The Last Beautiful Girl

by Nina Laurin

  “Good one,” she says at last. “Now, seriously. What have you all been up to? And don’t look at me like that. It’s not a funeral.”

  “That’s what we’ve been up to,” Kendra says, frowning. “We’ve been auditioning for the role of Sibyl. And I think I’ve made my decision.”

  “What decision?” Isa’s voice is no longer melodious. “And why would you be holding auditions for my role?”

  Alexa thinks the silence might burst her eardrums.

  “It is not your role,” Kendra says levelly.

  “You said you wouldn’t have an audition! And you said you had me in mind!”

  “Sure, but that was before. Lately, you haven’t been bringing your best. You daydream in class, and, when it’s your time to read, you look like you just want to get it over with. So I decided to hold the audition to give you a chance to prove yourself one last time.”

  Alexa sees Isa’s fists clench at her sides. She can almost smell ozone in the air like a thunderstorm is coming. “This,” Isa says in a loud, clear voice that’s no longer pretty or pleasant, “is. Such. Bullshit!”

  “Please control yourself,” Kendra says. But it comes across more like she’s pleading. Everyone looks as lost as Alexa feels in the face of such a force of nature.

  “This was supposed to be my role. It should be my role! Do you seriously think, even for a moment, that I’m replaceable? That any one of you could do what I do? God. You’re such a joke.” A blush creeps across Isa’s delicate skin. Her eyes flash, frightening, their pale blue with a tinge of green in it.

  “Well, guess what. I’m the star of Project Isabella. Me! You think you can just put that on like a costume? You’re mistaken. A hundred thousand people follow my account to see me. How many will see your stupid play?”

  Alexa shoots to her feet, realizing how catastrophically late she is. “Isa, come on. Class is about to end. Let’s just go home, okay?”

  But Isa turns on her heel and runs out of the classroom. Silence falls over the room again.

  Kendra clears her throat. “I suppose that settles that. Why don’t you guys go. I’ll have the cast list up by the end of the week, okay?”

  Everyone files out, still dazed. Alexa pushes past them and out the door. She ignores Sara, who’s bleating her name, and races down the hall, but Isa isn’t there. She’s not on the staircase or down in the lobby. Alexa searches frantically for the flash of bright auburn hair and the swishing, too-long hem of Isabella’s dress, but Isa seems to have vanished.

  Just like that. She’s kicked over all her years of hard work and got booted from the one thing she cares about the most.

  Or, at least, used to.

  A light bulb goes off inside Alexa’s mind. She sprints around the school and all the way to the old chapel. The door opens to let her through, and no sooner do her eyes adjust to the weak light than she sees Isa. She’s perched on the edge of the stage, dangling her feet. There’s no way she didn’t notice Alexa come in, because the echo of her steps rumbles like thunder under the domed ceiling.

  “Hey,” Alexa says feebly.

  Isa finally looks up. She looks tired with deep shadows lurking under her eyes. As Alexa comes closer, she’s stricken by the sadness she sees on her friend’s face. Not just a normal, bummed-out-because-I-just-freaked-out-at-a-teacher sadness but a profound, existential sorrow.

  So Alexa forgets what she was going to say. Instead of what the hell was that or, even better, what the hell is wrong with you, she just asks, “Are you okay?”

  Isa covers her eyes with her hand. “I’m simply wretched, thank you for asking.”

  Alexa comes closer and climbs onto the stage. Isa gets to her feet.

  “Where were you?” Alexa asks. “Why were you so late to class?”

  Isa rolls her eyes in an exaggerated, theatrical motion. “Oh, god. Who caaaaares? It’s just more pointless monologues. Kendra thinks she’s Stanislavsky.”

  “You used to care,” Alexa replies cautiously.

  “And now I don’t.”

  “And why did you say that about Project Isabella? What does it have to do with anything?”

