AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The truth surfaced like a corpse from the bottom of a lake: Clem had been murdered, as suspected—but not by Don. By Rachel. I remembered the tension that simmered between them: Clem, Rachel’s most vocal critic, the one who was least afraid to shut her down. In turn, Rachel had loved to see Clem punished most of all. She’d hung Clem in her favorite place, which meant she’d been paying attention to us, even when we thought she wasn’t.
“Just do what they want, okay?” Nicole was pulling away. “And everything will be fine. You can come with me to the Hilltop.”
I could hear Dorsey’s footsteps on the stairs. She would race to greet him; grovel, beg, throw herself on the pyre of his ego. I knew in my gut I shouldn’t let her go. I should grab her, hold her, wrest her away. She was Laurel and Clem and my mother all over again, walking straight into the razors, the fists, the fire.
But instead I stayed frozen with shock and fear, watching as Nicole disappeared into the dark. I listened to the crash of voices from the stairwell and knew what would happen. Today, tonight, tomorrow—I didn’t know when, only that it was coming.
All I’d wanted was to save one woman. But when it came time, I didn’t know how. Nicole was right: the idea had been a fantasy. A guilty mind clutching at redemption.
That’s what would go down in the history books. What the recording device in my bra would show everyone who listened: me, soundless and still as Nicole walked away, an empty void of rolling tape. In the glaring silence, they would know that when it counted, when she’d needed me, I’d once again failed to make a difference.
Part Three
Scheherazade, you upstart king
Imagine this. The night comes, the one you feared. The one you’ve been waiting for, death in exchange for an end to the mad weaving. He sees the woman you are, understands the fiction, and it is too much for his ego to bear. He takes up your father’s sword from the corner of the room, takes that thick, gleaming steel in his hands, and thrusts at your head.
You duck.
You have watched him one thousand and one nights, after all, and you know the soreness in his knee, the way his wrist stiffens and clicks in winter. You have catalogued each weakness, each chink in his armor, studying him the way prey always studies the ones who hunt it.
He stumbles. You stick out a foot and he trips, sword clattering at your feet. He looks up at you from where he crouches on his hands and knees.
You seize the sword. You could spare him, take the weapon with you, leave this room you’ve been trapped in for so long you can’t remember anything before it. Maybe there’s another world beyond the door. A thousand worlds, like you’ve dreamed, and some of them benign.
Or.
You could drive the thick, gleaming steel down in an arc that meets his neck, separate his head from his shoulders, quick and ruthless as he would do to you. You could take the crown from his forehead and place it on your own. It would smell of blood—iron and ocher—but doesn’t every crown?
What will you decide?
Whatever it is, the world will never be the same.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There’s an inferno inside me. Whirling and hungry. I’ve felt it before.
Jamie rolled toward me, sheets clinging to his sweat-slicked body. “I can feel it, too,” he said. “Simmering under your skin.”
I blinked in surprise. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken the words out loud. Maybe after so many interviews, I’d grown porous, the veil between inside and outside thin and breachable.
I leaned back next to him, my head finding the pillow, and we stared up at the popcorn ceiling, trying to catch our breath.
Jamie made me feel so good it worried me. If I was being honest with myself, Cal had been so self-absorbed, so uncurious, that being with him never felt like a risk. Jamie was different. Over and over he reached for me, like it was only natural. In the mornings, when his eyes opened on the other side of the bed and there was no pretense between us; at night, when I came back to the car and climbed over him without speaking, his mouth finding mine, no questions. Nothing that came this easy, no one who wanted this much, could ever be trusted.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said slowly. “I think I’m going to explode.”
His voice was painstakingly gentle. “Like senior year?”
I could feel my heart pumping, carrying blood to the surface of my skin. Every inch sparking, still sensitive from where he’d touched me. It was a tether to this room, but it wasn’t enough… Still, I was drifting.
Yes, I’d felt this way before.
“Like senior year,” I agreed.
“Will you finally tell me what happened, why they took valedictorian away? What did you do?”
The only two people I’d ever told were both dead. Perhaps I should tell one more person to create a record, just in case.
