Gorgeous Gruesome Faces, page 11
“Last night, when I left the room … I saw her.”
“Who?”
I breathe deep, then let her name fall from my lips for the first time since the funeral. “I think it was Mina.”
At that, Candie sits up, fully awake. She stares at me, waiting for me to elaborate. I can’t read her emotions; her face is blank, no wide eyes or slacked jaw, and it makes me feel so foolish that I end up retracting it.
“It might have been someone trying to scare me. I don’t know. We also got lost in the building and saw some weird stuff. Did you know there was a whole basement level beneath the first floor?”
“Sunny.” Candie’s lapsing into her placating tone again, the way she used to talk to me when I was spiraling. “Being in this environment is probably triggering a lot of negative emotions and memories.” Her hand lands like a brief breeze on my shoulder. “I really think you should consider going home.”
Her words are a bucket of ice water splashed into my face. I push her hand aside, heat rising in my chest. “Why are you trying so hard to get rid of me? You really want me to fail that badly?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then what are you saying? That you think I made my bed and deserve to sleep in it? That I should just vanish into obscurity forever?”
Cold fury ignites in Candie’s eyes. “Name one time where I haven’t stood up for you.”
I look away from her, avoiding the searing truth in her gaze. She’s right. Candie brought us into the fold, shared her secrets, her powers. Shielded me and protected me. Avenged me.
“Is there any way…” I stumble through the question, not sure exactly what I’m asking. “Is there any chance at all that Mina might still be…”
“Of course not,” Candie says, pushing out of her bed and brushing past me to the dresser. Her shadow shifts between us, dark at her feet. “Mina is gone.”
* * *
Eugenia is a lot less nasty during the morning group rehearsals. She’s still terse and impatient as she doles out directions, but the majority of her frustration is clearly directed at herself.
“Looks like that evaluation finally knocked her off the Clydesdale she rode in on,” Alexis says, winking at me.
“She’s probably freaking out about getting eliminated,” Hannah adds, a smidge of schadenfreude in her tiny smile.
I don’t breathe a word to Alexis and Hannah about last night. I promised I wouldn’t rat out Eugenia, and promises matter to me, even if it means giving the competition a leg up. For now. My gaze flickers across the practice room to where Eugenia is fiddling with the speaker system. She pointedly evades eye contact. I guess we’re just going to pretend we weren’t chased down the halls screaming last night. That’s fine. Avoidance I can do. I am the queen of avoidance.
“Let’s go from the first chorus again!” Eugenia spins around, shouting at us like a carnival barker.
I don’t know how she’s so amped right now. After two consecutive nights of no sleep, all I want to do is lie down in the very spot I’m standing and nap. But hers is the exact kind of all-consuming, whatever-it-takes dedication the industry expects. If you’re not willing to wring your soul dry, there are a thousand, a million girls right behind you ready to step up and shove you off the stage. Eugenia is giving it her all, everyone is, and despite securing an early win, my old nemeses—insecurity, anxiety, and guilt—rear their ugly Hydra heads.
Do I really still have what it takes? Or was yesterday just a fluke? After retreating from the public eye in disgrace and hiding from the world for two years, can I really just strap my gloves back on and climb in the ring with these girls, all of them bursting with talent and hunger, fighting as hard as they can for a shot at their dreams? The dream that I was handed—and ended up squandering and destroying with my bare hands?
“Five, six, seven, eight!” Eugenia counts.
The music booms, and my overwrought brain switches off, my body going into autopilot mode. The exhaustion and pain vanish. No soreness, no cramping. The song powers me, that thrumming bass line looping around my joints like muscle memory, carrying me through each transition with ease. I remember all the steps. I don’t make any mistakes. The doubts fade, and suddenly I feel so wonderfully strong, ready to impress the judges and earn my spot in the finals. I shut my eyes; I can already feel the heat of the spotlight, the expansion of my chest as the crowd screams my name.
