I kneel down, flip my bag over, and start again on my wooden spider web. I use longer sticks, which airs out the piece and makes it grow quicker. I can feel a crowd building around me, curious, but I don’t waste time looking up. Spinning the web, I tie and angle, tie and angle, until the disk is larger than I am. Then I get up and study it. Against the pale sand, it resembles a trap.
My gaze lands on the large plank. I decide to strap my piece to it so that I can stand it up. I don’t know if the long grass will suffice in maintaining it upright, but it’s worth a shot. Inspired by Kevin’s rope, I create a large plait with the grass, which I then wrap through the bottom rung of my web and tie around the plank. I craft five more fat braids to hold the plank base in place.
And then I pull my piece up. If it holds, it will be the most magnificent and complex work achieved today. If it collapses, it will very possibly get me eliminated.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Aster
“What the hell, Redd?”
I try to tip my head up, but it’s as heavy as a bowling ball. It lolls right back to the floor where I’ve collapsed. I’m hoisted up. I try to pry my lids open, but they’re glued shut.
“What the hell?” Chacha mutters again. “Get her some blankets. Anything in wool. Socks.”
Light burns my lids. Warm hands rub my skin. I’m being moved from one side to the other. They’re going to hurt the baby, but then I remember the baby’s gone.
My clothes come off, or is it my skin? There’s more rubbing. It feels like they’re massaging bruises. It hurts. I want to tell them to stop, but my lips can’t shape words. Besides, my mouth is too weak to expel them.
“I’m here, Aster,” I hear.
Ivy…Ivy came back.
Sluggishly, painfully, I crack open my lids; it feels like cracking thick ice. I look for my sister, but can only see blurred shapes and blobs of color. I blink, but still, nothing is sharp, which pains my eyes, so I close them.
“Stay with me, Aster.”
You stay with me. My heart moves delicately, like an eyelash flutter. Choose me this time, not the show.
“Don’t cry. You’re going to be all right.” The voice is clearer, clear enough for me to realize that it doesn’t belong to Ivy, but to Gill. “They sounded the air horn an hour ago. They thought you’d broken out. Didn’t you hear it?”
I try to shake my head, but my neck is frozen.
Chacha grumbles, “Said she would take my shift so I could rest. Shoulda known. Shoulda known. Going to tell Driscoll. Stay with her.”
I grab her arm but can’t hold on. “On’t,” I whisper, unable to sound out the D.
“What did she say?” Chacha asks.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
The light goes gray behind my clasped lids.
Something soft touches my lips, like peach fuzz. “Say it again, Aster.” Gill’s voice is so close that it sounds like it’s inside my head.
“On’t,” I whisper faintly. My throat is scratchy, like the fabric bunched around my hand.
The light turns gold again.
“She says don’t. I don’t think she wants you to tell Driscoll.”
I part my lips and swallow a long sip of hot air. It stings my throat. And then I try to talk again, but my teeth keep clattering. Still, I manage, “Acci…acci…ent.”
“Accident my ass,” Chacha says.
“P-pease,” I murmur.
“Maybe she’s right. Maybe don’t say anything.”
“Cheyenne is a mean bitch. She—”
“It’s Aster’s choice.”
“My kitchen. My rules.”
“Then talk to Cheyenne, but don’t involve the guards. Would that be okay, Aster?”
I manage a minuscule nod.
“What the—” It’s a man’s voice. “Where was she?”
“In the freezer,” Chacha says. “It was an accident.” I can tell from her intonation that she’s pissed I’ve chosen to lie.
“I’ve got two patrols canvasing the area and she’s in a fucking freezer? You got to be kidding me,” Driscoll says. I hear him yap orders—probably calling the cavalry back. “Can she walk?”
“Keep her horizontal!” Chacha says. “Don’t you know nothin’?” She grumbles something in a language I don’t understand.
“Yobwoc, get in here! Carry her to the infirmary,” the sergeant snaps.
