The Last Beautiful Girl

by Nina Laurin

  The photos that Alexa posted steadily collect likes. Every other second, it seems, my phone is pinging, until I have no choice but to do something I’ve never done before: turn off the sound. Still, the silent alerts keep popping up. There are names I don’t recognize. I think they might be from my new school.

  I do keep an eye out for one name in particular, but it never comes up. Eve posted a photo earlier in the evening in which she’s wearing my Yvonne costume. I reflexively hearted it before I even realized I should be feeling hurt.

  I glance at the time at the top of my screen and notice that it’s past midnight. The room and the house are both eerily quiet. It feels almost as if they’re wrapped around me, a protective cocoon of silence and darkness and dust. My phone is the only beacon of light in a dark space. It’s not spooky at all. I put it on the charger, and, a couple of seconds later, the screen goes dark.

  It doesn’t make a difference whether I open or close my eyes, so I figure I might as well keep them closed. I don’t even notice I drift off to sleep.

  In my dream, I find myself in a vast space I can’t identify until its edges come into focus: the domed ceiling and wooden floor and the expanse of an empty auditorium are the theater at my new school. I’m on stage, and, when I look down, I’m wearing my Yvonne dress. I spin around, and the skirt flares around my legs. But there are no other actors anywhere, and, when I look behind me, I see that there’s no backdrop, no set, no props—nothing. I’m alone in the completely empty theater. With the skirt swishing around my ankles with that particular sound cheap, fake velvet makes, I go backstage. All the lights are on, but there’s not a soul anywhere. The door to the wardrobe is half-open, and, when I peer in, it’s not the normal costumes that I see but rows of dusty, faded dresses from all different eras. I touch one, then another—not costumes, that’s for sure. Not replicas but the real thing. They disintegrate beneath my fingertips, turning to a mass of threads that collapses into dust.

  I make my way to the dressing room. Here, everything is dark. I can see the outlines of the makeup tables and the mirrors and the chairs. I feel along the wall for the light switch and find it. I flip it, and, with a faint buzzing sound, the lights flicker on.

  My heart does a backflip when I realize that it’s not the dressing room I was expecting, the one I remember. It looks antique. The mirrors are all in heavy gilt frames, the chairs are all Art Deco, their once-clean lines blurred with cobwebs and more dust, their brass tarnished to a dull brown. On the makeup table sits an array of ancient pots of creams and cosmetics. Once-elegant little porcelain and glass containers are now grimy and chipped. I give a start when I spot what I first think is a human head in the corner, but, just as soon, I realize it’s just a mannequin head holding up an old wig. It, too, hasn’t escaped the dust and cobwebs, but I can still clearly see its original color through the gray shroud: a brilliant, deep auburn. This could only be made out of real human hair, I think with a shudder.

  Next to it on the counter is a brush. I pick it up. The hairs still enmeshed among the broken bristles are long and gray.

  A rustle behind me makes me whip my head around. “Is someone here?” I want to say, but, for some reason, no sound comes out of my mouth. Like my throat is locked. I turn back and finally catch my reflection in one of the big mirrors.

  Through the web of black cracks that snake across the mercury trapped under the old glass, another face looks back at me. It takes me a beat to recognize the harsh line of the mouth, the hard green eyes, the deep lines etched into skin that’s not mine.

  With a start, I jolt awake. My head spins. I’m not laying in my bed. I’m not in my bedroom at all. I’m standing in the middle of a small, cramped space, dimly lit by a chandelier’s three flickering candles. The air smells like dust.

  Panic-stricken, I gulp air like a fish. I’m in the small storage room on the fourth floor, I realize. At my feet is the biggest trunk, wide open, and old dresses spill out over the side like guts from a corpse.

  When I look down, my breath catches. I’m wearing the burgundy dress from the big painting. The heavy gold trim tugs at my sleeves. The hard bodice squeezes my ribcage, the built-in whalebones digging into my flesh.

