Page 49 of The Women of Wild Hill
Brigid slid her glasses down her nose and looked over the frames. Whenever she cried, her eyes shone brightly. “I’m getting some sun.”
“You’re just like your degenerate mother,” Sienna told her and turned away to head back to the house.
Until that moment, Brigid hadn’t fought back. “How would you know?” she called out loud enough for the maintenance men to hear. “You never met my mother, you fucking psycho.”
Sienna wheeled around, a wide smile on her face, raring to fight. “Go ahead. Speak your mind. You’ll be out on the street blowing strangers for Snickers bars by the end of the day.”
Brigid had heard enough. “Well then, I guess I have nothing to lose.” She stood up and pushed her lounge chair to the side. There, beneath it, was a mound of soil she’d first noticed days earlier. She’d spent hours watching its inhabitants, marveling at the complexity of their world. She hadn’t wanted to see the colony eradicated, so she’d covered it up with the chair. Now she placed a bare foot at the center of the fire ant hill. Thousands of insects accepted the invitation. Soon they’d formed a thick line that started at her toe and reached all the way to her palm.
Sienna watched with amusement. “If you think I’m going to help you, you’ve lost your mind. You’re going to get what you deserve this time.”
“Am I?” Brigid walked toward her stepmother. She felt each and every ant crawling over her skin, all of them waiting for her command.
Suddenly aware that the situation was swinging in her stepdaughter’s favor, Sienna took a few more steps back until she reached the edge of the pool. “Don’t come any closer, you little tramp!” she hissed.
“I’m not a tramp, you dumb bitch, and neither was my mother.” The ants were everywhere now. Her face was mere inches from her stepmother’s when she smiled, showing off teeth crawling with insects. “I’m a witch.”
She reached out a hand and grabbed Sienna’s shoulder. The antsimmediately went on attack, slipping under her stepmother’s wig and past the collar of her peach silk shirt. When Sienna screamed, Brigid took a moment to enjoy it. The ants would have been happy to kill. It was Brigid who granted the reprieve.
She reared her hand back, then shoved the woman, fully dressed, into the pool. When Sienna surfaced, shrieking, Brigid calmly returned to the ant hill and let her tiny soldiers go home.
THE NEXT MORNING, BRIGID WASeavesdropping when her stepmother recounted the whole story to her makeup artist as Heidi spackled the ant bites with concealer.
“You’re saying that gorgeous little goth girl—” Heidi started.
“You think she’s gorgeous?” Sienna interrupted. “She’s so pale she’s purple. She looks like a corpse.”
Heidi apparently knew better than to argue with the boss. “You’re saying that kid had fire ants crawling all over her body and none of them bit her?”
“Haven’t you been listening!” Sienna screeched. “She’s a fucking witch! She said so herself!”
“Wild,” Heidi said, leaning in with a powder brush. “I don’t think I’ve met a real witch before.”
Sienna swatted Heidi’s hand away and rose from her chair. “Believe me, she’s not as interesting as she sounds.”
An hour later, the makeup artist emerged to find Brigid communing with two crows in the driveway.
“There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Heidi took Brigid by the arm and led her around the bushes that hid the house from the street.
“Have a good look.” Brigid spun around. “It’s true, I’m a freak.”
Heidi clearly wasn’t interested in playing any games. “Listen, kid. You need to get the fuck out of here,” she whispered. “That bitch isout for your blood.” All it took was two sentences, and Brigid’s faith in womankind was partially restored.
“I don’t have any money,” Brigid told her. “My mother is dead. I have nowhere to go.”
“One of my other clients is casting a movie—a horror film. The main character is a young female vampire turned zombie killer. You should audition. You’d be perfect. If you get the part, you’d be on set in Eastern Europe for months. That means you wouldn’t have to live here.”
“I’ll never be allowed.”
“If you get the part, your parents will throw you a fucking party, I promise. Your father would sell his soul to get on the director’s radar.”
“But I’m not an actress,” Brigid deadpanned.
Heidi gave Brigid a once-over and burst out laughing. “Sweetheart, I’m not sure this role is going to require much acting on your part.”
AND THAT’S HOW BRIGID, ATage seventeen, landed the role that launched her career as America’s favorite scream queen. The day she turned eighteen, she moved out of her father’s house. She wasn’t sure who was luckier to have survived the experience—her or her stepmother. Brigid headed back to the mansion she’d grown up in, which had been sitting empty for over a year. Every day, the pets had been fed, the pool was cleaned, and the dust wiped away. It looked exactly as it had. Now it was home again, but this time, there was no Flora. No Phoebe. No family at all. And when it got lonely, Brigid reminded herself that meant there was no one to disappoint her. No one to betray her. No one who knew where to find all the weak spots in her armor.
In the years that followed, Brigid conquered Hollywood. She builta kingdom and amassed an astonishing fortune. She knew everyone who was anyone—and they all owed her a favor. She had a billion acquaintances and an endless series of lovers. There were people she traveled with, people she ate with, people she fucked, and people she phoned when the shit hit the fan. But that was it.
