Author: Emily M. Danforth
Category: LGBT
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/emily-m-danforth/page,18,568862-plain_bad_heroines.html
They had believed, then, that they were charting new worlds with their bodies. Surely the arch of Alex’s back, the jut of her hip bone, the flush of her cheeks when Libbie moved atop her were each more beautiful than the sunsets or mountain passes or banal wildflowers Libbie had previously gushed over, never guessing at their mere adequacy. She could almost (though not quite) blush to remember the hours—hours!—they had spent together in the narrow, squeaking bed of an empty Wellesley dorm room (one with a leak in the ceiling that had yet to be repaired), using their hands and mouths to explore the territories of each other’s bodies. And most importantly: those bodies when they were fitted together.
Mary MacLane’s words were now like an echo of that lost time. And that echo had lasted for more than just a single night of lovemaking to be overheard and remarked upon the next morning by their pretending-to-be-scandalized friends.
In fact, Readers, it seemed to Libbie that it had lasted all the way into the fall and the start of term. She and Alex had been better. They had been more like what they once were to each other—more like the couple they’d been, like the people they’d been—before this life at Brookhants.
Until, that is, the tragedy with Flo and Clara.
And now Eleanor, too.
And so here was Libbie, at her desk atop the tower, the book before her, and what to do with it?
Sara Dahlgren and her games, everything a chance to play.
Her very personal inscription to Libbie was buried in the March 5 entry. She’d made boxes around letters and underlined words until the passage read as follows:
To library*—
I feel a strange attraction of sex
a certain strained, tense passion
And this is my predominating feeling
It brings me pain and pleasure mingled in that odd, odd fashion.
Love,
Your sara
Sara had written beneath in her own hand: P.S. Hasn’t your Alex ever learned to share?
Libbie sighed. She looked out the windows at the snow still coming down and thought she might let herself be hypnotized if she stared long enough. It seemed almost to hum. She could hear it beyond the shivering windows. Perhaps she should just give the book to Alex as it was, even leave it open to this entry when she did. Then they would finally have to talk about the things they’d rather not. Wouldn’t they?
The clock struck the half hour and startled her, its chime filling the room like a warning bell. Hanna would arrive with her tray at any moment.
Libbie picked up her pen. She did not want to talk to Alex about the things they did not talk about.
So for now, she would add more brackets and boxes to confuse the issue. That’s what she would do. She’d thought of doing it earlier but couldn’t, for whatever reason, make herself mark the page. But she would do it now. It would hide Sara’s original code in plain sight. If almost everything in the passage was marked, then who could read it and make any sense of it—who could discern the original message or its sender?
Libbie put the pen to the page. And, she would have sworn it, the buzz from outside grew louder. Her eyes wobbled. She refocused, tried again. Her markings looked so obvious to her—so tellingly new, added after the fact.
She drew boxes and circles. She underlined and crossed out.
But the more of her own markings she added, the more Sara’s original message seemed to stand out. She couldn’t explain this, but it was almost as if Sara Dahlgren’s lines were now darker.
And that buzzing from outside had come in. Libbie looked up into the umbrella ceiling and then behind her at the shelves lined with Harold’s collections. She almost expected to see the mounted taxidermy, the broken pieces of ancient pottery, the framed photographs and sky charts and maps vibrate. The buzzing moved through it all: from the floorboards up through her desk and the walls to the rafters above.
And now Sara Dahlgren’s message was practically glowing. This was so stupid, so stupid a thing, and yet Libbie was so frustrated that she was now near to tears.
And Alex would read it and Alex would know. Another wrong between them.
She could hear Hanna saying something below. She was on the landing, on her way up.
Libbie had waited too long and now her only choice was to remove the page. Its absence would spark other questions, yes, but the evidence that connected her to the book would be gone.
Libbie bent the binding back, heard it break as she did. She found a ruler in the drawer—quickly, quickly now—and set its thin edge against the inside fold of the page. She fit it there exactly and then applied pressure.
