Which secret is that?
CATHERINE
Soon the whole world will know who you really are.
Craig gives Stephanie a playful hug after Francis yells, “Cut.” I race back to my trailer, fall on the bed, hold my head in my hands and cry. I stare at the tablet propped against a pile of papers on my makeshift desk. I’m afraid to turn it on.
Francis tried to shame me with that riddle from Bryson, but I knew the answer, thanks to all my training—all those Greek tragedies I read while Susan was probably getting her hair done. But I don’t feel victorious. The riddle that play is from is Oedipus—which in the House of de Menich is a story that cuts a little too close to home.
I rise and reluctantly turn on the tablet:
Dear Petit,
Are you there? I’m scared and really need someone to talk to. Francis just tried to shame me with a riddle that was a reference about what my mother did to my brother. I didn’t let it get to me in the scene. I guess I should be proud, but I’m not.
Dear Cease,
Francis didn’t put that line in. And neither did any of the writers.
Dear Petit,
Are you saying that you put it there? Why? Are you trying to shame me? Do you want me to have a meltdown the way Francis does? For the entire world to see?
Dear Cease,
Well, actually a writer did write the line but it came from me. He’s calling it inspiration; a lot of writers call it that. I wish he’d accept where it really came from.
Hey Petit,
Why?
Cease,
Because I need you to see something—it’s painful but you need to see it before things get out of hand. What your mother did. It didn’t just hurt your brother, it hurt you, too. The hardest part of my job is trying to help young people who’ve been abused. Just as a gift can be passed down from a mother or father, shame can be passed down, too. And sometimes the people who are abused become the abusers.
Petit,
I know some bad things happened to me, but when I woke up in the hospital and saw my brother, I knew no matter how bad I felt, his wounds went a lot deeper than mine. And what about you, Jeanne? They chained you to a wall, tortured you. That was worse than I ever got.
Cease,
Just because I got hurt badly doesn’t mean what happened to you should be minimized. You’re still in a world of hurt, and punching your way across the battlefield won’t help you heal. You’re still back kneeling over your brother’s coffin with phony promises. There’s something you need to see. Open the volume you found in your bag.
Jeanne,
I’ve got it. Did you put it there? How’d you do that?
Cease,
There’s no time for that. You have to trust me. The year at the top of the page says 1914. The Russian Revolution is three years away. Place your right index finger on the name of Misha in the middle of the page. A box beneath the boy’s name has his date of birth as 1899. He’s a child of fifteen.
J,
I got it.
C,
Now press your ring finger on his name. What do you see?
J,
I see a beautiful boy’s face, all dimples and wonder. There’s a dotted line diagonally up to another box, labeled Alexandra, twelve years old. Were they cousins?
C,
“Yes. What else do you see?”
J,
A billowing blue cloud…no, a curtain in a high-ceilinged room, French doors opened to a giant, mirrored ballroom in a winter palace. Misha stands in the middle of the ballroom with his hands over his eyes. Alexandra is behind the giant blue curtain, peeking. They’re playing a game. They’re playing the game.
C,
What do you see, child?
J,
I can’t…it’s so…I see the girl leave the vestibule, advance slowly to the boy. She’s walking slowing toward the boy. It’s just a game of hide-and-seek…he’s counting…I can hear the words…I understand the words…he’s speaking French…they must be the royal family…Alexandra advances and stands behind the boy. He’s wearing a red hunting jacket. She slowly raises her arms to the gilded light of a chandelier…I can’t see what Alexandra’s wearing. I’m seeing everything though her eyes. Why? Why am I seeing everything through her eyes? Misha’s turning…I can see his crimson Fauntleroy suit—satin pants…buckled shoes…but Alexandra’s turning with him…raising her hands over his face…she’s got something in her hands…maybe a handkerchief…no. It’s a cord. Her hands are coming down over his neck with the cord…she’s pulling and Misha’s face is turning…his hands are up to his throat and he’s pulling, but to no avail…his body goes limp in her arms…Jeanne, what’s going on? She’s killing him. Why?
C,
You have to keep looking. Tell me exactly what you see.
