“Up there,” Nihal said. He hadn’t said a word since we’d come in, drinking the place in with weary scanning eyes. Now he stood halfway down the aisle, pointing up at the back of the theater. The projection window glinted in the center of the wall, a black aperture cut into the paneling.
I exhaled. “Nihal, you’re perfect.” I scanned the walls for a way up, found nothing, and pushed back into the foyer. A peeling door stood ajar beside the ticket booth. “Out here,” I called to the guys, and shouldered into the darkness behind the door.
I held out my phone, revealing the shadowy helix of a spiral staircase. The mold and damp smelled twice as strong in here, pressing the taste of earth into my mouth. The Minuets’ snowy shoes had left the steps squeaky. I jogged up. The staircase came out inside the projector room, whose ceiling leaned closely over my head.
The guys came up behind me. “Watch the ceiling,” I said to Isaac as he reached the top of the steps.
“Thanks.” He craned his head sideways to keep from bumping it. “Jesus. This room is for elves.”
Nihal ran a hand along the wall, found a light switch, and flicked it, revealing a long, narrow room. Shelves had come loose from the wooden pegs propping them up; they hung diagonally, handprints disturbing the thick coats of dust they wore. Snatches of drab pale blue glimmered between the concert posters and CD covers the Minuets had plastered over the walls—their own, of course. Except for one Sharps concert poster, which had been mercilessly defaced.
The lone projector hunched in the center of the room, its metal body scabbed with decay, the empty slots for film reels blooming in circles above and below. At the end of a thick cylinder, its lens peered up against the projection window’s glass, like a sniper rifle’s barrel eyeing a faraway target.
In the corner sat a familiar chest.
“Shit yeah.” Isaac held out his hands to Nihal and me. We slapped them.
Noise shuffled up from downstairs. “Hello?” said a rich baritone voice. Trav had caught up.
“I’ll tell him we found it,” Nihal said, winding his way back down the steps. His gray windbreaker rustled away into the dark.
Isaac and I moved to the corner and cracked open the chest, sorting through the materials. Mic carriers had come unzipped and unbuckled. Isaac grimaced. “Trav’s going to have to check that everything’s still in here,” he said, glancing over my shoulder at the staircase.
“Yeah, I’ll grab him.” I dodged the projector, spiraled down the steps, and stopped.
Nihal’s voice was echoing past the door, low and urgent. “—said you were done with this stuff, you promised you’d stop!”
“Nihal, I said I’m sorry,” said the other voice. It wasn’t Trav.
Lurking in the darkness, I craned my neck to see through the cracked door: Connor Caskey stood in the foyer, dark-cheeked and glassy-eyed from the wind, knit hat pulled low over his arched eyebrows. Everything was bluish in the night.
Had he brought the other Minuets back? Decided to give us away?
No. He was alone, breathless tension on his face, as if he were about to jump out of an airplane.
“Okay, but are you sorry?” Nihal said. “Because you’ve said that before, but actual guilt makes people act differently, and as far as I can see, you haven’t gone out of your way to do anything you said you’d do.”
“Like what?”
“Like acting like a decent human being! What you drew on Mama’s door wasn’t funny. It’s not funny. Connor, you beat up my best friend!”
I leaned back from the door. It should have felt wonderful to hear that—best friend. But guilt soured the glow, seeping around the edges.
“Come on.” Connor’s voice was low and embarrassed. “Don’t be like that. It was just—”
“Answer the question. Did you take the key or not?”
“I . . . look, I didn’t want to hurt you or anything. I didn’t think you would . . .”
“Didn’t think I would what?” Nihal said. “Care? You didn’t think I would care that you swung by my room for the first time just to steal something from me? Or was it that you didn’t think I’d hold you accountable?”
Silence.
The manic edge to Nihal’s voice dulled. “Because I suppose, you know, I haven’t really done that. I’ve given you a dozen second chances.” He sighed. “I don’t understand. I’ve done everything you asked. I’ve kept myself in the closet, even though I’ve wanted to be out for months now, and all I want is—I just want to know you give a shit, don’t you get it? That’s all I’ve wanted, this whole time.”
Silence.
Nihal let out one of his little laughs. It sounded like an injury. “I mean, what,” he said, “are you so ashamed of me, you can’t even admit you care in secret?”
The hurt in his voice gutted me. Numb, I turned to head back up the stairs. This wasn’t for me. I shouldn’t have listened to any of it.
“No, come on,” Connor murmured. “Of course that’s not it. Hey.”
“Don’t touch me,” Nihal said. And then they were out of earshot.
When I got back to the projection room, Isaac was holding the Golden Bear.
The Bear’s blunt nose gleamed, its ridges of fur coarse with daubs of gold. Here and there, patches of frosted glass shone through the leaf. The statue was smaller than I’d expected, maybe eight inches tall, and almost delicate, with its outstretched paws less fearsome than pleading. It looked like it knew it was in the wrong hands.
As I approached, Isaac turned the Bear over and over. “What do you think?” he said.
My brain said to put it back. Everything I’d just heard made me want to smash the thing against the wall.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Isaac set the Bear on the projector. Its heavy resin base thudded onto the metal. “Is Trav coming up?” Isaac asked. “We should show him.”
“That wasn’t Trav,” I said, trying not to sound so hollow.
“Then who?”
“It’s one of the Minuets. Nihal’s talking to him.”
“Shit.” Isaac made for the corner. “Let’s get our stuff before he tips them off.”
“He won’t,” I said quickly. “He and Nihal are friends.”
“Huh.” He stopped. “I didn’t know the Minuets had ‘friends.’ Isn’t that against their cult rules?”
“Yeah, well.” I approached the projector, tracing the contorted line of the Golden Bear’s back. “People probably say the same thing about us.”
“And they’re right,” he said. “I don’t really care about anyone else.” Isaac stopped on the other side of the projector, folding his arms on top of it. We looked at each other for a second. His attention flickered down to my lips, and my body was too warm, all of a sudden. I remembered how kissing him felt, a searing memory.
I leaned on the projector too. Our arms lined up against each other, and he slipped his hand over mine. “How’s your face doing?” he asked.
“Not bad.”
“Good.” His thumb passed across my knuckles.
Feet clattered up the stairs. We jerked back as Trav appeared in the threshold, scanning the room.