“Awwow,” I cry. “You just hit me. I’m a girl, and you just…” I open up with the waterworks and when he lets down his guard, I punch him in the face. He slips on the ice and goes down. I leap over him. He grabs my boot, it slips through his fingers and I go full force down on his chin. I race inside, grab the scapular from my bedpost and jump over him as he rises in the darkness.
“Suck on that, you big bully,” I shout over my shoulder. I’m back on my mark ready for what’s left of make-believe.
“ACTION.”
A branch snaps and I spin around.
“Brad? Where are they?”
He shakes his head. “Waiting.”
We crunch through the fresh snow into the darkness, down a path to where the trail bottoms out into a dry creek bed. A pair of hands rises from behind a rock, an arrow streaks past us. It sticks in the trunk of a birch a foot over my head.
I pull the out the arrow, hear a thud, and turn to see an enormous man lope across the creek bed. He’s real flesh and blood and huge; a giant with a giant lope. He raises a rock in a sling and swings it in a slow arc around his head.
“We need to get back in the forest!” I shout. But it’s too late. A mangy hoard of fighters rises from behind trees with crude swords.
“Brad. Duck.” A rock whizzes over his head. Another hits me in the face.
“What the…”
Stay in character. I try to assure myself.
I have one shot before the giant reaches me and then it’s game over. I fall back. I rise, step back, but my weak ankle gives way. I lay helpless at the giant’s feet. I raise my crossbow. Grope for a dart. It grabs the bow in its huge hands and snaps it in half. I grab for my dagger—grasp the handle, but keep it beneath the fold of my armor.
The giant pins me down on an ice patch with a club and grabs Brad by the neck.
“Help me…Jeanne,” Brad cries. He looks down at me, helpless, as the giant tosses him into a thicket like a paper doll.
I see my chance. I thrust the dagger into the giant’s thigh. He staggers back and falls across the creek bed. He gropes for the handle as I turn and run to Brad. He’s in a heap beside the boulder; unconscious—then his eyes flutter open. I see the fear and think he’s going to scream. I press my mouth into his ear and say, “Brad. It’s OK. It’s real. We can’t stop.” He gives me a short nod.
I look down the creek bed to the steeple of a church rising through a field of pine trees. Brad tries to rise, falls back, and I thrust my head into his armpit and put his arm round my neck. There’s a gash in his thigh. I drag him forward, but it’s too late—the peasants have surrounded us and one points a broadsword directly at my throat. They march us down a hill to where Susan waits in a churchyard cemetery.
“What was once yours is now mine,” Susan says after I lay Brad beside a crooked tombstone. I reach down to brush the flyaway hair from his face.
He’s trying to say his line but can manage only a whisper. “I was told to betray you but I just can’t—”
I place my mouth to his ear but one of the captors grabs me by the neck and pulls me back up to face Susan.
I look to the sacristy of the chapel, an open hole in the roof. I know where the sword is. Francis might be strange, but he’s historically accurate. The sword is behind the sacristy, in the same place the real Jeanne told a solider to search for it…I’m going to find it, and then Woe is you, Miss Anthony.
Susan gropes Brad’s wounded thigh as I’m pulled back. I study the bruise on his face from where he’d hit the rock. I can feel the cameras close in on his open gash.
“Brad. She doesn’t love you. She wants to control you.” My captor lets me go. “Bradley?”
“What does that mean?” he asks, anxiously pulling himself away from Susan. He stands. Susan tries to pull him back to the rock but Brad pushes her away. “What does that mean?”
“She’s a witch,” says Susan. “Don’t listen to her.” She pulls him back and tries to wrap her arms around his thigh, but Brad pulls himself away.
