Echo After Echo

by Amy Rose Capetta

  She gives a blinking nod. It feels like some kind of Morse code that Adrian can’t figure out. He puts an arm around her and the crowd cheers. Leopold is hovering behind them. Waiting.

  It only takes one perfectly choreographed turn, and then Adrian is kissing Zara. Her mouth is flat, which throws him off. Leopold said that she was ready. But maybe she just needs time to adjust to the new reality. Adrian’s hand in her hair. Adrian’s hips gently nudging hers. Adrian’s, not Ariston’s.

  The audience is going insane. Adrian didn’t think a room of old theater patrons and journalists could get this riled up. It’s like nothing he’s ever experienced. Adrian’s blood rises to match the heat of the lights, the heat of kissing, the roar of applause.

  The room grows furious with cheering — Zara feels it in her body, louder than her pulse. Every time it surges, Adrian drives the kiss deeper.

  Zara has kissed him a hundred times in rehearsal and a hundred more onstage. This feels different — hot and smothering and breathlessly wrong.

  This is her life. Not the Aurelia.

  And Leopold is right there behind them for the big reveal. He knew about this. He orchestrated it.

  And then, over Adrian’s shoulder, she sees Eli standing in the wings. Not only is Eli wearing a dress, it’s the perfect one. Dark, fathomless blue with tiny points of silver. With her hair down, she looks like a wild night spread out over the sea.

  Zara draws back from Adrian. A furious red has settled over Eli’s face. She rushes for the door, her combat boots peeking out below her gown.

  In this moment, Zara doesn’t care about Leopold. About what he wants or what he’ll do to her.

  She runs.

  Eli slams through the backstage door, headed for the lobby. Zara left her coat at the coat check, and there’s no time to get it now because Eli is already passing through one of the triple front doors.

  Zara hurries under the shattered light of the chandeliers. She picks the middle door, which turns out to be a mistake, the heavy old-fashioned fins of revolving brass and glass barely moving as she pushes. In front of the hotel, the night smacks into her like a careless stranger. Cold slides down her back. Wind takes the hem of her dress and waves it around.

  Eli disappears around the corner.

  Zara pitches forward in her borrowed heels, balanced like a tiny boat taking on ten-foot waves. She keeps her eyes on Eli’s gray coat as she steps into the street, crossing at almost a run, muttering under her breath — probably every swear she knows, in two languages. Zara has to stop at the intersection, where a stream of speeding taxis holds her to the curb.

  “Eli!” Zara cries. “Eli!”

  The taxis clear the intersection and Zara takes flight. Halfway across the avenue, she catches up.

  Eli turns, a tight spin. “What?”

  Zara wants to touch her, but she can tell it’s not allowed. Eli’s hands blink open with rapid fury.

  “Why were you late?” Zara asks. As if that’s what matters, as if that’s why she kissed Adrian Ward.

  “I couldn’t find my invitation, and then I remembered Roscoe put it with his,” Eli says, her words so heated that they’re almost melting together. “So I went back to the theater — yes, alone — I found the tickets in the booth with this note Roscoe wrote to himself. It said get a corsage to match her eyes, but then he crossed it out and wrote they don’t make dark-brown corsages, so just get something pretty. I spent half an hour crying on the floor. That pretty much catches us up.”

  The light changes and cars speed at them in a solid line, horns and headlights bearing down. Zara and Eli run. When they make the far side of the street, Zara reaches for Eli’s hand.

  “Look,” Eli says, snatching her fingers away, not stopping. “I know that kiss was about the play. Your career. Whatever. I know this is how things work. So you don’t even have to say it, okay?”

  Zara doesn’t know what to do. She’s terrified of the Aurelia, and she’s terrified of losing it. She’s sick of how things work.

  “Eli . . .”

  “No,” she says, and the word is so hard, but her eyes are soft and starred with tears. “You don’t get to kiss me under the stage and then kiss Adrian Ward everywhere else. Maybe that would have been a good deal a long time ago, but I’m not doing it.”

  “I didn’t know that was going to happen,” Zara says, leaning forward, everything in her trying to get back to Eli. “I stopped it. I left.”

  “Too late,” Eli says.

