Pretty Is (20 page)

But he did not join them. Did they expect him to? They weren’t sure; the episode seemed so very strange, so unscripted, that it was nearly impossible to form expectations.

It is possible, though, that they had formed a hope—collectively, echoed silently between them. In any case, they let it go, gave themselves up to the pure pleasure of being enveloped by the water. He did not speak, and that was fine. He simply held the light. He gave them the lake, piece by piece.

And then suddenly he turned off the light. They heard the click of the plastic switch. They lifted their heads from the water, opened their eyes and closed them again, and saw no difference. Instinctively, they fell silent, treaded water. They could pinpoint each other’s location because they could hear each other’s breath, but Zed seemed to have vanished. “Where are you?” Callie asked after a moment, her voice harsh but also vulnerable. Hannah could tell that her mood had changed: Callie was angry now.

After a few seconds his calm voice carried across the water. “Why does it matter?” He was as blind as they were.

“How can you say that?” Callie demanded. Outrage vibrated in her voice.

Because it doesn’t
, Hannah thought, not even knowing what she meant.
It doesn’t matter, not anymore.
This time Zed didn’t answer. Would it be a happy ending, Hannah wondered, if he just left them there? They would huddle all night beside the lake, shivering and mosquito bitten. When dawn came they would make their way back to the road, bedraggled. Eventually someone would find them, and it would all be over. Zed would escape, perhaps. He would never be found.

No, of course he won’t leave us, she thought peacefully. He still needs us
. For what?
asked a treacherous voice in her mind.
How can you be so sure? What if he brought his gun? What if he slips into the water, places his hand on your head and presses it down, down beneath the surface, and eventually you don’t struggle anymore, and—
Appalled, she silenced the voice, flipped onto her back, and stretched her arms out to the sides, scissoring her feet slightly to keep her balance, feeling her peace return. As she stared up at the blank sky she saw that, as her eyes adjusted, it became less perfectly dark. Low clouds captured stray light from below—maybe from towns miles away, she thought, or houses they couldn’t see—and reflected it back to the water. She could discern the outlines of the clouds, the place where the lake met the trees, a shape a few feet away that must be Callie. She had the irrational thought that the light was coming from her own gaze, that if she looked long and hard enough she could light up the woods. She sensed that Callie, out of sync with her mood, had stopped floating and righted herself, anchored her feet on the bottom of the lake, waiting impatiently. She tried to project her strange sense of calm in Callie’s direction, wanting to share it, but she could tell that Callie had become unreceptive. She tried to turn her attention inward, blocking Callie out, but her awareness of Callie’s unhappiness created a tension she couldn’t ignore, and she felt drawn in two directions: it was as if she had to be two people, herself and Callie. She grew conscious, meanwhile, that the part of her that was exposed to the air was getting chilled. But she didn’t want to stop floating.

Finally Zed said, quietly, “Enough.” His voice had moved. They turned in its direction. Hannah, obedient, swam toward him, but she felt Callie’s resentment collect itself and tremble though the water. “What if we’re not done?” Callie called out, defiant, though she was more than done with this invisible lake. As usual, Hannah admired Callie’s courage at the same time that she was annoyed by it.
Why does she have to try to ruin everything?

“Then stay,” Zed said, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. “Hannah and I will go.”

Hannah heard Callie behind her, plowing through the water toward the shore. She wondered if he had meant it; she suspected not. He had simply known that Callie would come. Somehow this knowledge made her feel both safe and sad.

As they emerged from the water onto the chilly shore, clutching their towels around themselves, teeth chattering, they saw that there was an extra light, hovering precisely where his face should be, and they smelled his familiar pipe. Wordlessly he tapped the base, tipped out the glowing ember, and ground it out beneath his heel, turning as he did so and shining the flashlight at the car. Dripping and shivering, they piled in. No one spoke.

