The special effects were the model’s own, procured for her by a makeup artist she had worked with on several movies. She said she needed them for a private performance—an apt description of our little production, I thought.
Lana lay on the ground, in the pool of fake blood. Then I pulled Kate’s red shawl out of my back pocket and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“What’s that for?” Lana asked.
“Just a final touch. Now try not to move. Lie completely still. Let your limbs go limp.”
“I know how to play dead, Elliot. I’ve done it before.”
Hearing the others approach, I went and hid behind the column. I stuffed the shotgun into a rosemary bush.
Then I emerged, a couple of minutes later—acting as if I had just arrived; breathless and confused.
From then on, I followed my dramatic instinct. Seeing Lana lying there, in a pool of blood, with Leo, hysterical at her side, I found it easy to get caught up in the drama. It felt surprisingly real, in fact.
I see now that’s exactly where I took a wrong turn in my thinking. I didn’t anticipate how real it would feel. I got so caught up with the twists and turns of the plot, I didn’t think of how it would affect everyone emotionally—and that, therefore, people might react in highly unpredictable ways.
You might say I forgot my most fundamental rule: character is plot.
And I paid the price for it.
2
Lana hurried through the olive grove, in search of Agathi.
She needed to find her. Lana had to calm her down before she ruined everything.
It had been a mistake not to tell Agathi, to keep the plan a secret from her. But Lana felt she had no choice. Agathi would certainly have refused to take part, and she would have done her best to talk Lana out of it. Now Lana rather wished she had.
A small figure was in the distance, through the trees, at the end of the path.… It was Agathi, hurrying into the house.
Lana quickly followed. At the back door, she took off her shoes, leaving them outside. She crept in, barefoot, silently, stealthily. She looked around.
There was no sign of Agathi in the passage. Had she gone to her room? Or the kitchen?
Lana deliberated which direction to go in—when heavy footsteps heading down the corridor made up her mind for her.
Lana turned and quickly climbed the stairs.
A few seconds later, Jason appeared at the foot of the staircase. He nearly collided with Kate, who walked in through the back door.
They had no idea Lana was there, at the top of the stairs, watching them.
“They’re gone,” Jason said.
Kate stared at him. “What?”
“The guns. They’re not there.”
Outside the back door—from the wings—I nudged Leo onstage. “Go on,” I whispered. “Now’s your cue.”
Leo ran inside and told Kate and Jason he had hidden the guns.
That the guns weren’t in the chest where Leo had hidden them was a surprise to him. I had decided not to tell Leo that I had moved them; I thought it would aid his performance if he was ignorant of that.
As it was, I could see that Leo required no acting aid. The kid’s a natural, I thought. A chip off the old block. His performance was frighteningly real in its hysteria and grief. A tour de force.
“She’s dead!” Leo screamed. “Don’t you even care?”
Lana, watching from the gallery, craned her neck, trying to see Jason’s reaction.
This was what she had been waiting for. This was Lana’s real reason for agreeing to my plan. She wanted to observe Jason’s reaction to her death—to test his love. She wanted to see if Jason’s heart would break; or at least glimpse some proof that he possessed one. She wanted to see him cry; see him weep for his beloved Lana.
Well, she saw. Jason didn’t shed a single tear. As Lana watched him from the top of the stairs, she saw he was angry, and afraid, trying to not lose control. But he wasn’t heartbroken, or grief-stricken. He was entirely unmoved.
He doesn’t care, she thought. He doesn’t give a damn.
And in that moment, Lana felt herself die a second time.
Tears filled her eyes; but not her tears—no, they belonged to a little girl from long ago, who had once felt so unloved. A girl who used to crouch in this exact same position, at the top of the stairs, clutching the banister, watching her mother entertain her “men friends” down below—feeling unwanted and ignored. That is, until her mother’s friends began noticing her precocious beauty; and her troubles really began.
Lana had gone through so much since then—since those bleak, frightening days—to ensure that she became safe, respected, unassailable—and loved. But, now, watching Jason from the top of the stairs, all that Cinderella magic vanished. Lana found herself right back where she had started: a suffering little girl, alone in the dark.