Nobody here.
I wash my hands and walk back to Screen Two.
Quietly I take my seat and pick up my popcorn and my soda.
Jack Nicholson is out in the snow, carrying his axe, hunting his family. I can’t watch, it’s too awful.
I count heads. Two more than when I left. Latecomers. But both sitting in the middle section. Nobody knows I left during the opening credits and nobody knows I returned. There are cameras near the tills, near the popcorn stands, near the main atrium. But not near the Screen Two restrooms. Not there.
It takes the entire last part of the movie for my heart to return to its usual rhythm. There are some things you must do for yourself, for survival, and dealing with my sister was one of those things. Then there are other things you do because they are the right thing, to restore balance, to right wrongs. Tonight wasn’t so much about punishing Scott, even though he cheated on my twin. No, it’s Violet who will be most cut up by this action.
Either because she loses the man she cared for.
Or because she gets arrested for his murder.
Chapter 38
I don’t walk back to my suite at the Ritz-Carlton.
First thing I do once the movie is over is make sure people see my Scream mask and costume, the one I stored in the dumpster. I made sure they noticed me when I came in before the movie and now I make sure they notice me when I leave. I was with them the whole time, sure, I was right here, The Shining, All Work and No Play, RedRum, all two hours and twenty-six minutes of it.
I know where all the cameras are and I make sure I get picked up on each one. I don’t look up at them, nothing so obvious, but I walk slowly, with nobody immediately in front of me. When I exit out on to the street I head to Times Square, to the world-famous ticket booth.
The area is heaving with skeletons and ghosts and men in hockey masks. There’s a dog dressed up like a demon and two babies in a walker, each one with a clown mask.
Dinner is Shake Shack and it is delicious. The queue is long and the restaurant is packed. When I’m done with my cheeseburger and fries and frozen custard I discreetly deposit my rubber gloves with my food carton in the garbage bins. This place, tonight, this many people – they’ll fill a hundred black bags or more. There won’t be any DNA in the dumpster bag because I used gloves at all times to handle the costume. Gloves to remove it from its packet, and gloves to put it on. There won’t be any of my sweat on the costume because, although I didn’t wear any underarm anti-perspirant – a measure to mitigate sweat from elsewhere – I did have extra-absorbent night-time sanitary towels taped under each armpit. That minimised any sweating from my forehead or neck, and made sure it was collected in the towels. I’m not a sweaty person anyway, far from it, but you need to take extra precautions. Before conducting a covert mission it’s always prudent to scrub down. So that’s what I did. I scrubbed down, scraping my skin, cleaning my nails thoroughly, clipping them short, violently brushing my hair, scouring my eyebrows and lashes. Those measures, combined with the sanitary towels, hazmat suit, mask, hat, wig, gloves and back-up liquid Band-Aid fingertips, should ensure there isn’t any trace of my DNA in that hotel room. And if there is, well, then I have the argument that maybe KT slept with him there on a previous occasion. Can you imagine how many DNA samples are present in one Manhattan hotel room? I feel almost sick just thinking about it.
I want to walk home because I’m exhausted. The adrenaline’s burnt away, leaving me tired and chilled.
I want to lock myself in my room and run a deep bath.
Instead I find a late-night electrical store near Madame Tussaud’s. There are a few dozen people checking out tablets and phones and TVs. Text message from Martinez apologising for no Crimestoppers coverage of KT’s case. Says a kid’s missing and that took priority. I reply OK, thanks, and then I use my back to shield one of the wifi-connected display iPads, so the camera can’t pick up the screen image. My Scream mask is still in place.
I load YouTube.
I search for my first ever video to see how it’s doing.
Chapter 39
I accidentally have 3.2 thousand subscribers.
The video has been viewed almost seven hundred thousand times in fifteen hours.
It has already been quoted, reviewed, critiqued, ripped apart and lauded by seven well-known YouTubers, each with over a hundred thousand subscribers. The #BagbyTroll hashtag has gone viral. The anonymous Gmail linked to my anonymous YouTube account has over three hundred messages in the inbox.
No response yet from Shawn Bagby. How will he recover from this? Will he ever recover? That’s the thing about stars created by social media. The fans giveth, and the fans surely do taketh away. And there’s not a single thing he can do about it.