The Last Beautiful Girl

by Nina Laurin

  “What does that even mean? As opposed to what—gazing hardly?”

  “Just do it, Isa. Yes!”

  Click, click, click.

  “Are you going to show me those photos?”

  “Don’t rush me, or I won’t show you anything at all.”

  Click, click.

  I turn my gaze to the window. The arched windowpane is taller than me, and the only thing that keeps me from falling is the double glass. It’s breathtaking, I must admit. Below, I see the semicircle outline of old tiles through the sparse grass—that’s where there used to be a gazebo. And, off to the side, another perimeter, now only a low wall marking a ruined foundation. For some reason, it pulls my gaze like a magnet. The air is so still that not a blade of grass moves—like I’m looking at a picture, or an old-school theater backdrop.

  “Alexa,” I say. Something is scratching in the back of my mind, a realization, or some knowledge I’d forgotten but am now struggling to remember. “This place. It used to be—”

  “Stand still.” Click, click.

  “They’re perfect,” Alexa says as she swipes through the photos. It’s growing darker now, and her face is bathed in the glow of her phone screen. Her eyes are wide in wonderment. “Every single one. Holy shit, Isa, you have to see.”

  I climb off the windowsill and try to peer at Alexa’s phone, but she dodges, tapping busily at the screen. A second later, my own phone, which I’d left on the floor by the window, chimes.

  “I sent them to you,” Alexa says. I thumb through the photos and have to admit these are some of the best pictures ever taken of me. They make the rest of my Instagram look like a second grader’s. They look otherworldly, almost like paintings if not for the sharp definition—and my pink hair and cropped T-shirt that ground them in the present day. In one of the photos, my pose looks uncomfortable, my posture bordering on tortured, my spine bent, my head lolling. But the look on my face is utterly calm, serene. Did I really do this? Wouldn’t my neck be hurting like hell right now?

  “Can I post them?” I ask, hoping only that the internet connection doesn’t let me down.

  But Alexa shakes her head. “We can do better.”

  I don’t see how you could improve upon such perfection.

  “I don’t just want to make some cute Insta shots,” Alexa is saying. “I want to make true art.”

  “Then you better scare up some oil paints,” I murmur.

  But Alexa is unflappable. “To each era, its own medium!” Semi-comically, she points one finger into the air, showman-like. “Ours will be photos!”

  She’s a little too worked up, I think, and, frankly, it’s getting a little weird. Like, I can see the whites of her eyes all around the iris. How many espressos did she have?

  “We need to go to a higher floor,” she says. “I want to capture that view behind you. Quick, while we still have that light.”

  “There’s a terrace on the top floor,” I say. “We can go outside.”

  We head upstairs. But, as I make a right turn, I notice Alexa isn’t following me. When I turn around, Alexa is standing at the entrance of the left-wing hallway.

  “What’s that way?” she asks, her tone light but not fooling anyone.

  “We shouldn’t go there,” I say with an embarrassing stammer. “Something about the floor. Or the ceiling. I—”

  “Looks fine to me.”

  And, before I know it, Alexa is ducking under the remains of the tape and heading down the hall—right toward the locked walnut door.

  “What’s behind this?” she asks.

  And, as if in slow motion, I watch her reach for the ornate handle and jiggle it.

  No! I want to yell out that it’s not safe, although I can’t seem to remember why. But my jaw grows slack, my face numb.

  What is happening?

  I extend my hand in front of me, but it feels like someone else’s hand. I think I see the dull gold glint of old rings.

  One blink, and everything goes back to normal, but too late. Alexa is pulling on the door handle, and the door swings open.

  But it’s supposed to be—why is it unlocked?

  I don’t run—I fly down the hallway and skid to a halt at Alexa’s side. Alexa gives me a look like I’m crazy.

  “It’s just a room,” I start to say. The door opens wider, and the light from the hallway pours in.

  “Whoa.”

