Echo After Echo

by Amy Rose Capetta

  She takes a breath at the wrong time, arrives at the end of a line with nothing left to give. And there are hundreds of people in the audience wanting more. The lights continue to pound and words that Zara used to worship are pouring out of her like sand.

  I hate this ending, she wants to tell Eli.

  I hate it. Let’s write a new one.

  That will never happen. Zara is alone with the part that she wanted so much. She has to get to the end of the play. And then Meg will be arrested and everything will be fine.

  But fine is not beautiful, fine is not Eli.

  Echo and Ariston’s home by the sea becomes a place for the lovers to huddle together as the story tightens around them like a noose.

  With a sick flush, Zara realizes Meg was behind more than just Leopold and the roof. If she could frame him for two murders before he committed suicide, it would change Leopold’s entire story. He wouldn’t be the darling of the theater world anymore. People would see him for what he was. An art monster. Leopold didn’t kill Roscoe or Enna, but using the deaths to expose him as a monster was a twisted, brilliant piece of theater.

  A lie that tells the truth.

  The blackout comes on fast, and quick as a held breath, a beacon stamps itself onto the dark. A lantern. It’s not coming from the stage, from Ariston. It’s out there in the audience, a lighthouse blink in the ocean of darkness. Zara’s heart flares a single word.

  Eli.

  Zara runs back to the wings. Cosima is there. Waiting. A stagehand is supposed to help Zara into the binds, but tonight it’s the tiny costume designer, with a new length of rope.

  “Last-minute change,” she whispers in a voice that has the same basic properties as a dull pair of scissors. “I tie these on, you go in the water, your hands won’t fly apart. No smashing the wrist again. Good? Good.”

  Zara doesn’t have time to agree or disagree. Was that even a real lantern, or did Zara just invent one bright moment out of madness and hope?

  “You wait for the blackout, you twist, the ropes come undone,” Cosima says, demonstrating with her own wrists. She turns them halfway around, a swift unlocking motion. “This knot is special,” she says. “It will come apart, no problem.”

  Zara nods, hoping her brain has absorbed all of that.

  In the final moments of the blackout, Cosima leans forward and whispers, “Leopold killed her. My Vivi. He said she would never be good enough, pretty enough. No one would love her. But I loved her. That girl was as good as my daughter. And he killed her.”

  And then, with a shove, Zara is back onstage.

  She feels sorry for Cosima and sick for Vivi. Another girl he plucked from nowhere and pushed until she broke.

  Zara’s mind splits in two, like forked lightning. One branch is racing through the play, fully present, electrified. The other is reaching for Eli; she is the ground. She is there, past the storm, waiting. She is what Zara needs to touch.

  It’s not hard tonight to put on her bravest face while the messenger unspools the story of Echo’s final moment. It’s nothing to climb the stairs and stand at the top, balanced on her toes.

  It’s easy, sublime, to leap, because every movement brings her closer to Eli.

  In the cold water, she does what she’s supposed to do. She pretends to struggle. The ropes around her wrists seem to shrink with the touch of the water, to bind tighter. And even though she took the deepest breath her actor’s lungs would allow, when the ropes catch, she wants more.

  Air. Air. Air.

  Now Zara is not so much fake struggling as she is real struggling, and she wonders if anyone in the audience can tell.

  She wonders if Eli can tell.

  The blackout comes on time, and Zara tries not to let out the rest of her air in a blind panic. She pedals through dark water, feeling her muscles start to prick with fatigue. She turns her wrists, the way that Cosima showed her.

  Nothing happens.

  Her hands budge less than an inch, and the rope is a tight, wet heaviness, despair turned into something she can touch. The lights are out, which means Zara is allowed to surface and breathe, but with her hands bound like this, she can’t.

  The tank lowers into the stage, and now she is away from the audience, and she can’t help feeling like she is slipping into some underworld. But that’s the Greek tragedy talking. As soon as the tank locks into place, there will be a stagehand, and the stagehand will help her up the ladder, and Cosima will show her how those binds were supposed to work, and Eli will be there waiting and —

  There is no stagehand to help her out of the tank. There is only Meg, pale eyes locked on Zara as she struggles.