  * * *

  Monday at school, everyone is looking at me strangely. Maybe I just notice more than usual because I’m jumpy, still not over what happened. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Taylor—especially not Taylor. Or my dad. I knew that, if I told, they’d board up the room and never let us in there again. Which, when I think about it, isn’t such a bad idea, but, somehow, I just knew that I shouldn’t say a word.

  I practically tore my way out of the burgundy dress before making a beeline back to my room and shutting the door. Once I caught my breath, I propped a chair up against it.

  The worst part is, it was impossible. The dress had all these little buttons up the back, from the small of my back all the way to the neck. Every single one of these tiny buttons was done up, threaded through a little woven loop. To get out of the dress, I had to claw at them, twisting my arms out of their sockets. Even then, several buttons came off.

  No matter how I think about it, there’s no way I could have done it myself, even if I had been awake.

  I look around for Alexa, who’s nowhere to be seen. Instead, I practically bump into Sara, a girl from theater class, who gives me a big smile that puts me on my guard.

  “Beautiful photos!” she says before continuing on her way.

  I blink, not sure what she’s talking about. Then it hits me. I’d turned off notifications on my Instagram—and, funny thing, actually forgot to look at it for a whole day. I take my phone out of my pocket, turn notifications back on, and watch my screen explode.

  I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that many likes. We’re talking viral here. My photos where I pose for Alexa got a huge amount, but the one where I’m blurry in front of the Isabella painting is the one that’s breaking the internet, it seems.

  Here, in broad daylight, in the ugly tiled hall of the school, the photo has lost its eerie quality. It’s just a picture on my screen. A good picture. But, the closer I look, the more it feels off. The painting is perfectly framed in the photo—weirdly so. Like Alexa did it on purpose. Isabella is in full focus. You can see every little detail of her face, every little variation of green in her irises and auburn in her hair. As I zoom in, I notice that the hair is painted in extreme detail, something that escaped my attention when I saw it in person. There are many shades in it, ranging from strawberry blond to copper to maroon to auburn so dark it’s practically brunette. Like Isabella somehow managed to get a balayage a hundred years before it was a thing.

  It also looks vaguely familiar in a way I can’t define.

  I zoom back out, and I’m stricken by the strange sensation, as though it were Isabella who was the real person, and I, with my blurred silhouette, just an imprint, a picture of a picture.

  “Hey!”

  Startled, I drop my phone. My insides freeze as I watch it flip over in the air, and I only have time to think, Oh god, not the new one—Taylor will never replace it now, when, just as it’s about to hit those oh so unforgiving tiles, it flips over again and lands safely screen-side up.

  All the breath goes out of me in relief. “Look what you almost did,” I say.

  “Sorry,” a voice says—and it’s none other than Alexa. She doesn’t sound sorry. “Did you see? It’s everywhere! Congratulations!”

  “That’s hardly viral,” I grumble, even though I was literally just thinking the same thing. Crouching, I pick up my phone and inspect it. Not a scratch.

  “Are you kidding? The whole school won’t shut up about it.” Alexa is beaming.

  “Not the whole school,” I groan. “Everybody saw it?”

  Alexa nods meaningfully. And, as I follow her down the hall to our first shared class, I start to realize she’s right. Everybody is l
ooking.

  And so is Nick. He’s standing in a corner nook so I don’t notice him until I pass by just inches away, and I feel his gaze, cold as a bucket of icy water down the back of my shirt. I can’t help but shiver.

  If he did see the photos, then he sure as hell isn’t happy about them.

  By the time theater workshop rolls around, things are normal again. A little too normal. As I walk into the classroom, everyone is smiling at me and saying, Hi, Isa, like I’ve been going to this school since elementary. Apparently, I’m everyone’s new best friend overnight, without any action on my part except posing for a few photos. Even Kendra gazes at me with a sort of serene adoration. Nick is sitting on the floor when I walk in, blithely flirting with Ines. He looks up when he sees me and gives me a crooked grin like nothing happened.