J,
I see Alexandra’s face as the boy falls limply to the ground. That look I’ve seen before…deeper than hate…deeper than rage…as if hate and rage have been compressed into a small gem-like flame…pure evil—the look I saw on Catherine’s face as she took out those men in the alley. Why. Why’d she do it?
C,
It’s the nature of the beast, child. The mother-to-be didn’t want to share her throne…That’s what happens to those who played the game without a cause…those who played for their own—how does your Aunt Nina put it—aggrandizement…
J,
Is that what Stephanie’s like? Is that what she’s going to do to me?
C,
No. Cease, it’s what you are going to become if you don’t find out what James was trying to get you to see.
My screen goes blank. I look out the window for the creepy guy who came and took my electronics when we were in the Pine Barrens. The Wi-Fi icon in the uppermost corner of my tablet has a cross through it. I look out the window and see the clock. Francis has shut down the Wi-Fi, and they’re jamming my broadband signal. No need to collect electronics. No landlines on the premises.
Cate has to go. You can’t afford to take any prisoners.
You mean Stephanie, don’t you Cease? A real girl who’s not going to go down easily.
INT—A SAFE HOUSE OVERLOOKING A MEAT PACKING DISTRICT IN LOWER MANHATTAN.
TIME: PRESENT DAY. THE ROOM HAS FRESH BRICK WALLS, OAK-STAINED FLOORS, AND A NEWLY PAINTED CEILING. MODERN SOFAS IN MAGENTA AND ROSE SIT BESIDE A FIREPLACE. IT FEELS COZY.
OBJECTIVE: CATHERINE THE GREAT HOLDS EVIDENCE THAT COULD RUIN JEANNE d’ARC’S CAREER. JEANNE MUST CONVINCE HER FANS THAT THE EVIDENCE IS FAKE. THAT SHE’S NOT A KILLER.
The lights are flashing from red to yellow as I take my mark toe-to-toe, a few inches from Catherine. Her lips are moving rapidly. I know what she’s saying. Francis sits behind the main camera. He looks exhausted. An assistant counts down with her fingers. I touch my finger to my upper lip again and wait for Catherine to blink as she takes her mark. But she doesn’t.
“Red leather,” I say. She laughs, genuinely.
“Yellow leather,” she replies. “The sixth shiek’s sixth sheep’s sick.”
“Red leather…”
“Yellow leather…”
“Red leather…”
“Yellow leather…”
“The sixth shiek’s sixth sheep’s sick…”
Faster and faster we go at it like a couple of dueling banjos. I feel suddenly proud—all this weirdness aside, we’re professionals. Not the talentless, well-connected Eve. Not the fresh-face-plucked-from-the-cornfield Brad. We worked hard to get here, and the proof is in our training. Then she brings her heels together, lightly, and I can hear her loafers gently tap; then her whole face lights up as if she’s just stepped onto the red carpet and the cameras are flashing—those streaks in her eyes look like the brilliant tale of a fireworks display. That’s when I brush my upper lip, and feel myself transform. Catherine the Great stares me down. I can see Alexandra in her eyes. I can feel what that cord must’ve felt like as she wrapped it around her cousin’s neck.
Then Francis steps out from behind the lens and approaches the coffee table where Cate and I will discuss the fate of the universe, and my involvement in the murder of a boy. Francis places a manila envelope on the coffee table in front of me, nonchalantly, but Francis is about as nonchalant as a train wreck. The contents don’t “accidently” spill onto the table, so he turns it over and dumps the contents out for everyone to see; photographs of a dead boy’s face—the lighting man sets a halogen beam on them. I look down at the purple bruises on the dead white face of a boy, as Francis disappears behind the camera. My head begins a slow revolution. It spins faster and faster as I turn away from Great Cate because I don’t want her to see me. I reach out for the cantilevered brick, a slice from the wall that might hold me up, nonchalantly.
Red leather…yellow leather…purple bruises…and the coroner’s report. It’s my brother with that horrible purple ring around his neck…bloated tongue that used to sing my praises…there on the table for everyone to see…Francis is a bastard. I’m going to kill him, but first I have to defend myself from Cate who’s turning to me now—her doe-like look of innocence has suddenly morphed into that cool rage she had as she sliced up those men. It’s not make-believe anymore…maybe it never really was…her motivation is simple…she wants the throne…and if I don’t step up, she’s going to wipe these nice, hardwood floors with my girly character.
