by Carter, Ally
“No!” I yell.
“Grace,” my mother’s voice comes again. “Honey, run!”
“No. No. No.”
The limo’s windows are black, like mirrors in the night, but I can see through them into the small shop my mother ran back in America. Rows and rows of antiques and first-edition novels. Dusty and cramped.
A tinderbox.
That was the word the fire marshal had used.
So much old, dry wood. So many flammable things.
She never stood a chance. Not after the second-story balcony collapsed. Not once the fire moved into the walls.
“Grace, run!”
“No!” I yell.
I can hear the glass cracking. I can feel my fists begin to bleed. Oxygen crashes through the broken window and the fire booms, knocking me to the ground, burning my hair and my lungs.
“Stop!” I yell, clawing through space and time at the blaze that started three years ago and, in a way, never has gone out.
“Stop!” I yell and start to scream.
“Are you okay?”
I look up at the driver. The limo isn’t moving and the divider is down.
“You did yell for me to stop, didn’t you? You’ve got to lower the divider for me to hear you. Or press the intercom.”
“Yes. Yes. I want — I need —”
I don’t bother to finish. I just climb out of the car and start down the street, holding up the skirt of my puffy pink ball gown, the train cinched within my fists. Running.
My shoes are gone, forgotten in the floorboard of the car, and I feel the damp cobblestones through the pantyhose that cover my bare feet. Feeling is starting to return to my toes. They go from numb to cold to bleeding, but I just run faster.
Gas surges through the streetlights overhead, growing brighter, then dimmer, then brighter again. The flames flicker and I have to stop.
My breath is coming harder than it should. My dress is too tight and so, so heavy. My head is spinning, too. When I slam myself against a wall, the gasp that comes is too shallow, too quick. I need a paper bag to breathe into but all I have are acres and acres of fluffy pink fabric.
I close my eyes and tell myself that I will not have a panic attack. I will not let them find me. I will not say a word.
Overhead, the streetlight flickers and goes out and all breath fails me. I slide to the ground. It must have rained because the stones are damp. My dress will be not just ripped, but ruined. But breath is more important to me. All I can care about is trying not to die.
When I close my eyes I hear the gunshot. I see the small circle of blood that starts in the center of my mother’s chest. Just a drop of something dark — like she should have used a napkin. But it has already started to spread. She stumbles back, unsteady.
And then the balcony falls. The sound is so loud. There are so many sparks — so much dust and flame and damage.
“No!” I think I might yell.
And then the man is on the street. He looks at me with cold indifference. He smells like smoke. Soot and ash cling to his brown leather jacket.
I retreat backward, away from the growing heat of the blaze. I stare up at him.
“My mother,” I say. “She’s dying!” I scream.
But the man just looks at me. “She’s dead.”
And then he turns and walks away so slowly.
In the distance, there are sirens. Someone will have seen the smoke. The shop has a security alarm. People are coming to help, but the man is not here to save anyone, least of all me.
He stops when he reaches a dark sedan, turns and looks back at the burning building. The whole street is orange and red. I need no other light to make out the massive scar that covers the left side of his face. I swear that I will never forget that face as long as I live.
I swear that, someday, I will see that face again.
“Grace?” I hear the voice in the darkness. When the glow of the lamp returns, I can see the dark figure on the other side of the street.
Instinctively, I move backward, clawing against the sidewalk, desperate to put every possible inch between me and the man who is moving steadily closer.
“Grace, are you okay?” Alexei says, and I curse him. I hate him for disappearing during the ball and now for showing up here — when I’m crying and broken and low.
I can’t let him see me like this. He’ll tell Ms. Chancellor or my grandfather. Or, worse, he’ll tell Jamie. And then it will start again. It will be just like After. With the pills and the shrinks and the looks.
I can never go back to After.
I push myself off the sidewalk and begin limping down the street. My toes are raw, but at least I’m free of the uncomfortable shoes.
