Pretty Is (38 page)

“It’s a sequel,” she says. “Right? Isn’t that what you told me yesterday?”

“Yes, in a way. It picks up the story years later, though. Or it was going to, but I—”

She interrupts. “So it’s just lies, then. Since there is no real story years later, right?”

“Well, fiction,” I say, but not defensively. If she is punishing me, I have a strange feeling that I deserve it.
Guilty.
“Not lies, really. Just fiction.”

“Except for the bits that are true.”

“Yes. There are also some true bits. And … some sort of true bits,” I add, thinking uncomfortably of Sean and the period during which I cast him as the son, the period when I created Gary. It’s a dim and disturbing memory, as if it’s someone else’s: a dream sequence in a movie.

“That’s fucked-up,” says Chloe. “People say actors are fucked-up, but that’s
really
fucked-up. You
use
people.” Something horrid drips from her voice.

“Maybe,” I say. “That’s one way to look at it, I guess. But … it doesn’t hurt them, does it?”

I have slowed down by now, looking for the little dirt road, easy to miss in the dark, though the construction crew has erected posts with reflectors on either side. “Kill the lights,” hisses Chloe, ignoring my question. “Drive past.” I obey, parking a little way down, as I did on my first visit. It’s very different in the dark. “Get out quietly,” she says. “My theory, if you haven’t guessed, is that the girls are here.
If
your little friend hasn’t taken a road trip, that is.” Surely she wouldn’t speak so flippantly if she thought it might be true. Surely it isn’t true.
But the knife incident was more than forty-eight hours ago. He’s been on the run since then. That’s more than enough time to
 … to get anywhere, really.

The girls
, Chloe keeps saying. Not my girls or Gary’s girls; not Callie and Hannah, not Lois and Carly May. Real girls, getting paid to pretend to be Carly and me at twelve. Real girls who have—impossibly or inevitably—gone missing in the middle of the night. In this strange place, surrounded by woods.

We use our flashlight apps to provide illumination as we double back along the road, make our way down the driveway, and approach the cabin. The pine needles and soft ground muffle our footsteps; we don’t have to try to be quiet. Only our breathing seems loud. All around us swell the nighttime woods noises. Our lights catch eerily green patches of grass, slivers of rough bark, tiny bright eyes deep in the trees. I steal a look upward, needing to check the present against my memory, to see which is more real. The stars are thick and deep here, as they are in the Adirondacks.

“I don’t see a car anywhere, do you?” Chloe whispers.

“Maybe around back. But … who do you think has them? I mean, who brought them here?” I’m not sure now whether Chloe thinks they’re here of their own volition or not. Her mind is dark to me. I feel very Lois, and very alone.

“They’re thirteen and resourceful. They’re pissed off because Billy Pearson has been paying less attention to them since his wife and kid got here. I can think of lots of ways they could get their hands on a car if they really wanted. That’s what I hope, anyway. Otherwise…”

She doesn’t have to say what otherwise is. Otherwise is unspeakable.

“Shh!” she says suddenly. “Listen.” I listen. I hear nothing and everything: wind and insects and small hidden animals. Breath. My breath and Carly’s. And … just maybe …

I am considering the possibility that I hear more human breath than two people can account for when someone grabs us from behind, arms locking around our waists with a suddenness that stops my breath cold. And then for a second I
am
back there, in the Adirondacks, and I have been hiding, and Carly has found me, and Zed is waiting for us on the porch … And at the same time it’s Sean, I can smell him, and he has a knife, I can feel the blade pressing—

I am about to yell, I think, when I hear a giggle, and then another giggle, and then two dimly outlined forms are running in circles around us, their voices joining in a giddy chorus: “Did you hear us? Did we scare you? What were you thinking when we came up behind you? How did you find us? What are you
wearing
? Are you pissed off? Does anyone else know? Are they worried? Are we in trouble? We just wanted to see it at night … to be alone here, without a million people around, and lights … because that’s what it’s like for our characters, right? We felt like we needed to know what it was really like … We thought it would help us understand…” Our phone beams carve them into fragments, flickers of long hair, pale skin, triumphant smiles, tight jeans. For a second I see them as girls in a kaleidoscope, geometrically fractured, beautiful in every new configuration. I’m dizzy with anger and relief.
They’re just pretty girls. Just pretty, pretty girls, sure the world is theirs to command, never dreaming that danger is real, that …

“Well, did it?” Chloe finally asks when their voices trail off. “Help you understand?”