After the session, I head to the lockers to pick up my things before lunch. When I open the cabinet door and reach in, my fingers brush against several loose sheets of paper scattered on top of my bag. I pull them out.
Mina’s face is splashed across dozens of printed pages. They’re all printouts of news articles. Articles about Mina.
Teen star Mina Park’s death ruled a suicide.
The truth behind Mina Park’s tragic death.
Sweet Cadence cast mourns the passing of beloved costar.
My hands cramp up. The papers sift through my fingers and scatter to the floor. Cold panic threatens to overtake my system, before a flash flood of rage washes away the fear.
Someone is trying to scare me.
I slam the locker door shut and bend to scoop up all the dropped papers, gripping them in a tight fist. I turn and storm past the practice rooms, down the corridor, calling out when I spot the person I’m looking for.
“Eugenia!”
Eugenia turns at the sound of her name, only to clam up when she sees me.
I march right up to her. “We need to talk.”
Her eyes shift around the busy atrium. “Why?”
A few curious heads turn to us. My hand lashes out and I grab Eugenia’s wrist, dragging her down a side hall by the cafeteria where there’s no foot traffic.
“What the hell do you want?” Eugenia snaps once we’re alone, yanking her hand away from me.
I shove the papers at her.
“What’s this?” She glares at me but takes the crumpled sheets.
“You tell me.”
Eugenia sifts through them with irritation and disinterest at first, before realization gradually settles on her face. Her throat bobs as she swallows.
“Someone put these in my locker,” I say.
Eugenia’s expression grows more disturbed as her eyes move across the bold headlines. Then she abruptly thrusts all the printouts back at me, like she can’t get them out of her hands fast enough. “Well, it wasn’t me!”
“And you have no idea who it might be?”
“Why would I?” she snaps.
“Because you were the one who trashed me and brought up my past on day one? And we were together last night when the ghost from Ju-On tried to run us down? In legal terms, I think that’s what they call suspicious as fuck.”
Eugenia steps toward me, shooting me a haughty look that I assume she practices often in front of a mirror. “When I come for you, you’ll know it’s me. I have nothing to do with this.”
I’m about to shoot back a retort when I suddenly realize where we’re standing. This is the hallway that leads down to the practice rooms. The hallway we were chased down last night by the “ghost.” Except, all I see at the end of the hallway is a solid expanse of white wall. There is no red exit sign, no emergency exit door.
I turn, pointing a finger down the hall. “… Wasn’t there a door there last night? The one with the stairs that went down to the basement with all those rooms?”
Eugenia’s sharp gaze follows the path of my finger. She squints. A brief confusion clouds her eyes, before she blinks it away. “I don’t know. It was dark. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Yeah, you were busy screaming directly in my ear.”
“When I find out who the fuck that was last night, they’ll be the ones screaming.” She sneers. “I’m a tae kwon do black belt.”
“You’ll definitely get sent home if you start roundhouse kicking people into submission.”
Eugenia’s glare reaches new levels of incineration, but it produces the opposite intended effect in me. The rigid tension in my shoulders relaxes. She’s probably telling the truth.
“If you want to find the culprit, wanna join forces? As fellow victims,” I offer in a just-kidding-but-not-really sort of way.
Eugenia gives me a look like I just suggested we do the Tour de France together on a tandem bike, before she turns away and starts back down the hall.
“Eugenia, wait—” I reach out a hand to—what? Warn her? Calm her? Make sure she’s real, too, not just an apparition, or a manifestation of my guilt?
Eugenia shoots a harsh look over her shoulder, and I retract my hand. “… Be careful,” I say.
That afternoon after sessions end, I walk down every hallway on the first floor, open every emergency door I come across. All the doors open to the outside, or to a stairwell with steps going up to the second floor.
There’s no door with a stairway that leads down to the basement.
* * *
“Who would do something like that?” Faye gasps when I tell her about my locker surprise on our way to dinner.