“Grace, stop.” Alexei sprints across the street and tries to block my path.
“Go away,” I tell him.
“No.” The way he says it, he must think the idea absurd. He must think I’m absurd. “What is wrong with you?”
“My feet hurt,” I say. “High heels — they’re even worse than advertised.”
The streetlights flicker, and I jump. I’m not afraid of the dark, but of the way the fire flits and moves, like it is a living, breathing thing. And then I remember that it is. It really is. It lives. It breathes. It kills. But it did not kill my mother. She was dead long before the fire took her.
“Here.” Alexei is taking off his tuxedo jacket and placing it around my shoulders. I want to push it off, turn triumphantly, and walk away. But the jacket is still warm from his body and the heat seeps into my skin. It feels like sinking into a hot bath. I want to soak in it for as long as I can.
He takes my arm, keeps me there as he asks me, “Where did you go tonight? Why did you leave?”
“Me?” I snap before I even realize what I’m saying. “You’re the one who disappeared! You went upstairs. Were you there?” I shout. “Answer me, Alexei! Were you with him?”
“With who?” he says, but then shakes the words away. “Let’s get you home. We have to —”
“I’m not crazy!” I’m shouting so loudly that dogs bark. Lights go on in windows, shopkeepers stirring from their beds. But I cannot keep the words inside.
“You want to hear that, right? I mean that’s what they told you. That’s why Jamie is so worried about his crazy kid sister. Because — news flash — she really is crazy.”
The last part I say softly. They’re the words I have been carrying for so long that they have a weight of their own. Physical. I should feel lighter now that I’ve released them, but there is no relief from the truth.
“Guess what, Valencia!” I shout. “The fire wasn’t an accident! My mother didn’t die from smoke! Did you hear that, Alexei?” I’m taunting him. “She was murdered. She was shot.”
“Grace, come on. Let’s get you home.” He’s looking at me like I’ve been drinking, and I can’t blame him. My dress is ripped and my words slur. I’m not myself, I think, but then I realize something even scarier: I am exactly myself.
The look in Alexei’s eye tells me he is right to be afraid of me. And I was very right to hide it.
“She was murdered, Alexei,” I say, softer. His jacket falls from my shoulders and lies like a puddle in the street. “She was. She really was. And I saw the man who killed her.”
Then the panic comes again. I try to breathe deeply, to think of calm and soothing things. But the wind is cold on my skin and the light that fills the street is the color of fire, and I can’t stop it.
“I saw him,” I say as his arms go around me.
“What happened tonight, Grace?” Alexei whispers.
“I saw him!” I yell again.
“Jamie told me what you think you saw —”
“He was there. He’s here. I saw him,” I say one final time, but I doubt Alexei even hears me. His arms grow tighter as my legs grow weaker, and then he is sweeping me up into his arms.
As I curl into the warmth of his chest I know that I should fight and protest, talk about my rights as a strong, inde
pendent woman. But the fact that I don’t have the strength to walk anymore undermines any argument I might make.
The attacks, when they come, are awful. But it’s what comes after that leaves me broken, riddled with shame. They are everything I hate. I am the thing that I despise: weak and docile and frail.
I am so frail, it’s like I have no muscle, no bones. I am nothing but a pounding head and a thousand electric wires pulsing inside a pale-pink gown.
I am nothing as I say another final time, “He’s here.”
I wake to the sound of voices, muffled but raised. Like they belong to people who are trying to yell as quietly as possible. For a second, I’m confused. The sky beyond the window is still dark, and then I reach down and feel the soft pink gown that I’m still wrapped inside. A tuxedo jacket lies across me. It smells like Alexei. And that’s when I know why the voices can’t stop shouting.
“Someone should have brought her home,” Grandpa says.
“We tried,” Ms. Chancellor explains. “Noah said he would escort her, but she left him at the palace.”
Slowly I sit upright on a bed that’s not my own. I place my feet on the rug and creep toward the door as softly as I can.
