saw her horrified expression. He reached his hand up to help her down. “Shane,” he said hotly in her ear.
He propped her against a wall. “Did you ever think about how weird it is that babies are born, like, whenever they want, like a Tuesday when everyone’s at work?” he said. “Or how people can die on a sunny day when kids are playing next door?” His mask had slipped a bit and she couldn’t find his eyes, but the way his jaw ground made him seem angry at her, like she, specifically, should have sorted out these indignities. She let Jenna pull her down the hallway, and watched Shane-not-Barry’s hands clutch dumbly at the air where she had been.
In the bathroom, Marlow let Jenna go first. She raised her mask and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair looked like she had slept on a balloon. The color of her skin, beneath her sweat, alarmed her; it was slightly gray, as if concealing a shadow cast from the inside. She looked like someone old, doing something she was too old to do, and she suddenly felt like she could not keep her eyes open for one more moment. She told Jenna she would be right out and climbed carefully into the slippery concrete bowl of the tub. She put her head back.
The door swung open again. Shane-not-Barry was moving from the dim hallway into the bathroom’s starched light. “You trying to ditch me?” he said. “You can’t ditch me.”
She remembered him climbing in. She remembered laughing at the fact that the tub was inconvenient, even though she didn’t feel like laughing. She remembered when he let out a sound—mmm—and put more of his weight on her. She remembered that she had mumbled something to stop him after waiting what might have been too long. Maybe not the best idea. She remembered that Shane-not-Barry had giggled and turned on the faucet over her face, let her sputter in the stream for a moment. “Live a little,” he said.
In the guest bed, now, her heart went cold as she remembered how it ended.
Her anger had saved her.
How strange, she thought, that so many livelihoods—hers, her parents’, Ellis’s, his coworkers’, network staffers’—had depended on her moving through every day complacent. All that effort and money spent on making sure she stayed sweet and even, when the real hero inside her, all along, was this other thing. The thing she was meant to tamp down.
Something in Marlow snapped when Shane turned on the faucet. It wasn’t about the water that shoved her breath back down inside her. It was about the way he yanked the faucet knob: without hesitation, like there was no chance he wouldn’t get away with it.
Marlow rose out of the stream and wrapped her hands around his neck. She could remember thinking just for a few seconds, just so he knows I’m for real—but she couldn’t remember actually counting.
Then Honey was there, on her knees, peeling Marlow’s fingers back one at a time. Shane-not-Barry flopped out of the tub like a fish, screaming you crazy bitch. He threatened things, but Honey just held up a hand and reminded him of what he had signed. Tall men came in to remove him. “And give him a pill first,” Honey told them. “David knows which ones.”
Marlow remembered muttering that she wanted to go to bed. But Honey ignored her, pushed her toward the party, wouldn’t let her fix her hair.
“Please don’t touch it,” she said. “It’s perfect.”
Then they were back in the living room, the people all turning to face them. Honey held Marlow’s limp form triumphantly—by the armpits, as if she had hunted her—and ripped off her mask. There was a gasp as the party took in this star they had streamed for years, this talent looking ill and worn and desperate. “See?” Honey shouted into the crowd. “See what comes from a life of being watched?”
* * *
There was more meat for breakfast. Actually, Marlow corrected herself, as she surveyed Honey’s kitchen table, there was only meat for breakfast. There was sausage and bacon and ham. Honey, inexplicably, was eating fried chicken. Before Marlow could speak, she sucked glistening fat from her thumb and stood up. “Good morning, sunshine,” she said. “Make a plate and bring it with. I want to show you something.”
Marlow followed Honey to a door at the back of the apartment, then up the stairs to the roof. “No way,” she said, when she