Chapter 57

Cindy Smith reached out her arm and found nothing but air. Her head hurt and her throat was parched, and for a moment she had no idea where she was. She bolted upright and caught sight of the ghost light on the stage below—its single bulb casting shadows that ran across her body like prison bars. She sat there for a moment thinking—her memory, like a leaky faucet, coming back to her in drips.

She was on the second tier of the Macbeth set, behind the railing on the stage right side. That’s right. She and Edmund had come up here after kissing in the parking lot—but where was he? Cindy looked around and found her handbag beside her. She took out her cell phone. 3:42 a.m.

“Christ,” she sighed, closing her eyes.

It had been her idea, she remembered suddenly, guiltily—she who’d asked Edmund to open the theater so they could have some privacy in case any of the other students spotted them in the parking lot on the way home from the party.

The party, Cindy said to herself. There was a fight at the party.

But Cindy didn’t care about that, and instead fast- forwarded to the memory of Edmund leading her up the stairs—the outline of his muscular back through his shirt glowing an eerie blue in the shadows from the ghost light. Then they were together, pawing at each other in the dark-ness—her back against the hard platform, the warmth of his skin, the sour smell of stage paint all around her. She had been drunk, but that wasn’t why she wanted him. She understood this even now, but thought it strange that Edmund wouldn’t take off his shirt even as she felt his hardness probing between her thighs.

Suddenly, Edmund froze—whispered something in her ear that sounded like “arrest a gal”—and then slid off. Cindy felt a wave of embarrassment and shame as she remembered how she all but begged him to continue “Come on,” she’d said, “put it inside me.” But now she couldn’t remember exactly what Edmund said next—mumbled something about stars and not having permission.

“Permission?” Cindy had slurred. “You’re too much of a gentleman.” Then came the fuzzy memory of them dress-ing—of him dressing her—and the warmth of his embrace as they drifted off to sleep. But Edmund hadn’t slept. Cindy knew that now.

“Edmund?” she whispered—but only her voice echoed back from the black. And suddenly Cindy was not only angry but also very afraid.

She stood up and grabbed her handbag, dashed down the escape steps behind the set, and felt her way through the wings to the side entrance. Her head was throbbing, her sense of balance off, but she found the doorknob and burst out into the night.

The cool air felt good on Cindy’s face—sobered her up but did nothing for her anger. She quickly descended the outside stairs and ran into the parking lot. Edmund’s pickup was gone, but her piece-of-shit Pontiac was right where she had left it before the show.

“Asshole,” she muttered—but once she was inside her car, her anger left her at once. On the passenger seat was a white rose, taken from her dressing room while she was asleep, she knew. Lying across it was a folded piece of notebook paper. She flicked on the dome light and read the note.

Cindy sat there for a moment, confused, reading the note over and over again. Edmund had written it in pencil, but it appeared as if he’d written another name first, then erased it and wrote Cindy instead. What was it?

Looks like the name begins with E, Cindy thought, but she couldn’t make out the rest of it in the Pontiac’s dim dome light. But the note itself—what the hell was that about? And what kind of guy would leave a girl all alone in a darkened theater?

Cindy sat in the driver’s seat, playing over the night’s events in her mind until the windows of her Pontiac began to fog. Amy Pratt was right. There was something kind of creepy about Edmund Lambert. The note, the talk about things being what they seem—so strange, yes, but at the same time … well …

Cindy sighed and closed her eyes; tried to block out the realization of just how much that strangeness intrigued her—how much it turned her on. Jesus Christ, she almost had sex with Edmund Lambert after only a single date! This from the girl who in high school made her boyfriend wait over a year to get in her pants—and that was only because she was drunk and it was the senior prom and he begged her.

But now, tonight, it was she who had begged Edmund Lambert. What the fuck was going on with her? And what was it about Edmund Lambert that made her act so unlike herself—made her throw herself at him just like that slut Amy Pratt would do?

Cindy opened her eyes and stared down at Edmund’s neat block-lettered print. She needed to get to bed and sleep off what had the potential to be a bitch of a hangover; she had to pull the lunch shift at Chili’s, too, before heading off to the show.

“He needs to be sure things are what they seem,” Cindy whispered, reading the note again. “Whatever the fuck that means.”

What things “seem” like, a voice said in her head, is that he ditched you in the theater. Didn’t wake you or stick around to walk to you to your car. That’s fucked up.

“But the note,” Cindy replied. “And the flower. It’s not like he just left me. Maybe he tried to wake me—”

Are you kidding? You’re gonna give him a pass on this?

“And the way he defended me at the party—”

Oh, my God! You’re truly one needy, pathetic bitch!

Cindy closed her eyes and told the voice in her head to fuck off. It was right: she should be furious with Edmund Lambert—but she wasn’t. And there was this odd feeling in the pit of her stomach: a dull sense of inevitability that at once both terrified and excited her—made her feel strangely liberated but at the same time like she was going bonkers inside a padded cell.

Damn right, crazy OCD bitch. Talking to yourself in your car at four a.m.—

“Out, out, damned spot!” Cindy screamed, her hands clawing at her tangled black hair—when suddenly in her mind she heard George Kiernan shout, “That’s it!”