“It did,” one of them says, her voice suddenly serious and subdued. “It’s actually really amazing out here, in this totally weird kind of way.”

“And kind of beautiful,” says the other one. Natasha, the me-girl. “I mean, have you looked up at the stars? I’ve never seen so many. I swear I didn’t know there even
were
so many
.
”

Their city-girl stupidity about the stars grates on my frayed-to-the-limit nerves. Their laughter feels like a dismissal of what happened to Carly and me; it cancels out the pure gladness I should be feeling. I find myself looking past them, peering hopelessly into the darkness, and realize with a start that I am looking for Zed, waiting for him to emerge from the shadows and announce that the game is up.
“Time for bed,”
he’ll say
.
“
Inside, quick. Brush your teeth before you turn into pumpkins.
” As if we’re children
.
The past is collapsing into the present. Of course we’re not children. Of course Zed is not here.
You are the earth, Carly, and Lois, you’re the moon.
But only if the sun is there to anchor us in space, to preserve our delicate alignment. Otherwise, what are we, what can we hope to be?

Now that Justine and Natasha’s chattering has quieted, replaced by a curiously reverent stillness, I find myself impressed almost in spite of myself by their uneasy grasp of the mystery around us. Their sense of wonder. Maybe there is hope that they will take my lies and make them true, take my truths and turn them into lovely fictions. We all stand in the dark for a moment, looking upward, before Carly clicks her phone back on. “All right, girls,” she says. “Next thing you know, we’ll be lying in the grass and discussing the goddamned constellations, and this isn’t that kind of movie. I need to call Billy and your parents and try to get your little asses out of trouble. Whose car did you take?” Chloe has turned matter-of-fact and practical all of a sudden, and it strikes me that she is essentially playing Mandy, though a version of Mandy infused with a bit of her own worldly vulgarity. It occurs to me, too, that in playing Mandy she gets a chance to love Zed one more time, safely and from a distance—and to lose him again, too. Zed, embodied by Billy, no doubt closely observed by a vigilant Fiona … I wonder if I want to stay. I wonder if I can bear to watch.

The girls confess at last that they bribed one of the prep cooks to let them use his car. “Will he get in trouble?” they demand anxiously, and I’m glad that they can think of someone other than themselves. “It wasn’t his fault, really. We were very persuasive.” They look at each other conspiratorially, reveling in the strangeness of their ability to make men do their bidding.

Chloe

Now that the girls are safe, I’m cold, damp, exhausted, and free to be pissed off at them. Shooting starts tomorrow, and no one will have slept. At their age it won’t matter, but I’ll wake up with an extra decade carved in my face if I don’t get the minimum hours of unconsciousness. They’re laughing now, oblivious to the fact that they have actually scared the absolute shit out of everyone. I want to knock their pretty heads together.

I’ve had enough stargazing. I hold my hand out. “Give me the damned keys,” I say. Justine is reaching into her pocket when, over her shoulder, I see a shadow detach itself from a tree and slouch toward the cabin. I blink. My eyes are caked with mascara and interrupted sleep, after all. They make their own shadows.

Is that a shadow?

“Lois.” My hand has already shot out, grasped her tiny wrist.
“Lois!
” I lower my voice. The girls stop chattering, lean into each other. Lois turns slowly, follows my gaze. I see the shadow again, slinking along the side of the house. Moving in our direction.
Zed
, I think for one crazy moment.
Looking for us.

Then Lois screams. Long and shrill, like someone else’s voice has invaded her throat, and someone else’s fear, because the Lois I know has never been afraid of
anything
, much less some stupid shadow. Lois’s scream slices through skin, veins, echoes through my heart. The girls, clutching each other, eyes wide and baffled, duck behind me. The shadow freezes.

When Lois stops screaming, the air still rings. Metal on metal, as if the night is sharp. She wrenches her arm free and steps away from me, toward the cabin. “Sean,” she says, her voice shaky but restored to its usual octave.

Not Zed, not a shadow. Lois’s fucking stalker. And she’s walking toward him, red dress and smeared makeup garish in the moonlight, like she belongs on a movie set.
Which this is.

What the hell is she doing?

I lean down to Justine and Natasha, whose faces are pale with fright. “Go to the car.” My voice comes out a low growl. “Call Billy, call your parents. Run.
Now.”
They go, arm in arm, long legs flying behind them.