  Zara gulps cold air. She’s out of time. “I love you.”

  She finally said it — not in her head, not on a stage. The words slipped out and hit Eli, and instead of a smile or a kiss or an I know or an I love you, too, Zara gets the world’s most frustrated sigh.

  “Fuck,” Eli mutters, hands clutched to the opposite arms, holding herself together. “This is not the time you tell someone you love them.”

  Zara feels a bitterness that has nothing to do with the cold. She messed this up in a single day. Ruined whatever could have happened between them. She can still see it — the beautiful possibility of them. Together.

  She knows she should turn right around and go back to the gala. She could make up some story to keep Leopold from hurting her. Hurting Eli. Zara should tell him she needed to step outside, get some air. That would make sense to Leopold. What girl wouldn’t lose her head over Adrian Ward?

  But the feelings Zara has been chasing since the day she found that ragged paperback of Echo and Ariston are right here, in a girl who made herself out of tattoos and abrupt laughs and every form of light.

  Zara takes a step forward.

  “What are you doing?” Eli asks.

  “Telling the truth.”

  When Zara kisses Eli, it starts as a little brush. One pass, then two. Eli’s lips are so hesitant that it hurts. Zara puts her hand to Eli’s face and tries another brush, a painter searching for the right stroke. She’s not going to let Eli go this easily. All Zara has to do is find the right kiss — the one that changes the story. Her hands grasp at Eli’s waist. And then Eli’s hand is on the back of her neck, soft and gasp-worthy.

  Eli’s fingers rain down Zara’s bare shoulders, stroke the secretly soft inside of her elbows, work their way down to her hands, curling their fingers together. It’s perfect for a second, and then it’s not enough. Zara tugs at the collar of Eli’s coat. A hundred places on their bodies meet. Time melts, the way it does in the theater. The brightness behind Zara’s eyelids grows brighter, the shadows take on a velvet depth. Eli lets out a low sigh. Zara kisses her harder. Everything is heightened, everything is more.

  Eli pulls back, letting her lips hover. There’s a tiny smile warming them. “What now?”

  Zara sighs into Eli’s shoulder. “I don’t want to go back to the gala. And Kestrel’s apartment . . .”

  Zara sketches a quick update about Kestrel throwing the glass at Carl, about her screaming, about the Xanax. Before she can stop herself, Zara asks, “Can I come home with you?”

  “Ha!” Eli’s laugh is even better up close. It breaks things up — a moment away from the trouble at the Aurelia. An intermission laugh. “I was worried it would look shady if I asked you. But you asked me. So yes.”

  Zara rushes in for another kiss. Eli is right there, her lips already warm. People part and flow around the two girls. They’ve made an island, a safe place to stand for a few moments before the city pushes them down the sidewalk and washes them away.

  As soon as Eli gets Zara back to her apartment, she goes into lighting mode: she can’t help it. Good thing she already has candles scattered everywhere — clustered on every surface, turning them into altars. Eli grabs a book of matches. She only strikes enough for half the candles, the little white tea lights and the skinny pillar candles with their colorful pictures of saints. She doesn’t want to shed too much light. There’ll be plenty of time for Zara to see the crumpled graph paper on the floor, the pots of herbs on the windowsill, the ugly flower pri
nt on the couch. Right now, Eli wants to focus on the way that Zara is looking at her from the doorway as she lingers with one hand on the frame.

  How Zara waits, so patient, until Eli holds up the last match between her thumb and finger and blows it out.

  And then, how Zara isn’t patient at all.

  Eli was expecting to take this one tiny step at a time. So here’s a surprise: Zara has her up against the wall. She presses into Eli like she’s been waiting for this, like she wants to leave a mark so Eli won’t forget she was here. It’s hard to believe that Zara Evans is here. She wants to lower the window and shout it to the whole neighborhood.

  “This is the first time I’ve had a girl over here,” Eli says in the breathless space between kisses.

  Zara’s hands pause — one on Eli’s waist, one caught in her hair. It felt good, the way she tugged at it when the kissing was involved. Now it’s just damned awkward. “You haven’t been with anyone since . . .”

  “Hannah,” Eli finishes for her.

  Zara pulls back, just a little. “Did she break your heart?”