Hands lift me. They’re not very big, but I can tell they’re not Gill’s. They’re calloused. How can I feel callouses through wool? Am I naked?
“I’ll get her feet,” Gill says.
“Keep her wrapped. Like a burrito. She needs to stay warm.”
As I’m carried down the bright hallway, I squeeze my lids tighter, trying to block out the glare. I don’t know where the infirmary is, but the trip there seems endless. Once we arrive, I’m deposited on a sheet of paper that crinkles underneath my weight.
Gill’s explaining that I was locked inside the walk-in freezer for close to five hours. Fingers probe the vein on my neck. The blanket is removed. My hands are inspected. My toes, which feel like they are being pricked by a million needles, are probed. Something goes in my ear. It beeps.
“Ninety-one point five,” the nurse reads out. “Mild hypothermia.”
My lids are pressed up. A flashlight blinds me. I blink them back shut.
“Responsive eyes. Good. What’s your name?”
“She’s conscious,” I hear Gill say.
“Did I ask you something?” the nurse snaps. She has a sturdy and authoritative voice. “What’s your name?”
“Aaas…ssser,” I murmur. My teeth are still chattering.
“Last name?”
“Rehh…”
“Inmate Swanson, can you get a bowl of broth from the kitchen?” she orders.
“Right away,” Gill says.
Drawers open and close. Paper crinkles.
“Officer Landry, help me roll this under her,” the nurse says.
I’m unwrapped, exposed again, and then squashed between something brittle and cool that turns hot in seconds. It crunches like paper, but it’s not. Foil. That’s what it must be.
“You can leave. I got it from here,” the nurse says.
Silence.
“She’ll be awhile.”
“The sergeant will want to know how long,” the young guard says.
“I don’t know,” she huffs. “First I need to stabilize her temperature, and then I need to get her to stop shivering.”
“What should I tell him? He’s going to want to know when he should pick her up.”
“When he should pick her up?” she says. “Tell the sergeant he should not pick her up, because if he puts even a single toe in my infirmary, I’ll cut off his tiny testicles and string them around my neck. Tell him that, will you?”
I wonder if my muddled mind has just made that up.
After a very long minute of silence, he says, “I-I can’t tell him th—”
“Just tell him I’m keeping her overnight,” she says. “Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Now get.”
After he’s gone, she bustles around her infirmary. Gill returns. Together, they try to tilt my head up and slide some broth down my throat. I cough and gag. After another failed attempt, they release me. My head rolls to the side, and my cheek meets the pillow. The skin on my face has thawed out enough to feel the soft firmness. It reminds me of my pillow, the one I don’t have to prop up with a book.
God, I miss my pillow. I miss my home.
***
I’m startled awake by the clicking sound of a keyboard.
“Good. You’re up.”
I jerk up on my elbows. Sweat coats my brow as my eyes dart from the white room to the middle-aged blonde shutting her laptop screen and coming toward me. I don’t know who she is. Nothing looks familiar. Paper crunches beneath me and foil crackles. Why am I wrapped like the garlic bread we serve at the pizzeria?
The woma
n gently coaxes me back into a horizontal position and takes my pulse. It’s late. I’m not sure how late, but there’s barely any light outside.
“Do you remember what happened to you?” she asks, fastening a blood pressure monitor around my bicep.
I blink. Like feathers, fragmented memories drift into my mind. Chacha. The basin of boiling water. The walk-in freezer. The cold. Slowly, I nod.
“Being disoriented is a normal symptom. It’s also a side effect of shock. But you’ll be pleased to know your vitals are back to normal and your temperature’s up. You’re good as new.”
She begins peeling the foil off my body. My skin is slick with perspiration, yet I don’t feel particularly warm. I shiver when the air hits the sweat. The nurse catches my tremor, stops what she’s doing, opens a cabinet, and extricates a folded towel. She lays it on top of me, and then proceeds to remove the rest of the foil.
