CHAPTER ONE
BUNNY
Two years later
“Do you plan to perform like that?”
My throat thickens, my gaze dropping to the swath of light glistening on the glossy black platform beneath my feet. Swallowing the growing knot, my heartbeat climbs in frequency, knowing the consequence of not being perfect.
“You rotten bitch!” His guttural shout feeds the raise of his arm, his hand swinging through the air with a whistle.
The crack whipping my head to the right smarts pain across my cheek. At least he forgot his gaudy rings this morning. So, I won’t cry this time. Even though tears of shame and hate are brimming my vision and warping the view of his evil snarl.
Hold it in. Perfect your act.
I pick my head up, facing his coarse gray mustache through watery ripples and strings of my hair. “I’m sorry. I’ll fix it,” I murmur.
“WHAT?!” His hot breath pelts my face.
“I’ll fix it,” I speak up, and start twirling my fingers around the silk on either side of me.
Realizing my hands are the reason for his explosion, my palms slip down the smooth fabric to hide them, and I break eye contact, looking over at the black plastic resting next to my water bottle on the wooden stool.
Spinning on his heel, his coat fans to the side as he dramatically shoves his hand in his pocket for another cigarette. “Expected better from you,” he clips under his breath, lunging off my stage and stalking down the center aisle in his heavy boots.
I’m trying.
Waiting for the red velvet curtains to close me in my tent, I watch his back disappear in the white sun from the corner of my eye.
Then, I’m alone again.
At this point, I’d be able to perform my routine in my sleep. But I’m held to a high standard and cannot mess up, so I haven’t had much time to manage the upkeep of my appearance.
Bringing my hands out in front of me, I sweep over my bitten nails, instinctively raising a bent middle finger to my mouth to chew off the chipped black polish.
While peeling a chunk up with my teeth, I move out from my silks and grab my water and mask from the stool, vacantly heading down the steps to the small dressing room in the back.
My feet ache with every step, until I’m closing the curtains and taking a seat on the leather stool in front of my vanity.
Setting my water and mask near the bulbous, amber lights, the relief of not having to carry my weight molds a moan deep in my chest.
I don’t know my name.
My actual name.
It doesn’t matter how long I stare at my reflection and root around in my blurry memories—I cannot remember who I really am.
The feeling of sinking through the earth, using all my strength to claw through soil up toward the light, and never progressing no matter how hard I try—overwhelms me sometimes.
“Sometimes,” I mock myself quietly.
A sardonic laugh huffs through my nose, opening the top drawer and plucking out my bottle of black nail polish. Cracking it open, the velvet curtains on my left part, letting in a cloud that smells like blue raspberry.
“Are you talking to yourself again?” Ora asks, her words thick with smoke.
“No…”
She travels through the center of what we call Ora’s Aura. She’s never seen without the disposable vapes the guys snag for her. She’s always puffing out clouds of blue raspberry or menthol watermelon.
I’ve personally witnessed her taking a hit while drawing her forefinger along some man’s palm and telling him he was going to die in thirteen days.
Hopping onto my vanity next to the open polish, she leans back on an arm, her vape locked in a vise-grip, and she rakes her red nails through her bangs that fall right along her monolids. “I’m gonna beat his ass,” she sighs, studying the handprint left on my face.
“What good would that do?” I question, wiping the excess polish off on the inside of the bottle neck, and quickly get to work on painting over the patches of the previous layer.
She sighs again, her vape crackling with the heavy drag filling her lungs. “You’re right. I need to kill him.”
I laugh, bending over my splayed hand and avoiding my skin with the brush. “Well, let me know when you do. I want his right hand so I can run it through my sweaty butt crack.”
“With or without the rings?”
“Definitely with. Why?” I look up at her, hovering the polish over the next nail waiting to be smothered. “Do you already have plans for them?”
Her chin tenses with a grin, but the aggravation rooting in her brown eyes contradicts the amusement she’s pretending to have. “He doesn’t hit anyone else, Bun. Those are all yours.”
Blinking off the parasitic burn, I return to painting my nails. “How special I feel.”
The tears springing to my eyes are why.
I’m too emotional, too weak.
I’m prey.
“Baby bunny, no,” she whines, her long, black hair puddling on my vanity as she bends sideways to look into my eyes. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel secluded. You’re our sweet girl with big feelings… and he weaponizes that.”
“Sweets rot, Ora.” Indicating I’m done talking about it, I make the last swipe on my pinky and start blowing on my nails.
