“Sit down.” She takes my hand again, leading me toward the blanket nest. “You can pick the movie.”
I don’t understand any of this. But it would be rude to refuse when she’s gone to so much trouble. I sit on one of the pillows, and Allison stretches out beside me on her stomach. While I look through her extensive movie collection, she kicks her feet idly in the air, tossing pieces of popcorn into her mouth one by one. Her hair slides over her shoulders, the ends brushing my knee.
My eye catches on one title: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I’ve never seen it, but I know the Alexander Pope poem the title must come from. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.
“Oh, I’m so obsessed with that one!” Allison says. “Isn’t it brilliant?”
“I’ve never seen it,” I admit.
She sits up. “What? Okay, we need to fix that immediately.”
Allison starts the movie, adjusting the laptop screen so we can both see it, then reclines against the stacked pillows. I try to follow the action—a man walking on a snow-covered beach before boarding a train, a woman with bright blue hair chatting him up—but I’m too distracted by Allison’s proximity. She keeps picking up the bowls and passing them to me, settling back down even closer than she was before.
“I want to be Clementine for Halloween,” Allison says. “What do you think, could I pull off the blue?”
She runs her fingers through her hair, letting the long blond strands fan out over the pillows. I imagine her with hair like the woman in the movie, the way it would set off the afternoon-sky color of her eyes and the creaminess of her skin.
“Yeah,” I say. “You’d look—”
“Oh, wait, this is my favorite line!”
She sits up again, knocking into the popcorn bowl. As the actress on screen speaks, Allison matches her words—the same pacing, diction, everything. It sends a strange little chill up my spine.
“ ‘I’m a vindictive little bitch, truth be told.’ ”
She shoots me a sly look, and I want to dart my eyes away, retreat into myself, but this time I don’t. I look her right in the eye and smile back.
“Thanks for doing all this,” I say.
“My pleasure.” She twists off the top of an Orangina bottle, taking a sip and then offering it to me. Her lipstick stains the glass. “I should be thanking you. You’re helping me keep my mind off the audition I just had.”
I take the bottle but don’t drink. “Audition? For what?”
“For Cabaret. The theater department’s doing it later this semester.”
“What part did you try out for?” I ask, even though her response won’t mean a thing to me. I’ve heard of Cabaret but I don’t know much about it—I think it has something to do with Nazis?
“Sally Bowles,” Allison says. “I want it so bad. I practiced my audition piece all summer.” She flings her arms back over the pillows with a dramatic groan. “But I’m afraid I fucked it all up. If I have to watch some other girl play her while I dance around in the background… Like I would actually kill for this part. I would end a life.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that. “When do you find out?”
“Monday. It’s going to be a very long weekend.” She turns to look at me, propping her head on her hand. “You ever feel so anxious it’s like your stomach is trying to eat itself?”
I nod. Yes. Every day.
“I bet you were amazing,” I tell her. “I bet you’ll get it.”
The wind picks up, whipping my hair into my face. I reach to smooth it down, but Allison beats me to it, tucking it behind my ear.
“You’re sweet,” she says.
That’s the last thing I am. But she doesn’t have to know that.
Allison turns onto her back again, and I stretch out too, my legs parallel to hers. We spend the rest of the movie that way, hands brushing as we reach into the snack bowls at the same time. She keeps pointing out favorite moments in the film, little observations I would never have picked up on.
By the time the credits roll, Allison has fallen asleep, her head lolling against my shoulder. The screen switches back to the movie’s cover image—Clementine and Joel lying on the frozen lake, Clem’s bright hair spread out on the ice like a lick of flame.
I think about turning off the computer, heading to bed. But I don’t want to wake Allison. So I lie there, in the blue glow of the screen, and listen to her breathing. It’s soothing at first—I feel warm and content, truly happy in a way I haven’t in years.
But it’s not long before the panic creeps in again. My throat tightening, my heart throbbing with the suspicion that happiness must be a trick, a trap, a rug about to be pulled out from under me, and any second now I’m going to fall.
9 SCARLETT
Samina Pierce wastes no time.
Mere hours after I introduced myself at the emergency faculty meeting, she reached out to schedule an appointment for the very next day so we could speak further about my offer to assist the task force. When I arrive at her office on Sunday evening, I find that she’s already transformed the space into a command center. University records are stacked in neat, color-coded piles on her desk, and the whiteboard on the wall is covered with an elaborate web of photos and documents.
She ushers me inside, then asks if I’d like some tea. “I only have the caffeinated stuff, I’m afraid,” she says.
“No, thank you. I’d be up all night.”
“I think I’ve rendered myself immune.” She smiles. “I could drink a whole pot at midnight and still sleep like a baby!”
Samina seems just as put-together and well rested now, at the end of what must have been a hectic day, as she did first thing on Saturday morning. Everything about her, from her glossy hair to her shiny leather pumps, seems entirely too glamorous for this cramped and dingy office space—too glamorous for Gorman in general, honestly.
“Be right back,” she says. “Make yourself comfortable.”
As soon as she leaves, I step closer to the whiteboard, studying the years of campus suicides she’s connected with red lines of dry-erase marker. They’re not all mine, of course. But the ones that are stand out to me like they’re illuminated with spotlights. I remember every man I’ve killed, in vivid detail. His name, his crimes. His last words, if I allowed him to have any.
This is the kind of gruesome exhibition movies and television shows seem to think every serial killer has in their basement. I would never be foolish enough to put my crimes on display. I don’t keep records or trophies. But there is something strangely satisfying about seeing it all laid out like this, since someone else has done it.
“Professor Clark?”
My favorite student, Mikayla Atwell, stands in the doorway, watching me. Without realizing, I’ve touched one of the lines on the board, smearing red marker on my fingertips.
“Ms. Atwell.” I brush my stained fingers off on my black skirt. “What are you doing here?”
Mikayla shrugs, rebalancing the stack of file folders she’s carrying. “The task force needed volunteers who know SQL.”