Now there was the rattle of Hanna and the tray of dishes up the twisting stairs.
Using her right hand, Libbie tore the page from the top.
Never before in her life had Libbie Brookhants so neatly removed a page from a book: no jagged edges or remnants left behind. There was a chance, slim but possible, that Alex wouldn’t even notice it was gone. Or if she did, she might think this hop from page 180 to page 183 merely a printing error. (Though given that it occurred in one of the most explicitly sapphic entries in the volume, this was doubtful, Readers.)
Libbie now slid the leaf that was pages 181 and 182, the evidence against her, beneath some other papers on her desk and closed the book just as Hanna came up the final stair and into the room, the coffeepot and saucer rattling with her efforts. “A bit late this morning, aren’t I?” she said. “But my jam will make up for it, I hope.” She placed the tray at the edge of the desk and turned the cup over so that she could pour into it.
Libbie felt like she’d been slapped hard across her face. Or maybe it was more like she’d ducked away from a slap at the last moment. She couldn’t tell.
“Hanna,” she asked, as even the scent of the coffee warmed her, “do you know the cause of the buzzing? Is Max doing something else with the radiators?”
“What is it, now?” Hanna asked, adding a ghost of cream.
“The buzzing sound,” Libbie said as if it should be obvious. It should have been, but now that she had said it, she noticed she could no longer hear the noise.
“I haven’t the least idea,” Hanna said, turning her head as if to listen.
“It seems to have stopped,” Libbie said. She took a drink of her coffee. It was bitter and rich, a combination she favored.
“Oh good,” Hanna said. “Max has fixed it, then. He is clever about those radiators.” She set a plate with toast and fruit in front of Libbie, mentioned again that the blackberry jam had turned out well, if she did say so herself, and then asked, “Is there anything else, ma’am?”
“If you could bring this to Alex,” Libbie said, handing her the book. “I think she’s in the parlor.”
“Yes, I just saw her there,” Hanna said.
So it was done.
Hanna was carrying the book away and it no longer showed Libbie’s secrets. She would have to do something with the page, of course, but it was only a single piece of paper. She might drop it in the kitchen fire or confetti it with scissors. Or she might keep it. She might. Because it was from Sara and because she wanted to.
But she had a little time to decide about that, anyway. For now, Libbie wanted only to finish this cup of coffee and then put her head upon this desk and rest her eyes.
She was so tired.
The (Unofficial) Chemistry Read
Audrey had not slept well.
Over breakfast, Caroline had blamed preaudition nerves. “Yeah, but with a part like this, I’d be—”
“I’d be nervous if you weren’t nervous,” Audrey cut her off.
“Exactly. Hey, maybe think about bringing the crystals I gave you.” Caroline put up her hand. “And you don’t need to have a big reaction to me saying that.”
Audrey was nervous. Anxious, too.
But those things didn’t account for the twitching shadows on the walls of her bedroom as she’d tried to sleep, shadows that seemed to skitter and shudder with pointed wings and po
inted bodies. Shadows with black-black mirrored eyes.
And nervousness didn’t account for the noises she’d heard, buzzing that became almost a hum, as if her bed was itself atop a yellow jacket nest, or as if the whole of her room was somehow inside of one. It was a sound that was only there when she didn’t try to listen for it. And then it was constant. And sometimes it seemed as though there were whispers laced in with that hum-buzzing: girls’ voices talking low. She’d spent most of the night—before a few anemic hours of sleep claimed her, anyway—stiff beneath her covers, an icy skein of fear coiling around her spine even as she told herself she was being truly silly and to grow up.