What did I really do to this beautiful boy? I couldn’t watch him suffer another day on the battlefield.
The lights go green.
CATE
Welcome, my captain. Your valor in battle has not gone unnoticed…
(Cate’s voice trails off…Jeanne steals a glance at her neck adorned with a golden cross.)
JEANNE
I fight for my prince
(Catherine goes to the window. Jeanne joins her.)
CATE
Look at all of them.
(Cate sighs. Points to the cars bustling down lower Broadway.)
Going about their daily lives unaware that the fate of the earth hangs in the balance.
(She pauses, stares Jeanne down.)
The stars have aligned. It is I who must marry Craig.
JEANNE
Love will determine our fate, Catherine. Not a marriage.
(Cate and Jeanne go toe-to-toe.)
CATE
I’m sorry, Jeanne, fate has already determined that I marry Craig.
(Jeanne becomes enraged, tries to hide it.)
JEANNE
Love isn’t a grudge match, Cate.
CATE
(regally)
My name is Tsarina Catherine to you…and while I salute your valor, your insubordination has not gone unnoticed.
(She raises her cellphone to Jeanne’s face and presses a button.)
I have some bad news, I’m afraid. You’re about to be court-martialed.
JEANNE
They can’t arrest me here. This is a neutral island.
(Catherine turns to a Plexiglas box that sits on a wooden table beside the couch. A whirring sound can be heard from the box, and then a folder materializes.)
CATE
I’m sorry, Jeanne. As soon as you cross the border, you’ll be arrested for murdering a young man under your command.
(Camera pans and zooms to document. Viewers see it’s a missing person report taken in the city of Manhattan. Cate holds up a photograph a few inches from Jeanne’s face.)
CATE
I hear he was a beautiful boy until you sank your claws in him.
JEANNE
I loved him more than life itself. He was wounded in battle and begged for mercy. I will defend what I did in any court.
(Jeanne finds the light. Cate stares her down.)
CATE
You don’t know what real love is. Did you take him in your arms and he resisted? Is that what you call love?
JEANNE
You sound like Susan B. Anthony now. Let’s wait for Craig to choose.
(Jeanne turns to the camera and addresses the audience as if they’re jurors voting on her guilt or innocence.)
What I did, I did for love…the kind of love I was born to share with the world.
(Jeanne and Cate both freeze as the camera moves in for close-up.)
“Maybe you get in a series, Miss Cease,” Yousef says, as we wait at a light on the corner of 43rd Street and Lexington. “Maybe they make a whole army of saints and you go around and take out all the bad guys.”
“Saints don’t hurt people, Yousef. Only people hurt other people.” I give him a bittersweet smile before I close the door on the icy curb, and hurry past the doorman. The sunset has dipped below the monolith. Nina waits at the dining room table, pulling the belt on her bathrobe in that worried-sick way. The doorbell rings as I throw my stuff at the foot of my bed. The scene arrives. We hurry over to the dining room table. I put my hand on her shoulder and rest my chin on her head as she quickly turns the pages. We’re a team, and if I want to survive this I must not forget that; she’s got Jeanne’s faith, I’ve got her muscle. She lets out a sigh. I shake my head, sadly.
“He’s an imbecile,” she says.
“He’s a liar, too,” I say. The scene’s disgusting; it opens with Eve, topless, pressing her D-cups into Brad’s face. “I told Francis he was way off course with all this…Susan’s chest…Brad’s junk for all the world to see. That’s the reason the boys and girls wanted me back so badly. And he looked me right in the eye and said he’d try something new.”
Nina shakes her head, turns back and studies the notes at the top of the page. “You’ve got to win Brad over,” she says, “if you want to survive to the finals, and the only way you can do that…the only way he thinks you can do that, is by having boys and girls fuck each other for the entire world to see.”