  Ines’s withering look is lost on everyone but me. I notice that Sara has gravitated across the room, away from her queen bee.

  Wasting no time, I go sit on the floor next to Alexa.

  “What’s their problem?” I whisper.

  Alexa shrugs. “Get used to it. You’re a star; you’re gonna have haters.”

  “No,” I say. “I’m not. Because we’re not taking any more pictures in the house.”

  I had a whole fake story prepared, about being caught by Taylor and forbidden to set foot in the room with the paintings because they’re historically valuable and a restoration team from the university is coming over to study and categorize them. But Alexa won’t even let me begin.

  She scoffs. “I thought we’ve been over this.”

  “Yes, but that was then.”

  “So what changed?”

  I’m this close to telling her about my nighttime misadventure, but something stops me. She gives me a look as if to say, that’s what I thought.

  “Besides, you can’t back away now. I already started us a new Insta account…”

  To my horror, she holds out her phone, and, on the screen, I see the familiar photo I was just looking at. At the top of the screen, I read: @IsabellaResurrected.

  “What is this?” I ask in a shaky whisper.

  “This,” Alexa says, “is five hundred followers overnight. Including half the school and everyone in this class. So, do you still want to back out?”

  I’m speechless. I tap at the screen and scroll through the list of names. She’s right. The account bio reads: The Isabella Granger Project: Bringing the Art Deco spirit and beauty back to life. Concept by @AlexaTheWolff.

  “You could at least have tagged me,” I find myself saying.

  “Atta girl,” Alexa says, grinning.

  Kendra claps her hands. “Sorry to interrupt, my lovelies, but we only have an hour, and there’s a lot to go over today.”

  Still, the buzzing doesn’t die down for another minute or so, and I can see Kendra getting impatient. It’s an interesting sight: she fidgets, knowing she has to call us to order and is clearly uncomfortable with that. The cognitive dissonance is obviously killing her. Cut from the same cloth as my mom, this one.

  “Girls,” she says at last. She’s talking to Sara and another girl, who are scrolling through their phones and talking in low whispers. “Phones on silent, please. Time to work.”

  Reluctantly, they put the phones away. Kendra gives a shake of her wrists, as if to get rid of the authoritarian persona she finds so distasteful. Her bracelets clink, melodious.

  “Welcome, class,” Kendra singsongs. “I hope you’re all ready to work, because boy do I have a fun announcement for you. We have our school play for this year.”

  Ironically, now she’s got everyone’s attention. Including mine. In fact, it’s really nice to think about something other than the house and Isabella and my little sleepwalking experience.

  Kendra gives us an enigmatic smile. “I’ve spoken to the committee. We’re going ahead with The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

  Thirteen

  A ripple of excitement courses through the class. Alexa whistles under her breath.

  “I was afraid there would be pushback,” Kendra says, and I understand with a start that she’s addressing not the whole class but me directly. “So no one was more surprised than me when it got green-lit. Congratulations, Isa. Looks like your pick won! It was unanimous. Well, almost.”

  She adds that last part softly, more like an afterthought. But I have a pretty good guess who voted against. Starts with G and ends with “reer.”

  That should put me right on her favorites list, I think grimly.

  “Now, everyone, I know this play has quite the history at this school, but I think we should look forward to the future rather than staying mired in the past. Together, we can put on a production that’ll make a new history. I know you all can do it!”

  “When are the auditions?” Ines speaks up.

  “Well, we don’t start rehearsals until after Christmas break, and, before then, I’ll have plenty of time to decide so that my choice of part can play to your strengths.”

  Looks like it’s not what Ines wanted to hear. “So there is no audition?”

