Chapter 23

"Tom," I'm whispering. "Oh god, Tom. Don't go."

But Tom leaves me. He holds me once more and then he becomes smoke in my arms. And I'm holding nothing. Air. But he promised that if I do what he says, we'll see each other again. He'll see me on the other side if I do it exactly. Exactly like he said.

I'll do it, Tom, I promise.

Not Tom, Seth.

Alone in my bed, I look up at the wrong stars that were just the right heaven when Tom Cruise was here. What did I just promise him? What did Tom ask me to do?

There's a garden, he said. Whispered in my ear only minutes ago. You know the one. Behind your so-called friend's house across the way.

And in my mind, I saw the bright red petals. Stacey's hand leading me quickly through the thorny beds, toward her back door. Alla smiling hard at me, a spade in her gloved hand. I nodded.

Her Russian mother doesn't like you coming over, does she? Doesn't want her daughter playing with the Egyptian girl. Not even a Christian. Never baptized.

I nodded again. I hated that Tom knew this. I was so ashamed.

It's not you that should be ashamed, Tom said, knowing my every feeling as I felt it. Can't hide anything away. They should be fucking ashamed, he said. But they do grow the most beautiful roses, don't they, Belle? he said, smiling at me under the stars.

Yes.And I pictured them through the cloudy glass of Stacey's basement window. Red flashing in my eyes while I watched her dance.

So you'll go to the ripest bed. So you'll pick the blooms off the stems, he said.

I looked at Tom in the dark. But that's stealing.

Not stealing, Tom said. Stealing back.

Now I'm standing in Stacey's garden alone. Still in my white nightgown, which lifts in the breeze. The moon is red and full and low in the black clouds. No stars I can see like the ones in my bedroom. I guess the right stars are too far away to see tonight. Or the clouds are too black and thick. I've never been outside at night alone before. The wind is soft on my face like a hand. I'd like it if I weren't stealing.

Stealing back.

Tom was right about the gate latch, very easy to lift. The house is dark. A pretty brick house in a line of pretty brick houses, the nicest on the island. I think of Alla meeting me in her garden. How I knew by her eyes that she hated me. She just doesn't know any better, Mother said when I told her. Small-minded people, Sunshine. You'll find them everywhere. Yet when Alla invited Mother for tea once, Mother said why not? They sat in the solarium off the garden, sipping tea from gold-rimmed cups patterned with roses and smoking long, thin cigarettes. They laughed and laughed; I heard them from where Stacey and I sat in the den watching Degrassi. No way could we rate each other with our mothers there, Stacey said. Listening to Mother's laughter, I felt angry. I thought she said Alla was small-minded, but apparently not to her face. Maybe because Alla was a fellow Christian. Mother, why can't I be Christian too? I asked her when we left. Because I promised your father, darling, Mother said. He had a different religion, so we made a deal. And I said, But Grand-Maman thinks you're leaving me open to dark forces. And Mother laughed. Dark forces. Do you believe that woman?

In the garden, my bare feet make no sound. The grass is spongy and soft, and the earth smells green and sweet beneath my feet. Somepeople have gardens, Mother said when we came home from Stacey's. We will too someday, Belle. In a much better place than this. She sounded drunk. Maybe Alla's tea wasn't just tea. We'll have a garden with fruit trees. And we'll have fucking flowers. Not roses, though. You know Mother's allergic.

I know.

I'm supposed to pluck thirteen petals, Tom said. From the bed of roses in the farthest corner, whose throats are the most open. So very pretty this place is where I'm not supposed to be. Where Mother sat drinking alcoholic tea with the woman who thinks I'm godless. Who looks at me with eyes of ice. I'm creeping toward the roses and my hands are closing and opening at my sides. Don't even need the light of the low red moon to lead me there. The smell would lead me, like the most alive perfume. What Mother calls heavenly, though never about roses. It opens something inside me, the scent. The same thing Tom opens whenever he looks at me. Don't wake anyone, Belle, he said. Be quieter than quiet. As quiet as a mouse, my mouse. Remember, it's a secret. Our secret. And the universe of his eyes was shining in the black. In my head now, I can feel Tom smiling at how quiet I'm being. My footsteps are nothing. I'm barely breathing. My heart's hammering inside me, but hearts don't make noise, do they? I remember Stacey has a white cat, Luba, that's always slinking around out here, hissing. God I wish Tom were with me. But Tom's gone. He's smoke. The only way back to him is through these roses. Why roses, Tom?