  Ten

  I step through the doorway, breathing in the sweet, musty scent of dust. It’s familiar to me by now—the faint whiff of it fills the entire house all the way to the ground floor. But, here, it’s the main note and with an undercurrent of something else, something sharper, almost unpleasant. The light that falls through the doors is barely enough to see the enormous room: the ceiling is so high that it’s lost in darkness far above our heads.

  There’s nothing wrong with the roof—at least nothing obvious. This room is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. This place could be a ballroom, if it weren’t on the fourth floor in a distant wing. The ceiling is lost in the dark, but I can tell it’s vertiginously high and vaulted. Like a church. Another grand chandelier hangs above our heads, wrapped in many layers of fabric, and more line the walls. The floor beneath my feet is dirty, but I still can make out an elaborate mosaic. I can only imagine what this place was like in its heyday.

  Wasting no time, Alexa opens the flashlight on her phone. Its beam roams the walls. Not a single window anywhere but odd rectangles all over the walls. The beam drops lower, and I understand why: matching rectangles wrapped in tarp and plastic stand in rows, stacked against the walls.

  “I don’t think we should be in here,” I say. I don’t really think that’s true, but it feels like I should say something.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Alexa says. And, to my dismay, she makes a beeline for the stacked rectangles. She pulls one away from the rest with some effort.

  My insides grow cold, but Alexa begins to rip apart the wrappings, ignoring the clouds of dust that rise up. The flowing lace sleeves of her shirt flail, and her black hair whips around her head, falling in her eyes. She quickly pushes it aside, leaving a trail of grime down her cheek and smudging her eye makeup. In the feeble light, she looks slightly demented, or demonic.

  “I knew it!” Alexa barely stifles her shriek of joy. “Look!”

  She turns the painting around.

  It’s Isabella—this much is clear at first glance. It’s done in a pre-Raphaelite style similar to what my googling turned up. And it must have been absolutely scandalous for the day, because Isabella is reclining in a bathtub, her hair flowing down her shoulders and floating on the crystal-clear, perfectly still water just so, to strategically hide her nakedness.

  The water, a few seemingly careless strokes of a brush, looks so real I’m sure that, if I reach out and touch the canvas, cold will shoot through my fingertips. Immediately, I think of that story I once heard, of the artist’s model who posed for hours in a tub of ice-cold water—the water so cold that the woman caught pneumonia and died.

  But the painting, the painting lived on forever. And isn’t that what she would have wanted? Isn’t it the most important thing?

  Images conjured up by Alexa and my own imagination invade my mind. I see myself in a diaphanous, flowing gown, my skin glowing like white wax, flowers in my hair.

  “Careful,” I say in a hushed voice. “This thing must be valuable.”

  “In that case, why isn’t it in a museum?” Alexa parries.

  I’m transfixed by the painting. Isabella’s profile is sharp, her green gaze fixed on something outside the frame. Her lips are rosy-pink, slightly parted. Is she waiting for her lover, or seeing him off? And something about the scene seems oddly familiar.

  Then it hits me. The claw-footed tub. An identical one is in our own bathroom. Unless it’s not just identic
al but—the very same?

  A chill travels up my spine.

  Alexa is busily unwrapping a second painting. I taste more sweet dust on the tip of my tongue.

  “This is it,” Alexa is saying. “This is what I want to do. True art.”

  “I’m not sitting naked in a bathtub,” I joke, hoping to defuse the tension. There’s a weight in the room; I feel it in my bones. Something about the pressure makes me feel like I have no right to say no. And not just because of Alexa.

  “No. We’ll make our own images. This is just the inspiration! What I’m asking you is, do you want to go viral or not?”

  “Taylor will have a fit, for sure,” I say with unease.

  “I’m sorry to say this, Isa, but your mother’s sense of aesthetics is mired in another decade. And that decade is over. The time of ugliness is gone, and the age of beauty is back!”

  The way her voice carries under the high ceiling—I can’t help but imagine someone else speaking through her lips.

  Eleven

  “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help?”