I get angry at the way she says “boys and girls,” as if it’s all our fault. It’s men who want to watch this kind of shit, or at least it’s not the boys and girls who’ve been writing me online.
“Brad’s not going to go all the way, not with all those people watching. He’s just a boy—”
“Just a boy? Nina. I’ve seen the way he drools over her breasts. He’ll be hard as a rock when she starts taking it all off. And then what?” I’m not taunting her. I really don’t know what to do.
“The police. Someone will call them and report underage sex, and then Francis and all his sick minions will go to jail.”
“No, Nina. He’ll shoot the scene going all the way, then edit it the way he did with Susan and Rex. He’ll only release the edited version, at least officially; the rest will appear on You Tube.”
“Well, the grown-ups will put a stop to this. An adult on the set will report—”
“I’m sick of this adults-are-going-to-save-us bull crap. Adults are responsible for this, and I can prove it.” I race to my room and grab the tablet off the bed. I pull up FANSCAN, which monitors demographics on streaming digital broadcasts. I run back out. “Don’t blame us, Aunt Nina. Look at this.” I hold the headline right under her nose:
SAINT FRANCIS GOES ADULT?
He may be a criminal. He may be insane. But Francis MacDonald has crossed over into the adult audience, a studio exec’s wet dream. His bizarre production featuring sex, violence, and historic superheroes had 1.2 million viewers between the ages of 18 and 32. For what was billed as a teen demographic show, that’s sweet dreams for the producers. Crossover appeal for teen drama is a risky venture, a quirky proposition that defies best-laid plans—as many producers who shoot for both often fail to make a foothold in either market. The execs at Tri-star first thought the brazen sex Francis pitched was a huge mistake. They were wrong.
“Half of the adult respondents in the focus group told us they’re waiting to see someone pull the plug…the other half admitted the thought
of a virgin going all the way was too irresistible to ignore,” said one of the consultants for MacDonald Productions. Nearly Cool, a kids show about teenage pregnancy. did the same thing and became the quirky cool for 18-to-24-year-olds. What demographic will crazy Francis capture next?
“Grown-ups? The one’s who’re supposed to be protecting us…from ourselves.” Saying it emboldens me. I’m thinking of Brad’s delicate fingers gently caressing me in his trailer on our first date. His lips, like fresh-cut figs, gently pressing down. We could make some magic. Eve wouldn’t stand a chance against two virgins going at it.
But I recoil as I re-read the article. Why the hell is anyone allowing eleven-year-olds to watch full frontal nudity?
But if they wanna watch…if they want to look on with all the sick envy Petit Fleur wrote me about…why not give them a show? I walk to the end of the dining room table, turn beside the kitchen door to face Nina.
“I could beat Eve. I could beat her at her own game.”
“What are you saying, child?”
I pull my shoulders back, thrust my chest out. “I’m not a girl anymore. Who do you think adults would rather watch? Two virgins going at it, or Eve with her fake breasts and all those clumsy moves? You saw her in the graveyard scene—the way she forced herself on him.” I point at the new scene. “It’s already written. Brad gently unlocking the chains that bind me, setting me free…I’ll let him. Adults will drool as they watch him get hard…” I’m angry, now. Angry in a way I’ve never felt before with Aunt Nina. “And then I hold it, take it in my mouth—”
“That’s disgusting. Your character would never allow—”
“My character’s dead. She’s been dead for nearly six hundred years.” I feel what’s coming. What started last night in the tub won’t be finished until the worst is said. I close my eyes, try to picture the faces of adults, watching, devouring Brad and me as we slowly take it off…but I can only see one face; my mother, just before she turns the wheel.
“Yeah. Adults, Aunt Nina. Like the adult who fucked my best friend in this life. Turned him into her boy toy. And you did nothing to stop it—”
Nina looks as if I’ve just stabbed her with one of the Wusthof knives she keeps in a butcher block by the stove.
“Your sister didn’t just like to watch,” I shout. “She liked to abuse her own flesh and blood. That’s what we really have in our bloodline…And the worst part is, I think you blame me for what happened. You want to hear everything that happened between James and me on the last night of his life? Make you feel better, wouldn’t it? Less guilty if you can find someone—”
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