Oh, you'll see, Tom said.

I see a bed of them growing by the basement window, glowing under the moon just like he said they would be. Sharp and red and shining in the dark. Long snaking stems. Petals that curl open prettily like bells. And inside, a tight swirl like a secret, the secret of Beauty itself. I hear them breathing quietly in the soil. The same cold, damp soil I'm standing in with my bare feet. They look like the word no. Don't touch. Don't pluck. They look like the word forbidden. These are the words I said to Tom in the dark about these flowers. And he smiled his white smile and said, All the more reason. His eyes like the sky the roses were trying to reach, his face glowing like the sun that made them bloom.

I look back up at the dark house of brick. The windows are still black. No light but the moon's. Stacey's in there somewhere, dreaming.

Tom, which rose, which rose?I asked him.

You'll know the one when you see it, mouse.

And I do know the one. Growing in the very center of the bed, shining with thorns. The tallest, the most beautiful. The queen. Its throat of swirling petals seems the most open, an open secret. Its scent the most alive perfume. It puts Mother's violets and smoke to shame. Fills me with something so happy and sad all at once. Like how Tom's eyes are the sky and the sea all at once. Beauty is a spell, isn't that what Tom Cruise said? I'm reaching my hand out to the rose like I'm in a spell, I'm in a dream. My heart's beating so hard, surely it makes a noise now. I have to really lean forward, dance my hand through the thorns. As I reach, I feel something drop from me. Oh god, what dropped? Before I can look, a light goes on in the dark house. I feel it before I see it, a square of yellow light falling on me, freezing me in the mud. I remember the eyes of ice, imagine a white arm gripping me—What are you doing here?!—and I lose my balance. Fall into the thorny bed. My skin sings with pain, the thorns cutting me all over—oh god—but I don't cry out. Quickly I gather as many petals as I can. Stuff them into the black silk bag Tom gave me.

Luba the cat slinks out of the dark, hissing.

"Please," I whisper to her shape. "I'm just here to get some roses."

But she knows I'm lying. She knows I'm Tom's dark mouse. She looks at me with Alla's eyes of ice. She presses her paws into the soil, arching her back.

"Please," I whisper.

She lunges into the air and she's on me, scratching my arms and face, and I scream. Another yellow square in the dark house. "Who's there?" says a soft voice.

The little cat runs away, shrieking. I run too. I'm running through the garden on the damp, sinking grass. Running back to the gate I left open, still open. Bare feet running so fast through the flowers while I hear the voice calling louder, sounding afraid and excited: "Who's there? Who's there?"

I don't stop running until I'm back home, until I've climbed back through my window, back to my bedroom. Still night. The longest night of my life. I'm alone now, standing in the middle of the room with the bag of rose petals in my hand. No Tom anywhere. Mother still asleep in the bedroom. My heart. Beating so hard, it's going to break through my skin. But I'm still not breathing, still quiet as a mouse, Tom's mouse. The police are going to call, any minute, any minute. They're going to bang on the door, break it open. Point their guns at me. Deny everything, Tom said. First thing, hide the bag of flowers. Not in the closet, too noisy to open a closet now. Under the bed, then. Shove it way down into the dark under. As under as it can go. Then get back into bed like nothing. Nothing ever happened. Close your eyes like you're sleeping, that's what Tom said.

I tell myself I can still feel the shape of him there. I can still smell him like oceans, the cold breeze over oceans. But what I really smell is my crime. What I smell is the word forbidden, red and sharp and bittersweet, rising up like crushed roses under the bed. And even as I lie there all night with my eyes closed like I'm sleeping, it's not until morning that I feel it missing on my wrist. My gold bracelet. I slipped it back on after Tom left, feeling bad about Father's eye sad and alone in the sea of dolls. Stupid. Where it is now is so much worse. More alone than ever before. Gleaming in the dark soil of Alla's rose beds.