  Isa shrugs. “Oh, Alexa. You’re so naïve. Why bother with this archaic nonsense when you can get a million fans without all the tedious memorizing of lines and endless improv sketches no one gives a damn about? All we have to do is keep posting photos. We’ll have all that and more.”

  “Don’t call me naïve, Isa. The whole thing was my idea, remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember. And how far would you get without me, I wonder.”

  “That’s mean.”

  “It’s true.”

  “You’re different, Isa. I don’t like it.” Alexa crosses her arms. Isa is taller than her, and the long dress makes her look even longer and slimmer. She looms over Alexa and doesn’t seem the least bit sorry.

  “So why don’t you follow Kendra’s lead and kick me out of the project? Oh, right. You can’t. Because it’s my house and my likeness.”

  “I’m serious. You didn’t have to be so cruel to Ines. She’s sorry for what she did, and everyone already despises her. You didn’t have to kick her while she’s down. It’s not like you.”

  “What do you know about it? We’ve only known each other for, like, a few months.”

  Alexa is stricken. She’s not wrong.

  “You know what?” she asks. “You’re right. I can’t kick you off the project, your house, your image, blah blah blah. But what I can do is quit. You can find yourself another photographer. Someone who won’t care that you’re being a royal bitch.”

  The word seems to ricochet off the walls, bouncing between them as Isa freezes. Alexa readies herself for an avalanche of abuse. But, instead, it’s like someone invisible had cut Isa’s tendons. Her body grows limp, and she sinks to the floor with a sob.

  In a heartbeat, Alexa is by her side. Isa lets her head loll prettily against Alexa’s shoulder, and Alexa sees the two perfect tears roll out of her eyes and stop midway down her cheeks. A flower falls out of her hair and into Alexa’s lap.

  “I’m so sorry, Alexa,” Isa says in a tiny voice. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen.”

  Alexa is motionless, frozen in awkwardness.

  “It’s just, everything’s been so difficult. I thought this role would be duck soup. But it’s so hard! I just can’t nail it down no matter how hard I try.”

  Duck soup? Alexa doesn’t dare move a muscle.

  “And I know I’m taking it out on you and everyone, but it’s been such a torment. And now the boy I was enamored with has left me.”

  Oh, Alexa thinks. This is about Nick. Strange turns of phrase aside, this is a boy crisis, after all.

  “He’ll come back,” she says, although she couldn’t be less convincing if she tried.

  “No, he won’t. Am I such a beast that even a boy I like won’t stick around?”

  “You’re not a beast,” Alexa finds herself saying.

  “But I feel perfectly beastly. Oh, Alexa, only you understand. That’s why your pictures of me are so beautiful. Because they capture the me that only you see.”

  Alexa is utterly startled when Isa puts her arm around her and pulls closer. Way closer. Isa’s cheek is pressed to the hollow of her throat. “I can hear your heartbeat,” Isa says. Her voice sounds different, higher in pitch. “Your loyal, loyal heart. Please don’t leave me. Don’t back out of the project. Do you promise?”

  Alexa is too bemused to say anything except, “I promise.”

  Isa immediately gets back on her feet. Her face is now aglow with joy. It’s whiplash-inducing.

  “Dilly!” she exclaims. “Are you going to take me home now?”

  Dilly. It’s an old word to say excellent, Alexa thinks. She read it in a book.

  “Of course,” she says. �
��But, first thing tomorrow, you’re going to go apologize to Kendra. She’s nice. She’ll let you back into the play.”

  Isa pouts. “Fine,” she says in the same voice.

  For the first time, Alexa wonders what the hell she got herself into.

  Nick,

  Sorry I didn’t get back to you. TBH I thought you sounded kind of crazy. But Isa’s been acting really strange, and I never thought I’d say this but I think you might be on to something.

  What exactly do you know about that house????

  Alexa

  Twenty-Six

  When I arrive home, I notice something’s different right away. I ask Alexa to drop me off, and I walk all the way to the front doors.

  The plywood is gone. In its place beneath the stone arch are the original doors, solid wood covered in ornate gilt designs.