I start across the lawn after Lois, who is moving like a sleepwalker, slowly and steadily. “I didn’t think you’d make it,” she says to the shadow, as if this is a perfectly normal conversation in the middle of the day. “How did you do it?” She sounds almost impressed.

“Got your credit card number off your computer. And your whole itinerary. And I followed those stupid girls. Wasn’t exactly challenging.” It’s a young man’s voice, tight and peevish and smug. “I could tell you didn’t take me seriously. I was sick of it.”

“That’s not true,” Lois begins, and then in the distance I hear a car door shut. The stalker hears it too; he jumps and emerges swiftly from the heavy darkness around the lodge. To me he looks slight, unremarkable. Something glitters, though, in his hand.

“Sean!” says Lois, her voice sharp. “They’re not part of this.”

The girls
. I dart forward to intercept him, place myself squarely in Sean’s path.
I’ll keep them safe
, says some crazy voice in my head. I can’t quite make out his face, but I can see that he’s nothing like Zed. I can still feel the shiver of senseless hope that shot through me. Sorrow and loss, hardly faded after eighteen years. But there’s no echo of Zed here, no trace. How could Lois ever have thought so?

Sean pulls up short when he sees me. “Yeah, but
she
is,” he says. “Carly May Smith!” Shockingly, he sticks out a hand—not the one that glitters—as if we’re going to be fucking properly introduced. I back away, and he laughs, dark and unhinged, arm returning to his side. “I can see Professor Lonsdale has told you all about me.”

“The police are looking for you, Sean,” Lois says calmly. “If you turn yourself in, you won’t be in much trouble. But they know where you are. And the knife isn’t going to help your cause, believe me.”

What if we had fled when Lois screamed? Could we have gotten away? Too late. For a second I think I hear something behind me. A voice? A rustle of clothing? But no, nothing. Wishful thinking. Escape and rescue seem equally unlikely.

“Maybe we should go sit down,” Lois proposes. “On the porch, maybe? We’ve all had a long day.” Her matter-of-factness should be reassuring, but it’s having the opposite effect. Now
I
want to scream. I’ve watched enough crime shows to know what she’s doing: she wants to keep him talking until someone comes. Fictional psychopaths always want to stand around and tell you their goddamned story before they shoot you or stab you or slice parts of you off or whatever. Right now my faith in fictional psychopaths is a little shaky. Besides, there are always exceptions, even on TV: the guy in
Criminal Exploits
just slit my throat with no warning, for instance. It can happen. And I can discern the contours of Sean’s knife now: it’s long, curved, cruel-looking. It’s not an ordinary knife. It’s a very, very serious knife.

But Lois is already putting her suggestion in motion. She’s stepping up onto the porch. She finds the outside light next to the front door, lowers herself into an Adirondack chair, stretches her legs out. “Just like your book,” Sean says, and they exchange a look. I feel strangely excluded, as if they’re in on this together.
Has she lost it?
I wonder suddenly. All this time I’ve been thinking that Lois was mildly off-kilter but basically sane. Maybe she’s actually out of her fucking mind.

Sean follows Lois onto the porch and produces a roll of duct tape from the deep pocket of what I can see now is an extremely shabby trench coat. My first thought is that wardrobe could have come up with something a little more original. Then I think I must be as goddamned crazy as Lois.

But he’s not going to tie her up, and he’s sure as hell not getting me in one of those chairs, fancy knife or no. “Jesus,” I hear myself explode. “You’re going to tape her to a freaking Adirondack chair? I don’t think so.” I lurch forward. I have no plan, but I have my eye on the knife. Isn’t this what Mandy would do? I’m taller than he is and very possibly stronger. I can see his face now; it’s sprinkled with acne, fine-boned, sun-deprived. And scared to death: I see fear cross his features like an eclipse and marvel at his reaction to my attack. Then I am being shoved aside, hands grabbing my waist, digging into my ribs—and now it’s my turn to scream, unthinking, until I see that it’s Billy pushing past me, grabbing Sean, wresting the knife from his grip, forcing his hands behind his back. “Tear me a piece,” he orders, tossing the duct tape to Lois. She pulls out a length of tape, tears it with her teeth, hands it to Billy, who looks more Zed-like than ever. After a few repetitions Sean’s wrists are secured behind his back and his ankles looped together.