Now, in Noel’s truck, on their way to Bo Dhillon’s house, the gold sunlight on the windshield helped to thaw the previous night’s chill. Audrey told people she hadn’t made the time to get her driver’s license. But the truth was that the idea of operating a vehicle in California traffic plainly terrified her. Terrified. Even as a passenger, her inclination was to imagine accidents—to see them, always. She anticipated the slam of metal on metal, the way it would twist and bend and the air would fill with screams and tire screeches. And though the fact of her not driving was becoming increasingly cumbersome in her day-to-day, right now it was welcome. She was glad to have Noel at the wheel.
Some other good news, they eventually saw as they pulled up the drive, was that Bo Dhillon’s bungalow turned out to be like the SoCal version of a storybook cottage. (The woodcutter’s, Readers, not the witch’s.) It had a porch with river rock pillars and wide railings and was set back within landscaping made to look more natural than manicured.
“I don’t see any skulls yet,” Audrey said.
“Just wait,” Noel said. “You can’t leave that stuff out in the yard.”
Gray happened to arrive right as they did, both of them pulling into a pea gravel side lot where several other cars were already parked in a jumble.
Audrey breathed out a long breath. She tried to remember anything at all about Clara that might help her to Clara better. She turned to officiousness as a calming technique.
They watched Gray unsuccessfully nose his car in one direction, then another.
“You should try to have fun in there,” Noel said.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I’m serious,” he said. “You’re already their choice. So go do the thing.”
“I like it so much better when nobody expects anything from me and then I surprise them by delivering anything at all.”
“That bar’s so low you’re gonna stub your toe on it.”
Gray had given up with parking maneuvers and stopped behind someone’s gleaming Audi. He rolled down his window and waved at them to pull alongside.
“I’m getting out,” Audrey called to him.
“Isn’t Noel staying?” Gray asked.
“He wasn’t,” she said, confused.
“Well, he can,” Gray said. He leaned out his window a little so he could better speak to them both. “Up to you. They said the more the merrier.”
“Weird,” Audrey said. It was another odd thing about this already odd situation. Bo Dhillon’s elaborate methods. She looked at Noel.
“Up to you,” he echoed, shrugging.
“Stay,” she said. She didn’t know if that was the right choice, or if it would mark her in some way, make her seem amateurish. She didn’t feel like she had time to contemplate it.
They ended up blocking what was left of the drive. Once Audrey was out of the car, she looked more closely at the house. On one of those wide railings now sat Harper Harper. She was smoking a cigarette and looking at something in her lap. A book, Audrey saw, when Harper turned a page.
And then she looked up and at them and waved. They all waved back.
It was shady under the eaves where Harper Harper was sitting, and Audrey watched the circle of her cigarette end burn orange as she inhaled. Then Harper turned toward the house and shouted something through the screen door that Audrey couldn’t make out. She turned back to them, to Audrey, and called out, “There are few things that annoy me so much as to be called a young lady!” She seemed to be reading from the book.
“Seems reasonable,” Gray yelled back. He was the first in their procession to reach her.
Harper kept reading. “I am no lady—as any one could see by close inspection, and the phrase has an odious sound. I would rather be called a sweet little thing, or a fallen woman, or a sensible girl—though they would each be equally a lie.”
“Mary MacLane,” Audrey said.
Harper grinned. “She’s such a weirdo Montanan,” she said. “She’s like my personal brand ambassador. Have you read it yet?”
“Not yet,” Audrey said. “I will.”
“You have to,” Harper said. “Then we can, like, book club it together. We’ll get Merritt to explain it to us.”
“What do you have me doing?” Merritt asked from inside the house as she pushed the screen door open. Audrey first saw the bold shape of her hair, its impressive color and curl.
“You’re gonna run our Mary MacLane book club,” Harper said, gripping the pillar beside her so she could lean back and look at Merritt as she walked from the shadow of the porch roof and toward the sunlight. “You’re the president.”
“Don’t tell me,” Merritt said, putting on her huge sunglasses as she stood next to Harper at the railing. “You meet in the woods, right? And you call yourselves the Plain Bad Heroine Society? And you’re in love.”
“This is Merritt,” Harper said to them. “She wrote us.”
