Envy (Fury) (33 page)

Two years ago. Skylar and Lucy are getting ready for a pageant together. Skylar knows, the way you know in dreams—especially bad dreams—what’s going to happen . . . that she’s going to fumble during her talent portion, the pathetic cherry on top after a disappointing performance, and she will not even place at all in the pageant. Another dose of humiliation. Skylar wonders just how much of that she can take.
Meanwhile, Lucy will wow the judges with her pure singing voice, her graceful dancing, her pulled-together look, her radiant smile. But for now they are still backstage in a dressing room. Their mother is watching them, rather listlessly, from the corner. Offering the occasional “pointer.” Lucy has already pinched Skylar’s arm. Now she is helping do Skylar’s hair. She’s pulling too hard, probably on purpose, and it hurts. Skylar screams, it hurts so much. Lucy leans down close to Skylar’s ear and whispers, “It’s supposed to hurt. Don’t you understand that, Sky-sky? Life is pain.”

Pain. Skylar moaned out loud as the wave brought her back to full consciousness. She felt pulling at her scalp—as if Lucy was here with her, scraping a brush against her head. No. She was here in the hospital. The pain at her hairline was the stitching in her skin, holding together a gash in her scalp. The glass. The snow. The memories came crashing back, along with a searing sensation of pain.

But then the pain ebbed and she floated up into an eddy of warmth. Just as quickly she started to drift away, back toward the visions. . . .

When Lucy leaves the room, Skylar is furious. What does Lucy know about pain? The anger keeps cycling in Skylar’s chest—and on every pass, it gets worse. Skylar looks around and spots Lucy’s sparkly gold pumps—the ones she always wears for the talent portion of the pageant. The talent portion, in which Lucy would excel and Skylar would fail.

She grabs the shoes and snaps off both heels with a strength she didn’t know she had. She throws them across the room. For a second her rage dissipates. But it’s not enough. She wants more. Then, the idea: manically, speedily, she opens their “emergency kit” and digs out a bottle of glue usually reserved for last-minute rhinestone emergencies. She retrieves the shoes and glues the heels back on. They look almost normal, like nothing happened. Lucy won’t be able to tell. It’s perfect. They’ll barely last until she gets onstage, and then the uneven pressure of her dance moves will break them. Skylar smiles with satisfaction, finally able to take a full breath.

But in the bed, now, she felt panicked, unable to fill her lungs with oxygen. She clutched the scratchy hospital sheet, trying to stay in this reality, to keep from rolling away in the next tidal surge. But there was no life jacket. She dunked under again.

Skylar is backstage as Lucy struts down the runway toward the judges. The lights are bright and hot, and Skylar can’t see anything but Lucy’s silhouette. Stumbling. Winding her arms almost like a cartoon character. Falling. Skylar can’t see her eyes, but she knows what they look like: bright, wide, shocked. Then a sound like a crack as Lucy hits the ground.

No, not the ground. A footlight—a sharp, metal sheath around a glass spotlight affixed to the runway, shining up at the girls. The glass shatters as Lucy’s head makes contact. Then nothing. The music stops. The audience is silent, even while the music keeps playing like a broken record. Skipping. Skipping on the image of Lucy’s bruised face. Lucy is
motionless. There is blood spreading in a butterfly pattern beneath her, as though she is sprouting wings. . . .

“I didn’t mean it,” Skylar mumbled. The skin at the sides of her mouth was dry and cracking. She brought her hands up to her face, felt the cloth wrapped around her cheeks and chin, the tape by her ears holding the bandages together.

The hospital. Doctors speaking in low voices; she watches her sister through a glass window.
Frontal lobe damage.
Lucy cannot hold a pencil.
She may seem fine down the road, but things will have changed.
Lucy’s hand shaking. Her head turning toward the window, looking at Skylar, taking a moment to register who she is.

The machines next to her kept beeping. She imagined them like a lighthouse. If she could just keep swimming toward that sound, against the current, against these hideous recollections, she would be safe.
Beep-beep-beep—

Lucy is staring at Skylar, crying. Then she is laughing. Pointing jerkily. “It’s her fault, you know.” Skylar sees the nasty set of stitches across Lucy’s forehead. Like Frankenstein’s monster. Men are taking Lucy away. Their mom is crying, saying her little baby is damaged forever. Skylar is crying too, and the doctors interpret it as heartbreak, not guilt. Lucy laughs the whole time.

