“We blew a breaker,” the cameraman called out. “The lights overloaded the circuit.”
“What the hell is happening here?” Deja’s voice was tinged with annoyance. “I told you to make sure we didn’t trip it.”
A flashlight shone across Linda’s eyes.
“Get back inside, lovebirds. We can’t film out here right now.” The flashlight moved closer until Deja’s hand brushed against Linda’s hair. “Here, I’ll lead you.”
“We could’ve adjusted to the dark if you didn’t shine that thing at us,” Tristan said.
“You can adjust to my ass if you get testy with me again, country boy.” Deja shoved the flashlight into Linda’s hand. Linda aimed it in front of them and walked forward. Tristan huffed into the wet air and followed. “That’s right, Linda. Now there’s a woman who knows what’s good for her.”
Linda’s body flamed, but she kept moving. The misty rain on her skin annoyed her, and Tristan’s presence beside her was even worse, especially when he looped her arm with his.
“These producers,” Tristan whispered once they were far enough away. “Is it a California thing? Southern folk don’t ever talk so rude.”
Linda relaxed as a laugh overtook her, fake at first, then real as she pushed away the terrible orchard. “Yeah, they do,” she said, remembering the old phrases her mom used to spew toward her, words that looked on paper to be coated with honey but when spoken dripped with poison: Oh, honey; Thanks for sharing; Bless your heart. “Maybe you didn’t notice them.” Tristan tensed beside her, but she didn’t regret the snarky comment. The dark brought out the worst in her.
• • •
They rejoined the others in the parlor, but the night had withered and died on the vine. Charity rose when they entered as though she were greeting a judge. She was, Linda realized. A flash of the elimination ceremonies they’d all been forced to endure appeared behind her blinking eyes. Even outside of competition shows like this one, relationships were nothing but daily judgments until one or the other party found someone unworthy of continuing on.
“Back so soon?” Marion perked up.
“Blackout,” Linda said. “Spooky.” She waved her fingers like tentacles.
Tristan laughed uneasily. “Producers forced us back in here. I’m beat, though. What do you ladies say to calling it a night?”
“Call it like it is,” Charity said. She faked a yawn. “I’m surprised we lasted this long.”
“I’ve got a wild day planned for you all tomorrow,” Tristan said. “Can’t wait to see what you ladies are made of.”
The women said their goodbyes to Tristan and filed out of the room. As Charity smoothed past Linda, Linda heard her mutter: “Skin and bone, country boy. Women are made of skin and bone.”
• • •
That night in her bed, snuggled under the red quilt, Linda turned the phrase over and over. Women are made of skin and bone. Linda shivered despite the blanket’s insistent warmth. If she asked Tristan what women were made of, he’d give her a saccharine answer: sugar and spice, and you give me that sugar right here on my lips, little lady. Skin and bone was closer to the truth, but it withheld crucial information. Linda was made of more than that; she was made, too, of cellulite and follicle, brittle nail and aching ancient injuries. Blood that often betrayed her with its pressures high and low, hormones that waxed and waned like a stupid moon in her pineal gland. She was made of fear and longing and the dirt on the bottoms of her feet from walking barefoot. She was made of roots that stretched as veins through her body, and as she lay trying to sleep in a house in the middle of nowhere, she imagined those veins pushing out through the bottoms of her feet and climbing down into the wooden floors, drilling through to find any substance that might hydrate her. She listened as the house made its old-house noises, something like a desperate sucking sound, and imagined that it was her body seeking what it came for.
Chapter Twelve
Sabrina
After washing her face and applying six creams—under-eye, face, hair, skin, foot, and cuticle—Sabrina sunk into her pink bed. She sighed into the feather pillows, but as she rolled to face the wall, she remembered the woman’s outline in the walls downstairs and rolled to face the ceiling instead. It had been a nasty trick.
The wood bed frame creaked with each of her movements, so she tried to move as little as possible to keep her mind off haunted thoughts. Her creams’ floral scents mixed with the other creams’ smells of mint and rose, and she breathed in the concoction that kept her soft enough for stray men to stroke.
She had barely dozed off when she woke to a hand tugging at her blanket.
“Care to be possessed?” Tristan whispered into her ear as she suppressed a scream. He stuck his nose into her hair. “You smell amazing, you know. And your hair.” He ran a hand through it.
Despite herself, a glow warmed in her belly. When his hands traveled to rest against her belly button, she ached between her legs.
“Possessed?” she whispered as sleep cracked in her voice. “You know I don’t believe in that.”
“You said yes and no,” he said. “Those kinds of answers confuse a man.”
“Yes,” Sabrina said as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into her. “Possess me.”
They made love like two planes of glass, trying not to break one another, legs straightened out, her thighs tightening as she gripped him inside of her. He rocked on top of her in his quiet thrusting. She grabbed the tender skin of his ass, guiding his every movement. Their cheeks grazed one another as they let their tiny moans vibrate in each other’s ears. Sabrina broke apart beneath him, her body trembling as he pressed it into the mattress.
He kissed her goodnight and slipped out of her room, leaving her to the squeaking bed frame.
• • •
The first time Sabrina had sex, she was fifteen. Her sister had brought a boy home from school, a friend from the junior swim team. Morgan set them both down and issued her command: “Alex, remove your shirt.”
Like so many people, Alex listened to everything Morgan told him. He pulled his shirt off over his head. He was all muscle and sinew, a pale, lean boy, with a handsome flop of black hair. “You’re going to take Sabrina’s virginity.”
He clutched his shirt to his chest and balked. “I thought this was a date.”
“It is,” Morgan said. “You’re dating my little sister. It will look good for her.”
“Like, at school?” he said, but Sabrina understood: it would look suitable for the story of her life. Lost it to a swim team boy at the age of fifteen. It was a little younger than most women—but lots of pretty girls who developed first lost it early—and not late enough to make her seem frigid. It would give her a hint of wildness, while the fact that the boy was athletic, older, the friend of her sister, would show that she was wanted, lucky even, from a young age.
“But I like you,” the boy said to Morgan.
Morgan cackled. “No, you don’t. My sister’s the pretty one.”
“She’s fine.” He glanced at her as though appraising her for the first time. “I mean, I guess you’re right. She’s hot.”
