“Your lady is in a foul mood.” His eyes on Misty across the camp, he spoke to Josie. “You know, we ran together as children. When we were six, we married each other in that way that children do, all innocence beneath the flowered bower in the shady shoulder of her fraudulent father’s magnificent manor.”
“Admirable alliteration,” Nina whispered to Josie.
“I just wanted her to see me again,” the Bandit King was saying. “To see the boy she loved, not the disgraced nobleman.”
“Yeah, well, these kinds of stories always require romantic tension,” said Josie. “Obvious compatibility masked by a misunderstanding or an old feud or something. With Shakespeare, the story is a comedy if they end up together and a tragedy if they don’t.”
Josie thought she’d contributed an idea to the conversation worthy of an aha! or even a thoughtful hmm. But the Bandit King was still gazing longingly at Lady Fontaine. Maybe he wasn’t really Justin, but still, seeing him ogle another girl made her feel simultaneously furious and forgotten.
“Typical.” Josie put her hands on her hips. “She’s rotten to you, and yet you’re going to fall in love with her anyway, right? Because she’s beautiful? And unattainable? And isn’t a broken girl who you’re sick of already? You want the drama and excitement of falling for someone you can’t have, so the story supplies an ice queen—a cold, independent woman who will eventually melt under your touch. Classic sexist cliché.”
“I beg your—” Not-Justin started to say, but he was interrupted by screams.
Meaghan and Marcus were trussed up in ropes and dangling from a pulley that was attached high in a tree. Beneath their dangling feet, a campfire crackled. Two bandits held the end of the rope—a middle-aged black man and young blond woman. Out of context, it took Josie a moment to recognize them as Bruce the coffee-shop guy and Deo’s sister, Bianca.
“Here we go, lads and lasses!” said Bruce. “We’ll roast the loudmouths tender slow!”
“You’ll kill them!” said Josie. “What genre is this story anyway?”
She turned to Nina, expecting some flippant commentary like old times.
“Baroque comedy? Classical tragedy?” Nina broke a leaf off a tree, raised her eyebrow, and said, “Pastoral?”
This version of Nina seemed to be a mix of a story bandit and the real Nina, who Josie had first met in drama class, where they’d sat in the back row and whispered running commentary, always trying to make each other laugh.
Bruce let a little rope out, dropping them lower. Marcus and Meaghan screamed again, tucking their legs up away from the flames.
“Stop!” Josie yelled.
The laughing and shouting silenced. Everyone was staring at Josie, and she experienced that same sickening drop in her middle she got during an actor’s nightmare: opening night, standing in a spotlight, and no memory of rehearsals or what to say next.
She shrugged. “I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were being obnoxious, but that’s not justification for, you know, murder.”
“We’re just wanting a little entertainment,” said Bianca.
“I know, mon amour,” Nina said sweetly. “But we talked about this. There are other forms of entertainment besides burning people alive. Right?” She looked at Josie, as if double-checking the truth of that statement.
Josie smiled. They had each other’s back—forever and ever—even in this weird fever dream.
Bruce let the rope slip an inch more, and Meaghan and Marcus screamed once more.
Josie said, “STOP!”
Again, everyone stopped. And stared.
She added, “In the name of love…”
She glanced over at Not-Justin, a tiny hope flaring inside her that he really was himself here, and that he remembered. She’d sung the Supremes song “Stop in the Name of Love” for freshman-year talent show, the night they’d met.
At the time, Josie had been locked in an awkward roiling of hormones and was crushing on a new guy every week. Age fourteen had been as painful as an orthodontist visit, her emotions constantly rewired and tightened, rewired and tightened. It was all tension and discomfort, and yet sometimes that could feel good, like the weirdly addictive pain of pressing a fingernail into her gums. She’d fall for a guy, achingly hard, and then, if he seemed remotely interested, she ran away before he had the chance to abandon her first. But with Justin, it had been different from the start. She’d known she could trust him with her vulnerability.
She could still see him, waiting outside the school auditorium doors, the folded paper program rolled up in his hands.
“You were so great,” he’d said, his eyes shining. “Really great.”
“No, I messed up that one part,” she’d lied, having bought into the idea that girls who acknowledged their own talent were brats just asking for the universe to smack them in the face.
But Justin hadn’t let her duck the compliment. “No,” he’d said gently but emphatically, “you were amazing. You made it hard for me to breathe.”
At that, she’d lost her own breath. His eyes were wide, taking her in, appreciating her—and not just her singing, but her. Never before had she felt so seen. And he’d kept seeing her. None of her flaws scared him off—not her insecurity, nor her confidence, nor even her tendency to snort like a pig when surprised by a laugh. And knowing her better had somehow made him like her more. It felt like a miracle.
Bandit King Justin was still staring at Misty. In this story, Lady Fontaine was the protagonist, not Josie. Josie was certain that real Justin would never have fallen for her—wouldn’t even have noticed Josie—if she hadn’t been the star of the talent show.
Well. There was something she could do about that.
She broke into “Stop in the Name of Love,” singing till he looked at her. And then she kept on singing, like she was Broadway star Idina Menzel. Like she was multiple Tony Award winner Audra McDonald. Like she lived in a world where you could just sing out your true feelings as easy as moon pie.
She cast a surreptitious glance at Bandit Justin. All his attention was pinned on her now. The bandits and captives were also rapt. Even Meaghan and Marcus, slowly swinging back and forth above the fire, stared, mouths agape. If she were in a musical, everyone would be like, Oh cool, that girl is singing, why don’t we all join in and dance down Main Street together? Musicals were more perfect than life.
Josie reached the end of the first verse. She took a breath and whispered, “Be a musical.”
Nina Bandit lifted a mug and said, “By George, that maid can sing!”
Deo knelt over a barrel and began to play it like a drum.
“’Tis the right idea,” said Nina. With a tin spoon against her mug, she added to the beat.
Josie began to sway, and she caught the second verse.
She walked around as she sang, smiling at the bandit crew, getting them to clap their hands as she teased out the curves and swells in the song. But always, always, she stayed aware of the Bandit King and his gaze on her.
The song ended, but Josie curled back around to the first verse again. She sang, and she imagined more instruments to round out the sound. As if on command, bandits pulled out carved wooden flutes; others added to the percussion on barrels and crates.