“I thought it might have been Eugenia so I confronted her. But it’s not.”
“Are you sure? She could be lying…” Faye drops her voice to a fearful whisper, as though she’s expecting that the mere insinuation will cause Eugenia to burst out from behind a pillar.
“I don’t think so. She was just as freaked out by it as I was.”
I feel worse about keeping last night a secret from Faye than I did hiding it from Alexis and Hannah. Even though Eugenia seems convinced that it was a prank, something about that encounter feels completely different from the printouts in my locker. My palms grow clammy just thinking about that shadowy broken figure in the hall, and that strange wooden door in the basement.
But … can I really rely on my mind when it’s been trapped inside a horror fun house on a loop for two years, my memories waging constant psychological warfare on me?
No. I didn’t imagine it. Eugenia was there. She saw the same things I did.
My anxiety must be showing because Faye’s hand lands against my shoulder, her knuckles brushing lightly against my jaw.
“Sunny? Are you okay?”
I turn to her and force a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine. I’m used to this. If someone’s targeting me this hard, it just means they feel threatened.”
“Exactly!” Faye says, pumping her fists in the air, miming the cheerleading moves I was known for on Sweet Cadence. “Don’t back down!”
Watching those old moves reenacted didn’t trigger the cringe of shame I thought I’d feel. Whether she realizes it or not, Faye’s been steadily repairing the gouges and tears in my self-esteem.
Commotion echoes from farther up the hall in the atrium. At first, it sounds like the usual hustle of girls traveling up and down the corridors, but the muffled voices become louder, followed by thundering footsteps. Faye and I shoot a quick look at each other before we break out into a sprint until we hit the congestion of bodies crowded around the base of the stairs. I strain to see over the tops of everyone’s bobbing heads.
A girl is splayed on the bottom step of the staircase. She’s crying, leaning over to hold her leg. I only catch a fleeting glimpse, but it’s enough to see—her leg is turned below the knee at an unnatural angle, twisted to the side.
The crooked, bent limbs of the apparition from last night flash across my mind, and my hand flies up to cover my mouth.
“What did you see?” Faye strains on tiptoe, trying to look. “What’s going on?”
“Jessica fell on the stairs; I think she really hurt herself!” a girl to our left answers.
“What happened? Did anyone see?” More voices join the chorus.
“Back up; give us some space! Everyone, please clear the hallway!” Yuna and two other trainers show up and start pushing their way upstream to Jessica.
I draw in a gasp as the crowds part. Candie is there, at the center of it all, crouched next to Jessica on the stairs. Goose bumps burst along the length of my arm and race up the back of my neck. When Yuna approaches, Candie aids the instructors as they heft Jessica up from the floor and maneuver her down the hall.
“Did you see it? Is she okay? Sunny?” Faye is speaking to me, but it barely registers over my careening thoughts.
This is the second time Candie’s been right there when disaster struck. Regardless of what explanation we’ll be given this time, I can’t ignore it anymore.
I’ve seen this exact kind of grisly accident before.
I grab Faye’s arm and pull her away from the crowd, heading straight for the outdoor patio. When we’re outside, away from everyone’s eyes and ears, I turn her to me solemnly.
“Faye, listen. I think there might be some bad players here that are trying to hurt other competitors.”
“What?” Faye’s eyes pop wide. “You mean, you don’t think that was just an accident?”
I shake my head. “The printouts in my locker weren’t an accident. What happened to Blake probably wasn’t an accident, either. And last night, I”—I stop myself before I let the information slip—“saw something really strange, too. There are so many idol programs out there that you can audition for. I have a really bad feeling about this place. I know it’s hard to believe, but you have to trust me. I think you should drop out.”
“That’s—!” As expected, she’s completely taken aback. “It’s only the first week, I can’t leave now! I haven’t gotten a chance to prove myself yet!”