  I jolt out of my thoughts. Alexa is on tiptoes, her arms straining under the weight of yet another painting, but she can’t quite reach the hook on the wall where the painting is supposed to hang.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Should we be touching all this stuff? These paintings are old and probably have some sort of historical value at least. Maybe we should get someone to help us. My mom, or people from the university…”

  I feel cowardly and kind of like a loser. Here it is, the thing I’ve been waiting for—something fun to keep me busy in my not-so-great new life. But all I want to do is board up the door and go back to my room.

  Alexa huffs. “The people from the university left all this beauty to molder under wraps for decades. And your mom is hardly better. No, we’re going to do this ourselves.”

  I look at the painting she’s trying to hang up. Isabella is standing near a mirror in an ornate frame, her hair flowing past her waist. She’s dressed in a gauzy white Greek-style toga that looks like a bedsheet, her shoulders exposed. Must have been controversial back in the day. She looks beautiful, pure, her skin glowing like the paint is new. Except something is off about it. I can’t quite put my finger on it.

  “Isabella!” Alexa’s voice comes unexpectedly from behind me. Confused, I spin around, just in time for her to take a picture.

  “Hey!” I exclaim.

  “Hey yourself. It looks amazing. Did you ever notice that the two of you could be sisters?”

  I snatch the phone out of her hand. The photo caught me mid-spin, my hair a pale, pink blur. My eyes are the only thing that’s in focus, their color surprisingly clear despite the lack of light. I look like one of those ghost sighting photos.

  “I’m so going to post that,” Alexa says, decisively taking back her phone.

  “No!” I exclaim. I’m overcome with a sudden deep, primal fear. “Don’t. Everyone will know we went up there.”

  Alexa gives me a blank look. “And?”

  I can’t answer.

  “Isabella, you disappoint me. We have something unique here. Something no one else has access to. And you just want to slink away with your tail between your legs? I’m posting it.”

  My phone dings in my pocket as I get an alert, since she tagged me.

  “And it’s done,” Alexa says. “Now, are you going to help me put up the rest of these paintings or not?”

  * * *

  I bring a small ladder from the third floor, where some workers forgot it in the hallway, and we put up the paintings one by one. It’s fairly easy to figure out what goes where, since each one fits its rectangle on the wallpaper.

  Finally, only one is left. The biggest one. It’s easily as tall as me, leaning against the back wall and shrouded in its tarp. I look at it, and a strange little shiver races up my spine. I’m not sure if it’s excitement or fear.

  “Looks heavy,” I say.

  “So don’t just stand there. Help me hang it!”

  Luckily, it doesn’t hang very high. It’s meant to be at the center of this whole display, a giant, dark rectangle on the wallpaper, the only empty space on a wall pretty much covered in paintings.

  I follow Alexa’s lead and take hold of the side of the painting. Dust from the tarp immediately rises up in a cloud, making my eyes itch.

  “On three,” says Alexa. “One, two, three.”

  We haul the painting across the room and lean it on the wall against the dark rectangle.

  “Ready?” Alexa asks. She doesn’t wait for an answer, just yanks away the tarp, which comes away with surprising ease. With a sound like giant wings flapping, it collapses to the floor at the painting’s foot, and, in another prodigious storm of dust, Isabella is revealed.

  For a moment, I’m breathless. She’s wearing a gown of red velvet, far too opulent to be of her era. There’s a jeweled bodice and gold embroidery and lavish jewelry to match—another historical costume. Her auburn hair flows down her back, just like in the other pictures. Her eyes are emerald green, a careful blush creeps across her cheeks. So why does she look so different?

  It’s the look on her face. Not carefully bland, spaced out like the pre-Raphaelites. Not gazing softly, whatever that means, not longing or daydreaming. Not subtly bored like the subjects of real historical portraits always look after hours of sitting without moving. Her expression has the sharpness and presence of a photograph, and her look is unkind. Her lips are pressed tightly together, her jaw sharp and defined like she’s clenching her teeth. I swear I can even see shadows of frown lines between her eyebrows and around her mouth.

