She follows me into a closed stairwell, and I pretend I don’t notice the sudden chill in the air as we head up a level. The higher we go, the cooler the temperature seems to get, and I can’t help wondering about the validity of the ghost stories that swirl about here.
I’m not sure whether I believe in the supernatural or not, but certain physical anomalies make it difficult to rule the existence out entirely.
Below us, the stairwell door swings open and slams shut, and I pause, peering over the railing. Lexington and Percy stand at the bottom, heads tipped back as they look up.
Lexington shrugs. “Suddenly, going to the woods is less appealing.”
Percy nudges him, then starts skipping the steps two at a time. “You just want to bug Elle about Los Angeles.”
My face flushes as we reach the thirteenth floor, and I shove open the door, enshrouding us in darkness. Percy gropes at the wall, flipping a light that sends a row of bulbs sparking to life above an endless sea of books.
This level is sparsely populated, with us being the only visible souls around. Like the rest of the building, the floor is decorated with sporadic dark furniture that looks like it was crafted decades ago, and the faintest scent of vinegar and mothballs clings to the air along with the cool temperature.
The windows, likely arched and double-paned like many of the other buildings on campus, are boarded up. Nothing can get in or out.
My nerves tighten like drawstrings. Maybe coming here wasn’t such a good idea, but all the curse and founding family talk has me curious, and the Obeliskos supposedly has the biggest catalog of Fury Hill’s history.
“If we go any higher, I might get a nosebleed,” Lexington says, panting by the time he gets to the top of the stairs. He bends over with his hands on his knees and glances at me, blushing. “I wasn’t being nosy down there, I swear.”
I lift an eyebrow.
“Well, okay, I was,” he admits, straightening to his full height. “But not to be weird or anything. I just heard a rumor and wanted to know how much of it was true.”
“A rumor.” I pause, crossing my arms. “About?”
“You.”
“Obviously. Whataboutme?”
Aurora and Percy walk over to an area filled with study tables, the former dropping her bag on the top and flopping intoone of the chairs. Percy makes his way to a glass display case against the far wall, studying the items inside.
“Why’d you come to Avernia?” Lexington asks, moving toward a solid wood bookcase. “Pythia says you got several highly competitive, merit-based scholarships before you graduated from high school, but you opted out of attending college to go to Hollywood.”
I slide my fingers over the spines of a few books, noting the dated encyclopedias. Picking one up, I aimlessly thumb through the pages, scanning the entries about my ancestor Cronus Anderson, whose strange actions during a tuberculosis outbreak caused him to become a pariah.
Cursing his bloodline forever in the eyes of Fury Hill’s residents.
Do the choices we make really have such extensive consequences?
“Higher education isn’t for everyone,” I tell Lexington. “And choosing to work instead isn’t an unheard-of phenomenon. Lots of people go straight into the workforce or take gap years or live off their parents’ dime.”
“Not people who applied for college,” he says. “Not those whowantedto go.”
My pulse thickens in my throat. I don’t want to talk about this.
Don’t want to dive into how I spentyearsout west trying to make a name for myself, and even when I tried to do what others told me worked—so many swore up and down you could get a part if you made enough film executivesfeel good—I came up short.
Sevenyearsand nothing except a little exploitation to show for it.
The embarrassing thing was that Iwasgood. Acting is the only thing I’ve ever taken seriously, performance the one discipline I indulge. But out there,everyonewas good.
So I started to feel like I wasn’t. Not comparatively. Despite the logic of not wanting to base my talent on the success of others, I couldn’t help it. Every time a friend of mine from the community acting company I’d joined got a part and I went jobless, something in me died a little.
Something vital that I’d been relying on my entire life to get me through the dark thoughts. The memories of my brief time here when I was seventeen and my understanding of the world changed forever.
That feeling propelled me to drastic measures. Favors, bribes, whatever else I needed to do to get work, because I was too afraid of failing. Too afraid of the memories swallowing me whole.
Acting was how I pretended to be someone who wasn’t consumed by inaction, fear, and envy. I wasn’t the girl who’d gotten lost in the woods or who witnessed something vile. Acting was my escape.