She sits up, staring thinly at me while taking another crackling hit off her vape. The smoke rolls out through her nose, jetting down her deep cut tank top and billowing inside her open oversized jacket. “You wanna go watch Aries yell at the guys?”
“Can’t. I need to fix myself.”
Leaping off the vanity, she says, “Bring your polish and rollers. I’ll grab your makeup.” Swirling around and helping herself to my things, she ignores my stare through the mirror and adds, “We’ll sit on the bleachers and get ready together.”
“I don’t even have pants on,” I huff, angling my head and wafting my drying nails.
Her brows crinkle tight, her gaze snapping up to me in the mirror. “You walk around in your panties at home. No one’s here yet. It’s just us.”
“Yeah… When I forget my pants and have to run from the bathroom,” I mumble.
She rolls her eyes, clattering through my makeup and tossing brushes into a carrying case.
“Why would you want to wear clothes? You have… Oh, what is it? …” Stopping her assault on my makeup, she flattens her hands on the vanity, turning her look of concentration to me.
“Ballerina bod? You know, when you’re thin but toned and have that curved gap between your thighs…
Perfect for a head—What?!” She whips her theatrical horror over her shoulder toward the curtains. “Who’s there?!”
My cheeks flush, my lips curling to shun a smile. “My fingers work fine. I don’t have a need for a head to be down there.”
She gasps, her hair whisking over her shoulder with the velocity of her shock. “You dirty girl! You do that next to me?”
The tension in my cheeks becomes too much. My smile breaks and lets out the laugh fizzing my chest. “In the shower,” I giggle out.
She looms closer, the corner of her mouth curving into a smirk. “That’s why you take so long in there. No fucking wonder your polish dissolves so fast. You’re fucking it right off your fingers.”
“Oh, my God, Ora!” Embarrassment blooms up my neck, causing my hands to cover the heat rushing to my face. “I’m never telling you anything ever again.”
“No, please do,” she whines, latching around my wrists and forcing my hands away from my eyes. “This is, like, getting to the center of cinnamon roll. You bite and swallow the crispy sweetness, knowing the orgasmic soft goo is sooo close. And then when you finally feel it melt in your mouth-”
“Oraaa,” I cry, bowing my head to hide the fact that I’m morphing into a tomato.
“Is that why Razor presses his ear to the door while you’re in there?”
The drum of my heart twists my stomach, my eyes pinning open and my head raising to look her dead in the eyes. “What?”
She lets my wrists go. “He’s totally listening in on you… Oh, fuck, that’s great!” Smiling cheerfully, she twists around for my bag of makeup and starts walking away with it.
“Wait! Ora, no! I don’t wanna!”
“Come and get me, Bunny,” she taunts, shaking my makeup around while passing through the curtains.
“Oh, son of a…” Quickly closing my nail polish, I lunge up from the stool and step into the low-rise jeans I left on the floor, then grab my case of rollers and the polish and run after her.
My hands are too full to zip and button my jeans, so I leave them parted open while catching up to her slipping out into the bright sun and the poppy music that conjures up a visceral frustration.
I’ve been in my tent since six this morning. The flash-bang of burning white has me slowly blinking and stumbling into my sneakers I kicked off before going in.
I don’t like making the janitors work even harder than they do before opening night. We’re expected to make good impressions that extend beyond summer. Everyone has their throats lunged at by Carl. So, I try to be as quiet as a mouse and as clean as a cat.
Speaking of the sinister snake…
My head swivels for him, my sight adjusting to the brightness while scouting around the rollercoasters the crew has been…
I’m actually not sure what they do. I assume test runs and tightening bolts here and there… Even though bolts are prone to flying off… Occasionally. Not all the time.
It does happen.
Walking past Scream of Hades, I elbow Ora for her attention, still panning over the fluorescent orange shirts making last minute adjustments on the triple loop that would make a professional medical advisor faint. “Why do they get to leave but we don’t?”
Her vape pops, the smoke puffing out in a controlled cloud before she quickly sucks it back in.
“Not a clue. I’ve learned it’s best to not question the strangeness of this.
There’s no point in killing ourselves with the unknown…
Not unless we kill him,” she finishes under her breath, darting her jaded eyes over to Carl yelling at someone with a clipboard.
She’s not wrong.
Having so many unanswered questions weigh on your chest only sinks you further into the dirt you’re choking on.
We were all specially handpicked for this. Cross my heart and hope to die, we were.