  Dios, this girl isn’t messing around.

  Eli doesn’t want to lie: that’s a bad way to start. But she doesn’t know how to phrase this particular truth. Not with Zara’s breath so near, teasing her with the potential for more. “Hannah made me feel like I wanted too much.”

  “What did you want?” Zara asks, her eyes glistening in the half dark.

  “Don’t make me say it,” Eli groans.

  “What?!” Zara’s face is all question marks and exclamation points. Eli doesn’t stand a chance.

  “Love. Okay? The ridiculous kind that people write plays about and then remember for the next two thousand years.”

  Zara holds a smile in her cheeks, tight, like she’s trying not to break into a mad grin. “You’re a romantic, Eli.”

  “Yes. In fact, I am. So when things got rough back there, I thought the whole damn thing was happening again. I thought, Zara Evans likes me, but not enough. And I worried that if we went too far and it didn’t work, I would die. Nothing dramatic. I would just lie down and die and go hang out with Roscoe, wherever he is. And they would put a little marker on my grave: Here lies Eli, the tragic queer girl.”

  Zara is laughing, her lips pressed together. Eli kisses that laugh right where it lives, in the base of Zara’s throat.

  Zara seems to enjoy that, but when Eli pulls back, Zara tips her head down, squaring her face with Eli’s, suddenly serious. “You haven’t said it back yet.”

  Eli shakes her head, curls flying. “You can’t tell someone it’s time for them to say it!”

  “You have a lot of rules about this,” Zara says.

  “Yeah, well, as you just pointed out, I’m a romantic.” Eli takes a breath. With one hand she reaches around Zara and pulls her close, her hand pressed against the perfect crescent line at the small of Zara’s back. “You’re beautiful.”

  Zara shakes her head, way too emphatically. She’s been listening to whatever ridiculous things Leopold and her stick-insect roommate have been telling her. She’s been thinking that she needs to match Adrian Ward’s pretty-boy looks. Eli doesn’t want Zara’s head filled with that nonsense. “I noticed you at the auditions,” Eli says, satisfied when Zara’s eyes fly open. Eli runs two fingers under the sheer straps of Zara’s dress. “I tried to stop noticing you. I wanted to stop. And I couldn’t. And then I fell in love.” Zara sighs. It’s the warmest sound.

  She dances away from Eli and sits down on the hardwood floor, ignoring the couch. She looks up, clearly waiting for Eli to join her. “I want you to tell me everything about yourself.”

  “Everything?” Eli asks.

  Zara nods fiercely. “This is the good part. Nobody can take that away from us.”

  Right now, with that look on Zara’s face, Eli almost wants to see somebody try.

  Zara feels the world shrink down to a circle of candlelight. Eli sits, knees touching hers, so close that every breath Eli lets out is the one that Zara takes in. She could rush forward just a few inches and close the distance.

  Kiss/kill.

  That’s what Meg and Leopold would call it. But Zara questions those words. Kiss/kill. How could it be a real question, which way the decision would go? Echo would never hurt Ariston. Zara could never hurt Eli. That’s why she kept away as long as she did.

  But they’re here right now, in Eli’s apartment. Safe.

  “Okay,” Eli says. “Story time.” She smiles so wide that her cheeks imprint with the commas that Zara loves. She touches them, one at a time.

  “Sorry,” Zara whispers. “No more interruptions.”

  Eli takes a deep breath, like Zara does before she starts acting. The kind of breath that stirs truth out of its hiding places. “I was my parents’ baby,” she says. “Their only girl. Which was supposed to make me their princess, but I, uh, turned down the role. Everything was a fight by the time I got out of high school. The boots, the tattoos . . . everything.” Eli reaches out and smooths the fabric of the couch. “I needed a change. Now that I’m here, I can see the good stuff again. Like, they’re the ones who got me to the Aurelia.”

  “They wanted you to be a lighting designer?” Zara can hear the ripe jealousy in her voice.