  Is she pretending to be Lady Macbeth? Mary Queen of Scots?

  Somehow, this look suits her even more. She’s prettier this way than in the paintings where she’s clearly trying to appear attractive.

  “Hello.” Alexa’s annoyed voice cuts through my haze of thoughts. I realize she’s been calling my name.

  “Yeah, sorry,” I say, feeling uncomfortable. “I just spaced out.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Don’t you think it’s magnificent?” I ask softly. “Just look at her face.”

  Alexa shrugs. “Nah. Not my favorite. The dress is incredible, I give her that, but the face is off. Whoever painted that didn’t like her very much.”

  “I like it,” I say. I feel vexed for no reason.

  “Good, then. Help me hang it up.”

  So we pick up the painting once again and, after some effort, manage to hang it on its hook.

  “Ta-da!” Alexa wipes her dusty hands on her shirt. They leave behind two ghostly gray smears.

  I take a step back and look at the wall of paintings. Complete now. There’s an odd satisfaction in that. It spills in my chest like a physical warmth. And, as if on cue, the room takes on a different aspect, as though the light has changed. Everything is warmer, coated in a sort of living sepia filter. Finally, things are back in their place, I catch myself thinking.

  Where did that come from?

  I blink, and the room is normal again. Dark and murky.

  “If we want to do any more photos, we have to get some normal lights in here,” Alexa is grumbling. “Do you think there’s a power outlet?”

  “I doubt it,” I say without really thinking, or even hearing what she said.

  Alexa won’t be discouraged, though. She inspects the walls like a hound. I follow her with my gaze, which hits the back wall and screeches to an abrupt halt.

  “What’s that?” I point. Behind the big painting, it turns out, there’s a door. How neither of us noticed it when we moved the painting, I have no idea, because it’s low but fairly large, covered with the same wallpaper but noticeable.

  Alexa whistles. She makes a beeline for the door.

  “Be carefu
l!” I yelp, but she ignores me. She turns the handle, and, when the door swings open without resistance, vanishes inside. I see the light of her phone darting back and forth.

  “It’s a storage room!” she shrieks, hardly able to contain her joy. “Get in here, quick!”

  Reluctant, I inch my way to the door and gingerly step over the threshold.

  Alexa is already pulling reams of dusty-looking fabric from a trunk. “There’re clothes. And probably more. Oh, Isa, oh my god.”

  “My mom is going to look for us,” I say. “We should probably get back downstairs.”

  “Wow. Way to be a buzzkill.”

  “If she finds us here, she’ll nail the whole room shut. Then who’s the buzzkill? And, anyway, we can come back here next week.”

  I don’t know what made me say that. Just as the words escape from my mouth, I realize I don’t really want her here again. I don’t want to come back here.

  Except I do.

  Do I?

  “Isa, that’s incredible. I’m so happy right now, you have no idea.”

  I’m pensive as we exit the room and close the double doors behind us carefully. It’s fully dark outside, and, from downstairs, I detect the scent of dinner cooking. I feel like I accidentally walked through a time portal to find myself in a much more boring era. One glance at Alexa’s expression tells me she’s feeling the same way.

  “Isa,” she says, meeting my gaze. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I think this has been, hands-down, the best day of my life.”

  Twelve

  That night, I go to bed late. For some reason, I’m so hyper that I doubt I’ll be able to sleep at all. For the longest time I idle in bed, scrolling through my phone, which chooses this moment to have a crystal-clear signal. And, since it’s Saturday night, every feed is like an endless stream of concentrated FOMO designed to torment me. It seems that everyone is doing something cool, everyone is at some amazing house party at a penthouse or a concert or the latest nightclub. Except, as I scroll through it all, I’m not bothered in the slightest. On the contrary: I feel almost smug. Here I am, and I have the coolest thing ever right at my fingertips, separated from me by one floor and some old caution tape. I can’t even brag about it, at least not yet, but that only makes it even more special. Hell, I almost feel sorry for all my Brooklyn friends. They don’t know what they’re missing out on.