I take a step toward Susan. She winds up with a roundhouse, swings. I duck. Try to head-butt her in the chest, but she turns, and I hit her in the armpit. I race to the sacristy. My ankle gives way on the steps and I do a face-plant on the heavy wooden door that hangs open. Susan lets out a sick laugh. I drag myself up and crawl across through the ruins of broken tile and brick to the dais. I grope through the cold earth for the handle. I can hear the crunch of boots from behind. I feel it, the hilt, and then that familiar jolt of warmth through my chest as I wrap my fingers…
Susan’s boot comes down on my wrist, the crunch of bone on a frozen plank. She pries the sword from my fingers. In the cold silence I turn, see the camera in the hole above the sacristy, wonder what all the boys and girls watching are thinking.
“Stand up, you witch. I want you to see Brad and I together before I finish you off.” I feel the tip of the sword prod, then pierce my armor. Susan steps back as I stand up, slowly, and hobble outside.
Brad pulls himself up. There’s a lot of blood coming from his nose and mouth as he says, “We all know the rules. I will kiss each of you before making my choice.”
Susan puckers her lips, but Brad turns from her and faces me, dips down and kisses me. I let him gently press and just as gently I pull away. Then I press my lips hard into his and let him take me. I gentle his wounds as he slowly lifts me; I prop his wounded leg up with my unwounded foot. Susan shakes her head violently.
Brad steps back and lets out a long sigh. He falls backward, tries to stand on his wounded leg, but can’t. Susan lunges forward to hold him up. She kisses him but he slumps in her arms, and it looks like she’s trying to smother him. Brad looks embarrassed. He pulls away. Susan looks enraged and I know what comes next as her head turns. She spins and swings the broadsword a wide arc to my neck. I duck and swing my right elbow into her face, grab her wrist, twist, and the sword falls to the ground. I grab it, take a single step backward. I raise the sword.
First, I’m gonna chop off those rich-bitch feet and let you hop around on your aristocratic ankles. Then I’m gonna put my fist in your face so hard.
I hear a voice—not the booming omniscience of Francis on the loudspeaker from atop his crane, but the voice of a girl.
Stand your ground, but offer no resistance.
Just what the hell am I supposed to use? Foul language? In case you haven’t noticed, miss whoever-you-are, I’m about to get cut to bits.
I lift the sword overhead and plunge it into the soft snow beside a broken tombstone. Susan draws her dagger. She swings at my face. I duck. I take out my dagger. Hold it up to the sky. I throw it down between her feet. I’m not going to stop this scene. I will not be disqualified for stopping this scene. I’m just going to show the world what she’s really about. She swings at my stomach with the dagger. I grab her forearm with both my hands and thrust my knee into her wrist. That dagger falls to the snow. I kick it away. Susan winds up and punches me right in the face. I go back on one foot. Another punch. I go down on one knee.
“Why aren’t you fighting, you stupid witch.” And then I know I’ve made the right choice.
“Love isn’t a grudge match, Miss Anthony. I love Bradley. He loves me. Now step aside and let us save the world.”
“You don’t know what love is, you stupid witch.” Susan spins around and takes Brad by the shoulders. She kisses him on the lips. She places one of his hands on her hip, smashes her breasts into his chest until he lets out a yell and grabs his wounded thigh.
“Doesn’t look like your kind of love is working, Miss Anthony—I guess you know what happens to anyone who comes between me and the boy I love.”
“Shut up.” She swings low and hits me right in the stomach. She turns to Brad. “Oh, I can make you feel better. I can make all the pain go away, my prince.”
It’s time for my confession, but before I can begin, Susan takes off her top—pulls off the chest-plate so quickly I figure she must’ve spent
all morning practicing that move. Brad tries not to look at her breasts but he can’t resist. They kiss. She takes his hand in hers and slowly draws it into her chest. He pulls back. I don’t know if he has a line or if he’s just coming up for air.
Do it, Brad. Tell her she’s not the one for you.
“That’s not the kind of love that will save this world,” I say. Susan spins around and punches me in the face, a roundhouse. As I go down, I see her outstretched arm and bare breasts and think she might as well be plastered onto the prow of some ship. Then she kicks me in the head.
“Cut.”
The crane lowers. Francis climbs out from behind the camera and says, “Thanks for all your hard work, Cease.” I pull myself up, dazed.
