15 Elena
Elena
Elena is back at the Strike. Just as she’d hoped, the film crew is here. There are no other drinking options in town, so it didn’t take her long to guess where they might go.
The bar is as cliché as it is grimy. It stinks of beer, and the little twinkle lights are supposed to be charming, but a few of them are dead, giving the whole strand the look of a hockey player’s mouth.
The patrons, new to this kind of town, look out of place in their bright, short-sleeve button-downs and nineties-style hairstyles.
Pure LA, and yet, they seem wide-eyed with awe as they hover over a real working jukebox.
Maybe they can’t believe that a place so remote, so small, could still exist in the world.
And sure, anyone would be enamored for a few days.
Give it a month, though, and you’ll be bored out of your mind. Better yet, give it seventeen years.
Elena catches Ken’s eyes from behind the bar.
He looks surprised to see her there. She’s reminded again of the feeling of constant surveillance in a town where people have little else to do but watch each other.
She smacks on a smile and orders a double Buffalo Trace, neat.
He doesn’t say anything but keeps his eye on her as he pours.
Elena pays and turns away, bumping into a twentysomething woman as she does.
The woman apologizes, though she has done nothing wrong, and Elena jumps at the chance to start a conversation.
She is a production assistant, apparently, and is as chatty as she is young.
As they talk, Elena doesn’t reveal that she’s a background actor.
Instead, she chooses to play up her localness.
Yes, I grew up here, in the mountains. Yes, it was such a unique childhood.
Hiking trails right out my back door! This faux-rosy depiction of her adolescence throws her inadvertently into real memories.
The four of them—Quinn, Joey, Sophie, and Elena—were freezing their asses off as they lowered their bottom halves into an ice-blue alpine lake.
Summer days spent sitting on the curb and drinking Dr Pepper, tossing Reese’s Pieces into each other’s mouths.
Summoning cigarettes to the spell circle and, later, lying to her mom about the smell.
Afternoons in junior year English class, holding eye contact for just a bit too long.
She is lost in these dregs of the past—the reminder of which she blames on the carvings under Quinn’s deck—when someone speaks quietly, almost intimately, into her ear.
“You’re not one of mine.”
When she turns, she nearly chokes on her drink.
It’s Phillip Granger. The director. He wears a black ball cap on top of a pile of Wonder Bread–white hair and ears that stick out sideways.
Not handsome but distinctive. She turns toward him, slowly enough to catch the production assistant darting away, lizard-like, behind her.
Standing next to Phillip Granger are two other people she recognizes.
Nicola Bianco and Cal Pierce. Nicola is petite and sprinkled with gold jewelry, owl eyes glancing about.
She looks mildly curious, like a child at the zoo for the first time.
Cal, on the other hand, is looking straight at Elena and beaming with boyish white teeth.
Veneers? She can’t tell and doesn’t want to stare too long.
They are a trio of fame and untouchability.
“Not yours yet,” she replies. She extends her hand into the space between her chest and Phillip Granger’s.
“Elena Alvarez.” He responds to her flirtation with smiling eyes.
They shake. Elena raises her glass to all three celebrities and says, “Welcome to Whisper Ridge. The last place in America where you can still smoke inside. Not because it’s legal, but because no one gives a shit. ”
For the next forty-five minutes, she keeps Phillip Granger’s attention by asking as many questions about him and his career as she can think of.
He is responsive, even attentive. Elena knows she is attractive and delightfully charismatic when she needs to be.
Her charms seem to be working especially well tonight.
At one point, he even says to her, “Call me Phil,” and she almost high-fives herself under the bar.
She is on her game more than she thought she would be.
The bourbon is helping a bit. Just as more drinks are ordered, Elena tells them all she’s actually a background actor in the film.
She’s working up to telling Phil that she has a demo reel she can email him, in case he needs fresh-face talent for future projects.
But before she can, Ken yells, “Last call!” far too loudly, like this is a real bar in a real city.
A groan of disappointment moves through the crowd. It’s only ten o’clock.
Slightly drunk, Phillip Granger steps onto the rung of his barstool. “Bedtime, kids,” he yells over the din. “We have an early start tomorrow.”
