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“Oh my god.” Everly hauled her hammer over her shoulder and brought it down repeatedly on a cracked concrete block, doing her best to drown out her brother’s voice. The rest of them were laughing, but Everly wouldnotbe joining in. Thinking about your sibling having sex was no better than being forced to recognize that your parents knew each other carnally.
Stanton finally took his first swing at an object, slamming an aluminum bat into a stack of plates in spectacular fashion. Shards of porcelain rained down like confetti as he threw back his head and hollered.
He blew out a breath when he was done and wiped at his brow. “You’re naming everything, right?” he asked Everly.
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Label everything you break. It’s part of the process.” He spun his grip on the bat and pointed the end at his next target, a large, flat serving platter. “For example, we’ll call that one the comics industry. Every imprint that denied my pitches because heroes needed to have ‘a certain look.’” He threw air quotes around the last few words before choking up his hands on the bat’s neck and landing a stunning strike at the plate’s center. Half of it launched in the air, smashing into the closest wall.
Lowering his arms, he scanned the floor. Then he retrieved a computer monitor and placed it on the barrel in front of Everly. “What’s this?”
Everly didn’t need to think twice about it.
She pictured Grandma Helen as she brought the hammer back over her shoulder. First, how she’d looked for most of Everly’s life—tall and round, strong, confident. The way her eyes disappeared into her plump cheeks when she grinned. The way she loved to swear, and to yell, and tolaugh, and only grew louder the more Everly’s mom tried to shush her. Everly used to look forward to holiday gatherings, not for the gifts or the food, but for the chance to watch her mom squirm beneath the shadow of her own mother’s unbridled energy.
Then Everly recalled how all that had been sucked away by chemo. At the end, her grandmother had been so small and frail. Her laughs had turned into coughs, her bright smiles into closed-mouth grimaces. Cancer stole her grandmother’s joy, her laughter, her magnetism. Then it took her life.
She slammed the sledgehammer down on the monitor as if it could erase those final images of Grandma Helen from her mind. There was a loud crack, and the plastic stand snapped, but the casing remained intact. She frowned. She’d wanted it to crumble under the force of her blow.
She wanted to have the power to change things. If she didn’t, what was the point of being on this show?
Logan had been circling the room, grabbing footage, helping Sady direct everyone into the best spots for filming, all while managing to avoid getting hit by swinging blunt objects and flying debris. His agility was pretty impressive. Everly was sure she would have been bleeding from multiple wounds by now if she’d been in his position.
He paused across from her and, for a second, lowered the camera from his face. “Place it flat,” he said.
“What?”
“The monitor.”
She stared at it. He was right. There’d definitely be more surface area that way. More room for maximum damage. Flipping it on its side, she glanced up to thank him, but he’d already moved on.
She wound up her swing like a postapocalyptic baseball player in her hazmat suit and, using all her strength, slammed the weapon down on the monitor’s back. Tension fled her body, and she couldn’t help but grinat the bits of plastic that cut through the air when the hammer’s head burrowed into the casing.
“Nice.” Stanton patted Everly on the back. “Who was that for?”
“The cancer that took my grandmother.”
Stanton gave the pieces a few whacks of his own. “Fuck cancer,” he said.
“Fuck cancer,” Everly repeated.
After a moment of silence, Stanton summoned Ellis and Becca over and asked each of them to pick an item and place it in front of Everly. “It should represent something you know she struggles with,” he explained. “And you need to tell her what it is.”
Becca stepped up first with a vase. “Self-doubt,” she said.
Stanton touched Everly’s shoulder lightly. “Smash it, then say an affirmation.”
The crystal exploded into chunks that shimmered in the light like diamonds. “My art is good.”
Becca jammed her hands on her hips. “You can do better than that.”
“Isn’t it against the rules to criticize affirmations?” Everly turned to Stanton for backup.
“Not when she’s right.”
Everly sighed. “Fine.” She said the words in her head a few times before she spoke them aloud. “I’m… talented, I guess?” At Becca’s glare, she cleared her throat. “Iamtalented.”
“What else?” Becca demanded.
