Zara can’t help noticing that New York is different a few days after Christmas. The lights stay up, but everything else goes back to normal. The city was putting on a show. Now it’s over.
Now it’s opening night. Zara finds a spot onstage and warms up, sliding her muscles to the very edge of their abilities, coaxing her voice to new heights. She is merciless with herself, thinking pain might crowd out fear.
The curse ends on opening night.
When the stage manager tells the actors to clear out, Zara rushes to her dressing room. Loads her face with makeup. Stabs her hair full of pins. Slides on her act 1 costume, the white dress.
The curse ends on opening night.
The stage manager comes knocking, calls fifteen minutes to curtain, and Zara echoes, “Thank you, fifteen.”
Zara tucks Eli’s Leatherman down the front of her dress, snug in the fabric of her bra — the only place she can keep it close without having it show through the outline of her dress. It sits like a cold fist an inch away from her heart.
If Eli isn’t here tonight, she can’t get hurt.
That’s what Zara has been telling herself. That’s why Zara asked Adrian to wait. She wants to believe that if Eli knew the truth right now, she would come to the Aurelia. But then she would be in danger. Zara has already failed her enough.
And if something goes wrong, at least Eli will know the truth.
She would hate what Zara is about to do, but Zara’s out of time, and she can’t see any other way. No matter how many stories she collects, no matter how firmly they all point to Leopold, it’s not the same thing as hard evidence.
So there’s one thing left.
Zara can try to stop him.
The director isn’t backstage. He isn’t in the men’s dressing room, at least as far as Zara can tell by hovering outside. She storms around in the same restless pattern — greenroom, backstage, dressing rooms, greenroom, backstage, dressing rooms. She runs the length of the hall and checks the loading dock, but all she gets is a slap of cold air to the face.
Zara feels blank, emptied of possibilities. Would Leopold go up to the studios? She thinks of the mirror scrawled out along the whole room. She wonders what it would be like to die there, caught staring at her own panicked reflection. But no — too many people have access to those studios. She needs to think of a private place. Away from the crowds.
And then she remembers his office.
The fear in Zara’s system is taking over, a panic that pushes on her nerves and plays tricks with her pulse. It feels indistinguishable from stage fright. Some of it is stage fright. She has to get onstage soon and give the best performance of her life.
Zara runs up the stairwell, and when she opens the door to the hallway, she sees blond hair shining from a pool of overhead light.
It’s Meg.
“Have you seen Leopold?” Zara asks.
Meg’s eyes cut to the far end of the hall. The emergency exit. “No,” she says slowly. “I came up here to find him. But he’s missing at the moment. Probably not feeling well.” Meg puts on a soothing tone, a textbook sort of calm. “Can I give you a bit of advice, from one actress to another? This is what you’ve wanted so long, what you’ve worked hard for, and now it’s here. If there’s one thing I know, the chance won’t come twice.” Meg’s blue eyes bear down on her. “Stay focused.”
The words travel backward in Zara’s brain, searching for something. An echo. Or — what comes first and creates the echo? An origin? A source? She’s heard these words before.
You need to stay focused on the play.
Carl said that at the gala.
“Let’s go down,” Meg says. “Have they called ten yet?”
Zara should leave now, forget about Leopold. She cared only about being Echo for so long — she wishes she could have that back now. But she feels as drunk and dangerous as she did on gala night. She swings an accusation at Meg. “You know he hurt Enna and Carl and Toby. You probably know more people he hurt, and you’re not doing anything.”
“Of course I do, and of course I am,” Meg says. “You just can’t see it. It’s one thing to know what he’s done, and another to try to get people to believe. So many would find a way to ignore it. To put it in a little compartment in their minds and say, yes, he was a monster, but he made such beautiful things. I’ve seen how people treat him. I’ve lived with him. I know.” Meg catches Zara’s hands between her two small ones. They smell comforting and predictable. Lavender soap. “Go downstairs and put everything you think and feel into this play. Forget about Leopold.”
Zara feels the world swinging around her — or maybe that’s the nausea part of stage fright setting in. “Why would you tell me all that, about his visions, if you wanted me to forget?”
Meg closes her eyes and sighs. “I wanted you to be careful.” She opens her eyes again, tightens her cheeks, adds some impossible cheer to her demeanor. “Let’s go down. All right?” And Zara does, trailing right behind her. The audience will be taking their seats now, sliding into place.
Zara has one last chance to disappear into the fantasy of her childhood — the love story. She used to pick and choose, remembering Echo and Ariston’s epic love and forgetting the unspeakable ending. That doesn’t work anymore. She can’t believe in love without knowing it could end in pain. She can’t care about Echo’s life and keep her death at arm’s length.
Everything in her training tells her that if someone’s eyes flick to the emergency exit, there’s a reason. Zara isn’t going to let that go, to pretend it never happened and hurry to places.
As soon as Meg disappears down the hall, Zara heads back up the stairs, taking them at a blinding run. Her toes bruise immediately. The shoes that Cosima gave her aren’t much more than slippers. They were made for a girl who was kept inside, kept safe.
Zara pelts down the hallway, putting a shoulder to the metal exit door. She shoves with all her weight. The door opens, blowing cold air in at her. The metal fire-escape stairs are waiting. They eventually lead up to the roof — to the open wound of the winter sky.
There is a sound far above, like the shadow of steps. She thinks of Eli, of how she wouldn’t want Zara to do this, especially not alone. But Zara can be braver than she ever showed Eli.
Zara can be more.
And she hopes that, if this all goes wrong, she can someday be forgiven.
She takes another frozen breath and tells herself that she can do this. Maybe it’s just a story, but it’s enough to make her believe.
Zara starts up the stairs.