“Hello,” Merritt said with a wave like a windshield wiper.
Audrey echoed that hello and waved back. She could tell already—between Merritt’s hair and those sunglasses, even with just the one comment she’d made—that Merritt was the type of woman in her twenties who most intimidated Audrey. She seemed so confident in her affect: erudite, particular, and unimpressed. (Actually, Audrey had formed this opinion the previous night, watching the video interview of her. Now she was just having that opinion confirmed.)
Gray lived for introductions. He stepped toward Harper with his hand partially extended. “I’m Gray Wright, Audrey’s manager. And I couldn’t be a bigger fan of yours.” He seemed to be done and then thought better of it, looked at Merritt, and added, “Of the both of you, I mean. Of course.”
“Of course,” Merritt said without smiling.
Harper unfolded herself and jumped down into the shiny driveway pebbles. She pinched out her cigarette, hid it behind her ear, and shook Gray’s hand, all as one continuous move. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Gonna go say my hellos,” Gray said, halfway up the porch steps and seemingly unsure of how to navigate Merritt after her comment, so he just left it.
Harper was now standing before Audrey and Noel. She wore a white T-shirt with a Renaissance-oil-painting-style image of a silver tray heaped with pears, grapes, and pomegranates. Over it were the words QUEER FRUIT.
“Great shirt,” Noel said before Audrey could.
“Thank you,” Harper replied. “I just got it at Slap Happy. In Los Feliz. You know it?”
“I don’t think so,” Audrey said.
“Let’s add it to my tour,” Merritt called from behind them, inserting herself from the porch.
“Are we even doing that?” Harper asked, turning back to Merritt, who was now leaning over the railing, her head and shoulders in the sun and the rest of her in shade. “I didn’t know you ever said yes.”
Merritt shrugged. “I didn’t ever say no.”
“It’s good you’re wearing jeans, then,” Harper said inscrutably. She turned again to Noel and Audrey. “Shit, I’m sorry. Hello,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m Harper. And I am very glad you’re here. And excited.”
Harper’s hand was cool and dry. Audrey was trying to remember the last time she’d shaken hands with anyone her age. “I’m Audrey,” she said. “I’m really glad to be here.” She hat
ed how introductions make everyone sound like parrots. Or at least they made her feel her worst parrot self.
“Noel,” Noel said, kind of waving, “professional third wheel.”
“Nah, c’mon, I know about you,” Harper said. “This Malibu girl who was sweet on me for two seconds is so into your band.”
“Was sweet on you?” Merritt said, now coming down the stairs to join them. “Was this happening in an episode of Father Knows Best?”
“Yeah, were you there?” Harper grinned at her then turned back to Audrey.
There was something about the intensity of Harper’s focus, when you had it all to yourself, that was both unsettling and almost-but-not-quite pleasant. Audrey noticed this even in those first few minutes of interaction. Maybe it’s because Harper could seem somehow both earnest and sort of fake, put-on. Audrey couldn’t decide how seriously to take this whole thing she was doing, this Harper Harper shtick, or even decide if it was a thing she was doing at all.
Audrey also thought it was strange how much Harper looked like Audrey had expected her to, like the movie version of herself. All of that style (or maybe not style, but persona) that you’ve heard about: it was there.
Audrey was an industry kid through and through. You couldn’t surprise her with horrifying and revealing photos of this or that celebrity because she intimately understood all the ways in which there was the human and then there was the movie star—especially when we were talking about the film-carrying, high-voltage talents. She knew, from experience, that when you met the action hero, he was gonna be skinnier and shorter and have worse skin, maybe—still handsome, of course, absolutely—but not the guy on the screen.
I’m telling you this so that you’ll believe me when I say that Harper Harper surprised Audrey because she seemed to carry with her all of the stuff Audrey had seen onscreen and more. She couldn’t quite see the flaws, the cracks that were supposed to reveal where the movie version ended and the human began.