“Is she hurt?” Grandpa asks, but the question is met by silence. “Is she?”
It takes a moment for Alexei to say, “I don’t know. I’ve never seen Grace like that. She was not herself.” Then Alexei mumbles something in Russian. “I have to tell Jamie.”
“No!” Grandpa snaps.
“He is my best friend, sir. It is my duty.”
“I know it feels that way, young man,” Grandpa says, softer now. “But, please, let us handle it. Her father … well, we all thought the worst of it was over.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Alexei says slowly. It’s like he’s almost afraid when he finishes, “The worst of what?”
I’m almost to the door. It’s open just a crack, and I can see Alexei in the small sitting room that constitutes the outer chamber of my grandfather’s suite. His tie is undone and his sleeves are rolled up. He looks like he’s seen a ghost. Then I realize with a start that he has — he’s seen the ghost of me. Of the girl who was never supposed to follow me across the ocean.
“Grace has had a difficult time of it, young man,” Grandpa says with a slap on his back. “She’s not the same Gracie who used to tag after you and Jamie, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah,” I say, pushing open the door. “Seeing your mother murdered in front of your eyes will do that.”
“Grace.” Ms. Chancellor spins on me, shocked. “We thought you were —”
“Unconscious?” I guess. “Insane?”
“Resting, dear.” She starts toward me but suddenly stops. “You should be resting.”
I look right at my grandfather.
“I saw him tonight, Grandpa. I saw the man who killed her. The man with the scar. He was there. He was at the palace and … I saw him.” I take a deep breath. “I saw the man who killed my mother.”
For a second, no one speaks. Not one of them dares to move. It’s like they are afraid of me. I’m a house of cards and any quick movement — sudden breath — might send me crashing to the ground.
“Somebody say something!” I shout.
Grandpa turns slowly toward Alexei and takes his hand. “Thank you for bringing her home, young man. We will see to Grace from here.”
That’s Alexei’s cue. There’s no doubt he’s been dismissed. And yet he stands there, looking at me. It’s like he doesn’t trust himself to leave me alone. Or, more likely, that he doesn’t trust me to be alone.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’m fine.”
I’m not fine, but no one says so. He just walks to the door of the sitting room.
“Good night, everyone.” He looks at us all in turn. For just a second, his gaze lingers on me. “Sleep well.”
And then he’s gone. Not for the first time, I want to chase after him. To see where the boys go when they disappear. But Ms. Chancellor closes the door firmly behind him, and I know that I can’t follow. They don’t want him to hear what comes next. Like most streets, on Embassy Row you never let your neighbors hear you fighting.
“Gracie,” Grandpa tells me, his big Southern voice booming in the small room. “Now, I don’t know what you thought you saw tonight —”
“I saw him. I saw the Scarred Man.”
“You saw no such thing!” Grandpa yells, but then he seems to regret it. He’s a diplomat. He knows there is a time and place for strength and a time and place for tenderness. But heads of state are one thing. It’s been a long time since he’s tried to raise a teenage girl.
“You were tired, sweetheart. Confused. You don’t know what you saw,” he tells me.
“How do you know? You weren’t there. You haven’t been anywhere near me since she died.”
This wounds him, I can tell. And that alone makes me happy.
“Grace, dear, let’s take you to your room. Get you out of that dress,” Ms. Chancellor tries. “You’ll feel so much better after a hot bath and —”
“I don’t need a bath!” I’m shouting now. I can’t help it. “I need someone to listen to me! I need someone to believe me.”
I cross the room in two long strides and then I’m gripping my grandfather’s vest. I have to make him see me — see that I’m not lying. See that I’m not the girl they’d warned him I’d become. I have to make somebody understand.
“He’s real, Grandpa. And he’s here. I saw him!”
“There is no Scarred Man, Gracie.”
“You don’t know that,” I snap.
