Chapter Forty-Seven. Sarah Lynn
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
SARAH LYNN
I sit on the love seat in Mom’s pageant room, whitening strips on my teeth, staring at the giant portrait of her in her crown and sash, the gleam of her teeth, the perfect slope of her nose, her high cheekbones. But all I can picture is the skull beneath, the bones that give her face its shape.
Mom is at her desk, phone to her ear. She’s been fielding calls all morning.
By now, everyone in town knows that The Hollow is taped off.
They want to know if the pageant will be postponed, if maybe it will be cancelled altogether.
They’re also concerned about the weather.
Warnings crawl across the bottom of every local channel: temperatures dropping into the twenties, windchill in the teens, a chance of sleet.
A handful of counties have already called off school, and the power company is urging people to “prepare for disruptions.” And still, Mom keeps assuring callers that the show will go on.
“The Amenity Center is not considered part of the crime scene,” she says crisply, as she clicks her pen against a legal pad. “We’re still planning to meet tonight to set up the venue, and I expect all contestants and volunteers to show up as committed.”
People don’t understand how much work she’s put into this, how every vendor has been wrangled, how the deposits have all been paid, funds raised because she’s been buttering up sponsors for months with favors and fancy lunches and a thousand phone calls.
But I do. I have seen every single thing she’s done.
When she finally hangs up, she exhales sharply, then turns to her corkboard. The headshots are pinned in neat rows, contestants lined up like soldiers. Olivia’s face sits at the very top, skewered with a red pushpin.
Last night, when Mom picked us up from The Hollow, she didn’t yell. She didn’t ground us or threaten to take away our cell phones or tell Dad. She just drove home in silence, her hands tight at ten and two. In the garage, she got out, walked straight into the house without a word.
Kayden smiled slyly, like we’d gotten away with something, and he slipped away to his room.
But I found her in the dark kitchen, pouring a glass of wine with her back to me.
Mom?
Go to bed, Sarah Lynn, she’d said, her voice flat and calm, like a door clicking shut. This is what she does when I disappoint her. She locks me out in the cold.
Now, she crosses the room and sits beside me. She takes my hand.
“I’m proud of you,” she says. “You know that, right? You’ve worked hard for this. You deserve it.”
And the tension in my chest loosens enough for me to breathe.
Once, when I was little, Mom caught me chewing on my nails. I hadn’t even realized I was doing it until she popped my hand with the back of hers, quick, like the strike of a snake. Her ring caught my lip and I tasted blood. Tears stung my eyes.
But then she pulled me close, wrapped her arms around me and held me against her perfume and her warmth. I could feel her heartbeat against my ear, and I felt safe. I just want what’s best for you, she said.
And, still, I know that it’s true.
Because Mom does want what’s best for me. She found a way to break away from the shitty life she was supposed to have. She forged her own, exactly the way she wanted it to be. And now she wants the same for me—wants it so badly she’ll bend the world until it breaks.
“You’re going to win this,” she says now. “We’ll make sure of it. Do you understand?”
I want to tell her that Olivia is my friend, but she wouldn’t care. After all, Iggy was her friend. “Yes, ma’am,” I say instead.
Her phone rings again and she goes back to her desk, straightening the stack of extra Miss Lone Star Princess invitations as she answers.
“Yes,” she says. “Venue setup will proceed this evening as planned. Yes, of course, I heard.…”
The whitening strips burn on my teeth. I peel them off and toss them into the trash. My tongue runs across the fresh enamel, tingling. I try not to think of Isabelle Whitmore’s teeth still locked into her skull. The missing jaw beneath.
Mom has always been determined. I know what she’s capable of when she wants something badly enough.