“Don’t you want to know what it says?” Deja said.
Linda snapped back. “What does it say?” She didn’t reach for it.
“It says he decided to off himself after his conversation with you. It says he realized he only had so much time before all the things he’d done got out. It says, Linda, that his suicide is all your fault.”
Now Linda grabbed the note. Her eyes scanned it. Deja was right. Brandon blamed her.
“I didn’t tell the man to kill himself.” She swallowed hard, her brain a foggy swirl of half-thoughts. Brandon’s suicide was his fault—or Deja’s. She studied the writing, but she’d never seen anything written by Brandon. It could be his, or anyone’s. Deja towered over her. She felt small trapped in her shadow. “This isn’t my fault,” Linda whispered.
Deja shrugged. “Authorities might see it that way. Viewers could, if we spun it right.”
Linda searched the room for Deja’s camera. It lay on the floor, its red light off. Linda’s stomach sunk.
“Has this happened on set before?” Linda wrapped her arms around herself, clutching the skin at her back until it caused an icepick of pain to shoot through her. “Someone…killing themselves?”
Deja rubbed her temple. “ Once. A contestant. I’m not going down for this,” she added. “A suicide on my watch? I’ve worked hard for this career.”
“What do you want from me?” She felt like she might throw up. She wanted to throw up. She would aim it at Deja’s feet.
“I want one thing from you. It’s the thing I’ve wanted from the beginning: a good performance.” Deja clicked the microphone at her lapel, speaking into it. “Show me the woman on edge.” Her voice echoed in Linda’s earpiece.
“Or else?” Linda said. “What are you dangling over my head now?”
“The blame for this has to go somewhere.” Deja gave Linda a wicked half-smile.
“This is not what I signed on for.” Linda moved forward on her knees, hoping the subservient position would make Deja take pity on her. It had worked with her husband, and her father before him, when she begged for him not to ground her for sneaking sips of his booze. “You promised you’d make me look good. You promised you’d give me a good future. I didn’t sign up to be the woman on edge.”
“Did you read your contract?” Deja stepped toward Linda, her steps heavy, as though she might stomp Linda beneath her boots. “I can make you look however I want. But Linda, I’m not a monster. If you give me what I want, I’ll make this suicide note disappear. I’ll put another one in its place. One that doesn’t blame you.”
“Let me go.” Linda pictured herself running free of this place, mudslide or no. She imagined herself hiding in some hovel, living there, away from the spotlight, forever. “Let me leave.”
“We’re trapped,” Deja said. “You saw it with your own eyes.”
“I’ll take my chances out there,” Linda said. “I’ll go through the woods, off the path. I’ll walk until I can’t walk anymore.”
“I’m not letting you die for some stupid pride.”
“So, what? We’re just going to stay here with a dead body? The others are going to freak.”
“The others aren’t going to know.” Deja knelt to meet Linda on her level. With hands too soft to belong to such a hard-ass, she wiped a tear Linda didn’t realize she’d shed. Linda let her cheek graze her palm. She needed it, the hint of concern, the promise. “We’re going to film like nothing happened, and this suicide thing? It’s not going to come out until we’re finished here. Do you understand me?”
“You want me to…lie?”
“I want you to play your part,” Deja said. “And I want you to leave the truth out of it.”
“And if I tell someone?”
The room stunk like new pus, soon to ripen and spread.
“Then it all comes out. Everything you’ve ever kept from them. What you’ve done. Who you are. You know the drill.” Deja wiped Linda’s tear back onto Linda’s night shirt, leaving behind the wet imprint of Deja’s finger. “Nothing here has changed.”
• • •
As Deja led Linda back down the hall to her bedroom, Linda didn’t walk, but forced her way through a heavy fog. She slipped into Deja’s leftover footsteps. She would not step out of line. She couldn’t. There was everything at stake.
When Deja stopped before her bedroom door and held it open, Linda stumbled inside. She crawled onto the bed as though it was her only choice, the final destination, a soft grave in which to die.
That night, it wasn’t crying she heard, but a wail so high-pitched it might have been a ringing in her ears. But it didn’t cease, and it burned her ears, the way an animal in pain hurts to hear. As the night eroded, Linda tossed and turned, and the wail transformed, amplified, until it was the howl of a coyote in heat. The shrill of cicadas dying in the heat. The crash of a summer storm outside her childhood home. The manor moaned in answer. Linda dreamt of swinging vines that scooped her up and delivered her to their mangy den.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sabrina
Buzzed from her picnic date with Tristan, Sabrina found herself wandering the halls as the rest of the manor dozed. They’d had such a lovely time, it left her sure that she’d be the one to stand before him as he bended knee and presented one of those network-funded rocks.
At first, she didn’t know where she was walking. Like sleepwalking, love-walking was a state that possessed her and pushed her forward of its own will. She was happy to let her mind wander, and it replayed their picnic as her feet led her to her secret room, her peaceful place.
Inside the room with humming walls, she lay, legs throbbing, on the floor, letting the sound soothe her. While she had tossed and turned in bed, the hardness of the wood beneath her felt more like her stiff mattress at home. Finally, she slept and dreamt of Tristan, his boyish smile, his tickling touch. In her dream, she cried tears of happiness, not pain, and where they landed in the ground beneath her, little trees sprung through the dirt.
When she opened her eyes, her breathing had slowed. She rolled over, the sleep and love chemicals blunting her reality. She’d fallen asleep with the lights on, and it amused her, like something a child might do. As she nuzzled her own hand with her chin, her grin pressing into her palm, a movement caught her attention.
A hand reached from the wall. It reached toward her, as strong and convincing as Tristan’s. She rose. She moved toward it. It needed something from her. Its presence pulled at her, asking her to lace her fingers with its fingers. It told her what to do. So, she did it.
As she took the hand, it pulled her. Her heart rate sped up as its woody skin hardened over her, and her arm sunk into the wall. She yelped, returning to her waking state. She kicked her feet, but the hand was strong. It took her into the grains, and as she screamed, the wall closed over her mouth.
She gasped for breath like a beached fish until the wall opened around her. She found herself on her knees in a womb-like entrance, a tunnel twisting around her, as pink as an intestine. It smelled like sawdust sanded from rotted wood. Someone’s voice spoke on the other side. Was it her sister’s? She crawled on hands and knees toward her. The wall undulated beneath her. She rode its waves, its vibrations moving through her, moving into her. As her skin hummed with them, she felt as safe as she had in Tristan’s arms. She kept crawling forward and let the tunnel lead her where it wanted her to go.
• • •