That laugh. Where was it coming from? It filled Skylar’s head, her whole body. Like a twittering bird . . . She knew that sound from somewhere. Meg. Meg with the red ribbon around her neck. She laughed like that. Did Meg laugh like Lucy, or did
Lucy laugh like Meg? It was impossible to tell. Skylar whimpered. She felt like a child, or a singing doll stuck on repeat. She closed her eyes and pressed her head against the thin pillow.
Stop. Shut up.
The dreamscape flooded back to her, even as tears began filling her eyes.

Skylar is on a stage with the lights shining too brightly into her eyes. Everyone is looking at her and pitying her and petting her and telling her not to worry, her sister will be okay. It is a lie. She is a liar.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
she says, and no one understands why.
You have nothing to be sorry about, sweetheart. Don’t blame yourself.

“I’m
sorry
!” she cried. All of a sudden Skylar sat up straight in her hospital bed, sputtering and shaking, her bandages soaked with sweat. No longer onstage, but here at the Southern Maine Regional Hospital, in room 17. Alone.

She squinted. Her vision was still fuzzy. No. She was not completely alone. As she looked around, trying to catch her breath and her bearings, she saw a figure standing in the doorway—blond and beautiful, just like Lucy was. Like Lucy had been. She gasped.

Lucy was here. Lucy had come; she had come to make sure Skylar knew she was a terrible person, a horrible sister, a liar. Skylar hadn’t visited her sister once after Lucy got shipped to the “rehab center” for people who had suffered severe brain damage. Skylar had made excuse after excuse until finally it was time to leave for Ascension.

“Lucy? Lucy? Is that you?” She sounded groggy. Maybe now she could explain and apologize. Maybe she could undo the wrongs.

“Hi, Sky-Sky.” The girl stepped farther into the room. Smiling, all curves, with peaches-and-cream skin, the girl seemed almost to glow with an ethereal light. And her lips. Her lips were painted a deep, true red. Or was that blood dripping from her mouth? For a moment the girl looked like someone else. . . . She looked like Meg’s cousin Ali. Skylar gasped and pulled back, feeling her head swaying a little.

The girl smiled again. “It’s me,” she said.

Skylar stared, trying to stay present, trying not to get sucked back into a dream state. The girl—it was Lucy, it had to be—fanned her face with her hand. “It’s hot in here, huh? Come on. We’re leaving. The nurses may not want you to leave, but we do!” She smiled conspiratorially. “I came to bring you to the dance.”

Skylar let her eyes close while the girl began unhooking and unplugging various machines and IVs.

“How . . . how did you get out?” she murmured, listening as the machines stopped whirring one by one. The rehab facility was almost like an asylum—once admitted, patients were unlikely to leave. How had Lucy found her here? She grew tired trying to unscramble the mixed signals in her brain.

“They let me out,” the girl responded brightly. “I wanted to come and see my baby sister.”

If they’d let her out, she had to be fixed, right? “Then you’re all better?” She looked at Lucy’s face imploringly.

“All better, Sky-Sky,” the girl singsonged in response, smiling a smile that was even more perfect than Skylar remembered. The words caused another wave of relief and euphoria to wash over her. “Now come on. I’ll help you get ready once we get you out of here.”

She was better. Lucy was better. She’d be forgiven after all. With hope in her heart, Skylar swung her legs over the side of the hospital bed and stood up shakily, still swinging between dream and wakefulness. Slipping quietly through the darkened halls, miraculously undetected by the few doctors and nurses they passed, Skylar followed her magically healed sister out of the hospital, still in her thin blue-green gown and bare feet, with bandages concealing her face.

They were going to the dance.

Em got ready in a matter of minutes. She grabbed a short, flowy white dress from her closet—she’d worn it only once, to a party at Gabby’s country club last summer—and a lavender shawl. On her feet, silvery flats. She was flushed with nerves and anxiety; it barely registered that this outfit might be more appropriate for a summer celebration than a winter dance. But with her hair pulled up into a tight dancer’s bun, silver strands dangling from her ears, and a slick of berry-stain gloss across her lips—all this done on autopilot—she could see, with a quick look in the mirror on her way out the door, that she looked okay. Pretty, even. It didn’t matter, anyway. She wasn’t going to make a fashion statement. She was going to stop the Furies. She was going to make things right, to find Drea, to put an end to this cycle of hurt and revenge.

