. “What are you talking about?” She jerked forward and the rope holding her chest to the chair back knocked the breath out of her.
Her mouth dropped open.
“Because it’s not about that with him and me. We’re different.”
I saw the fear building in the frantic pulse that twitched below the base of her ear. No matter what they told themselves, girls that were beautiful were so attached to it.
“What did I do wrong? Why are you doing this, Lena? Is it just because you’re miserable you have to make everyone else miserable along with you?”
I lunged forward and put my nose as close to hers as I could without touching her. “I’m not miserable. I’m the happiest I’ve been in my entire life.” Drops of my saliva sprinkled her cheeks. “Don’t you get that?”
She turned her face from me.
I stood up straight again. From outside, the darkness pressed in on us. Tree branches scraped the rooftop.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” I said. “You’ve been tricking Chris.” I pointed my finger at her chest.
She swallowed and it looked painful for her to do it, as if her throat was sore from all that useless screaming. “How, Lena? How could I have possibly been tricking him?”
“You—you’ve been distracting him.”
Her lower teeth stuck out from her upper ones. “From what?” she spat.
I curled my outstretched finger into my fist. “You’re going to get him into trouble. Things are going to end badly.” I was pacing back and forth, back and forth. Stomp, stomp, stomp. “There are rules, Honor.”
“I know about the rules.”
I whipped around to face her. This surprised me. This caught me off guard. “Then—then—then, you’re even more guilty than I thought.”
“Please,” Honor said, “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I shook my head furiously. “No, no, you did. You did mean something by it. You meant to take him away. But—but guess what? I feel sorry for you,” I said. “You don’t know Chris like I do. You will never know him the way I know him. No matter what.”
Honor was breathing hard. Her breast rose and fell and each draw of air took something out of her. “Lena, you have a school-girl crush on him. I get it. I’ve been there. We all know I have. But it will fade. Please, Lena.”
“I don’t!” Before I could stop myself, I had reached out and slapped her. The edge of my ring grazed her cheek, leaving a shallow pink cut there that filled slowly with bright-red blood, though not enough to drip. She kept her head turned from me, chin pointed to her shoulder. She wasn’t laughing anymore. Her jaw was tense, and I could see the tendons working. “You made me do that,” I said, cradling my own hand. “You made me. Chris is my friend. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m not perverted by some ridiculous high school romance like you. I want what’s best for him. Only me.” I shoved my thumb into the bone running between my ribs. “You don’t know—”
She barely moved her lips when she spoke. She didn’t look at me, but I could feel the heat rolling off her body. “Three, absolutely no trouble,” she said slowly. “Two, no fast cars. One … no girls.” She looked sad. “Why these three rules? Because if he doesn’t make it work in Hollow Pines, he’ll be sent to military school. He wants to go home. He wants so badly to get out of here. I know this because he told me. We talk. Plenty. We were making it work. Chris and I.”
The way she said “Chris and I” hit like a knife wound through the heart. It was so clear that she intended no room for me in that equation. And that made me furious.
“You’re wrong.” I stamped to the fireplace. My vision had narrowed to pinholes. Next to the poker and iron tools that were leaning against the fireplace rested a red plastic fuel canister. I picked it up by the handle, still heavy, and the gasoline sloshed around inside.
Honor whipped to attention. “What is that?” she demanded.
I cradled the canister in my arms. It was heavy. But I didn’t need to be strong like Marcy. I just needed to be clever. And I had been.
And now Honor would pay for being so insolent.
“What, this?” I tipped the fuel can over, and the gas began splashing onto the floor at Honor’s feet. She drew her toes under the chair, squirming against the back. “This is gasoline.” The smell of it was sweet and addictive. It flooded the room.
“What—what are you doing?”
Her eyes were wide, the whites visible the whole way around her irises.
I started to walk in a circle around Honor, pouring as I went. “John Mark bullied Chris. I couldn’t let him go unpunished. Mrs. Dolsey sent Chris to the principal’s office.” The canister grew lighter as I walked. “And I couldn’t let her go unpunished.” Drops splattered Honor’s white Cleopatra gown, already tattered at the hem and coming loose from the gold serpentine belt at her waist. “Drake yelled at Chris incessantly,” I continued. “And of course I couldn’t let him go unpunished, either.”
She contorted her neck this way and that, trying to trace my path. She yanked at the ties around her wrists. Finally, I’d completed the circle and I stood in front of her again. From my back pocket I retrieved a travel matchbox. I slid the match bed out and extracted one, its red and gray head perfectly intact.
At this, Honor started to cry again. I was no longer invisible to her. I was here and she saw me. In fact, she couldn’t take her eyes off me.
“Please, Lena. Please. Please. I didn’t do any of those things. Please.” Her sobbing mouth turned as lopsided as a jack-o-lantern’s as I struck the match head and watched it burst into flame. “I love Chris,” she said.
; The red and orange fire reflected off the tears shining in her eyes.
“And that,” I said, “is why you are the worst of all.”
And then I dropped it to the ground.
TWENTY-THREE
Chris
Before I could see the cabin, I smelled smoke and for a split second I was confused at the comfortingly familiar aroma and the way it reminded me of fall back east, those times when we’d rent a house in the country and people would light their fireplaces for the first time and smoke would go curling out of the chimney tops and everything was fine.
I breathed deeply, letting my pace lag for just a moment because the muscles in my legs were screaming for a break and my lungs felt raw and overworked. The cheap plastic armor of my Mark Antony costume chafed my waist, and I finally managed to wrestle it over my head and drop it into a bush as I pushed through the thickening treescape of the Hollows.
Everything wasn’t fine. Blood pumped in my ears, louder than the sounds of the forest around me. A stray twig scratched my nose. I snapped it off and threw it behind me. Burrs and pine needles kept working their way into the dance shoes I wore, digging painfully into my heels and between my toes.
And then came the break in the trees. It felt as if it’d taken forever to reach it, and I still thought that maybe I was wrong about Lena and about Honor when the cabin at last came into view. The windows were awash in light, which was strange because the cabin didn’t have electricity.
From inside, light bounced unevenly off the opposite walls and then I saw it. A lick of flame visible over the sill.
No. No, no, no.
I was the link. I was the boat and behind me was the wake of destruction and death in Hollow Pines. It was me. Dread seized my lungs. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. I wanted to wake up and still be living in New York. Or I wanted to wake up and have pancakes with Honor to celebrate a successful opening night because I was realizing that would be fine now, too. Better than fine.
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