12:01 on the Snow White clock. Bright light of day floods my bedroom. Mother thinks she's letting me sleep in, but I'm not sleeping. I'm standing in front of Mother's mirror that I stole last night, staring. Because in the light of day, it's so much worse than I thought. My face, my arms and legs, my whole body's covered. So many scratches and cuts, I can't even count them. The bruise on my forehead from Tom's kiss is darker, bigger than it was before, how is that possible? I hear Mother singing to herself in the living room, some Sting song about beating hearts being still. I wish my heart could be still, but how can it ever be now? Mother will know. She'll take one look at me and she'll know everything. All I have to do is look at your face to know you're lying, Mother always says. And she'll drag me in front of a mirror to show me. My face, whatever it's telling Mother. I never had any idea what I was supposed to see there, apart from what I always saw. Until now.

A knock on my bedroom door. "Sunshine?" A happy singing still in Mother's voice. So Stacey's mother hasn't called yet.

"Yes?" Tears in my eyes right away at Mother's voice that is so sweet and gentle this morning.

"Someone slept in today." I feel her smiling on the other side of the door.

"Yes."

"We're going out for the day. But Grand-Maman's coming to stay with you. She'll be here later this afternoon, okay?"

"Okay. See you."

"Come out and say hello before we go. Bryce's here."

In the mirror, I'm still looking at my scratched-up face. My bruised and cut body still smelling of the word forbidden. Bittersweet. Tom, what do I do? And I hear his voice inside like a whisper of a whisper. You're tired today.

"I'm tired today," I tell Mother, staring at myself in the glass. I can almost feel Tom nodding on the other side.

"Belle," Mother says, and this time, there's no more singing. "You slept all morning, how could you be tired? Come out and say hello. You were very rude to Bryce yesterday. Today, I want you to be nice. Shake his hand, okay? Apologize. Oh, and wear the little white sundress I bought you from work."

That one has spaghetti straps that tie at each shoulder. A bow tie at the back. Wearing that will show all the cuts. "Do I have to?"

"Yes." And now her voice is cold. "Two minutes to get out here."

So I put on the white dress. There's a folded piece of paper in the pocket. That picture of Tom I tore from Sky so long ago. I stare at his glossy face. Smile though I feel strange. He looks different than when he's in person. But that's how pictures are sometimes, right? It's Tom, of course. I fold it up, tuck it back in my pocket. Put a sweater over the dress, though it's hot and it itches and it doesn't cover everything. Not my neck or my hands or my face. All I have to do is look at your face, Mother says, and I know everything. I can read you like a book, remember? Every page.

When I come out in the dress and sweater, I expect Mother to scream, but Mother is smiling. She looks like Vogue magazine. Like she stepped out of the movies she watches to cleanse from Ladies Apparel. She's wearing the black Saint Laurent suit today. Lips shining with her best red and her hair a soft wave. White sunglasses on her head, the lenses big as a bug's eyes. There's a gold chain on her neck with a gold Nefertiti head.

"How sweet you look," she says, not looking at me. Looking through me, it feels like. There's Bryce beside her. He doesn't look anything like Tom Cruise today, not even close. He's a completely different man. Very tall. Glasses. Beard. Small, bloody, watery eyes. Something spidery about his long legs and arms. He's wearing a look on his face like he expects something from me. My apology. That's when I know I hate him. Creep, I think.

My hands are behind my back so Mother won't see the scratches on them. Though she has to see the bruise on my forehead is worse. But she doesn't at all. She keeps glancing at herself in the mirror behind me, nervous. Checking her hair, her jacket, her best red. Checking that Nefertiti's head hangs from her neck exactly like it should.

So I reach out my hand to Bryce the Creep.

"Sorry," I say. "For yesterday."

He doesn't smile at first. He just looks down at my hand like it's a bug. And Mother doesn't tell him to stop being a baby like she would to me if I did that. She just stands there, looking at Bryce like she's nervous. She doesn't scream at the sight of my scratched-up hand either. Finally, he takes my hand, shakes it, but he doesn't hold it back. It's like I'm holding something dead.

"It's fine," he says. But he's lying. Now I know what Mother means when I'm lying and she says, Do you see your face? Because I see the lying in his. I want to ask Bryce if he sees his face. I want Mother to ask him that. But Mother is looking at herself in a gold compact now. Sometimes her best red smears beyond her mouth corners and she needs to check. On the back of the compact, there's a picture of a lady also looking at herself in a compact. She's checking her best red just like Mother is.

