Page 12 of House of Hearts
“That’s fine as long as I’m not the punch line.” Amber snorts in response, twisting and turning so that her dress twirls alongside her. “Come on! Let’s at least have fun before the madness starts.”
She drags us out to the dance floor and giggles at my yelp.
I don’t know about the rest of them, but my only frame of reference for a school party is my homecoming ball sophomore year.
Em begged me to attend, and we spent the entire semester trying to scrounge up the money for the tickets.
It was fun because Em had a way of making everything feel festive, but it didn’t prepare me for this.
This is a far cry from a school gym with a Kool-Aid punch bowl and party streamers and the PE teacher playing chaperone in the corner.
There’s a massive gilded cage in the center of the room with a goddamn aerialist hanging from a lyra hoop.
She’s angled to tell the time like a human clock counting down to midnight.
“This has to cost more than my tuition,” I mutter, and Birdie giggles at that.
“More like all of our tuitions combined,” she adds over the elegant hum of a violin.
A server spins through the crowd, her metal hoopskirt fashioned to hold dozens of glass bottles.
She interrupts our conversation to offer drinks, and just like the man’s at the door, her face is a painted Venetian smile.
The liquid sloshing in each bottle is a curious storm blue.
They’re all corked and labeled with an identically scrawled note.
Two words in a delicate cursive script: Drink Me .
Before I can think too hard about it, I knock back one of the bottles. There’s a hint of blueberry, bubbling and sweet, but I can’t say for sure what it is. It’s…good.
Birdie and Amber clink their own cups with a shared “santé” before the attendant moves on to the next unassuming victim. With that, we’re off, the three of us swept up in the revelry of the dance.
I feel like I’m in one of Emoree’s fairy balls.
Emoree was always frolicking around in the woods, hoping for some fae prince to sweep her off her feet and whisk her away to a far-off land.
She must have felt like all her dreams finally came true here.
Was this how she met Percy? Was this how he lured her into a world of lies?
The walls spit my reflection back in every direction, the illusion making the party go on for an eternity. Amber and Birdie each take one of my hands, and we’re spinning like girls singing gruesome nursery rhymes. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
The crash of percussion is the only marker of one song ending and another beginning. It’s alarmingly easy to lose yourself to the thrall, the music demanding all of you at once. A particularly bright streak of lightning flashes overhead, with a loud clap of thunder not long after.
Amber gasps at the sound of it, her shoulders hunched like she’s the rabbit among us.
“Is the storm freaking you out?” Birdie teases, and I’d bet there’s a smirk behind her snout.
“I’m easily spooked, that’s all,” Amber huffs, throwing her shoulders back and shrugging off the sensation. “It’s nothing.”
I surprise myself by spinning her, a playful pirouette to lighten the mood. “The scariest thing in this room is my two left feet.”
Amber giggles. “You could really do some damage in those heels.”
“The night’s early. I still have time to break someone’s foot.”
Suddenly we’re all laughing and dancing and…and it’s nice. Dare I say “fun,” as guilty as that makes me feel inside. I’ve carried around my sorrow for so long that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to not have it slung across my back.
We carry on together for a song or two more before the music shifts into a coupled waltz. I’m lost to the crowd, and like with everything else in my life, I find myself completely and utterly alone in the end. My smile slips off my face the instant I realize I’m by myself.
I’m this close to finding a good corner to hide in when a stranger appears.
The tide of the crowd sends a fox drifting over to me.
His mask is handcrafted from pheasant feathers like all the others, but his suit is unique to him.
It’s the same shade as crushed berries and split lips.
He extends a gloved hand, and somehow it feels twice as dangerous as the bottle I drained.
“Care to dance?” he whispers, his voice hauntingly familiar but lost to the blur of the night.
I don’t know what compels me to take his hand, but I do. Pressing my body to his side, I can’t fight the shiver at his touch.
“You should know I’m ridiculously clumsy,” I warn.
“I think I can handle you.” His words strike a match inside me, and our sudden proximity only fans the flames. His movements are as graceful as the aerialist in the gilded cage. “Follow me. Step forward as I step back.”
I shiver with the sensation of his hand on my back, and I pray to any god listening that, whoever he is, he doesn’t feel the hitch of my breath, sticky and hot against his skin. Our chests are pressed flush together, my heart knocking on his ribs and begging to be let in.
“There, not so bad, is it?” he whispers. His eyes shine through his mask. They’re firefly bright, the same shade as mulled cider on a cold autumn night.
Our reflections molt in the mirror as we dance.
We become someone else in the glass, no longer two strangers but Em and Percy.
Their image feels suspended in time, their dance immortalized forever.
They’re figures spun by clockwork, a music box left open so long the gears have rusted over and the song has grown distorted and strange.
Did they dance like this? Is this how Emoree felt when Percy looked at her—like the whole world was ready to rip apart at the seams?
“Now for the dip.” I’m only vaguely aware as I’m lowered to the floor.
His hand rests scandalously low on my back, and suddenly I’m falling in his arms. Just like Em and Percy, we’re trapped together in this moment as his eyes chart a course down the length of my throat.
If this was Emoree’s monstrous, magical world, his lips would part and his canines would carve into my throat.
All at once, the lights cut out.
The room shrouds us in near-total darkness, and even the moon has retreated into the passing thunderclouds.
We’re left with nothing but the hazy imprints of the dancers before us and the all-consuming night.
There’s a flurry of panic in the room and the shuffle of feet and then, finally, the glimmer of candlelit sconces casting an amber glow upon Anastasia’s portrait.
She begins to weep in the dark, her portrait leaking tears like a blessed Mary Magdalene.
Blood drips from the center of the canvas and blotches her chest a crimson red.
There’s a horrified gasp, and while some of the students attempt to laugh it off, I notice the barn owl freshman stumbling his way out of the room.
What follows is a heavy hammering in the walls, pounding like my heart.
Phantom fists slam all around us, loud and turbulent like a woman trapped within the wood and begging to be let out.
Thump, thump, thump. It’s enough to drive a man mad, pulsating like another round of thunder.
The dreary words of Edgar Allan Poe cross my mind, and I remember his “Tell-Tale Heart” well: tear up the planks!
—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!
More students stumble over themselves to leave, but I keep my eyes trained on the portrait. This can’t be real; there has to be a sensor of some sort, a vial of prop blood breaking open behind the canvas and bleeding through the portrait. Hidden speakers. Something. Anything.
I recall the Venetian jester’s voice, loud and echoing through the corridor. Fake.
The masked fox lifts me back to my feet and continues our dance like nothing has gone wrong.
At least someone else knows it must all be for show, I praise inwardly, letting the young man carry me through the motions.
Our dance continues in the midst of the chaos surrounding us.
We’re lost in each other’s company until the moment I see something move above his shoulder.
The stranger’s gown is shapeless and white, the fabric fluttering with every spin like a cloud of fog.
She’s built like a ballerina, all long limbs and lithe grace, wispy auburn hair, and moonlit skin.
It’s only when she brushes past me that I see the constellation of freckles on her arm, the ones I used to connect with Sharpie back in grade school.
She isn’t wearing a mask, but it wouldn’t matter if she was. I’d know her anywhere.
Even beyond the grave.