“Evil people? I don’t know any evil people. I only know my friends at Rouge. And you. You’re a friend too, aren’t you?”
Hud Hudson’s turn to look at me sadly with his clear gray eyes. “No, Belle. At least, I haven’t been. But I want to try and be one now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I should’ve been straight with you from the beginning. I just never thought they’d move so quickly. So fuck me for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your second treatment.”
How does he know about the second treatment? I look in the mirror at my sister on the couch. She’s seething. Oh, he’s clever, this one, isn’t he? He thinks he’s very clever indeed.
“Second treatment?” I say. “I haven’t had a second treatment.”
He looks at me like come on. Am I seriously going to lie about this?
Why am I lying about this? I ask my sisters with my mind. And in the mirror, my sister on the couch smiles like it’s really very simple. Because Beauty is our little secret. Because we never tell. Not even over our dead body. We deny everything. We deny all.
I think you should be honest, says my sister deranging the flowers. Honesty is the best policy.
Don’t listen to her, she knows nothing! shouts my sister on the couch. Denial is really the only way forward.
The water looks so pretty from here, sighs my sister by the window.
“Your face gives you away, Belle. That Glow.”
“Plenty of people glow, Detective.”
“There’s the Lift, too. The Smoothness. The Whitening,” he adds, lowering his voice.
Whitening? And we all have to laugh, me and my sisters. Call it a Brightening. “I’d call it a Brightening.”
“Is that what you’d call it?” He looks at me until I find I have to look away, in the mirrors, at my sister on the couch. She appears outraged by his terminology. Regards him coldly. Her looks could cut.
“Also that mark that was on your forehead. Barely there anymore,” he marvels. Still looking at me, entranced. Not just entranced, another shade of feeling in his expression. Darker, sharper, I used to know its name.
Envy, snaps my sister on the couch. Envy is its name!
Not envy! Desire, says my sister by the flowers. He desires you, because you’re so very entrancing, Sister.
Well, envy and desire are often one and the same trance, murmurs my sister by the water.
I look at the scar across Hud Hudson’s sharp cheek. Like someone took a hook to the skin and ripped. Seeing me notice, he turns away and pours himself another drink. “Taken all together, I’d say the evidence is pretty damning, Belle.”
Evidence? Don’t let him get to you like this, he knows nothing! What is he going to do: arrest you for a Glow? Ha! Since when was Beauty a crime? Envy, now there’s a crime for you!
I think he just likes you, says my sister by the flowers. Really likes you and this is his way of saying it.
I think you should sit by me, Belle, says my sister by the window, who won’t meet my eye in the mirrors. We should walk to the cliff’s edge. I know a game we can play. We can play it together, you and me.
“Belle, are you listening to me?”
“Of course we—I am.”
“You did it, didn’t you?”
“No.”
Very good, denial! cheers my sister on the couch.
“You followed the path to the house on the cliff. There was a party, and everyone applauded. Said how you glow and glow. Like a moon, Daughter.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, no.”
“And once you were good and drunk on the bubbly drug, a woman, maybe in silver, maybe in red, she took your hand and led you downstairs, below what they call the Depths. They made you lie down on a table, sort of like a massage table, in a dark room full of fog. And you took some deep, deep breaths. What were you breathing in, Belle? Maybe eucalyptus. Maybe ether. Maybe a special blend of both.”
Wow, says my sister by the flowers. He seems to know the whole story. He’s very smart.
He THINKS he’s smart, shouts my sister on the couch. He knows nothing!
“And then they took something from you, didn’t they? What did they take from you, Belle?”
A little of your cloudy skies, says my sister by the flowers.
Nothing you couldn’t do without, says my sister on the couch.
Please walk out to the water with me, says my sister by the window.
“Nothing, nothing,” I whisper.
“Something they said you didn’t need, maybe? Something dark and sad from your past. A humiliation. A childhood trauma. A painful labyrinth of memory you unknowingly walk in the night that shapes your dreams. Maybe even a crime. What did they call it? A Free Radical of the Mind. A Comedo of the Soul.”