  Meg, who is watching her drown.

  Eli can’t sit here and watch Echo die. Again.

  She hated this part when she was up in the booth and she hates it more now. At least when she was working it kept her mind busy enough to interrupt the constant spin cycle of the girl I think is cute is dying, the girl I want to kiss is dying, the girl I love is dying.

  The woman on her left and the man on her right — both in full evening dress, the lady drizzled with beads — are sitting with their mouths open. It’s like they’re wearing their heartbeats outside their clothes.

  Eli stands up, ruffling her entire row. She passes them one at a time, bumping into knees, not even caring. “Excuse me,” Eli whispers. “Coming through.”

  She shouldn’t be drawing more attention to herself. She isn’t, technically, a ticket holder. Eli used the oldest trick in the broke-theater-girl book: dress up, wait until intermission, and then flood into the lobby with everyone else. Claim a stall in the bathroom, wait until the last second, check the theater for an open seat. The woman on Eli’s left gave her a quick, prodding glance and then left her the hell alone.

  Eli could have kissed her.

  She breaks through the double doors and heads straight past the ushers. It’s a miracle they didn’t throw her out after the lantern trick.

  When Eli left the Aurelia, she was fully prepared to be angry at Zara for days or weeks, but she just ended up angry at herself, Leopold, and the entire world, in that order.

  Why did you make her choose? Eli asked herself as she boxed up her books and her ripped jeans and her chipped bowls. She spent all Christmas day packing. Her parents called a dozen times: M’ija, come home. ¿Dónde estás? It’s Christmas. We’re all here waiting for you. But she couldn’t do it: couldn’t face them with a broken heart and a life in glass splinters. She’ll be back with them soon enough — no way she can afford Manhattan without the Aurelia money. Eli wanted to be mad at Zara for that. She wouldn’t have been fired from her dream job if she hadn’t fallen in love with the wrong girl.

  But what made her wrong in the first place? The world, Leopold, and Eli, in that order.

  Cue guilt. Cue emotional meltdown. Cue kicking at packed boxes until her toes went numb.

  Eli imagined a thousand different phone calls — but what was she going to say? I’m sorry I asked you to give up your dreams for me, when I built my whole life around mine. I’m sorry that Leopold is a controlling asshole of the highest order. I’m sorry I don’t want you to die.

  That’s why Eli is here. Zara might not want her back, but there was no way Eli could sit across town while Zara fought her way through opening night alone. The curse ends on opening night.

  It makes Eli sick sometimes, thinking she could have changed things if she’d been there the day that Roscoe died. She’s not going to let that happen twice.

  But Zara made it to the last scene of the play perfectly alive, so it’s time to go. Still, Eli hesitates in the lobby.

  Twelve hours ago, right around dawn, there had been a knock at Eli’s door, and hope had blinded her. It was the most painful thing Eli ever felt, but also beautiful — like staring straight into a cloudless sun.

  When Eli opened the door, it wasn’t Zara. It was an even less likely person. Adrian Ward.

  “Don’t kill the messenger,” he said,
looking very Hollywood in a leather jacket and dark glasses. He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, shocking it straight up. Eli couldn’t help thinking: he would make a pretty cute lesbian.

  “Look,” he said, taking an envelope out of his pocket. “I’m not supposed to give you this until later, so I’m going to give it to you now. If Greek tragedies have taught me one thing, it’s that what you don’t know always comes back to bite you in the ass.”

  Eli just stared at him.

  “I’m going to leave this right here,” Adrian said, crouching down to deposit the envelope on her apartment doormat. “Now, if you and Zara don’t need me anymore, I’m going to call my girlfriend.”

  “You have a girlfriend?” Eli asked, latching on to the least confusing of the very confusing things he’d said.

  “It’s a long story.” And with one last hair scrub, he was gone.

  Eli has the letter now, folded into a thousand squares and stuffed in her bra. One corner spikes into her skin. Leopold killed Roscoe, but Zara made it through opening night, safe. Eli should leave, but the letter is proof: Zara loved her. Loves her.