They couldn’t have been far from the lodge when a car appeared behind them, its headlights boring into the backseat, bouncing off the rearview mirror. “Stay down,” Zed ordered, straining to make out a shape, a face behind the dark windshield. He didn’t alter his speed, but they could feel his sudden alertness, as if something newly rigid in his body communicated itself to them through the car itself, entering their own bodies through the rough fabric of the backseat, against which they had pressed their cheeks. They lay still and quiet, the tension between them suddenly gone. The other car kept up with them, pressing. Someone who knew the roads, perhaps, and wanted to go faster. Someone in a hurry, late for something they couldn’t even imagine.
Someone looking for two missing girls, traced to this area.
Zed kept driving, long enough that they were sure they must have gone well past the turnoff to the lodge. At last they came to a stop, and the girls listened breathlessly to the tick-tock of the turn signal, the headlights bearing down on them. They veered right. The lights swept along the left side of Zed’s car, picking up speed, and vanished.

They had turned, and the other car had stayed straight.

Silence returned. They drove on for another minute before Zed swung an efficient U-turn and headed back the way they had come. He killed the lights as they rolled down the long driveway, approaching the lodge in utter darkness.

No one had been following them
. But people were looking, surely. They had to be.

Back at the lodge, he sent them off to bed as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But he was unusually quiet, and they couldn’t help feeling that something had shifted, that things were not quite the same. It made them nervous.

*   *   *

The next day was cloudy, humid, oppressive, and Hannah and Callie’s sense of unease held on. Hannah walked softly, looked over her shoulder, startled at trifles: a branch striking the roof, the hiss of the water heater, the squawk of an unfamiliar bird. Callie, on the other hand, grew reckless, restless, couldn’t be still. While Zed circled the perimeter of the clearing in which the cabin was set—head down, round and round, unreachable—Callie played pageant: tried to entertain Hannah by reenacting bits of her routine, spoofing imaginary competitors. As she demonstrated her pageant walk, Hannah played judge, pretending to scribble seriously in her notebook. Callie crossed the room with strong, graceful strides, her head angled in Hannah’s direction, her lips shaping a huge smile. Pausing in front of the window she turned slightly, hand on hip, flashing her imaginary audience another dazzling grin. Even without stage makeup and a fancy dress, she conveyed something of the bewitching presence that had already won her so many crowns.

They didn’t know he was in the doorway until he had lunged across the room, almost catlike, grabbing the arm perched on Callie’s hip and wrenching it around in front of her. Hannah had been lounging on the couch, laughing; when she saw him—or sensed him, really—she curled into a ball, clasping her hands around her knees. Callie turned red, and Hannah saw, for the first time, tears in her eyes. But she didn’t struggle—she looked him right in the face, anger blazing, and her tears didn’t fall.

The first fat raindrops spattered against the windows, like the ticking of a mad clock. Zed held on to Callie’s arm. Every muscle in his body seemed tensed, his face stretched taut across bone and sinew. “
Don’t do that here.
Not here. Do you understand me?” He pulled her a little closer and repeated: “You understand? You’ve left that behind. It’s over.” He pushed her away, gently enough, but with such visible control that it suggested a tremendous current of power flowing beneath the surface. Callie reeled a little—more from her sense of that power than from the push itself. “Never. You hear? Never. You won’t be that girl anymore.” Then he turned and strode out of the lodge, closing the door hard behind him.

“Well.” Callie dropped onto the couch beside Hannah and crossed her legs gracefully. “So I guess he doesn’t approve of pageants.”

“But why—” Hannah sat up straight, folded her legs beneath her. She was afraid Callie would be offended, but she had to go on: “Why did he pick you, then?”

Callie twisted a long golden curl around her index finger. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” She tugged sharply at the coiled hair—once, twice; Hannah felt the twinge in her own follicles. “Maybe he meant to save me,” Callie said. She made her voice sound flippant, but Hannah knew Callie was serious. And perhaps she was also right.

Later that night Hannah awoke with a pressing feeling that something was wrong. The rain had ended almost as soon as it began, and the sky was clear again; a glimmer of moonlight revealed Callie’s bedding, twisted into its customary nest. Empty. She told herself that Callie must simply have gotten up to go to the bathroom. Unconvinced, she bolted upright, trying to ward off panic. Only then did she realize that she could hear voices downstairs, quiet and serious.

Hannah slipped out of the room and crept to the head of the stairs. Crouching on the first step, she eased her head forward until she could just see them, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. At first, blood pulsed so hard in her ears that it was all she could hear, but their conversation became intelligible as she listened.