The slight tremble of her sad mouth makes me realize the utter hypocrisy in my request. Here I am asking her to leave, when I blew up at Candie for asking me to do the same. “Maybe it’s my grief speaking. I just don’t want to see anyone else get hurt.”
“What about you?” Faye reaches out and catches my arm, concern etching deep into her face. “You’re already being targeted; what if this person tries to hurt you next?”
“You want to know the truth?” It feels awful and embarrassing having to admit it aloud to another person, but the confession is already poised to leap out of me, having hit the threshold after weeks of pressure and buildup. “One of the main reasons I’m here … maybe the reason, is because of Candie.”
Faye blinks, her wide eyes growing even more owlish.
“I saw her post a video about entering this program, and before I knew it, I was sending in an audition. She hasn’t spoken to me in two years. This feels like the last chance for me to … fix things.”
Faye’s hand on my arm tightens reassuringly. “You still really care about her, don’t you?”
I place my hand over hers and squeeze. “Please just think about what I said. And if anything else happens, promise me you’ll consider leaving?”
Faye purses her lips and after what looks like heavy internal deliberation with herself, she finally nods. “Okay.”
An update comes half an hour later, and the explanation for Jessica’s incident is similar to Blake’s: an extremely unfortunate accident. Jessica had apparently injured her ankle earlier in the day and lost her footing on the stairs.
Two “accidents” in three days.
I don’t think I’ve had a single moment’s rest since I got here. These first few days have honestly felt like two weeks.
Curfew’s not for another hour or so, but the halls outside my room are conspicuously quiet. There were no instructions for everyone to return to their rooms early, yet there’s a distinct lack of the usual last-minute activity frenzy as the entire floor tries to squeeze in that final bit of social interaction before lights-out.
Candie hasn’t returned. It’s like she’s deliberately trying to spend as little time alone with me as possible. Or there’s something she’s trying to hide. I glance over to her side of the room, my eyes roaming over her desk and dresser as I consider the ethics of snooping through her things.
Several persistent knocks pull me away from my wild speculations. I cross the room to answer the door, expecting Faye again, and instead find Eugenia standing in the hallway, looking for all the world like someone had forced her at gunpoint to knock on my door. She glances over her left shoulder, then her right, as if checking to make sure the coast is clear.
“Well? You going to let me in?”
I step back, blinking, as she waltzes into my room, planting herself firmly in the center of it, her overbearing energy sucking up all the oxygen in the space. She waits for me to shut the door before folding her arms across her chest.
“All right. I want to find out who’s behind all this weird shit that’s happening.”
Chapter 16
THEN
Three years ago
I’ve already experienced the wild thrill of being launched into another world from our sudden celebrity. There are still plenty of days when I’m reduced to a baby bird blinking into the foreign chaos of my new life, everything too bright, too loud, too much. But being gifted the history of Candie’s lineage is like transcending another plane.
Walking around with this kind of earth-shattering information feels like transporting live explosives that I am in no way qualified to handle. I can’t stop wondering if every ordinary stranger I pass on the street wields unthinkable power, if there are secret societies or covens of witches, if even the most obscure of urban legends have merit.
As weighty of a burden as it is to hide something this massive, I break out in a smile whenever I think about being the keeper of Candie’s secrets. More than the TV show and the record deal and the fans, the fact that Candie chose me as one of only two people to entrust with this knowledge is the one thing that has made me feel truly special.
Mina’s going through a similar revelation. Before landing the role on Sweet Cadence, she was living in Seoul, taking part in a trainee program for a major entertainment agency. She was eliminated from the program after nearly a year of punishing training, and had told us how crushing it was, how her confidence was obliterated and she was completely ready to give up on her dreams, until she auditioned for Sweet Cadence on a whim.
Now Mina’s completely convinced that the celestial maiden had brought the three of us together, that there’s fate and magic circulating between us whenever we step onstage, that with Candie’s power and the maiden’s blessing we’ll be able to reach the kind of success only few can ever hope for.