Cease? But I’m Jeanne. I’m going to be a…
“Good luck with your career, Cease. I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”
“That’s it? What about my speech?”
“I’m sorry, Cease. You’ve been eliminated.”
No. NO. You can’t.
My ears buzz. I feel as if the elastic safety cable that had saved me yesterday had suddenly snapped and I am about to hit the ground doing about seventy-five miles an hour. So much for nonviolence. So much for a virgin girl teaching the boys how to make love. I turn to Francis, who is already instructing the crew to pack up. I look to Brad and he moves to put his hand on my shoulder, but I give him a look that says: touch me and I will kill you.
Francis can’t look at me as I pass him. “I hope you enjoy your little game, mistah genius,” I mutter as I spit blood down to his feet. “We’re oooonn to yaaahah,” I add, but it comes out funny because I’m choking on the prosthetics that have come loose in my mouth.
What the hell just happened? I look up to the black sky, plead for an answer. I swat at my ears—that’s how loud and real the buzzing sounds. I’d only heard it this loud two times in my life; when I went to see a production of a rock opera on Broadway, and the morning I found my brother hanging in the closet.
The tall man in the black parka is waiting for me just where I left him beside my trailer steps. He hands me my phone and my tablet. I clear out my trailer and stuff into the trunk of the car the extra comforter Nina had insisted I take. Yousef waits by the wheel. I look anxiously at the empty seat beside me as he starts the engine—as if I were leaving someone behind.
Is this the way it was supposed to turn out? I wish I’d been killed.
Dear Fans,
Thank you for watching me. Thank you for believing in me. Does that sound like the start of a victory speech? Well, it’s not. If you’ve seen the updates on WebTV, you know I’ve been eliminated from the reality-drama directed by Francis MacDonald. A lot of you have written to me, shared secrets, told me you hope I go all the way. You asked me questions about sex and love and what love feels like. I don’t know why you’ve chosen me to share these things with…I don’t have any answers—I feel like a phony right now—it wasn’t until I read more of your emails I realized how stupid and selfish I’ve been. The press made me out to be some precocious star on the rise. Maybe I have a gift—that stage presence all the wannabes in this business fish for—but the truth is, I became an actress to run away from real life—truth is, I feel like a freak and a loser in the real world. I wanted to be the last girl standing. I wanted to give you a big speech about how becoming a woman isn’t just about losing your virginity; it’s about standing up to the things you’re afraid of. I think that’s what Jeanne d’Arc would’ve said had she landed in our time.
But you just can’t have it both ways.
Jeanne d’Arc, my character, was a pretty amazing girl. I’m just an ambitious girl who thought I could hide my secrets behind a mask. My character was real. My character was strong but I wonder if she ever felt the pain we feel. She never had a boyfriend, so she never had to worry about breaking up or going all the way… Maybe she just lived in some holy bubble and never had to face some of the real shit that you’ve been writing me about. I used to wonder that late at night when I thought about her…mostly because I was sacred; I was afraid I’d never measure up to my character, that all I could do was punch out boys and never really love at all…
What do you think Jeanne would’ve thought of Francis, the director? She probably would’ve punched him out, thrown him into a river. I would’ve cheered. Today he pulled some pretty sick shit. If you haven’t already guessed, the fights were real. Yes, that was real blood you’ll see on my face, and my head still hurts from when Susan B. Anthony kicked me. I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t I fight back? Why didn’t I go all the way with Brad? I don’t have an answer to that. I still don’t know what happened, exactly; in an instant I made a choice (a choice I still don’t understand because it came from someplace outside myself), and now I’m just a girl with all the same questions about love and sex that you’ve got.