Hastily she transferred her things from her school bag to a simpler, smaller silver purse, noticing in the process that she had several missed calls on her cell phone from Crow. She hadn’t spoken to him in a few days—not since their strained interaction at the Dungeon—and she felt a twinge of guilt. Sure, he could be an asshole, but he was also genuine. Weirdly, even though she hardly knew him, she felt like she could trust him. What was it he’d said? Something about just wanting to make sure she was okay . . . ? She was curious about the rest of his mysterious revelation.

But it wasn’t Crow who she needed right now. It was JD. Her love.

She shoved the phone into her purse, vowing to call Crow tomorrow once all this was over. If she hurried, she could catch the last half of the dance.

•  •  •

Screeching into an illegal parking spot outside the gym, Em spotted Mr. Shields, a senior adviser and a government teacher, working the door.
Shit.
Em realized that in the chaos of the last few weeks, she hadn’t bought a ticket. Ascension admin insisted that students buy tickets in advance in order to be admitted to school dances. Something to do with some drunken dance crashers from Trinity a few years back. She considered trying to sneak in; maybe she could go around the back? Sometimes smokers propped the door open. . . .

Shields was busy lecturing a freshman dance committee volunteer about keeping watch on the door, which was being held open by a garbage can.

Just as Em was about to make a run for it, Shields swung his face over in her direction. With his arms crossed over his barrel chest and a frown on his face, he looked like an actual bouncer. But as soon as she approached him, it was like he melted, or something. Like he was under a spell.

“Mr. Shields?” Em gave him her sweetest smile. “I think I forgot to bring my ticket, or lost it. . . .” She craned her neck, trying to see inside.

He looked at her distantly, as though seeing her through a fog. “Oh . . . that’s fine, Emily. Go ahead.”

She raised her eyebrows.
That
was easier than she’d expected.

A maze of mirrors had been set up throughout the dance floor, sheets of sheer fabric were suspended sporadically from the ceiling, and the gym was full of smoke from a fog machine. The air smelled overwhelmingly sweet, a combination of the chemicals in the fake fog and the Axe body spray used by most Ascension boys.

Em stood on her tiptoes, looking for Drea, for JD, for Gabby, for anyone. She needed an anchor, some way to tether herself and get her bearings.

It was easy enough to locate Gabby, at least. Em had arrived in the middle of the crowning ceremony. Pierce Travers was
already standing awkwardly onstage, wearing a crown and a sheepish smile. In black dress pants, a white shirt, and a blue tie, this King of Spring was the picture of clean-cut cuteness, Em had to admit. She could see how he would be the next Zach McCord . . . only less skeezy. Hopefully.

Next up was queen, which was Gabby, no big surprise. As she made her way to the stage in the middle of a roar of whistles, cheers, and applause, Gabby literally sparkled. She was the perfect queen in a strapless pink dress, a white belt, white wedge heels, and a head of bouncy curls. Instead of demurely accepting her crown and going to stand near Pierce, Gabby grabbed the microphone and cleared her throat.

“Thank you so much for this honor,” she said, her voice reverberating throughout the room, which went silent at once. “But I won’t be wearing the Queen of Spring crown this year.” Quiet gasps and whispers buzzed through the gym. “Instead, I’d like to give it posthumously to Sasha Bowlder, who left us too soon.” She took a breath and continued. “Nights like these probably made Sasha miserable,” Gabby said, and Em’s heart swelled as she watched her best friend address the crowd. “We forget, as we go through our daily lives here at Ascension, that not everyone is as happy as we are,” Gabby said. Em heard sniffling coming from some of the girls near the drink table. “I know I often forgot, while Sasha was alive. And so, I’d like to give her this crown tonight. It’s a small gesture to show that we’ll try to remember from now on.”

Everyone, including Em, applauded wildly as Gabby walked off the stage on Pierce’s arm, smiling and brushing off the crowd of people who instantly surrounded her. Gabby pushed her way to the corner where a bunch of shaggy-haired, vest-clad musicians were standing, probably urging them to get the music going again. Em started toward her.

Then she saw him: his hair, his shoulders, his neck. JD was standing just a few feet away, with his back to her. Her heart sped up and she could feel the heat rising up her neck and into her cheeks.