Chapter Sixty-Six. Sarah Lynn
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
SARAH LYNN
This time the lights don’t come back on. Neither does the heat.
My hands are buried in my jacket pockets, but my legs are bare under the tailored minidress Mom insisted on, flimsy against the cold that’s already seeping through the glass doors.
Olivia’s still locked away in that room with Emily.
The awful sounds of her crying have gone quiet, and I tell myself she must have fallen asleep.
But the truth is, I don’t know how to face someone laid bare like that.
The only funeral I’ve ever been to was my Great-Aunt Birdie’s, and she was almost ninety, so it wasn’t exactly a big surprise to anyone.
If I were a better friend, I’d knock on the door, curl up beside her, just sit with her in the silence, I guess, or whatever you’re supposed to do. Instead, Hannah and I keep our distance. And the longer I wait, the heavier it settles in me, a knot of sickness that feels too close to guilt.
Through the windows, I watch Olivia’s dad and a couple of the other men lean into the storm, shoulders hunched, hauling a generator off the back of a truck. There’s still some gray to the sky, but it’ll be dark soon. We’ll have to stay the whole night.
Snow whips sideways across the lot, stinging the guys’ faces, catching in their beards and wool caps.
They wrestle the heavy machine just outside the doors, boots thudding, voices raised above the gale.
Someone drags in a coil of orange extension cord, while other men set down tall construction lamps and a few electric space heaters.
The whole place smells of cold air and gasoline now.
A sharp pivot from pageant prep to survival camp.
We are trapped here, and my heart feels like a bird beating its wings against a cage.
Mom is beside me. Always. Always right there even when she isn’t. “Don’t worry, sweetheart.” She brushes a hair near my face with her fingertips, then pulls a bobby pin out, holding it between her lips while she resets my curl.
She starts to slide the pin back into place when I reach up, swatting her hand away. “Mom, stop.”
She pulls back, looks at me sharply.
“Sorry,” I say, dropping my hands to my sides.
She purses her lips and re-spirals the lock of hair around her finger, then secures it back in place. “I know this is stressful,” she says, smoothing her hands down my arms. “But everything will be fine. We’ll reschedule Miss Lone Star for a few weeks from now.”
As if that’s what I’m worried about.
Image is everything. That’s what Mom has always taught me. If you control how you’re perceived, then you control the narrative.
Every time I leave the house, I feel her eyes on me, evaluating my outfit, my makeup, my hair.
She watches my plates of food, watches my grades.
She approves every post I make to social media, rehearses my answers to pageant interviews.
She chooses the shows I watch and the books I read and the color I paint my nails.
“I promise,” she says. “Pretty soon, it will be like none of this even happened.”
I smile like I mean it. But inside that guilt is swelling, coiling, and writhing, like one of those giant pythons, swallowing me from the inside out.