You make choices in life the same way you make choices on the stage. I made a choice today not to attack another character. Susan B. Anthony is a character. That’s what I kept insisting, but we all know behind these characters, behind these masks are real people, people who are willing to fight and claw and suck our way to the top. Maybe Francis is a genius for making things this way, showing us what lies behind the mask we present to the world. Maybe he’s trying to get us to see we’re all actors, because most of us wind up playing other people in real life. We try to be good. We try to be real…and that real part of us isn’t always good, so we try to become someone else—a character we admire—a hero—someone who reminds us of our father, or a saint. We play our part, then return home to be who we really are. It’s all just a game. This truth we try to live is really just a lie, a lie that makes sense when we look up to the silver screen in a darkened theater.
So, Francis is a genius for showing us all who we really are. So what? That doesn’t really help any of us. Should you go all the way with that boy? Should you really hurt that Queen Bee who hurt you? That’s pretty much what it boils down to. Here are two emails that should tell you what most boys and girls are thinking of who I am, what I did.
Hi Cease,
I really think you get what’s going on in my head. You’re tough and don’t let boys mess with your body. But a lot of girls on TV talk that talk, about staying a virgin until you meet the absolute right boy, blah, blah. It’s pretty phony. It’s not that you’re different from the rest of the good girls, it’s that I can see you’re not a hundred percent convinced…You’re really struggling with something…I can see the hurt in your eyes, that you’ve got some secret you need to share before you can really love…anyway, I vote for you every night you’re featured.
Rock on, sister.
And this:
Hey Cease,
You’re such a stupid tease. You’re never going to make it to the final round until you go all the way. Fuck Brad and I’ll vote for you.
Well, I guess the last writer was right. I wanted to be the last girl standing, but I also wanted to give you viewers a big, virtuous speech…confess some of the secrets to my real life that Francis is prying into, and get you to feel sorry for me, to vote for me, because that’s all acting is to me…a place to run, a safety net, an unbelievable drama, because make-believe keeps me from facing the real drama I’ve been running away from. So, right now, I want to say thank you for telling me your secrets. I don’t have any answers, but all the questions you’ve asked got me thinking about my character, and about something I felt today when I made that fateful choice. My character was real. And maybe she has a lot more power than I ever imagined. Anyway, I try not to talk about faith and religion, because it just makes most people feel depressed. But here’s a piece of advice for those of you who’ll be watching me lose—something about fame I think you should know. Once you get a taste of it, you’ll want more. You’ll say you can control it. But you’ve no idea what you’re getting into…What you think is a gift may be a curse. I know that sounds like some line an actress would say. But in this busine
ss, curses are real. They don’t come from vampires or werewolves or some dark, distant planet. I think people make movies about those things because they’re afraid to face where curses really come from. Curses can come from your own family and all the secrets families hide for generations—their taboo bonds…stuff that you thought you could only see in a vampire film.
I’ve been running away from a secret about who I really am. And for those of you who actually read the Greek tragedies you were assigned sophomore year in high school, guess what? That stuff is true, at least the part about trying to hide from your fate. No matter how far you run, you wind up turning around and seeing you’ve come to the exact place all the soothsayers told you to avoid.
Life can suck when that happens; it can make you think your life’s worthless.
I should probably write—just to sound precocious—that life’s just a passing shadow, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But I’m beginning to think there might be someone out there directing the big picture—and whoever this may be, they’re a lot more important than some director with a big ego…
I don’t think this tale is being told by an idiot. I still believe I’m a pretty reliable narrator…
I look down at what I’ve written. Outside the car window, whitening exhaust from the passing cars—it’s a freezing night…Yousef makes a turn and we head toward the Tunnel.
Lie back, Cease, you need to rest. That’s a nasty bump on your head.
Why did I refuse to fight Susan? How did Brad and I survive? The weapons were real. I got a nasty blow to the head. We could’ve been killed.
You’re exhausted. Take a nap. Nina’s waiting…with her brownies and her faith.
I’m not an idiot…I’m a reliable narrator…who needs to confess…it’s time to sleep…perchance to dream…I’m falling into the exhausting whiteness of a freezing night. Sleep.
My brother’s a broken toy. Our mother broke him. I glued him back together, but he’s never going to work right after what she’s done. She hated what we had…the magic we inherited…
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