“Of course I know that. Who do you think paid for the doctors?” As soon as the words are out, he regrets them.
I recoil. “I’m sorry. I never meant to be such an expensive inconvenience,” I say, letting him go. I no longer want to touch him. I don’t even want to look at him.
“Now, Gracie, sweetheart. Hear me out. You were so young.”
“I was thirteen,” I counter, but he talks on.
“It was traumatic. You were confused. Your mother …” And then his voice cracks. He can’t look at me anymore. “Your mother’s death was an accident, Grace. It was terrible and tragic, but it was an accident all the same.”
“I know what I saw,” I tell him.
“The police scoured all the footage from the nearby security cameras. There was no sign of any man. There was no evidence of foul play.”
“The bullet wound in her chest seemed like pretty good evidence to me,” I say.
“You know there was no bullet wound, Grace. We’ve told you that. I saw the autopsy report myself, and the coroner’s findings were very clear.”
“But —” I start, but then my grandfather interrupts with a shout.
“It was an accident!” His face is red. I can’t tell if he wants to scream or cry. Probably both. I am talking about his daughter, after all. “It was an accident, Gracie. An accident.”
When he says the word one final time, it is almost a whisper.
“Think about it, Grace.” Ms. Chancellor’s voice is soft. She tries to smooth my hair, but I jerk away. “You’re still jet-lagged. I know you haven’t been sleeping well. You’re exhausted.”
“I know I’m exhausted! That’s why I didn’t say anything when —”
When I saw him in Iran, I think, but dare not say.
“When what?” Grandpa snaps.
“When I was at the party,” I finish meekly. “But now I know it was him. I know it.”
“Forget about the Scarred Man, Gracie. Make your peace. Let her go.” He tries to calm himself. At least his voice is softer when he turns to look out the window at the city lights, the small sliver of inky black sea. “I’ve had to let her go.”
I could protest. The words are rising up inside my throat. I want to throw open the window and yell out into the street — run around the wall, announcing the truth to the entire city. But no one will believe me.
“Can
I go to bed now?” I ask. I try to smooth the skirt of my dress that was so pretty once. So lovely. But it’s ruined now. There’s no use in standing there, being reminded of it over and over.
The Israeli embassy looks different in the light of morning. The building itself sits farther back than the other embassies on the street, but the Israelis have built a new wall that juts up directly against the sidewalk. It is the only embassy on the row that has two.
“Hi,” I greet the guard outside the main gates. The guard studies me but doesn’t say a thing. “I’m here to see —”
“Grace?”
When I turn, I notice a small pedestrian-only gate along the side of the building. That is where Noah stands, looking at me through the bars. It’s like I’m visiting him in prison. Or more like he is visiting me.
There is a loud buzz and then Noah pushes on the gate, comes toward me.
“Well, hello, Cinderella,” he says with a roguish grin. “I should have known you would come back, looking for your slipper. The ladies always come back. But you’re too late. I’ll have you know the Dowager Countess of Capri was all over me last night after your untimely exit.”
“That’s nice,” I say.
“Not really. She’s my grandmother’s age. But feistier. Way, way feistier.”
Noah gives a whole-body shake like someone has just walked over his grave.
“So, where’d you go?” For once, Noah sounds serious.
“Back,” I say. I don’t tell him back to where. He doesn’t have to know I’m not talking about the embassy — that I’m talking about going back to the darkest corners of my memory. Going back in time.
“Can we go somewhere?” I say.
“I’m already going somewhere,” he tells me, holding up the backpack he carries as if it’s proof.
“Where?”
“Brazil. We’re staying at Dad’s tonight. Lila’s already there. Come on. Walk with me.”
“But is there somewhere else we can go? Someplace private?”
My voice doesn’t sound like my own. I keep looking at my hands. In the past twelve hours my cuticles have become the most fascinating things ever. I can’t look anyone in the eye anymore. I’m afraid of what else I might see.