Snow whips sideways across the lot, stinging the guys’ faces, catching in their beards and wool caps. They wrestle the heavy machine just outside the doors, boots thudding, voices raised above the gale. Someone drags in a coil of orange extension cord, while othermen set down tall construction lamps and a few electric space heaters. The whole place smells of cold air and gasoline now. A sharp pivot from pageant prep to survival camp.
We are trapped here, and my heart feels like a bird beating its wings against a cage.
Mom is beside me. Always. Always right there even when she isn’t. “Don’t worry, sweetheart.” She brushes a hair near my face with her fingertips, then pulls a bobby pin out, holding it between her lips while she resets my curl.
She starts to slide the pin back into place when I reach up, swatting her hand away. “Mom, stop.”
She pulls back, looks at me sharply.
“Sorry,” I say, dropping my hands to my sides.
She purses her lips and re-spirals the lock of hair around her finger, then secures it back in place. “I know this is stressful,” she says, smoothing her hands down my arms. “But everything will be fine. We’ll reschedule Miss Lone Star for a few weeks from now.”
As if that’s what I’m worried about.
Image is everything. That’s what Mom has always taught me. If you control how you’re perceived, then you control the narrative.
Every time I leave the house, I feel her eyes on me, evaluating my outfit, my makeup, my hair. She watches my plates of food, watches my grades. She approves every post I make to social media, rehearses my answers to pageant interviews. She chooses the shows I watch and the books I read and the color I paint my nails.
“I promise,” she says. “Pretty soon, it will be like none of this even happened.”
I smile like I mean it. But inside that guilt is swelling, coiling, and writhing, like one of those giant pythons, swallowing me from the inside out.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVENINGRID
I settle Mom into one of the side rooms off the hallway, and Dad plugs a space heater in, the glow of the coils illuminating the room like candlelight. I’m tucking a blanket around her lap when someone knocks on the door, and in steps Melanie, a steaming Styrofoam cup in her hand.
“Chamomile,” she says softly.
She sets it on the table, then crouches a little so she’s eye level with Mom.
“You keeping warm enough? Any chills?”
Mom shakes her head, giving a tired smile.
Melanie nods, tugging the blanket a little higher on her shoulders. “Good. Chemo can make you more sensitive to the cold. So keep sipping fluids—it helps more than you think.” She rests her hand briefly on Mom’s wrist, as though checking her pulse without making a fuss. “If you start shivering or feel lightheaded, you call for me, all right?”
“Thank you,” Dad says, sitting down next to Mom and taking her hand.
“Of course,” Melanie says with a light chuckle, “I’ll keep the chamomile coming.”
When she slips back out the door, I follow her, shutting it behind us. The hallway is dark except for the eerie red glow of the emergency exit sign at the end of the corridor.
“Is there anything else you need?” she asks.
“No. I just—” I look at her sweet, smiling face, waiting patiently for me to continue. “Melanie, I’m so sorry about Cat. I know y’all were close.”
“Oh,” she says, dropping her eyes down to her hands. With a thumb she pulls at the skin around one nail. And when she looks back up, there’s a sheen to her eyes. “I’ve been worrying about Cat most of my life. I don’t know who I am without her.”
“Does your dad know anything? I mean, does he think it was a break-in or…” I trail off.Or was it someone who knew her?I mean to ask, but can’t make the words come out.
“No signs of a break-in necessarily. The back door was open though.”
“Was anything taken?”
Melanie looks over her shoulder, down the shadowed hallway. She takes a step closer, talks in a fast, faint rush. “Well, don’t tell anyone, but Cat had this security footage of the kids partying at The Hollow. She had it on this SD card, and she threatened Kennedy Claire with it. You know, saying she had these pictures of Sarah Lynn drinking and doing drugs. Cat just wanted Kennedy Claire to back off Olivia, you know? I don’t think she would have actually done anything with that footage.”
A cold pulse ripples through me, like the draft in the hallway has slipped straight beneath my skin. “What are you saying? You think Kennedy Claire—”