“She’s not here,” he said when he reached me.
I struggled to keep the relief off my face. “How long is the line?”
“It’s a good-sized crowd.” He grinned.
“Oh, I could kiss you.”
Gabe flushed, one of those unlucky fools who wore his emotions on his face. He was perhaps a little in love with me, though I had made clear years ago that nothing amorous would transpire between us. I never would have gambled our partnership on something as fleeting as love.
“And The Five?” I asked.
“Waiting outside with the rest.” He riffled through his backpack. “Have you had your granola bar yet?”
I sighed. “Gabriel, how am I supposed to get in the proper frame of mind when you’re droning on about snack bars?”
“You definitely skipped it.” He dug until he pulled said bar from the depths of the bag, examined the label, then glanced up, confused. “I thought the blueberry ones were your favorite.”
I cleared my throat and clenched my gluteus, which always made me feel powerful. “Your job is not to feed me. It’s to extract every drop of endurance from my body so I can apply it toward the work. Everything—”
“Is in service to the work,” Gabe finished. Under his breath he said, “Can’t endure on an empty stomach.”
I gazed at the dark rings under my assistant’s eyes. The sweat on his face had dried, and now his skin lacked luster. He went on and on about nutrition and exercise and sleep but took none of his own advice. He had been overexerting again. I fought the urge to run my fingers through his sandy hair, to rest the back of my hand against his forehead.
“Perhaps you’ll take a few days off after tonight.”
He checked his watch. “Thirty seconds until doors open. Take your mark.”
I nodded, standing in front of the pedestal and stepladder. On top of the pedestal rested the coffin, black with ornate finishes. The coffin maker had put his best foot forward, knowing a photo of his product might make it into tomorrow’s papers.
Spectators began to trickle in, whispering their exhilaration. Goose bumps pricked my skin. My heart pounded. This was it, my next opportunity to secure my footing in the annals of history.
How long would I be able to withstand the pain this time?
I spotted The Five the moment they walked through the door. The two boys had long scruffy hair; the three girls had sheared theirs close to the skull. They all dressed in baggy silhouettes and chunky boots.
At my first show I had barely registered the five young people dressed in black, eyes wide as believers’。 I would later learn they’d been only seventeen at the time. Some of them had broken curfew to attend.
After the second show, a year later, they introduced themselves nervously, said they attended a school near my gallery. They’d seen the flyers Gabe had put up around their campus, found themselves intrigued. One of them blurted that they loved what I had to say about fear. The others bobbed their heads.
Before my third show they shyly revealed they wore all black as an homage to me. They said they had no interest in following in their parents’ footsteps, questioned whether college was the right path even as they sat through lectures and exams. They were bored with drinking every night but had nowhere else to funnel their almost manic eagerness; they buzzed with passion but were unsure what to be passionate about. I was only eight years older than them but they treated me like an oracle. They had watched and rewatched old Fearless footage, they explained. I saw the potential immediately.
After my fourth performance I began to see them weekly, spending hours talking through their questions and concerns. They were afraid of everything but badly wanted not to be. I helped them summon the courage to live fearlessly. When one of the girls came out to her parents, they shunned her. I let her move in with me until I found her a place of her own. When one of the boys dropped out of college like I had, I offered him a job so he wouldn’t feel like a failure. When a third member of their circle broke up with her high school sweetheart, I smoothed her hair while she sobbed. One by one we celebrated each of their twenty-first birthdays with a trip to the local watering hole. They couldn’t believe their first legal drinks had been paid for by the Madame Fearless.
Now, at this fifth show, they stood before me, dutifully dressed in black, as they had the past seven years. They knew better than to approach me before a performance but snuck in subtle waves hello. I winked.
By now they all worked for me. Their mission was to spread news of my mission as far and wide as they could. Even if I’d had the wherewithal to pay them, they wouldn’t have heard of it.