Any minute now she's going to snap the compact shut. Really look at me and scream. She's going to notice my forehead bruise, so much darker now. The cuts and scratches on my neck that my sweater doesn't cover. She's going say, What the fuck happened? She'll be so mad, she'll say fuck. And I'll have to deny everything, like Tom Cruise said. But she'll read my eyes and she'll know the whole story. Tom's kiss. The bracelet with Father's eye lying in the dark soil of Alla's garden. The crushed stolen roses under my bed in the black sack. Probably I stink of their alive perfume. But Mother doesn't notice, even though she's snapped her compact shut. She's looking at Bryce the Creep mostly now, his lying smile.

"Mother has her audition today," she says to me. So that's why she doesn't see. On audition days, Mother sees only herself, her dream of herself in what she calls that other world. Far from Ladies Apparel. Among the lights and palm trees. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck." And suddenly I'm angry about Mother not seeing. When usually she sees a button missing on a dress, a loose thread on a sweater. What the hell is this? Mother will say, poking at the hole where the button was, holding up the loose thread like evidence. What happened? What did you do? Do you know how hard I work to buy you these things?

But Mother's just smiling now. "All right, Sunshine, we're off. We can't stay and wait for Grand-Maman today, okay? But you'll be fine."

She's not asking me. She's telling me.

"Yes," I say. "I'll be fine." My face is full of lying, but she sees nothing. Not even when she leans in close to kiss the air by my cheek and I smell her dead perfume. Thank god, I tell myself. Which god, I don't know. Between Mother's and Father's gods, I picture a wide black space full of stars. That's the space I whisper up to. Maybe there's a god there, too. My own.

Find a pestle and mortar, Tom said to me last night. His eyes were shining in the dark. Blue-green then red then blue-green again. Your mother has one in the kitchen. She likes to think she's a cook.

What's a pestle and mortar?I asked.

And Tom smiled his white smile. It's a tool, my dear mouse. You'll use it to crush the roses.

It takes me forever to find it in the kitchen. I have to open all the cupboards and drawers. Turns out Mother hid it under the sink, behind a carrot juicer that she bought a long time ago. For a week after she bought the juicer, we drank nothing but carrots because Mother said it was good for us and also it might make us beautiful. Then it turned our skin orange and Mother was frightened. So much for that. The mortar and pestle is a black heavy bowl of stone that comes with a rock for crushing. I can't remember Mother ever using it. The sky is still bright though it's evening now. I bring it to my bedroom and put it under the bed with the roses, which are really starting to smell. I have just enough time to hide it before Grand-Maman arrives.

When she comes in the door, she looks at me and I know she sees everything. Her eyes take in every cut, every scratch. She sees the dark bruise on my forehead, and that's where her eyes stay.

"Que s'est-il passé?" she whispers.

"Nothing."

But Grand-Maman knows it's not nothing. "Is it that man? The new one? The producer?"

I hesitate. Look at Grand-Maman's face. "Yes."

And then Grand-Maman's eyes go like I've never seen them go before. Soft and hard at the same time. Like she's going to cry, but then her eyes say never. "Je le savais. I knew something."

And her hands holding mine are shaking.

"I'm going to go to my room and play records now," I tell her. You'll need to play them loud, Tom said, to cover the sound of the crushing.

Grand-Maman looks down at our held hands. My tan hands and hers white with tan spots. All the jewels on her wrists and fingers. All the shimmering gold and pretty colored stones. I picture her young, beautiful, holding out her white, spotless hand for each shiny thing the men give her.

"Go play records," she says.

Loud, Belle, remember, Tom said. I play Madonna, who Mother hates. Why don't you play that record by the Bangles instead? Mother always says. With "Walk Like an Egyptian"? Mother bought it for you, remember? And she hums the song, does the dance from the video, arms and hands bent at strange angles. At a parent-teacher meeting, Mother told Ms. Said she bought the record for me. And do you like that song, Belle? Ms. Said asked me. Yes, I lied, to protect Mother. I hate that song. Whenever Stacey sings that song to me, which she loves to do, breathing it hot and close into my ear, I go red in the face and want to not exist. But Mother loved me for saying I loved it to Ms. Said. She even bought me the Madonna record True Blue on the way home as a surprise. Rolling her eyes a little but smiling when she handed it over. Trashy with that blond hair now, Mother said on the bus home. She was watching me stare at Madonna on the cover, I could feel her eyes. Always trying to transform herself. Into what this time? Marilyn Monroe?

