Except that Chess had ended up with a C while I made an A, and it wasn’t long after that Green was abandoned.
I wonder why she’s bringing it up now.
“Well, you took that advice,” I remind her. “And sold a gazillion copies and made a gazillion dollars, so maybe you should send Dr. Burke a thank-you note.”
She snorts at that. “Maybe. Anyway, if you need any help, let me know,” she says, and her voice is breezy, but there’s something in her eyes that doesn’t match that tone. “This is my deal, after all. The nonfiction thing. I’m happy to read what you’ve got, give some tips, whatever you need.”
“Thanks,” I tell her, “but it’s really nothing I’d want anyone to read yet. It might not be anything at all.”
A lie. It’s something, I know it is.
And it’s not that I don’t want anyone to read it.
It’s that I don’t want Chess to read it, specifically—and I can’t really explain why.
* * *
“SO, WHAT IS the book even about?”
It’s two days later, and Chess and I are back in our favorite room in the house, the small sitting room with its soft sofas and crystal candelabras. Tonight’s wine of choice is a red, a Sangiovese that Giulia brought for us, and it’s sliding over my tongue like velvet as I study Chess on the other sofa.
“Lilith Rising,” she clarifies. “I know, I know—you don’t even have a book yet, right?”
What I have is 21,863 words that I now know in my heart are absolutely a book, but I make myself shake my head. “No, I’m still just in the exploratory stage. But you really want to know about Lilith Rising?”
Chess is slouched on the sofa, her feet on the coffee table, the toenails a bright coral, and she lifts her glass like a toast. “If my best friend is obsessed with something, I wanna know about it. Like when you got super into those dragon books in ninth grade, and made me read the little stories you were writing about them.”
I laugh at the memory. “You never even read the dragon books.”
“And I’m probably not going to read Lilith Rising, but I still want you to tell me about it. I know it’s all demons and possession and stuff, but—”
“It’s more than that,” I tell her, and she immediately holds up a hand.
“Okay, sorry to insult your new favorite book. Please continue.”
I throw one of the tiny decorative pillows at her, and she dodges nimbly, her wine sloshing, but not spilling. She’s laughing, and she once again looks like the Chess I knew years ago. Less polished, less perfect, her hair in a messy bun, dressed in an old T-shirt and pajama pants with watermelons on them instead of one of her Guru in Italy looks.
Maybe that’s why I let down my guard a little.
“All right, so Lilith Rising is about this teenage girl, Victoria Stuart, who moves with her family to a big old manor in the English countryside called Somerton House. And everything is perfect and bucolic and summery, and the house isn’t even super creepy, and you’re, like, ‘Oh, okay, so maybe this isn’t gonna be so bad!’ But then she meets this priest, and they fall in love.”
“Hot,” Chess acknowledges, and I nod.
“Also, timely. This book came out right after The Thorn Birds, so everyone was very into that. But this priest is evil.”
“Not exactly a shocking plot twist.”
I forgot how fun it can be to talk with Chess like this, like bouncing a ball back and forth, both of us somehow always knowing the right thing to say to each other. I’ve never experienced that kind of intellectual chemistry with anyone else. Not even Matt.
“No,” I agree, “but that’s kind of the point of the book. By the end, you’re not sure who was the corrupting influence, him or Victoria. And he’s dead, so she’s the only one telling the story, and obviously she’s putting herself in the best possible light. But…”
I sit up, warming to my story, feeling excited all over again. “That’s what’s so cool about the book. Horror was pretty straightforward at the time. This person is bad, they do a bad thing, or this house is bad, it makes people do a bad thing. But Lilith Rising is just really ambiguous. Was there even a demon? Is Victoria making up a story to explain why she does all this violent shit? Or did she just want to kill her family, kill the priest who seduced her, and blame it on some outside force?”
“That is kind of fucking cool,” Chess says, propping her ankle on her knee, her foot jiggling, the light catching on a thin gold anklet she’s wearing.
“It’s very fucking cool,” I assure her. “Plus, at the end of it, she wins! Sure, they ship her off to a hospital for a while, but then in the last chapter, she’s been released and is living back in the house that she loved, and all the other assholes are dead. And so of course, male critics were, like, ‘this is bleak as shit.’”
“And female critics were, like, ‘actually, this rules’？” Chess supplies.
I nod. “Exactly. And that’s why Lilith Rising is considered a masterpiece of feminist horror.”
Chess claps, careful not to spill her wine, and I lift my glass to her. “It’s no TED Talk, I know, but I’ve hit the high notes for you.”
Chess grins at that. “And you think there are more connections between the book and the house than just ‘she wrote it here.’”
A little of my tipsy enthusiasm fades. Now we’re back on my story, and I’m probably imagining it, but there’s something so … avid in Chess’s eyes as she studies me.
“I think there could be,” is all I say.
I don’t tell her what I’ve really been thinking, which is that Mari Godwick wasn’t just writing a book inspired by this house and people she knew. She was actually trying to tell us something, something more about what happened that summer. Was Pierce Sheldon’s death really as simple as a drugged-up argument between two men that went too far? And if it was, why were the survivors so secretive about it for the rest of their lives?
“Your brain is working, I can tell,” Chess says, and no, I’m not imagining it, the hungry expression on her face. Suddenly, I think of the past few days and try to remember if I’ve seen Chess working at all.
She was out most of yesterday, and then the day before, I saw her reading at the pool. I’ve been so absorbed in my own stuff that I haven’t really been paying attention.
And then something in her voice goes sly as she says, “And you’re a dirty rotten liar, because you absolutely have a book.”
I blink at her, my stomach lurching. “What?”
She’s very drunk, I realize now, way more than me, and she’s giggling as she sits up. “Okay, don’t be mad, Emmy…”
Emmy.
It’s always “Em,” unless Chess suspects she’s fucked up. That means she knows I’ll be mad.
“But”—she places both hands on her knees, watching me—“the other day, you left your laptop open when you ran out to the store, and I was just passing by, and maybe I had a teensy little peek.”
Holding her thumb and index finger close together, she gives me what I’m sure she thinks is an endearing squint.