Rehearsals were taut. I wasn’t a complete monster: I’d slipped the necklace back in Harper’s bag during class. Let her think she’d just misplaced it.
Besides, the last thing I needed was her getting used to performing without it. I could always rely on taking it again in the future, especially if she decided to ever do something as reprehensible as plant drugs on me again.
Hopefully next time I wouldn’t be caught unaware.
Harper clung tighter to Lewis even though I hadn’t flirted with him again. Just that once to plant the seed. Lether convince herself she was imagining things, that she was overreacting—and let her run herself into ruin with doubt every time our characters kissed.
———
During our final rehearsal before our performance, Harper called everyone into a circle.
“I have gifts to say thank you and to wish us all luck.”
She passed out little velvet boxes tied up with red ribbon. I watched Zoe unwrap a CADS ring, embossed with the school’s logo. Eric opened an engraved CADS pen.
I pushed the ribbon off.
A necklace. Turquoise. A wiry silver chain.
I glanced up, seeing Harper watching me, her amber eyes sparkling with amusement. And her own necklace hung at her throat.
“Because you liked mine so much,” she said.
I remember flushing—and I think that angered me even more. The embarrassment whenshewas the one who had started all of this. How dare she accuse me in turn—and publicly at that. I could hardly gift her a bag of cocaine back, so if this was her attempt to throw me before the final show, I determined to let it fuel me instead.
I wanted to give a performance so stellar that Harper—effortless, gravitational Harper—would be forgotten.
I retreated to the changing rooms before I could risk another word bringing that resolve toppling down.
Lewis followed me.
“I have a gift too,” he said, leaning close to my ear to whisper. “Fancy some method acting?”
“Oh, don’t tempt me, Leonardo,” I replied, breathy.
But I ran before he could make plans. This had to be it—some trap Harper planned to spring. Drawing me somewhere the night before our performance to what? Deprive me of sleep and make me ruin the show? Shave off my eyebrows? Frame me for something, get me arrested, and force me to miss the show that way?
Dear god, this whole thing was making me paranoid.
I couldn’t wait for summer; I needed to escape CADS immediately. So I spent the evening not running over my lines as I once might have but swept away in Adeline’s story—coming of age through horror, the parallel of womanhood and terror, the specific interrogation within the screenplay’s wider themes of woman as slate, as projection, as a person who can tell you exactly who she is and still have the male fantasy version of her superimposed.
I thought of someone else playing her and ached. But still. But still …
If I had that prize, I wouldn’t need to spend the summer working. If I won the Wilfred Allen Award, I could become Adeline.
———
I avoided Harper as much as I could in our shared dressingroom. My preshow nerves had distilled into an anxiety that whatever this spat was it was detracting from our real performances.
There was a possibility neither of us would get the award, and that somehow felt worse. Harper was the only person I could conceive of losing to—as bitter and agonizing a thought as that was. It would be humiliating. But it might be the only sort of loss I could stomach.
Still, despite all that, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to snatch one last pointed dig.
So I wore the necklace, allowing it to settle between my cleavage, much of which was on show in the white dress that was horrendously cliché for the Bride.
Harper noticed it immediately, her head whipping round as I fastened its chain. “That’s fake, by the way.”
“Yes, maybe that’s why it reminds me of someone. Still lucky though.”