  They’re breathtaking. My gaze snakes along the pattern of swans, roses, and cherry blossoms; at the top of each door, I see a beautifully rendered calligraphic number six. It’s amazing how well preserved it all is. The gilt is perfect, not worn away, and the varnish looks fresh.

  I walk hesitantly up the stairs until I’m close enough to touch the handles. The second my fingertips brush against their polished metal, it’s like magic: the doors whisper open, and I step over the threshold.

  “Here you are,” says Taylor out of nowhere, making me jump. “Incredible, isn’t it?”

  I can only nod.

  “Can you believe I found them in the cellar? Just standing there. I’m one hundred percent sure nothing of the sort was there the last time I went in. Anyway. I called the college right away, and they sent the workers to have them installed. They say these are the original doors.”

  “Beautiful,” I say hoarsely.

  “Do you know what all those symbols are?” she asks. “Why the number six?”

  “No idea,” I say.

  “There’s so much history,” she goes on, but I’m tuning her out.

  “Mom, I had a really long and crappy day. Is it okay if I just go to my room?”

  “Sure,” she says, a little disappointed and not trying to hide it. But I’m already walking past her and up the stairs. Except I don’t go to my room. I go all the way to the fourth floor, to the portrait room. This is the place where I really belong, anyway—these days, my room is just the place where I sleep. Once the door is shut and I’m alone, surrounded by the paintings, I finally start to feel at peace.

  I face the biggest painting, the one where Isabella is in the burgundy velvet dress, and, before I know it, tears well in my eyes.

  Thank god for this place. I was a nobody before I moved here, wrapped up in my boring and pointless little pursuits that kept me from realizing just how generic and replaceable I was. I mean—it took them all of five minutes to give my starring role to Eve after I left. That tells you everything you need to know, doesn’t it?

  But here—I am not just anyone, not another teenager trying to make herself feel special. Here, I am Isabella.

  There’s a soft creaking sound behind me, and I spin around. But it’s just the door to the storage space that opened a crack. Must be an air current. I walk over there, my steps echoing, but, instead of closing it, I go in.

  Isabella’s trunks are where I left them, her things folded carefully. I spot the silk cameo brooch sitting on top of a jewelry box. Next to it is a bracelet that I don’t remember seeing there before. It’s got the same pattern as the cameo brooch, made to match, and the woven silk matches the cameo brooch perfectly. I pick it up, turn it around in my hands, then put it on my left wrist where it looks like it was made for me.

  A token of appreciation.

  When I look up, I see a door that wasn’t there before.

  It’s crazy—it had to have been there the whole time, and yet I’m only noticing it now. How many times have the girls been in here? But it chose to reveal itself to me. The door opens without resistance. It looked so low, but I don’t even have to duck to go through.

  Inside, a wall chandelier is alight, and I forget to question it, even though the gas lamps are not supposed to work anymore. But its soft glow illuminates a sight that takes my breath away. Mirrors, mirrors, floor to ceiling, little oval ones, big square ones, larger-than-life rectangular ones.

  And all of them reflect my face back at me, endless tunnels of Isabellas as far as the eye can see.

  My own face, resplendent in its timeless, ageless beauty.

  Twenty-Seven

  Alexa keeps telling herself that she’s not doing anything wrong—since when is she forbidden to talk to someone she goes to school with, anyway? Isa doesn’t make those rules—but, still, she can’t help but feel like she’s sneaking around. And, if Isa found out what this was about, she would be furious, this much Alexa knows.

  Still, she meets Nick behind the bleachers in the soccer field before school. It’s a half hour until classes start, so they have their privacy.

  It’s a cold day, even for the season, and Alexa gets there first so she has to spend what feels like a small eternity stomping her feet to keep warm, her hands deep in the pockets of her coat. She only has time to wonder if the bastard stood her up or never intended to show up in the first place when he appears. He hurries across the field, dressed in only jeans and a hoodie, his breath billowing in steam from under the hood he pulled over his face. Alexa has to admit she’d kind of been hoping he wouldn’t show up, so that she could dismiss the whole issue as a stupid prank and think of it no more.