“I heard talk it wasn’t an accident,” she says, peering at my face through a pair of canary-yellow bifocals.
I don’t answer. I just stare at her boy-cut hair as it swishes around her face.
“You missed a good show today.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“The Masterpiecers,” she says, balling the foil and chucking it into the bin at the foot of the exam table. “It’s my guilty pleasure, but don’t tell anyone, okay?”
The pillow is soft and takes the shape of my cheek. “I won’t,” I whisper. But I don’t want to talk about Ivy because, even though she didn’t lock me up in the freezer, she told the cops I was crazy.
“You okay, hun?”
“Yeah,” I croak, even though I’m not okay.
“Your sister’s real talented.”
Don’t talk about her, I scream inside my head.
Unfortunately, she forges on. “I wish I could’ve bought something of hers before she got on the show, but it was already too expensive then. I got a stack of bills this high.” She holds her palms apart as though there was an invisible accordion in between them. “And a mortgage and—”
I’m startled she knows the price of my sister’s quilts.
“What?” She glances at the door. When she sees no movement behind the frosted glass, she peers back down at me. “Are you okay?”
I’m about to nod, but I find myself asking instead, “How do you know how much her quilts are worth?”
“Oh. Harry told me…I mean Commander Collins. He has one.”
My brain catapults the picture on his desk to the forefront of my mind. That was what I’d realized when I was scouring Chacha’s soup pot! His daughter was posing in front of one of Ivy’s quilts. “The warden owns one of my sister’s quilts.”
It’s not a question, yet the nurse treats it as such. “Yes. And it’s gor-geous.”
She smiles because she attributes my astonishment to sibling pride or awe when in fact, it stems from confusion. Did he buy it, or did she bribe him with it?
The nurse tucks me under the towel. “You can be really proud of your sister.”
I don’t answer.
“You want to watch some reruns of today’s show on my laptop?”
“Do I have time?”
“Time? Hun, you’re not going back to your cell tonight, and it’s only seven thirty. Before they announce the winners, they’ll show a recap of the day’s highlights. I missed a bit when you came in.” Since I’m not very enthusiastic, she adds, “But if you’re too tired, I’ll just listen to it on my headphones and let you rest.”
“No. I want to see it.”
“Great. Here, let me raise the backrest up a notch.” She adjusts it so that I’m propped up. Then she sits on her wheelie chair, places her computer on her lap, and drags herself back over to my cot. She logs in to the TV network’s website and pulls up the first and most popular tab: The Masterpiecers.
Her screen goes momentarily dark and then the image of a bright shore fills the blackness. How ironic that while I was freezing, Ivy was on a warm beach. The commentators launch into vivid descriptions of the day’s test, from Lincoln’s intricate drawing, to Chase’s sand city, to Kevin’s wild grass rope, to Ivy’s magnificent stick spider web, to Herrick’s transitory seashell wall. They’re making prognostics as to who will get eliminated tonight. After seeing my sister’s piece, I’m a hundred percent sure it won’t be her. Nevertheless, I’m not enthusiastic because her talent has brought me nothing but pain.
As the recaps stop and the show goes live, I look for my sister. I find her sandwiched between Lincoln and Herrick, dressed in a flowy, Grecian gown that billows around her ankles. All the competitors are in white tonight. They’re standing a few feet away from a massive bonfire like warlocks and witches about to leap into the pyre to burn for their sins. The flames dance across their tense faces. I search my sister’s expression for emotion and spot nervousness. I wonder if she knows what happened to me today.
“I don’t see how she would,” the nurse tells me, her gaze taped to the screen.
“What?”
She swings her gaze toward me. “You asked if she knew what happened to you today.”
I said it out loud. Wow, my brain must not have thawed out completely. “Right.”
The video montage people have divided the screen into six equal parts. Five of them show the artworks, and the last show Dominic raising the microphone to his lips to announce the loser.