  “Ines, this is your second year in my drama class—I think you know how I operate. I don’t believe in judging someone’s ability and merit based on one single, short, high-pressure performance. I prefer to think in the long term.” She casts a glance over the quiet room. “And, before any of you get ideas, know that I can see pandering from a mile away. The only thing that’ll get you anywhere is consistent effort.”

  Ines sits down, seemingly satisfied.

  Meanwhile, Kendra hands out our exercises for today. Some monologue, photocopied onto grainy paper. I snap out of my thoughts only when Kendra plunks it into my lap.

  “This is your chance to shine,” she whispers.

  But I don’t exactly shine. I’m wooden and sluggish and a total zero—especially compared to Ines, who positively sparkles. As I go sit down after my turn, I feel her evil, gleeful stare on my back.

  “She totally thinks she’s going to get Sibyl,” Alexa says on our way out of class. “Well, she’s got another think coming.”

  I gulp. “I am going to play Sibyl,” I say softly through clenched teeth. “The whole thing was my idea. She has to give it to me.”

  Alexa wiggles her eyebrows. “That’s the attitude.”

  I feel momentarily confused, then mortified. Where did that come from? I guess losing the part of Yvonne hit me harder than I thought—and it was totally out of my control too. For a moment, I wonder if I’d lost my touch.

  “You are already a star,” says Alexa when I share my doubts. “At an art school in Brooklyn, no less.”

  “Yeah,” I say, my mood plummeting the second she utters the word Brooklyn. “And they couldn’t pack me off across the country fast enough. My best friend Eve seems to have pounced on my role before my moving truck left the city. And I was supposed to go see the play before Christmas break—”

  “Wait. The play in which you were supposed to star?”

  “Yup. But, honestly, I don’t think they want me there.”

  “First,” Alexa says, “it’s kind of shitty of them to expect you to go see someone else play your role that you worked on for months only to have it taken away.”

  It’s such a relief to hear someone—especially my new friend—say out loud what I’ve been secretly thinking since I left. I instantly feel like less of a deluded, envious loser.

  “If it were me, I just wouldn’t go. That’s it. And, second, she’s clearly jealous.”

  “Eve? Jealous of me?” I chuckle feebly, it’s so preposterous.

  “Of course. She’s a small fish in a ginormous pond. And you are here, living in the coolest house in the universe, at an arts college practically rolling out the welcome mat. Stardom is at your fingertips, all you have to do is take it.”

  “Do you really mean that?”
r />   “Of course! You can out-act these amateurs in your sleep.”

  That reminds me again of the episode at the house, and my mood sinks even lower.

  “One way to make sure you’re the star,” Alexa says, “is to make sure our Insta account goes viral. If you become the star of Project Isabella, no one will dare stand in your way. You’ll get Sibyl; don’t you worry.”

  “Oh, will you stop with that?” I ask. “Besides, I think I already agreed.”

  Alexa gives a squeal so loud that several people turn around.

  * * *

  “So, you must be feeling pretty good, huh?”

  I spent the whole day both waiting for him to talk to me and dreading it. Now that I’m on my way out, here he is, the one and only Nick Swain.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  It wasn’t my intention to go on the offensive like that, but I guess I’m feeling pretty jumpy. I crane my neck, searching for my parents’ SUV by the gate, but it’s nowhere to be seen. And the time on my phone tells me I’m the one who’s ten minutes late. Dammit! Nice timing, Mom and Dad.

  Nick leans against a fencepost, arms crossed. What’s he waiting for? Nobody picks him up—didn’t Alexa say he lives alone?

  “Well, the play you wanted was picked as the final drama project. And you’re blowing up on Instagram. Every girl’s dream, right?”

  “Sure, if every girl you know is a shallow twit.”

  “I’m just teasing. The photos are beautiful. And it’s not like you’re posting vapid selfies all day. I can tell that was a lot of work.”

  “I just posed in front of some paintings,” I grumble.

  “I saw. They’re just hanging all over your house? Century-old paintings of a famous socialite?”