Now I play True Blue the loudest it can go. My very favorite song, "Live to Tell," which is like a secret at the end of side one. When I first heard it, I thought I dreamed it there. It sounds like smoke. I take the black bag of roses out from under the bed, and the mortar and pestle. But it's funny, when I open the bag, I see the petals have changed. Not soft and red anymore, they're dark and crisp like they've been burned. I'll start the process, I remember Tom said. The bag will start the process. You'll finish it, mouse.

Petal by crisp petal, I put them in the bowl and crush. Very important to go petal by petal, Tom said. It needs to be a fine powder in the end. A very fine dark red powder is what you'll have, Tom said. If you really crush. I crush all night in my white dress, never once looking in Mother's mirror in the corner. Can't seem to bring myself to, though I can feel Tom there somewhere. I can almost smell the ocean of him through the roses. Nice to feel him there. It takes a very long time to crush, longer than I would ever think for thirteen petals. Grand-Maman doesn't knock on the door. She won't now that I've told her that lie about Bryce. She'll leave me alone. Maybe she'll pray to her and Mother's god for me. But she's not praying now. Even over the sound of "Live to Tell," I can hear Grand-Maman watching Wheel of Fortune in English out there. I can hear the rickety turning of the wheel and the applause. Then Jeopardy! and Grand-Maman never knowing the answers. Never shouting them out like Mother, even when I know she knows them. Not the answers, darling, the questions, Mother always corrects. In Jeopardy!, the questions are everything.

Midnight on the Snow White clock when every petal is crushed. My ceiling stars are glowing. Grand-Maman is dead silent. She could be sleeping in the rocking chair. She could just be staring at the dark. She does that sometimes. I have no idea what she's seeing there. The perfume of the roses is so thick in the bedroom. It smells just like I'm back in Alla's garden and the yellow squares of light are coming on behind me, freezing me in the soil. The phone rang twice earlier. Once and then once again right after. Maybe Alla. Maybe Stacey. What the fuck were you doing in our garden? Grand-Maman never picked up, though. She let it ring and ring. It rang so loud, it rattled my pink phone. The spiders in the corners are awake now, spinning bigger webs, dangling down from threads, but I'm not afraid of them anymore. Funny, I'm not afraid of anything anymore. Mother's still not back. She won't be back till dawn, Tom says. He says it at the very back of my mind. That's where I still hear his voice when I need to. That's where he reminds me of everything I need to know.

The next step, Tom says, is the trickiest of all.

To go into Mother's bedroom. To her vanity with the three mirror faces. To find the jar of night cream on the table. The one she uses every night. Rubs tenderly into her face in counterclockwise circles. I sometimes watch from her bed, making wishes in my head until she tells me to leave. Why do I have to leave? I always ask her. Because this is Mother's secret, Mother says, and her face is suddenly a closed door. The night cream smells like perfume and is named after the sea in French. Because the cream has red algae in it, Mother told me once. Plus a magic sea broth.

Like a potion, I said.

Yes. Mother laughed. Exactly like that. Mother needs all the help she can get these days.

I look at the jar shining on the vanity in the blue light of the moon through the window. I'm supposed to open it, Tom said. Take the dark red powder from Tom's black bag and mix it in. Easy, Tom said. I picture Mother's throat closing. I think of the open throat of the rose whose petals I plucked.

This will hurt her, I tell Tom in my mind.

And in my mind, Tom smiles, amused. Didn't I already know that? Didn't I fucking know that when I plucked the red petals? When I crushed them one by one by one with the heavy black stone? I'll have to mix them into Mother's cream. Your mother's cream comes with a little gold spoon, remember?

Yes. Of course I remember. Mother using the gold spoon to scoop. How she dabs it on her face dot by dot like she's anointing herself, she says. I always ask if she can anoint me, too. And Mother always says my skin is young and plump and perfect just as it is, so I don't need anointing. I won't ever need it anyway because of my father. That Egyptian blood. It will always save me in the end. How she wishes she had it, Mother lies, so it could save her, too. And she cups my face between her hands like a light she wants to keep lit.

Can you believe that cream actually comes with its own little gold spoon to mix?Tom said in the bedroom last night, delighted. Shaking his head at the ceiling stars like how perfect was that?

Yeah. And I just stared sideways at his so perfect face. Glowing like a sunrise right beside me. If I touched it, would it burn me?

Too perfect, right?Tom whispered, turning to me.

Too perfect, I whispered. I smelled the cold ocean of him. And I thought, how could someone be a sky and a sea and a sun all at once? How could someone be heaven and also the endless deep? Tom, I thought, this is what you are to me. This is what you will always be. Everything all at once.