“This is my least favorite part of the show,” he begins by saying. “Especially now that we—Josephine, Brook, and I—have discovered how talented you all are. Please remember that disqualification doesn’t mean you lack talent or intelligence. Disqualification just means you didn’t score well on this particular test.”
He studies them, offering each a pearly smile. But then his smile fades as his gaze settles on one particular contestant. I can’t tell if he’s looking at Ivy or Herrick.
“Herrick Hawk, your piece was inspired, but not thought out enough. One puff of wind, and it buckled. Even though some art is as transient as a butterfly, at the Masterpiecers, we believe in creating something perennial.” Dominic walks toward him and puts his hand on the twenty-three-year-old’s shoulder. “We will miss you deeply. And on behalf of everyone here on the show, I wish you the best of luck with all of your future endeavors.”
As Herrick’s face decomposes, the image switches to flashbacks of his journey on the show: snippets of interviews and slow motion highlights of Herrick competing, laced with pretty music. The nurse sniffs next to me, lifting her glasses to blot the tears from her eyes. I don’t feel particularly sad for him. It’s just a stupid show. He’s not going to rot away in a cell for having rid the Earth of a bad person.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ivy
“I really didn’t think I’d be sticking around after my sand castle exploit,” Chase tells me as we are led to the banquet underneath the white big top.
I laugh because I’m in a good mood. Not only am I still on the show, but my work has been touted as the most magnificent piece of the day. I felt it would be, but a gut feeling isn’t worth as much as spoken compliments. I spy Herrick in my peripheral vision. His cheeks are blotchy red and his nose is running, and his big hair, which is usually so perfectly slick, is standing on end. He’s a mess. If I lose, I won’t make such a miserable display of myself in front of the cameras. I’ll keep it together.
“By the way, Chase, thank you for last night.”
“Last night?” Brook says, appearing beside us. “What happened last night?” Brook eyes his brother, then me, but thankfully doesn’t insinuate anything.
“Kevin was out late,” I tell him. “And since we don’t have locks on our tents—”
“You have nothing to worry about,” Chase says.
I frown. “Have you seen the size of him? Plus he hates my guts. Brook, would it be possible to get an extra camera to monitor our hallway?”
“I’ll see what I can do. Anyway, congratulations, you two.”
“It’s Ivy you sh
ould congratulate. My work was pretty pathetic,” Chase says.
“Maybe, but you’re still here,” he says.
The vein in Chase’s temple throbs. I don’t think he wanted Brook to validate his comment, I’m pretty sure he wanted him to tell him how crafty it was. Brook’s gaze is focused on me, so he’s oblivious to his brother’s soured mood.
“I’m going to grab something to drink,” Chase mutters. “You want anything, Ivy?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Nothing alcoholic,” Brook says with a grin. “At least not for the next”—he checks his expensive wristwatch—“three hours and forty seven minutes.”
Chase doesn’t return his smile. He just leaves.
“What happens in three hours and forty seven minutes?” I ask.
“He’s going to be legal.”
“Oh, right.” I glance at Chase. The white linen shirt is stretched tight across his shoulder blades and his dark copper hair gleams in the firelight. “He doesn’t seem very excited about it.”
“Oh, he will be. I’ve organized fireworks and s’mores and a champagne fountain.”
I don’t think a big celebration will thrill Chase.
“I wanted to tell you something.” Brook’s voice has dropped so much that I think he’s going to bring up the elevator conversation again.
“Kevin’s lawyer is here.”
“Really?” I squeak.
“He scored an invite without us knowing. Jeb was reviewing the raw footage earlier and recognized him. Anyway, I’ve told Dominic, who’s asked him to leave, but he says he didn’t come here as Kevin’s lawyer, but as Madame Babanina’s guest.”
“Madame who?”
“Madame Babanina. One of the show’s biggest sponsors. Cleaned her husband out in a divorce, and then donated half his money to the school to annoy him. Anyway, Kevin’s lawyer was her lawyer and—”
The Masterpiecers (Masterful #1) Page 19