  “They like the arts. But it’s more than that. When I was little, my mom was always telling me about growing up in Puerto Rico. About the sunshine. The light there, she said it was so much better. More. And when I was a baby, all I wanted was to be in the sun. She called me her Luzecita, told me I lit up every room. At some point I started to take it literally, you know? I would steal candles from around the house, find a lighter in my brother’s stash and spark it a thousand times until the fluid ran out. When I was nine, I begged my dad to let me help him with the Christmas lights. Stood there on the roof and fed him string after string while Mom yelled at us to get down.”

  Zara is smiling now, so wide, so much, her face almost hurts.

  Eli takes Zara’s arms and holds them, her thumbs rubbing circles into warm skin. “I still can’t believe this is happening,” she whispers.

  “Yeah,” Zara says. Her words have had a shine to them ever since they kissed on the street, but now they go dull. “What if I told you we had to keep it a secret? For a little while?”

  “A secret,” Eli repeats slowly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been good at those. I was the only first-grader with a playground girlfriend. Sometimes I think what I loved most about living in the city, about being with Hannah, was how damn free the whole thing felt. We got our share of weird stares because you get those anywhere. But I could touch her, kiss her, like there wasn’t a different set of rules.”

  “I want that,” Zara says. The words slip out — she doesn’t even think them first.

  Eli frowns, like she’s trying to figure this out. “But you don’t want people to know we’re together.”

  This is the heaviest sort of truth. Now that Zara has given it words, she can feel it pressing down on the whole night. “Just one person.”

  “Is it Adrian?” Eli asks, her voice spun in a bitter new direction.

  “No,” Zara says, almost laughing.

  Eli pauses. Softens. “Is it someone in your family?”

  Zara curls up, the memory a blow to her stomach. “I tried to tell my parents. They pretty much ignored it.”

  Eli lifts her face in both hands and kisses her, and for just a second the entire world is the red-dark behind Zara’s eyelids. And then Eli pulls back and says, “I’m sorry.”

  Zara nods. She looks down into the wavering flame of a candle. She can feel Eli staring at her. Hard.

  “I need to ask you something,” Eli says. Zara nods again, smaller this time. “Who’s this person you’re so afraid of?”

  The stage is empty. The gala ended an hour ago, and the last scavengers of hors d’oeuvres and gossip have gotten into cabs and spread like an opening fist, a finger to each of the boroughs.

  Meg is th
e only one left.

  Soon the hotel staff will come to whisk away the napkins, the crystal glasses with their slowly melting ice. For now, Meg has time and solitude and she can unfold the evening, moment by moment.

  Zara and Adrian took the stage. There was a single, flawless kiss. Then Zara ran away. Meg could have killed her — what if Leopold had disapproved? Did she want to risk his anger?

  But right now, he loves Zara Evans. Right now, everyone does.

  The press thought the ending was something right out of a fairy tale. Leopold fed into their frenzy. He called her my little girl from the woods.

  Right now, he loves her.

  Meg laughs so hard that she starts to shake. She remembers that feeling. And the places it led. Her head is a dark forest of memory, where she could lose herself for days.

  She grabs every glass on the table, silently thanking Kestrel for the inspiration. She flings them one by one. Onto the ground. At the wall. Inches away from her own feet. She considers taking her shoes off and walking through the shards, but Leopold would notice. She can’t hurt herself so badly that he would see it, or she would have to stay away from the Aurelia.

  Leopold is still having visions.

  They’re not out of the dark woods yet.

  Zara stands on a small platform above the stage, looking down into an unexpected pool of water.

  It is cobalt blue and perfectly still.

  Leopold stalks through the orchestra pit. He’s told Zara to climb up and await further instruction. She arrived at the Aurelia a bare second before rehearsal started. Usually, she gets there half an hour early to warm up — sometimes more. But Leopold hasn’t said a word to her about what happened at the gala, and Zara wants to keep it that way.

  The rest of the cast is assembled onstage. They’re doing costumes tonight but not makeup; in the glare of the lights, faces lose their shadow. Zara is looking down on a company of ghosts.

  “So far, we have held with the Greek tradition,” Leopold says, “keeping Echo’s death offstage. A messenger runs to tell us what happened. Echo is nowhere to be seen.” Zara can feel his voice, like it’s meant only for her. Teasing her with some idea he has. Some new way to make her life worse. “What if we make a different choice? What if we choose not to spare the audience this pain?”