It's fate in a way, Tom said, oblivious to my staring. Or maybe not. Maybe that's why he was smiling. Do you know what fate is, Belle?

I thought of the picture of him I'd torn from Sky. Folded three times then hid like a secret. And now here he was in the flesh, here with me in the flesh.

It's what's meant to be?I whispered.

And Tom nodded in the dark. Definitely.

Like you and me, then, I said. Shy suddenly. My turn to look away up at the stars. But I could feel him still watching me. I could feel his fang shining in the dark. The fang was my favorite part of Tom.

Yes. Exactly like you and me, seedling.

But Mother will see, I told the stars. She'll notice the red powder. She'll smell the roses.

Which is why you'll have to mix it well, Tom said. So well that Mother won't be able to tell. She won't be able to see or to smell that anything is amiss. It's a good thing her cream is red, too. Red like roses. Red like blood. Red like the algae she steals from the Deep to make her look young and beautiful forever. But it won't save her in the end.

It won't? Why not?

Nothing saves us in the end, Tom said, stroking my hair. Not gods or shadow gods. Not heaven or the endless Deep. Not blood or cream red as blood. Rouge, as they say.

And he smiled his smile that lit me up.

In Mother's blue bedroom, I'm quick and light as a mouse. But not like I was in the garden. Not stiff and afraid and waiting for a yellow square of light to fall across the garden, exposing me. I'm not afraid of being caught, even though Grand-Maman's not sleeping. I can hear her breathing in the living room. I can hear her still staring in the dark. She doesn't say, What are you doing in your mother's room? She gives me all the time I need. To open the jar. To tip the red powder in from the black bag. To mix it with the little golden spoon that's too perfect. To mix it well by the light of the June moon. To not look in any of the three mirror faces. Tom won't be there anyway. Just me alone in the glass, though I don't dare look. Three of me mixing in my white dress stained red from the flowers. And my memory of Tom's voice in the back of my head like a song.

Now you'll also want to dust some red powder onto her hairbrush.

Which hairbrush, Tom?

Oh, you know the one, Belle.

And I do know the one. I'm reaching for it just as Tom tells me: The gold one she bought for you that doesn't even work on your coarse dark hair. So she had to take it back. It works such magic on hers. So let's see what sort of magic it works now, Tom says as I sprinkle the powder on the brush and my hand not at all shaking.

And then her perfume. A few roses for her dead violets and smoke. Just a sprinkle in her jagged star. Very good, Belle. Now shake it up. Perfect. Oh wait. Don't go just yet.

Not yet?I say.

No, no, Tom says in my head. There's one more thing.

What?But I know what Tom is going to say.

The drawer, Belle. Where Mother keeps her lacy hideous things she wears for her Creeps. The red ones with the little garters hanging down.I open up the drawer. The scent of Mother's skin hits me. I smell it through the roses. Powdery. Sweet. So familiar. How she held me in the night when once I woke up screaming from a bad dream. Oh Belle, she whispered. Dreams aren't real, remember? Dreams are just dreams. The powdery sweetness enveloping me then like now. Making the tears in my eyes sting.

I don't know, I tell Tom, shaking my head. Will it kill her?

Belle, what am I, a monster?

I think of Tom's burning kiss, his cold, sticking touch. His insistence that I call him Seth—why Seth when he looks just like Tom Cruise except for the red in his eyes sometimes? Suddenly I'm not so sure. But I shake my head no. You're Tom Cruise, I say.

I feel him smile that amused smile. We're just giving her a little rash is all.

Will it hurt?I ask him.

Nothing like you hurt. Not even close. It'll just give her a taste of the hurt you feel. So she'll definitely know. So she won't lie to you anymore about wishing she had your face.

Now go on, he says. A little red powder there, too, for good measure. And Mother won't even notice the red. Because her lacy hideous things are red too. Good. Very good, Belle. His voice is so clear in my head now, so near, like it's at my ear the whole time. I can almost feel his breath on my neck.

And then it's gone. And then it's done. I've sprinkled it all. I've closed the drawer. Nothing in my hands but red dust. And a pounding in my chest like a petal crushed.