  Eli kept thinking that she wasn’t enough for Zara, but sometimes it was too much for Eli. The secret keeping, the constant fear. All she ever wanted, besides her light board, was to fall in love with someone and have it be this good, simple thing. Maybe she was being painfully innocent.

  The lobby is empty, no patrons yet. Eli waits until the ushers are turned away, and then she slips through the door that she knows, from plenty of experience, will lead her backstage. She strides right down that hallway like she belongs. It’s a good thing everybody else is in the wings.

  Eli can slip into Zara’s dressing room before the actors and crew flood out of the theater. She can be waiting for Zara when she gets back, and finally help Zara out of that wet dress. But in front of the men’s dressing room, a few steps from her final destination, Eli hears voices.

  She tucks into the doorway, ready to rush away if the door flies open.

  “Stop it,” Carl says. “We have to go out there and bow.”

  Someone else is in there. Someone is crying.

  Toby.

  Eli’s fear is a freshly struck match.

  “Pull yourself together,” Carl says. “No one can see you acting like this.”

  “I defended you. I told Zara you would never hurt Enna. . . . I believed it.”

  “Is that really what you’re worried about right now?”

  “All I had to do was tell one little lie,” Toby says, panic welling in his voice. “That’s what you said.”

  “And that’s all you had to do,” Carl says. “All Cosima had to do was make costumes and follow Meg’s orders. Some of us had to do more.” His tone is bitter, bleak. “It all went wrong.”

  Eli blinks. What went wrong?

  “Meg will think of something,” Carl says. “She always does.”

  Toby cries harder. Carl must be bringing him toward the door because footsteps are growing close and loud. Eli quick-strides into the women’s dressing room. It’s empty. The door to the little dressing room stands open.

  Zara should be back from the pool under the stage. She should be here by now.

  With her hands bound and her breath almost gone, Zara has to do the hardest thing imaginable.

  She has to stop fighting.

  It’s the struggle that’s killing her. The thrashing, the kicking. It’s twisting her up in the godawful heavy layers of Cosima’s costume. This costume wants her to die. Meg wants her to die.

  Zara lets her body go slack, melting into the weight of the water. She has to sink down — down is the right direction. She hits the bottom of the tank and uses every bit of strength in her legs to propel herself up —

  She hits the air, heaving and gasping. Meg is still watching, standing calmly at the side of the tank, hate roaring through her pale-blue eyes. “Why did you stop him from jumping?” she asks. “I was doing this for you. For all of us. You only had to stand back and let it happen.”

  Zara tilts her face up toward the stage tiles that have been put back together, creating a ceiling like a low, black night. Footsteps echo across the boards above her. Actors are coming out from the wings in ones and twos to take their bows. The company is smiling and joining hands.

  No one will miss Zara. Not for a while, at least.

  “I finished it,” Meg says. “Leopold is dead.”

  Zara gasps, and this time water comes in, mixed with the air.

  “I’m going to try this one last time,” Meg says. “I’ll help you out of the pool, and you can be Echo, if you forget what you saw. There will always be a place for you here at the Aurelia. Just. Forget.”

  Zara tries to nod, but it dips her head under, sends burning cold water sluicing into her nose.

  She fights her way back up. “Yes,” she chokes. “Okay.” If she can’t convince Meg that she believes her, she’ll be dead before she can come up with a plan.

  Meg’s voice curves with satisfaction. “Come to the edge.”

  Zara goes under and tries to work her way over to the side of the tank, her feet like useless flippers, her hands still bound.

  Cosima did this.

  Bound Zara’s hands.

  And there was that costume, in the corner of the shop. Cosima made it so someone else could dress to look like Leopold. It would have to be convincing enough that strangers on the street would be able to confirm that they saw Leopold coming out the front door of the theater that day.

  And who better for the role than Leopold’s son?

  Barrett never wanted to help Leopold — he hated his father. That’s what Kestrel told Zara. Meg must have been the one who promised Barrett a better job when Leopold was gone.

