“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.
24
“All that broken glass,” says a voice. I open my eyes. Tom’s there, smiling beside me. Shaking his head. We’re back in the dark Treatment Room, in the room full of fog. Lying side by side on the floating table under the sky of water. The red jellyfish pulses beside us in the glass tank. Pulsing fast like the heart in my throat.