“Who?”
I breathe deep, then let her name fall from my lips for the first time since the funeral. “I think it was Mina.”
At that, Candie sits up, fully awake. She stares at me, waiting for me to elaborate. I can’t read her emotions; her face is blank, no wide eyes or slacked jaw, and it makes me feel so foolish that I end up retracting it.
“It might have been someone trying to scare me. I don’t know. We also got lost in the building and saw some weird stuff. Did you know there was a whole basement level beneath the first floor?”
“Sunny.” Candie’s lapsing into her placating tone again, the way she used to talk to me when I was spiraling. “Being in this environment is probably triggering a lot of negative emotions and memories.” Her hand lands like a brief breeze on my shoulder. “I really think you should consider going home.”
Her words are a bucket of ice water splashed into my face. I push her hand aside, heat rising in my chest. “Why are you trying so hard to get rid of me? You really want me to fail that badly?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then what are you saying? That you think I made my bed and deserve to sleep in it? That I should just vanish into obscurity forever?”
Cold fury ignites in Candie’s eyes. “Name one time where I haven’t stood up for you.”
I look away from her, avoiding the searing truth in her gaze. She’s right. Candie brought us into the fold, shared her secrets, her powers. Shielded me and protected me. Avenged me.
“Is there any way…” I stumble through the question, not sure exactly what I’m asking. “Is there any chance at all that Mina might still be…”
“Of course not,” Candie says, pushing out of her bed and brushing past me to the dresser. Her shadow shifts between us, dark at her feet. “Mina is gone.”
* * *
Eugenia is a lot less nasty during the morning group rehearsals. She’s still terse and impatient as she doles out directions, but the majority of her frustration is clearly directed at herself.
“Looks like that evaluation finally knocked her off the Clydesdale she rode in on,” Alexis says, winking at me.
“She’s probably freaking out about getting eliminated,” Hannah adds, a smidge of schadenfreude in her tiny smile.
I don’t breathe a word to Alexis and Hannah about last night. I promised I wouldn’t rat out Eugenia, and promises matter to me, even if it means giving the competition a leg up. For now. My gaze flickers across the practice room to where Eugenia is fiddling with the speaker system. She pointedly evades eye contact. I guess we’re just going to pretend we weren’t chased down the halls screaming last night. That’s fine. Avoidance I can do. I am the queen of avoidance.
“Let’s go from the first chorus again!” Eugenia spins around, shouting at us like a carnival barker.
I don’t know how she’s so amped right now. After two consecutive nights of no sleep, all I want to do is lie down in the very spot I’m standing and nap. But hers is the exact kind of all-consuming, whatever-it-takes dedication the industry expects. If you’re not willing to wring your soul dry, there are a thousand, a million girls right behind you ready to step up and shove you off the stage. Eugenia is giving it her all, everyone is, and despite securing an early win, my old nemeses—insecurity, anxiety, and guilt—rear their ugly Hydra heads.
Do I really still have what it takes? Or was yesterday just a fluke? After retreating from the public eye in disgrace and hiding from the world for two years, can I really just strap my gloves back on and climb in the ring with these girls, all of them bursting with talent and hunger, fighting as hard as they can for a shot at their dreams? The dream that I was handed—and ended up squandering and destroying with my bare hands?
“Five, six, seven, eight!” Eugenia counts.
The music booms, and my overwrought brain switches off, my body going into autopilot mode. The exhaustion and pain vanish. No soreness, no cramping. The song powers me, that thrumming bass line looping around my joints like muscle memory, carrying me through each transition with ease. I remember all the steps. I don’t make any mistakes. The doubts fade, and suddenly I feel so wonderfully strong, ready to impress the judges and earn my spot in the finals. I shut my eyes; I can already feel the heat of the spotlight, the expansion of my chest as the crowd screams my name.
