At just past nine o’clock, less than six hours before she is going to die, Irene Palmer knocks on the door and pushes it open. Juliette takes off her headphones. Her mother’s cheeks are flushed, her hair messy around her face, and she covers her forearm with the opposite hand in an odd way. “We’re off to bed. I wanted to check in on you.”
“I’m fine. Tired. Probably just going to sleep,” Juliette says. It isn’t yet ten o’clock. She isn’t the least bit tired.
“Good, good,” her mother says. She sighs. “At least there’s one of my children I don’t have to worry about.”
“I love you, Mom,” Juliette says. Her mother gives a tight smile and shuts the door. Juliette listens for the master bedroom door closing. Once Mom has checked on her, she’s good for the night. Dad never pokes his head in, and Mom knows—believes—she doesn’t need to check in again, like she does with Emma and Daphne. This is the advantage of playing along that Emma has never understood.
Just past eleven, Juliette throws back the covers and swings her legs out of bed. She goes to her closet and opens the box labeled WINTER SWEATERS. She removes the two sweaters on top and takes out her boots—Doc Martens, her prize possession—and a change of clothes. Jeans, a blue sleeveless top with a V-neck that slashes right down past her bra. She pulls on the boots, tying them tight. They’re way too big, but if she laces them up and wears thick socks, she can walk in them all right. She found them at a thrift shop. Nina has a pair just like them.
Juliette’s cheeks get a bit hot. She wonders if Nina will be there tonight. Nina with her smoky laugh and the short, messy curls she is constantly fiddling with, piling them on top of her head, sweeping them all to one side, stretching one coil out to its full length in front of her face and letting it spring back. She was a year ahead of Juliette in school. She left for college but often comes back over breaks. She’ll be gone again at the end of the summer, but Juliette tries not to think about that.
She finishes changing and listens again for the sound of movement in the house, but there’s nothing. Dad will be in his study, drinking. Mom will be in bed with her glass of wine. Juliette eases up the window and swings a leg over the sill, then wriggles the rest of her body out. She closes it softly behind her, making sure it doesn’t latch, and then it’s easy to climb over to the corner of the house and scramble down the trellis there. She keeps to the edge of the lawn, out of sight of the kitchen in case someone is grabbing another drink, until she gets to the trees.
Her path takes her under the tree house. A light glows inside, and as she walks underneath, Daphne peers out. They look at each other, Juliette on the ground, Daphne up top, and Juliette presses a finger to her lips. Daphne does the same, retreating inside again.
Daphne won’t tell. Daphne keeps everyone’s secrets.
Juliette sets out through the woods, toward where she knows Logan is waiting for her.
She’s seen Logan around plenty, but she doesn’t think they actually had a conversation until last fall. She’d just had a fight that wasn’t a fight with her parents. A rare slipup. She asked to skip a recital so that she could do a college visit trip with Stacy, and when Mom reminded her that she could look at colleges only in commuting distance, she pushed back.
“Disrespecting your mother,” her father had called it, and applied what he terms a swift correction. Just one quick strike to her stomach, so she’ll remember.
She doesn’t think she can complain, not really. It doesn’t happen often, and it rarely even leaves a mark, and she lives a comfortable life. More than comfortable. They’re rich, basically, and she has everything she could ask for, wants for nothing; it isn’t like her parents are violent drunks who lock them in the basement.
But she was still smarting and still angry when Logan pulled his car up alongside her. He called over to her. “Hey, Princess, want to have some actual fun?” She isn’t certain which one of them was more surprised when she said, “Sure.”
His car smelled of cigarette smoke and the glass cleaner he used obsessively. The seat was split, the foam padding bulging out, pockmarked like acned skin. The AC was broken, and she remembers the sweat trickling down her spine as Logan asked her where he could take her.
“Anywhere but here.”
He took her to the Saracen house.
Each night she leaves, there is a moment of pleasurable adrenaline, a moment when she thinks, You have no idea who I am. A moment when that statement is a triumph, instead of a fearful whisper.