I've done it. Which means…

I run back to my room, to Mother's mirror shining in the corner. I'll see you on the other side, Tom said. Now that I've done what he's asked, he'll be there, won't he? Waiting. Maybe holding roses for me. I'll step through the mirror and we'll go to California, where the water will be as blue-green as his eyes. An ocean of Tom's eyes to swim in. And I'll be beautiful.

But when I get to the mirror, all I see is me. My stained white dress. My scratches and cuts that look like black bugs in the dark. The bruise of Tom's kiss is glowing like a strange star on my forehead. Underneath, I'm the same. A seedling in the dirt. My same ugly face full of every ugly thing I have done. Telling it in my eyes of mud and in my pale worm mouth even though no words come out. Tom, where are you? You're supposed to take me away now, remember?

But Tom's voice is gone from my head. I'm alone.

I call his name. Tom, Tom.

I knock on the mirror like it's a door.

Tom Cruise, I whisper. Where are you? Where are you?

But he doesn't come.

Just me in the glass and my hands full of red dust. My pounding heart, I can see it pounding through my skin, darker against my dirty white dress. My breathing ragged like I've been running miles.

Like I'm running still.

In the morning, the sound of sirens. A red flashing light outside my window. A phone ringing and ringing and a man shouting in the next room. The scream has the word fuck in it.

"Fuck! What the FUCK happened?"

I remember it was Mother who first taught me what a siren meant. An ambulance, darling, she said. It means an emergency. That someone's very sick. Or hurt.

Will they be okay?I asked.

Maybe, maybe not, Mother said. That's why the ambulance comes.

I see there's a trail of red powder on my bedroom floor. I didn't see it last night in the dark. The red trail goes from my bed to the door. It goes past this door, I know. All the way down the hall. To Mother's bedroom, where there's screaming now. I look down at my red hands trembling.

And then? It's like a nightmare except I'm awake. Still in my white dress. Lying in my pink room, where I barely slept. Hearing shouts and loud voices now in the hall. That man who was screaming fuck is saying, "In here, in here!" I hear the word unconscious. Poison. Reaction. My heart is pounding and pounding. Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god. I follow the red trail to the hallway, where men in uniforms are running to the bedroom blue as dreams. No one sees me or hears me asking, "What's wrong? What's happening?" I run after them to the bedroom, my heart pounding so hard in my body, surely they hear it pounding. Then I see her. Lying on the floor between their crouched bodies. Lying like she fell there. I'm crying. One word over and over. I try to run to her but someone's holding me back. Bryce. Creep. Shouting words in my face I don't hear because I'm crying, "Mother, Mother." Tears in my eyes make the blue room swim, make her body on the blue floor seem to float like a swan on a lake. Please, god, don't die, Mother.

"What is she talking about?" Creep whispers.

Over Creep's shoulder, I see her face. The white skin is red and raised like it's been burned all over. The skin on her neck and chest is red and raised too, all over. I'm screaming, No, no, no, but then I see her breathing. Quick and shallow. I hear it too, rattling, like when I had pneumonia. "Please," I cry through my tears. "Please be okay, Mother." She looks over at me then, through the bodies of the emergency men all around her. Tears in her eyes that make more tears in my eyes right away. "I'm sorry," I whisper. And then the look in her eyes changes. I see she reads everything. Every page all at once. Shakes her head like she can't look at me anymore, can never look again. Close the book forever. The hurt in her face is a stab in my heart. Her eyes close.

"Mother, no!"

I try to run to her again, but Creep's still holding me fast. I watch the emergency men lift Mother from the floor onto some kind of bed. They lift up the bed and carry her like the seven dwarfs carry Snow White's body. I see Snow White in her glass coffin when they carry her away, please don't take her away. But Creep is carrying me into my room now. There, he sits me on the bed and holds me down by the shoulders. Looks at me with new eyes. "You better stay in this room for now."

"Where are they taking her?"

"She had an accident. We're going to the emergency room."

"Please let me come!" I try to get free, but he's still holding me down. He looks down at the floor and I follow his eyes. But there's no trail of red powder on the floor anymore. All is gone like nothing. Nothing at all happened. Magic, Tom said. Only my hands are red now.

"I didn't mean to," I whisper. I can hardly speak because I'm sobbing, shaking. I can hardly breathe. I hear them carrying Mother out the front door, toward the red flashing lights outside. Away from me. I feel the hurt in her heart. It makes my own heart hurt like never before. I look back up at Creep. His face has no expression at all.

