Honor laughed but quickly stifled it with the back of her hand. “Sorry, I shouldn’t.”
But then we both laughed, only when I laughed it felt like something was stuck in my throat. There was no joy behind it, either. It was as paper-thin as I was. As though I even knew who I was anymore.
“You better wash that stuff off your mirror before Mom sees,” Honor says. “She’ll think you’ve gone off the deep end or joined some weird emo cult.”
I followed her gaze to the mirror above the vanity. My breath seemed to metastasize in my chest. There it was. A warning. HIDE AND SEEK, HIDE AND SEEK, IN THE DARK, THEY ALL WILL SHRIEK. Straight from her. It was like she was there preparing to reach through the glass and strangle me. Three more tally marks, and she was going to make sure she was the one to put them there.
My mouth felt dry, my tongue coated in dust. “I—I—was just messing around. Some … song I—”
But Honor cut me off. “Hey, when did you get that?” She slid her ankles off the bed. She reached toward the music box, and for a second I worried she’d open it up and find the tablet of Sunshine hidden inside. But her hand passed over it and she reached to the other side. She cradled a camcorder in her palms.
I jerked upright, quickly unsnarling my toes from the contorted blankets. “Um, hold on there—” I didn’t own a camcorder. I had no recollection of ever seeing this one before. So far things I didn’t remember didn’t have a great track record.
But my sister was already opening up the viewfinder, pushing the power button. There was a little chime to indicate that it was working. I made a grab for it and she snatched it away. “What is it?” she squealed. “Is it a sex tape?”
“No! God, of course not.” Or I hoped not.
“Whoa, Cassidy! Was … when was this?” Her nose wrinkled and she peered closer.
“Give it back.” I yanked just as she released the camcorder and I rolled backward so that my skull knocked against the headboard. “Oof!”
“Okay, okay.” She dusted her hands together to show that she’d let go first. “Geez.”
The effort left me panting.
“Was that Lena Leroux?” she asked.
The footage was already playing. I fumbled for the “stop” button while the video played and I was caught, mesmerized. It was shot at my school—worse—my school at night.
A shaky frame of the Hollow Pines auditorium where I recognized the barnlike set pieces. The clothesline. The wheelbarrow. There was someone moving on stage amid the eerie, yellow-green tint the camera used to catch movement at night. Two eyes peered back at the camera. The pupils glowed like a cat’s. I recognized the dark bangs that brushed the eyebrows of the girl on-screen.
Honor was right. It was the sophomore Lena. Then, before I could stop it, there was a voice behind the camera. More tense and clipped than I was used to. “Say hello,” it said. “… Do something,” it commanded.
The voice behind the camera was mine.
I appeared on-screen, shooting middle fingers to an audience that wasn’t there.
I jammed my finger into the “off” button and the screen went black. I stared wide-eyed at the blank viewfinder. Up until now I’d thought there might be some other explanation for the gaps in memory and for the strange things that I’d seemed to be involved in. I’d thought that maybe somehow I had nothing to do with them. But I had. The evidence was there. Whoever was doing these things to me … was me.
“How do you know Lena?” The skin between Honor’s eyebrows puckered. She seemed almost hurt. Like if I was going to give attention to an unpopular underclassman it should have been her.
The room stopped playing at being a Tilt-A-Whirl and after a few false starts I was able to answer. “I—I don’t.” I squeezed my eyes shut as a wellspring of nausea started in the base of my stomach and pushed up against my throat. “She was filming practice for us.” I thought fast. I lied. I never used to lie. “So we could see our mistakes. She forgot her camera. I just brought it home for her. That’s all.” Honor looked skeptical. “Thanks for reminding me. You know her?”
Honor’s eyes brightened. I rarely asked her about her friends. Was Lena a friend? I hoped not. “Yeah, she’s in drama with me. She does lights and edits the stage production videos and stuff, I think.”
This was different from what Honor did. Honor wanted to be an actress and loved to sing, a gift that was otherwise at odds with her soft-spoken personality. Currently, she had a part with only one solo line, but from what I understood, even that was pretty good for a freshman.
“Oh, okay. Well, what’s she like?”