The Last Housewife (80)
You duck.
You have watched him one thousand and one nights, after all, and you know the soreness in his knee, the way his wrist stiffens and clicks in winter. You have catalogued each weakness, each chink in his armor, studying him the way prey always studies the ones who hunt it.
He stumbles. You stick out a foot and he trips, sword clattering at your feet. He looks up at you from where he crouches on his hands and knees.
You seize the sword. You could spare him, take the weapon with you, leave this room you’ve been trapped in for so long you can’t remember anything before it. Maybe there’s another world beyond the door. A thousand worlds, like you’ve dreamed, and some of them benign.
Or.
You could drive the thick, gleaming steel down in an arc that meets his neck, separate his head from his shoulders, quick and ruthless as he would do to you. You could take the crown from his forehead and place it on your own. It would smell of blood—iron and ocher—but doesn’t every crown?
What will you decide?
Whatever it is, the world will never be the same.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There’s an inferno inside me. Whirling and hungry. I’ve felt it before.
Jamie rolled toward me, sheets clinging to his sweat-slicked body. “I can feel it, too,” he said. “Simmering under your skin.”
I blinked in surprise. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken the words out loud. Maybe after so many interviews, I’d grown porous, the veil between inside and outside thin and breachable.
I leaned back next to him, my head finding the pillow, and we stared up at the popcorn ceiling, trying to catch our breath.
Jamie made me feel so good it worried me. If I was being honest with myself, Cal had been so self-absorbed, so uncurious, that being with him never felt like a risk. Jamie was different. Over and over he reached for me, like it was only natural. In the mornings, when his eyes opened on the other side of the bed and there was no pretense between us; at night, when I came back to the car and climbed over him without speaking, his mouth finding mine, no questions. Nothing that came this easy, no one who wanted this much, could ever be trusted.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said slowly. “I think I’m going to explode.”
His voice was painstakingly gentle. “Like senior year?”
I could feel my heart pumping, carrying blood to the surface of my skin. Every inch sparking, still sensitive from where he’d touched me. It was a tether to this room, but it wasn’t enough… Still, I was drifting.
Yes, I’d felt this way before.
“Like senior year,” I agreed.
“Will you finally tell me what happened, why they took valedictorian away? What did you do?”
The only two people I’d ever told were both dead. Perhaps I should tell one more person to create a record, just in case.
I reached for his phone one last time.
Chapter Thirty
Transgressions Episode 705, interview transcript: Shay Deroy, Sept. 22, 2022 (unabridged) SHAY DEROY: I’d been in love with Anderson Thomas since middle school. It was a quiet obsession, one I never thought would go anywhere.
JAMIE KNIGHT: Trust me. I remember.
SHAY: He was a shiny person, wasn’t he? The quarterback, from a good family, a mom and a dad, a sister. And he was so handsome it hurt to look at him. Everyone loved him.
JAMIE: Mmm.
SHAY: What?
JAMIE: Not everyone.
SHAY: You?
JAMIE: I saw him places you didn’t. In locker rooms, out on the field when we played soccer, at parties, when it was just guys in the room. I didn’t like who he was when he thought no one was watching.
(Silence.)
Listen to me interrupting you. I’m not being an objective observer; I’m making myself a character. Like some bullshit gonzo journalist. Sorry, Shay.
SHAY: Jamie, there’s no such thing as an objective observer. That’s why stories are powerful. If you’re listening, you’re part of it.
JAMIE: Maybe. But for ethical reasons, I’m going to have to present this episode some other way. Not journalism—a personal narrative or something. A confession.
SHAY: For what it’s worth, the fact that you don’t like Anderson makes this easier.
JAMIE: Makes what easier?
SHAY: You probably don’t remember I got a little popular at the end of high school.
JAMIE: I remember.
SHAY: The truth is, I got hungry.
JAMIE: Hungry?
SHAY: I’d wanted attention my whole life, but I was also scared of it. Then everything fell together senior year. I was going to be valedictorian. I won Miss Texas, and suddenly I was giving speeches to girls in elementary schools, judging 4-H competitions, cutting ribbons. Kids even started talking to me at school, inviting me to things.
JAMIE: Suddenly I was sharing you with everyone.
SHAY: I was so happy. It felt like I was carrying around a tiny sun in the center of my rib cage. The day I got nominated for prom queen, Anderson Thomas walked up to me in the cafeteria and asked me to be his date. He’d barely talked to me before that. I was living a fairy tale.
The night of prom, when I was getting ready in the bathroom, I thought about that lock-in right after my dad left. How I’d felt so alone, watching other people be happy. It was finally my turn.