After the session, I head to the lockers to pick up my things before lunch. When I open the cabinet door and reach in, my fingers brush against several loose sheets of paper scattered on top of my bag. I pull them out.
Mina’s face is splashed across dozens of printed pages. They’re all printouts of news articles. Articles about Mina.
Teen star Mina Park’s death ruled a suicide.
The truth behind Mina Park’s tragic death.
Sweet Cadence cast mourns the passing of beloved costar.
My hands cramp up. The papers sift through my fingers and scatter to the floor. Cold panic threatens to overtake my system, before a flash flood of rage washes away the fear.
Someone is trying to scare me.
I slam the locker door shut and bend to scoop up all the dropped papers, gripping them in a tight fist. I turn and storm past the practice rooms, down the corridor, calling out when I spot the person I’m looking for.
“Eugenia!”
Eugenia turns at the sound of her name, only to clam up when she sees me.
I march right up to her. “We need to talk.”
Her eyes shift around the busy atrium. “Why?”
A few curious heads turn to us. My hand lashes out and I grab Eugenia’s wrist, dragging her down a side hall by the cafeteria where there’s no foot traffic.
“What the hell do you want?” Eugenia snaps once we’re alone, yanking her hand away from me.
I shove the papers at her.
“What’s this?” She glares at me but takes the crumpled sheets.
“You tell me.”
Eugenia sifts through them with irritation and disinterest at first, before realization gradually settles on her face. Her throat bobs as she swallows.
“Someone put these in my locker,” I say.
Eugenia’s expression grows more disturbed as her eyes move across the bold headlines. Then she abruptly thrusts all the printouts back at me, like she can’t get them out of her hands fast enough. “Well, it wasn’t me!”
“And you have no idea who it might be?”
“Why would I?” she snaps.
“Because you were the one who trashed me and brought up my past on day one? And we were together last night when the ghost from Ju-On tried to run us down? In legal terms, I think that’s what they call suspicious as fuck.”
Eugenia steps toward me, shooting me a haughty look that I assume she practices often in front of a mirror. “When I come for you, you’ll know it’s me. I have nothing to do with this.”
I’m about to shoot back a retort when I suddenly realize where we’re standing. This is the hallway that leads down to the practice rooms. The hallway we were chased down last night by the “ghost.” Except, all I see at the end of the hallway is a solid expanse of white wall. There is no red exit sign, no emergency exit door.
I turn, pointing a finger down the hall. “… Wasn’t there a door there last night? The one with the stairs that went down to the basement with all those rooms?”
Eugenia’s sharp gaze follows the path of my finger. She squints. A brief confusion clouds her eyes, before she blinks it away. “I don’t know. It was dark. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Yeah, you were busy screaming directly in my ear.”
“When I find out who the fuck that was last night, they’ll be the ones screaming.” She sneers. “I’m a tae kwon do black belt.”
“You’ll definitely get sent home if you start roundhouse kicking people into submission.”
Eugenia’s glare reaches new levels of incineration, but it produces the opposite intended effect in me. The rigid tension in my shoulders relaxes. She’s probably telling the truth.
“If you want to find the culprit, wanna join forces? As fellow victims,” I offer in a just-kidding-but-not-really sort of way.
Eugenia gives me a look like I just suggested we do the Tour de France together on a tandem bike, before she turns away and starts back down the hall.
“Eugenia, wait—” I reach out a hand to—what? Warn her? Calm her? Make sure she’s real, too, not just an apparition, or a manifestation of my guilt?
Eugenia shoots a harsh look over her shoulder, and I retract my hand. “… Be careful,” I say.
That afternoon after sessions end, I walk down every hallway on the first floor, open every emergency door I come across. All the doors open to the outside, or to a stairwell with steps going up to the second floor.
There’s no door with a stairway that leads down to the basement.
* * *
“Who would do something like that?” Faye gasps when I tell her about my locker surprise on our way to dinner.
