Page 36 of The Golden Spoon
I’d felt so confident as I got ready. I’d talked myself out of the anxiety I was having earlier. This is your destiny. To winBake Week, to be with Archie. This was all good, I told myself, putting on the black dress and a pair of tall boots. I’d waited until I knew for sure he’d be back in his room. I couldn’t risk knocking, so I’d slipped inside. Archie startled when he heard me there. He was sitting up in bed looking at his phone. He was in underwear and a T-shirt. My dress suddenly felt overdone,and I mentally scolded myself for choosing it. I waited for him to grin and pull me into bed, but instead he looked anxiously at the door.
“You probably shouldn’t be here,” he’d said, rising from the bed.
“No one saw me,” I’d assured him, laughing coquettishly.
“I have some things going on, work things. I don’t have the time right now.”
The smile died on my face when I realized he was serious.
“I can come back later.”
“No, no. Don’t do that.” He’d lowered his voice. “I’m sorry but we can’t do this again, Hannah.”
I stumbled back as though he’d punched me in the stomach. “Butwhy?” I’d demanded to know. “What about bringing me to LA?” I’d asked. He looked away. “What about you being my advocate, helping me build my career like you said?”
“Listen, you’re a sweet girl and very talented obviously.” He’d avoided looking at me as he talked, his eyes resting on the dark screen of his cell phone.
“Sweet?!” My voice rose, my fists clenched.
He’d rushed toward me, putting his finger to my lips, shushing me. “I made a mistake yesterday. I have my career to think about. And you do too. We shouldn’t have done that.”
“What? But you said you were going to be my mentor.”
He looked toward the door, as though calculating if he could leave me there. Then his expression changed and he took my hands in his. For a moment, I thought he was going to apologize, to say that it was a misunderstanding. He crouched down in front of me, finally making eye contact.
“Listen to me,” he’d said, brushing my hair from my face. “We are going to pretend like this never happened.”
My eyes welled with tears. “Please, no. Don’t say that.” I pulled on his sleeve, but he was impassive. Irritated, he tried to shake me off. He spoke to me like I was an unruly child, and he was disciplining me.
“You are going to stop. You are going to go back to your room,quietly, and not breathe a word of this to anyone. Because if you don’t, I will make sure you are the one who goes home tomorrow. Do you hear what I’m saying?” he asks, his voice cold.
I’d looked at him through swollen eyes, my heart nearly breaking in two as I watched my dream of being Archie Morris’s girlfriend disintegrate in front of me. How cruel he had been. How heartless.
“I think you’d better go,” he’d said curtly, swinging his hands to usher me out, pointing in the direction of the door. I hovered there, unsure what to do, giving it one last chance to turn in my favor. He’d raised his eyebrows.
“Go.”
I ran, stumbling down the hall and desperate suddenly to be away from Archie and the mess I’ve made of things here.
Now I pull off my dress, balling it up angrily and flinging it into my bag. How stupid I’d been to try to dress up for him when he never cared at all. I pull on my yoga pants and a sweatshirt. It doesn’t matter who sees me now, or what they think of me. I’m done with all of it. Now all I want is to go home to Eden Lake. I will beg Ben for forgiveness, tell him I didn’t mean any of it. He will be mad at me of course at first, but he’ll come around. He always does. I have the horrifying thought that Ben won’t forgive me. That I will be forced to move in with my mother. I will turn into an old woman working at Polly’s Diner who people will whisper about. “See her,” they’ll say. “She was once onBake Week, and now look at her.” I bend over to pick up an eye shadow compact that’s fallen to the floor and find myself crying again, big, convulsive sobs that keep me doubled over.
I attempt to close my suitcase, holding it down with my body weight and straining the zipper. Anger rises up in me, and I find myself kicking the suitcase again and again until it slides across the floor, slamming into the delicate wallpaper. I stand there panting, tears still wet on my cheeks. And that is when I hear the scream.
STELLA
When I wake up I am looking up at a dark sky through an open window. Heavy black clouds swirl above me. Rain pours sideways into the room, accumulating in a puddle around me. I am inside, but I feel outside. I blink, still coming to. I try to recall where I am and what I’m doing, but my brain feels like a clenched fist. If I could just get some sort of bearing, I could piece it all together. I take stock of where I am—on the floor. My shoulder bones press painfully into the hardwood. Nearby on the floor are a pair of men’s Oxford shoes, the laces crawling toward my line of vision like little worms. They are soaking wet. So am I. My clothes, my hair. With a groan I hoist my stiff body into a sitting position. My forehead pulses with the beginning of a splitting headache. My arms and legs are slippery with rainwater, and my clothing sticks to me uncomfortably.
A small lamp glows warmly on the bedside table. I take hold of one of the spindles on the four-poster bed and hoist myself up, wobbling a bit and then walking myself onto the side of the bed. Drips from my hair spatter the duvet. It is cool and crisp under my hands, the bed still made. A roll of thunder rumples the air, followed shortly by a crack of lightning. My teeth chatter.
I pull myself up across the bed shivering as I retrace what I can remember, trying to locate myself in the present. I can vaguely recall the previous day, the bake-off, dinner. Hannah. That’s right, I followed her. A long-sleeved shirt is draped over the side of a chair. My heart starts to pound faster as I realize where I am. I’m in Archie’s room. I wonder how long I’ve been here. Heat blooms on my cheeks as I consider that I must have made a total ass of myself, opening the door and just fainting like that. But where are they now?
My clothes are soaking the comforter, spreading out in a wet patch on the bed. I try again to see Archie through the dim tunnel of my memory, but my brain is shrouded in fog. Where is Hannah? I saw her enter the room, didn’t I? I shiver and close my eyes against a wave of headache pain. That’s the thing about my blackouts—they feel annoyingly like a hangover. I wake up and am left with a fuzziness and a dull body ache that lasts for hours. I think of the Tylenol in my room. I visualize the bottle. It is deep inside the pocket of the suitcase I’ve left packed all this time. I’ll go back there now, try to regroup in my bedroom. I will piece everything together. I try to make myself move, drawing up all my strength and hoisting myself up from the bed.
The rain beats heavily through the window onto the hardwood floor. The puddle I’d woken up in is spreading, threatening to take over an Oriental rug. I stagger to the window and grip the shutters. My intention is to close them, but something compels me to look out. I lean out over the ledge into the storm and gaze down. My stomach is suddenly sick. It is pitch-black. Rain obscures the edges of everything. The tent is a shadowy mass below. A weak spot of light flashes through the darkness. It bounces frantically across the lawn. It’s a figure with a flashlight, I realize. The person moves quickly, through the dark to the house. From above I can’t place who it is. I watch, the rain pounding at the back of my head, dizzy as I stare down over the top of the tent. There is a dark spot in its roof.Is it a tear? How easy it would be to slip and fall from up here. I strain to see. Behind me, deep inside the house, a door opens, echoing through the manor. And then I hear something else. A long panicked scream that sends shivers through my body.
I jerk myself back from the ledge and slam the window shut.
BETSY
