Chapter 21 1957
In the silence, a camera whirs and the sound of a zipper unzipping serrates the air.
And Aria can feel something like the Marmont’s ceiling pressing down as if the chateau wants her to hide not just behind the chair, but underneath it. She holds herself very still, tries not to breathe, doesn’t know why she needs to be invisible, just that she does.
“There’s one condition to you getting the part.” Bob’s voice.
“This isn’t a condition,” Calliope says very quietly. “This is…”
“Power,” Bob says.
Aria remembers what Flitter had said the night they lay in bed together and talked about dreams.
Flitter was the only one who’d made the right wish.
Calliope doesn’t scream. She doesn’t storm out. She doesn’t even say no. She does something far worse. She sighs as if she’s been tasked with a repetitive chore, like writing out multiplication tables, and she’s just looked up to see she still has dozens more to do.
Aria doesn’t know what’s happening exactly, thankfully can’t see, tries to hold the scream in her mouth that she can’t let out because nobody screams at the Marmont.
Somewhere in this hotel there must be a bonfire of unscreamed screams, and if Aria were brave, she’d crawl out and push Bob right into it.
But she has no warnings left. Nor does her aunt.
If Aria screams, they’ll be thrown into the street.
Miss Devine Rey will storm off down Sunset Boulevard and Aria will be utterly alone.
She already has so little—a borrowed room, a camera she doesn’t know how to use, a past she can’t look at because it burns.
Two friends, one of whom she’s betraying.
She shuts her eyes. And her mind gropes its way out of the blindness of childhood. Is she betraying Calliope? Does Calliope, who told Aria she’s going to do everything she can to affix her star onto the emptiness of time, want Aria to do exactly what she’s doing now—nothing?
Aria knows only that the fairies have died, just like Calliope and Flitter said they would.