  “Thanks for coming,” he says, his voice gruff.

  “And are you ever returning to school?” she parries. “People are starting to wonder if you died or something.”

  Isa sure is, she thinks.

  They must be thinking the same thing because his expression darkens. “No. This thing has its claws deep in all of you.”

  “Then why call me here at all?”

  “Because if anyone can put a stop to it, it’s you. You see it too. I know it.”

  “Isa isn’t herself,” Alexa says in a low voice. Immediately she feels like a traitor. Her face flushes with heat in spite of the icy weather. “At first I wondered if I just didn’t know her as well as I thought I did. Or maybe it’s just that—”

  “Viral fame turned her into a royal bitch overnight?”

  Alexa flinches. “I think it’s not that. I know how messed up it sounds but, well—”

  “Internet fame is one thing, but it’s definitely not normal for her to act like an Edwardian mean girl?”

  “Don’t joke about it,” Alexa hisses.

  “I wish I were joking. I’ve been doing a little digging on that house, on Isabella especially. And you know what kind of blows my mind? I didn’t even have to look too hard. It’s like all this info sits out in the open but everybody brushes it off.”

  “What do you mean exactly?”

  “That this place—the Isabella Granger house—is shady as hell. Sordid. Not only have dead vagrants been turning up in that house for years, but they weren’t the first ones to fall through the cracks. Ever notice how there isn’t a real death date for Isabella’s husband anywhere on record? Or Isabella herself?”

  “It was the old times,” Alexa says with a shrug.

  “It was a hundred years ago. Hardly the Middle Ages. Yet no one knows when they died. I thought it was odd, but I did a little search through the city archives, and I might have an idea why. Isabella wasn’t discovered until it’d been years since she died.”

  Alexa shudders. “So her body just rotted there in the house? Gross.”

  “Not just gross. Creepy AF. No one thought to check on her because she’d been a recluse in the last years of her life, and…well…when they did, the body they found was so decomposed they identified it as Isabella by her dress and jewelry. There was no trace of Samuel anywhere, but, since no one h
ad heard from him in several years at that point, it was safe to say he died sometime before she did. This is where it gets even weirder. Ever notice there’s this old foundation right by the house? There isn’t much left, it’s just a square of stones in the grass.”

  “Maybe I noticed it,” Alexa says warily.

  “I found some old photos where the building is still standing. Samuel took a lot of photos of the house. Anyway. That little shack was a makeshift photo studio where he could experiment with light, exposure, developing techniques, you name it. The guy was a real innovator in the photography field. And, if it wasn’t for Isabella, the world might have even heard of him.”

  “So what happened to the shack?”

  “I found reports of a fire on the premises. The place was considered remote at the time, and, by the time the fire team showed up, it was basically a pile of smoldering coals. Isabella refused to let anyone in the house or speak to anyone or offer an explanation. Photo equipment was flammable in those days. My guess is that Sammy went up in flames along with his film and solvents.”

  Alexa lets that process for a few seconds. “That would have been an agonizing death.”

  “No kidding. Isa told me she saw a burnt figure that left traces of soot on the walls.”

  “You think that’s—”

  “He’s trying to warn you away from the place. Away from Isabella. Although, for Isa, it might already be too late.”

  “So you’re saying she’s somehow—possessed.”

  “But it makes no sense. Why her? Why now? Others have gone into the house over the years. I think it’s because Isa was…chosen.”

  “I don’t get it.” And, to be honest, Alexa doesn’t want to get it. It all sounds so ridiculous.

  “Ghosts want things. And what does Isabella want more than anything in this world or beyond?”

  “She wants to be admired,” Alexa breathes. “Seen, and admired, and the center of attention once again.”

  “Except, now, no one poses for oil paintings anymore. She needed someone young and relevant. Someone with the times.”