It’s patronizing. A few people laugh, but it’s halfhearted, as if they are only humoring him.
Elena gets the sense that they’re all used to this kind of thing from him.
Then he turns to her. He is flushed with alcohol, his words slurred together and his movements unpredictable. A hand lands on her bare arm, squeezes.
“What are you doing tonight?” he asks, like it’s a secret.
She catches a small gesture to her left. Nicola Bianco taps a fingertip on Cal’s forearm, and they share a look that tells her this isn’t their first time witnessing Phillip Granger attempting to pick up a stranger at a bar.
“Phil, buddy,” Cal cuts in. “We should get some sleep.” Elena is grateful she doesn’t have to respond.
Phil seems to digest this. Then he snaps his fingers. “Cast party on Wednesday,” he says to her. “My place.” A smile showcases the brilliance of this idea.
“Oh, yeah?” Elena is, of course, aware that he is just looking to get laid, but she also senses an opportunity.
“Extras—I mean background actors—are part of the cast.” He glances at Cal, a challenge in his eyes. “Extras are part of the cast, aren’t they, Cal?”
“Where exactly is your place?” Elena asks. If she goes to this cast party, she can continue her charm offensive, then do a little bait and switch.
“The hideous glass house up the side of that mountain.” He flails a hand in the direction of the door.
Elena finishes her drink. “I know the one.”
Cal Pierce claps a hand on Phillip Granger’s back. “You’re a true man of the people, Phil,” he says coolly. Then, “Okay, let’s hit it. I’m beat.”
Once the Hollywoods are gone, Elena sits alone at the bar. Ken raises his eyebrows at her as he wipes the taps down. She glares at him until he looks away.
***
Fifteen minutes later, Elena is scrubbing the makeup off her face in Barbara’s low-lit guest bathroom.
Gael and Barbara are both long asleep. Being back here has been more full-on than she’d expected.
Getting Phillip Granger to consider her for future projects is going to take some creativity, but she can manage a man like him.
It’s more everything else. Last night, Sophie insisted they humor Joey because she seems fragile, but Elena refuses to live in the past, always has.
She always assumed Quinn’s death was an accident, just like everyone else.
Only, now, she keeps picturing Tom Winter pushing Quinn off the crag.
It’s fucked up, but it is playing on repeat.
Just the mention of Quinn’s death has had dark thoughts battling for space in her head.
And then there was that creepy word carved into the deck.
Bloodspell. It sounds like a word they should know—its allusion to magic is obvious—but none of them do.
From the counter, her phone chirps at her.
Low battery. She searches her purse and suitcase before remembering she used her charger on the drive from the airport.
She curses and tiptoes past Gael asleep on the upstairs couch, stopping to cover him with a throw blanket.
Down the stairs, then through the front door.
She feels the cold of the front walk on her bare feet.
Wind hisses between trees, but otherwise, the night is silent.
And that smell. She’d forgotten it, but it hits her now, piney and cool and filled with memories.
She wrinkles her nose and tries to recall smoggy LA, but somehow she can’t.
Whisper Ridge’s high-altitude crispness, the distinct odor of dry wood and cold stone, overwhelms everything.
When she opens the car door, the click echoes, and the yellow overhead light flickers on.
She yanks her phone charger free from the port and crawls out backward, closing the door and snuffing out the light.
It’s then that she feels it. A creeping feeling, like someone has just said something to her.
She spins around, clutching the small white cord to her chest. But she is alone in the driveway.
Nothing but darkness swimming around her.
In the distance, a lonely streetlight illuminates a neighbor’s house and—she takes a small step closer, heart skittering—the outline of a figure.
It’s no more than a dark shadow, but it’s in the shape of a person.
Her chest goes tight, and her breath momentarily leaves her.
She glances back at Barbara’s house and the darkened windows, wondering if she is being watched.
But when she looks toward the streetlight again, just a few seconds later, no one is there at all. She scrubs at her face.
She waits five minutes, listening to nothing but the chirp of a frog somewhere in the dark. Then she runs back into the house and double-locks the door.