This Might Hurt(47)

I studied each face. They were all so sincere—they believed in these exercises. Jeremiah was concentrating so hard his brow had furrowed.

“One final exhale,” Ruth said. “Everyone open your eyes, please.”

Ten pairs of eyes opened.

“There.” She beamed. “Don’t you feel better?”





18





TO BOISTEROUS CHEERS I bowed at center stage. For some the nightly ritual comprised a warm bath, a sheet mask, a good book. Mine was a standing ovation.

“Thank you, Dayton.” I grinned at my audience. I never felt higher than when a crowd was chanting my name. As I lay in bed at night, their cries looped in my head.

I am goddamn invincible.

I scanned the theater once more, searching for a familiar face. My sister, Jack, was meant to attend tonight’s performance. After all that fuss about moving as far away as possible in college, she had ended up back where she started, a fifteen-minute drive from our childhood home. I couldn’t locate her in the crowd. Perhaps she had changed her mind.

When the curtain descended, I sauntered offstage, closing my dressing room door behind me. I paced the room and waited for the adrenaline rush to recede. My tour had begun three months ago, during which I’d performed in a different city every day, and my shows were gaining traction. A local radio station had invited me for an interview. A fan had recognized and approached me while I was out to dinner the previous evening. Soon I would hardly be able to keep up with all my correspondence. Beneath me, at the mere age of twenty-four, a wave was building, swelling. A good night’s rest had become an impossibility.

There was a knock at my door. I opened it, and the oxygen fled my body.

“What are you doing here?”

Sir pushed past me to enter the dressing room. “Free country, ain’t it?”

I hadn’t seen my father since he’d dropped me off at college six years ago and I was shocked by how rapidly he’d aged since then. What was once blond had silvered. Jowls were firmly settled, beer gut complete. The lines across my father’s face ran deep as a bulldog’s, unhappiness embedded within each one. He watched me grumpily.

“I didn’t expect you to come tonight.” I swallowed. “You never got back to me.”

“Your sister made me.”

“Where is she?”

He shrugged. “Ran into an old friend from high school.”

“Where’s Mother?”

“Sicker than ever. Hardly leaves the house.”

I cast my eyes to the floor. “I’m sorry to hear that.” This felt like an out-of-body experience, talking to my father as formally as if he were a stranger.

He sniffed. “You’d know if you ever came home.”

I vowed to keep things civil. I would not take his bait, wouldn’t let him ruin the afterglow of a virtuoso performance. “It’s hard with the tour schedule.”

He scanned the room, mouth puckered. “Never had your priorities straight, did you?”

“You told me to go out and be somebody. My whole life you said it. That’s what I’ve been doing.”

“You think tricking people into eating spiders makes you hot shit?”

“It’s not the act itself. It’s what it represents.”

He crossed his arms. “Were there not enough respectable careers for you to choose from? You had to go and pick this one?”

My insides were wilting, but on the outside I bristled. “I’m a headliner, Sir. I have my own tour.”

He stabbed a finger at the door. “You were tramping around that stage like a common street whore.”

I stopped my mouth from falling open. He’s right. He’s absolutely right. I’m worthless, a talentless hack.

“W- . . . w-with all due respect, sir,” a voice said outside the doorway, “you’re talking to one of the preeminent mentalists of our time.”

In walked a brawny teenage boy, seventeen or eighteen, with honey eyes and a crooked nose. Sir and I both stared at him.

Sir turned to me, gesturing at the boy with his thumb. “Who’s this little snot rag?”

I shrugged. I had never seen him.

“I couldn’t help b- . . . b-but overhear,” the teen said, “because I was eavesdropping. Did you know her show tonight sold out? And, by the way, Madame Fearless is the first female mentalist to get a national tour?”

My father inspected the boy like he was from another planet. “Big whoop.”

“It is a big whoop,” the boy said. “You may not like magic, although frankly I can’t see w- . . . w-why you came tonight if you don’t, but how many stages have you ever stood on? How many people have paid their hard-earned money to hear you talk?”

Sir was at a loss for words, something I’d witnessed only once or twice in my life.

“Not many, I’m guessing. If this is how you treat people.”

Sir’s teeth clenched. “I’ll talk to my daughter however I damn well please.”

Surprise wrinkled the boy’s otherwise flawless skin. “Oh, you’re her father, then?” He considered me. “Guess you drew the short straw on that front. Sorry to hear it. My dad’s a b- . . . b-bastard too.” He shrugged.

The corners of my lips twitched.