“I thought it might have been Eugenia so I confronted her. But it’s not.”
“Are you sure? She could be lying…” Faye drops her voice to a fearful whisper, as though she’s expecting that the mere insinuation will cause Eugenia to burst out from behind a pillar.
“I don’t think so. She was just as freaked out by it as I was.”
I feel worse about keeping last night a secret from Faye than I did hiding it from Alexis and Hannah. Even though Eugenia seems convinced that it was a prank, something about that encounter feels completely different from the printouts in my locker. My palms grow clammy just thinking about that shadowy broken figure in the hall, and that strange wooden door in the basement.
But … can I really rely on my mind when it’s been trapped inside a horror fun house on a loop for two years, my memories waging constant psychological warfare on me?
No. I didn’t imagine it. Eugenia was there. She saw the same things I did.
My anxiety must be showing because Faye’s hand lands against my shoulder, her knuckles brushing lightly against my jaw.
“Sunny? Are you okay?”
I turn to her and force a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine. I’m used to this. If someone’s targeting me this hard, it just means they feel threatened.”
“Exactly!” Faye says, pumping her fists in the air, miming the cheerleading moves I was known for on Sweet Cadence. “Don’t back down!”
Watching those old moves reenacted didn’t trigger the cringe of shame I thought I’d feel. Whether she realizes it or not, Faye’s been steadily repairing the gouges and tears in my self-esteem.
Commotion echoes from farther up the hall in the atrium. At first, it sounds like the usual hustle of girls traveling up and down the corridors, but the muffled voices become louder, followed by thundering footsteps. Faye and I shoot a quick look at each other before we break out into a sprint until we hit the congestion of bodies crowded around the base of the stairs. I strain to see over the tops of everyone’s bobbing heads.
A girl is splayed on the bottom step of the staircase. She’s crying, leaning over to hold her leg. I only catch a fleeting glimpse, but it’s enough to see—her leg is turned below the knee at an unnatural angle, twisted to the side.
The crooked, bent limbs of the apparition from last night flash across my mind, and my hand flies up to cover my mouth.
“What did you see?” Faye strains on tiptoe, trying to look. “What’s going on?”
“Jessica fell on the stairs; I think she really hurt herself!” a girl to our left answers.
“What happened? Did anyone see?” More voices join the chorus.
“Back up; give us some space! Everyone, please clear the hallway!” Yuna and two other trainers show up and start pushing their way upstream to Jessica.
I draw in a gasp as the crowds part. Candie is there, at the center of it all, crouched next to Jessica on the stairs. Goose bumps burst along the length of my arm and race up the back of my neck. When Yuna approaches, Candie aids the instructors as they heft Jessica up from the floor and maneuver her down the hall.
“Did you see it? Is she okay? Sunny?” Faye is speaking to me, but it barely registers over my careening thoughts.
This is the second time Candie’s been right there when disaster struck. Regardless of what explanation we’ll be given this time, I can’t ignore it anymore.
I’ve seen this exact kind of grisly accident before.
I grab Faye’s arm and pull her away from the crowd, heading straight for the outdoor patio. When we’re outside, away from everyone’s eyes and ears, I turn her to me solemnly.
“Faye, listen. I think there might be some bad players here that are trying to hurt other competitors.”
“What?” Faye’s eyes pop wide. “You mean, you don’t think that was just an accident?”
I shake my head. “The printouts in my locker weren’t an accident. What happened to Blake probably wasn’t an accident, either. And last night, I”—I stop myself before I let the information slip—“saw something really strange, too. There are so many idol programs out there that you can audition for. I have a really bad feeling about this place. I know it’s hard to believe, but you have to trust me. I think you should drop out.”
“That’s—!” As expected, she’s completely taken aback. “It’s only the first week, I can’t leave now! I haven’t gotten a chance to prove myself yet!”