“I don’t understand,” Callie was saying, a sulky edge in her voice. “I thought you picked us because of who we are.” Hannah caught her breath. This was what they never spoke of, not to him.

“Not exactly,” he said.

“Well, then?”

He leaned forward, and Hannah drew her head sharply back, afraid he might be able to glimpse her. She could hear just as well without seeing—better, if she concentrated.

“It’s a waste.” He sounded very calm; there was no trace of the latent violence that had shocked the girls earlier. “A perversion. That’s why you needed me. Maybe you’ll understand someday. But listen,” he began.

“I’m listening,” Callie said. A rare subdued note had crept into her voice.

“I want you to promise me that you won’t do it anymore. The pageants. Cheapening yourself like that.”

A mosquito buzzed in Hannah’s ear, and she raised a hand to crush it. Missed. She could feel the tension in the air like a sudden chill, or a storm coming. Callie felt it too, on the other side of the wall.

When Callie finally spoke, her voice was low and steady. “Are we going home, then?” They had lived each day, as much as they could, without speaking of
later.
They might sketch fantasies of glamorous adulthood, but they avoided talk of their actual lives: starting a new school year, buying new clothes, listening to the newest songs on the radio, meeting new people.
Later
had become a hazy concept;
back
was unmentionable. But Callie was asking, as if it were the most normal question in the world, “Are we going back?” Hannah grabbed the railing; Callie gripped the edge of the table.

“Do you promise?” Zed said.

A strange, growing pressure inside Hannah’s head produced surges of dark, muddy colors before her eyes, and a band of sharp pain locked around her forehead.

The whole house waited.

“I promise,” Callie said, her voice oddly robotic, and so low Hannah hardly heard it.

“Say it again.”

“I promise,” Callie whispered. Hannah wasn’t even sure she had really heard it, but she
felt
it, as clearly as if Callie’s voice were coming from somewhere inside her own body. She felt it under her skin, in the pit of her stomach.

Did that mean they were going home?
Callie believed she had made a deal, that was clear to Hannah. But had she?

Instinctively Hannah believed that if Zed had made a promise, he would not break it. But he had been careful, it seemed to her, not to promise. Not in so many words.

Hannah released her sweaty palm from the railing, straightened her cramped legs, glided swiftly back into the bedroom. Slipping between her sheets, she curled up on her side and began to breathe the long, even breaths of sleep. Callie returned, tiptoeing across the room to her bed to avoid waking Hannah.

For once, Hannah noticed, Callie didn’t drop off to sleep immediately. Lulled by the deceptive calm of her own steady breathing, she listened to Callie, whose unaccustomed stillness meant she was lying awake. If they were really to go home, how soon it would be? Had Callie meant what she said? Was Callie a girl who kept her promises? She had been willing Callie to promise, willing Zed to reciprocate. But in the back of Hannah’s mind, an unacknowledged voice was asking another question: Did she want to go home? And if she didn’t yet, what did that mean?

When she finally slipped from feigned sleep to real, she dreamed of Zed turned into a tree outside her window, while she cried because he could never come in. There was a word she could say, a magic word that would free him, but she didn’t know what it was. In the dream this was because she wasn’t good enough.

The next day and afterward, she kept waiting for Callie to tell her what had happened, since ostensibly she knew nothing. Hannah wanted to talk about it, to examine what he had said and what he had implied.
You needed me,
he had told Callie. Did he think Hannah needed him too?

But Callie said nothing.

*   *   *

The next night he allowed them to go outside, and they played hide-and-seek. By this time he seldom joined their games. He was outside, too, but they weren’t sure where. They had already discovered that playing two-person hide-and-seek outside in the dark was a tricky undertaking: there was really no excuse for being found unless you wanted to be, because the person who was It could only blunder in the darkness. The real contest was with yourself: to see how long you could bear to stay hidden. It was challenging: first you started to get bored; then cold; and finally the silence grew eerie, and you began to fight off the temptation to give yourself up. The silence in the woods was actually full of sounds: even raccoons and opossums snapped small twigs under their shuffling feet, and there were bigger animals, too. If you ventured into the woods even a little way, a tree could easily hide the cabin and its reassuring lights, if only for a moment.