"Please," I tell Creep. "Please let me go with her to the hospital."

And he just shakes his head. Leaves, slamming the door. I hear the slam of the front door soon after. I feel the slam in the back of my head, in my chest.

I run out to the front door but the siren's sounding and the ambulance is already pulling away, speeding down the island road toward the river, the bridge to the city. I'm alone now. More alone than ever before. Standing in the living room in my dirty white dress with my red hands open and empty. The phone is ringing and ringing, it will never stop ringing. I pick it up before I remember about Stacey, the garden.

"Let me speak to your mother." A woman's cold voice. Russian accent thick. "Now."

I hang up. The phone rings again.

Covering my ears, I run to Mother's bedroom. The door is wide open. The jar of night cream named after the sea is open, oozing its red onto Mother's white wicker vanity. The drawer full of her red lacy things is open too, the lacy things spilling out like red tentacles. The jagged star of dead violets and smoke has been shattered against a wall. Someone broke the gold brush that never brushed my hair in two. But the red dust is gone. No evidence of it anywhere.

The phone is still ringing. Alla wanting to tell more, wanting me arrested. I have to get away from here. Mother won't look at me ever again. Mother will never love me again. She'll never forgive me even though I am so sorry, Mother. I can't breathe. Creep is going with her to the emergency room and he'll never leave her side now. He'll be her knight in shining armor forever. Protecting her from me.

Tom.

I need Tom.

But Tom hurt Mother. Tom, you said it wouldn't kill her. You said we were just taking my Beauty back, that it would hurt only a little. Belle, what am I, a monster? Isn't that what you said?

But I don't hear Tom's voice in my head anymore. He's gone like Mother is. Somewhere on the other side. Didn't he promise he would take me with him? Definitely, Tom said.

I remember the folded picture in my pocket. I pull it out and stare into his kind, light-filled eyes. I think of Tom's eyes. Red as my trembling hands.

Do you trust me? he said.

Yes, Tom, I trust.

Seth, Tom said.

I shake my head. No. Run to the mirror in the corner of my bedroom. Once it was Mother's and now it's mine. Once it was cracked and hidden away, and now it's sealed and here with me. Heart pounding, slow steps, eyes closing and opening, wanting and not wanting to see what's there. Will he be there? Tom, will you be there on the other side, waiting? To take my hand? To take me with you to the other world? To save me from all this. Please save me from all this. I look into the dark, shining glass. But all I see is my red face, my red hands. White dress dirty and torn. The scratches on my arms still black and raised. My bruise isn't glowing anymore, just an ugly blotch on my forehead. My hair's one big dark tangle. I've never looked more ugly, more alone. I've never looked more like Father's child. Tom is nowhere. Not in the mirror, or a breath on my neck, or even a voice in my head. I don't feel him on the other side of the glass like I did before. It feels like a light there went dark. I look down at the crumpled picture in my fist. Something in me is sinking, drowning. The not-breathing feeling. I knock on the glass.

"Tom," I call, and my voice sounds broken.

Nothing.

I knock again and again. "Tom, where are you? Will Mother be okay? What did you do to her? Please. Please take me away like you promised. I can't stay here. I can't stay." And my voice sounds more and more broken. Like my heart is right there in my words, breaking like my words, and still I call for him.

Now I hear a knock at our patio door. From a pounding white fist. The fist wants to come in. It won't take no for an answer. I know the fist. I know the eyes of ice peeking through the door. Alla. I pound on the mirror so hard the glass cracks, but I don't feel the pain.

"Tom, please! Please take me away from here. Please save me. I can't stay." But even as I say this, as I knock and knock on the cracking glass, even as I scream his name, my heart is breaking. I remember his face like a sunrise in my bed. Smiling in the dark when he said, Nothing saves us. Nothing saves us in the end.

Seth, I whisper.

The mirror shatters. It makes a sound so much louder than my scream. I've fallen to the floor. Lying here just like Mother was. Not screaming anymore. All is suddenly silent. Broken glass falling all around me, so many shards, shiny and sharp. They fall and fall over me in slow motion like the prettiest snow. The snow hurts terribly. I feel it cutting me everywhere, deeper than the thorns cut. I watch my blood flow onto the floor, onto my bed of snowy glass like a small red puddle. The puddle becomes a pool. I stare at the man in the crumpled picture in my hand, his smiling face eclipsed by red.

And still it snows more.