The slight tremble of her sad mouth makes me realize the utter hypocrisy in my request. Here I am asking her to leave, when I blew up at Candie for asking me to do the same. “Maybe it’s my grief speaking. I just don’t want to see anyone else get hurt.”
“What about you?” Faye reaches out and catches my arm, concern etching deep into her face. “You’re already being targeted; what if this person tries to hurt you next?”
“You want to know the truth?” It feels awful and embarrassing having to admit it aloud to another person, but the confession is already poised to leap out of me, having hit the threshold after weeks of pressure and buildup. “One of the main reasons I’m here … maybe the reason, is because of Candie.”
Faye blinks, her wide eyes growing even more owlish.
“I saw her post a video about entering this program, and before I knew it, I was sending in an audition. She hasn’t spoken to me in two years. This feels like the last chance for me to … fix things.”
Faye’s hand on my arm tightens reassuringly. “You still really care about her, don’t you?”
I place my hand over hers and squeeze. “Please just think about what I said. And if anything else happens, promise me you’ll consider leaving?”
Faye purses her lips and after what looks like heavy internal deliberation with herself, she finally nods. “Okay.”
An update comes half an hour later, and the explanation for Jessica’s incident is similar to Blake’s: an extremely unfortunate accident. Jessica had apparently injured her ankle earlier in the day and lost her footing on the stairs.
Two “accidents” in three days.
I don’t think I’ve had a single moment’s rest since I got here. These first few days have honestly felt like two weeks.
Curfew’s not for another hour or so, but the halls outside my room are conspicuously quiet. There were no instructions for everyone to return to their rooms early, yet there’s a distinct lack of the usual last-minute activity frenzy as the entire floor tries to squeeze in that final bit of social interaction before lights-out.
Candie hasn’t returned. It’s like she’s deliberately trying to spend as little time alone with me as possible. Or there’s something she’s trying to hide. I glance over to her side of the room, my eyes roaming over her desk and dresser as I consider the ethics of snooping through her things.
Several persistent knocks pull me away from my wild speculations. I cross the room to answer the door, expecting Faye again, and instead find Eugenia standing in the hallway, looking for all the world like someone had forced her at gunpoint to knock on my door. She glances over her left shoulder, then her right, as if checking to make sure the coast is clear.
“Well? You going to let me in?”
I step back, blinking, as she waltzes into my room, planting herself firmly in the center of it, her overbearing energy sucking up all the oxygen in the space. She waits for me to shut the door before folding her arms across her chest.
“All right. I want to find out who’s behind all this weird shit that’s happening.”
Chapter 16
THEN
Three years ago
I’ve already experienced the wild thrill of being launched into another world from our sudden celebrity. There are still plenty of days when I’m reduced to a baby bird blinking into the foreign chaos of my new life, everything too bright, too loud, too much. But being gifted the history of Candie’s lineage is like transcending another plane.
Walking around with this kind of earth-shattering information feels like transporting live explosives that I am in no way qualified to handle. I can’t stop wondering if every ordinary stranger I pass on the street wields unthinkable power, if there are secret societies or covens of witches, if even the most obscure of urban legends have merit.
As weighty of a burden as it is to hide something this massive, I break out in a smile whenever I think about being the keeper of Candie’s secrets. More than the TV show and the record deal and the fans, the fact that Candie chose me as one of only two people to entrust with this knowledge is the one thing that has made me feel truly special.
Mina’s going through a similar revelation. Before landing the role on Sweet Cadence, she was living in Seoul, taking part in a trainee program for a major entertainment agency. She was eliminated from the program after nearly a year of punishing training, and had told us how crushing it was, how her confidence was obliterated and she was completely ready to give up on her dreams, until she auditioned for Sweet Cadence on a whim.
Now Mina’s completely convinced that the celestial maiden had brought the three of us together, that there’s fate and magic circulating between us whenever we step onstage, that with Candie’s power and the maiden’s blessing we’ll be able to reach the kind of success only few can ever hope for.