  But Barrett couldn’t have used the costume to give Enna the pills. To poison her. Enna wasn’t a stranger on the street — she would have seen right through the disguise.

  That had to be someone else.

  Zara doesn’t have the time to figure it out. She only has half of the truth, and she is going to take it with her into nothingness. It’s stunning, how certain Zara is that she’s going to die. The water tells her so. Her brain starts to sponge with black at the edges.

  Zara chooses Eli for her last thoughts. Eli, somewhere in the Aurelia. Eli, waiting to tell her it’s okay and to take both of Zara’s hands in hers. Her smile. Bright, hot, white. Her blue-green tattoos, a whole world scrawled on her arms. Her black curls, everywhere.

  Her Leatherman.

  It’s still tucked into Zara’s bra. She can feel it there, hard against the workings of her heart.

  Zara lets out her breath all at once, sinks to the bottom of the tank like a dropped stone. She has one chance to get this right. No rehearsal. No running it again if she messes up.

  Zara tugs at the neckline of her dress until she has the Leatherman in a clumsy double grip. She pries at it, freeing several of the knives at once, slicing into her own fingers, pointing the Leatherman toward her wrists. The water pinks with blood as one long blade struggles through the rope.

  Then she pushes against the bottom of the tank, and when she makes it to the surface, she ignores the screaming pulse in her cut fingers and lashes at Meg. The director’s assistant steps back — not quickly enough. The blade catches her in the arm, and sticks.

  Applause rages above them.

  Zara can feel it in the bones of the building. She can hear it over the sound of her scraped breath.

  It covers Meg’s screams.

  Zara pulls herself over the side of the tank, her arms doing things they shouldn’t be able to after so long tied together, going numb. Blood runs onto the floor — her blood, Meg’s blood. She’s afraid of how much she hurt Meg. She’s afraid that she didn’t hurt her enough.

  Zara runs, floor slippery, hands sticky. Her feet are a nervous drumbeat on the ladder, pounding until she makes it to the top. She uses the last of her strength to lift the door above her head and crawl into th
e wings. The actors are onstage, looking out at the audience. There are no crew members on this side of the wings. The assistant stage manager stands on the far side of the stage, but she’s not paying attention as Zara waves one bleeding hand. Meg will be after her soon. Zara needs help. She needs —

  Zara thinks she must be wrong, she must be hallucinating.

  She might be dead.

  Because Eli is there, in her dark-blue dress, running through the wings. She doesn’t have the shining look of a prince coming to save someone. She looks tired and desperate and painfully in love.

  Zara collapses.

  Her breath is gone. Her muscles are failing one by one. She’s bleeding. A lot.

  Eli kneels down next to her, looking so beautiful that it’s just another ache. “Tell me what happened,” she says.

  Zara speaks, pouring words as fast as she pours blood and water. She tells Eli about the roof. About Meg. “She’s down there,” Zara says, nodding at the ladder. “I stabbed her with your Leatherman.”

  There is a glint of pride on Eli’s face, underneath the shock. She puts her arms around Zara and takes most of her weight, leading her to the back of the wings. The white sheet of the cyclorama cuts off the stage from the back of the theater, creating the thin passage the actors and crew use to pass from one side of the stage to the other. They turn, taking careful sidesteps.

  The audience is on the third round of applause for the full company. Zara realizes, with a hazy feeling like waking up after a string of dreams, that some of this applause is for her.

  Eli keeps her eyes on the far side of the wings. They’re moving so slowly.

  “How did you find me?” Zara whispers, each word a ferocious burn. Too much water got in her throat.

  “I heard Toby and Carl talking,” Eli whispers. She tells Zara what she heard, and another piece of the story becomes obvious, as if it were waiting in the dark for someone to shine a light on it.

  I pray you, pardon me.

  The scribbled quote didn’t have anything to do with the Aurelia production. Those were Gertrude’s last words — the words of a woman who had been poisoned by her husband. Carl must have given her a drink, a pill, several pills, and told her that he only wanted to help her relax.