the carpet, I pushed the brush against the wall. If my father were home and saw what I was doing, he would have lost it. But he wasn’t. He never would be again. I froze for a second and then ran the brush higher on the wall. I dipped into the paint over and over and painted black up and down, side to side, above and between the photos. I stepped back. It was not the grid I had set out to paint. It was the castle.
The tower stood menacing, dark; the faces and bits of people peeking through the windows. A home. A monolith. A prison.
The rest of the wall needed to be filled. Purple brushstrokes—coarse and swift—became the sky. Red rain pelted down. The drops grew longer and sharper, becoming daggers. I would paint daggers because I could use none. My thoughts turned angrier. Unearthly flowers of odd shapes and colors sprouted near the floor, under furniture that I did not bother to move. Some flowers had teeth. Some had eyes. Some had fangs. They grew from the ground and crept up and around the tower. Vines. Fingers. Strangling the tower of happy faces, covering the watchful eyes.
With the wall full and my hands aching, I slumped onto the bed and regarded my work. It was wild. It was disturbing. I was the best painting I’d ever done, and no one would see it.
Ophelia: You know they locked me up?
Barnardo: Yeah.
Ophelia: Was that part of my sinister plan?
Barnardo: They knew you were a danger.
Ophelia: So it was my fault?
Francisco: You threatened them. What else would you have had them do?
Ophelia: You seem pretty big on blaming the victim.
Barnardo: I don’t see any victim here. I just see the last girl standing.
20
“How did being locked away make you feel?”
Ophelia’s eye twitches. “Trapped.” She studies her laced fingers.
“And?” Zara pushes.
Ophelia pauses and looks out at the audience. The camera cuts to their expectant faces before she adds, “I guess… Horrible. Lonely. Terrified. I didn’t know what Claudius had planned.”
“Just Claudius?”
Ophelia nods.
Zara puts her hand on Ophelia’s. “So much for a young woman to go through.” She dabs at her eye before saying, “We are sooo glad you are safe and free.”
“What the hell is going on?” Horatio shouted as he pushed past Officer Cornelius.
I leaped off the couch and ran to him. His presence snapped me out of my malaise, and I clutched him, allowing relief to wash over me. Once I felt ready to let go, I guided him to where I had been sitting for most of the week. Taking his hands in mine, I forced myself to stay composed. “Hamlet killed my father.”
He winced. “I know. I went up to see Hamlet first, and he told me.” His leg was bouncing. “Where’s Laertes?”
I felt my face twitching as I struggled to push down the emotion. “He hasn’t been told.”
“How can I know but your brother can’t? This is outrageous.”
I nodded and started to whimper.
Horatio squeezed my hands. “Ophelia, I can’t get you out of here.”
I nodded again.
“I tried to talk to Gertrude, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She told me I wasn’t supposed to know and that if I told my parents, she’d fire them and imprison me as a traitor.”
I whispered, “She said that?”
He nodded. “It really took me by surprise. Gertrude has never been anything but civil to me. She’s scared, Ophelia. And getting desperate.”
My lip trembled again. “I don’t know what they’re gonna do to me.”
“They’ll let you go. They have to.”
I felt an emptiness in the pit of my stomach. “I’m not so sure.”
“They’re not going to hurt you,” he said. Horatio’s powers of forgiveness and optimism were usually endearing, but just then he seemed a fool in my eyes.
“You don’t know that.” Again I thought of Claudius grabbing me, his face so close to mine.
“What would make you think—”
“What would make me think they’d lock me up and hide my father’s body? I’m done with making excuses for them. Done with giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. Done with predicting. Nothing makes sense anymore, Horatio, and trying to reason it out hasn’t worked so far. I have cause to be afraid, and you know it. There are a million reasons a high school girl could disappear. They could put out any story, and everyone would believe it.”
“I wouldn’t.”
I felt a chill thinking of Horatio as a whistle-blower for my murder or my kidnapping or my banishment or whatever they might