Cate raised her hand and shushed the crowd. Even the animals of Killykeen seemed to heed her. She looked showered, refreshed, invincible again, her buzzed grey hair like steel. I remembered Henrik’s talk about how much she was sacrificing for this movie. What was it like to give your all like that? Could I learn to do that with my music? If so, where did I start?
Cate called, “Action!”
Shoshanna sprang into her role, and I couldn’t help looking for Eamon. Shouldn’t he be here? Ready to step into the scene?
Shoshanna ran up the shore, toward us, out of breath and devastated, slipping into the water, scuffing against roots. She collapsed on the shore near the mighty tree that Cate had been inspecting earlier. Shoshanna—Sevyn—drank from the water and ate berries from the weeds.
She fell into a twisting, terrible sleep. Sevyn thrashed, burning with fever, dreaming about her brother getting gnawed upon. From the scene I’d read, I knew she could see through his eyes, feel his pain—and do nothing. I shivered.
Cate called, “Cut!”
She gave Shoshanna notes, and Shoshanna went back to her mark. They taped it again and again. In between two takes, Ryder put his foam fantasy axe on my arm and I looked down to find it was actually his hand. He was still, focused.
“Are you scared?” I asked.
“Maybe.” His voice didn’t sound afraid; he was deep in thought.
“Ry,” I started, “does this scene make you think of Moss?”
“It makes me think about that nightmare I have. The one where you don’t stop him, and he drives away with me.”
I knew about his recurring dream. His therapist had marched the whole family in to talk about it without Ryder present, although my brother had never spoken to me about it before. His therapist had gotten a few details about the dream out of him, but not the whole truth, which is what had worried her. I leaned closer and brushed the side of his face where the very last of his sweet, fine baby hair was blending into dark locks. I don’t know what came over me—perhaps it was the urgency of only having a few breaths between takes, but I pushed forward. “What happens in your dream after the van drives off?”
“I wake up,” he said.
I sat back in my chair, taking in the way his eyes narrowed on Shoshanna, his tone mature and matter-of-fact. He was lying, keeping his pain secret.
The real Thorne legacy.
“Sevyn saves Evyn, doesn’t she?” I asked, desperate to help my brother with his pain, even if only through the roles we resembled in our grandma’s book. “In the end, she saves him.”
“Eyeball,” he whispered because they were about to start filming again. “You have to read it to find out!”
I grabbed his hand, which wasn’t small anymore and yet still little-kid sticky.
“Action!” Cate called.
Shoshanna went through her routine once more. She was tired and cold at this point, and I think a few of her stumbles weren’t fake. When she collapsed on the tree and shivered, her head thrown back on the gnarled roots, I believed she was witnessing something horrible in her mind. That her whole life was coming to some crucial breaking point.
I believed her because I had been there—sitting on the edge of the sandbox with Moss’s blood under my nails, answering the cops’ questions, my dad still missing. He’d turned off his phone to finish a chapter, and by the time he’d pulled up to the playground and listened to the police officer’s message, we’d been at the hospital for more than an hour.
Shoshanna turned her face into the tree and started crying, which I’m pretty sure Cate hadn’t told her to do. But it felt right.
And everything changed.
One minute, Shoshanna was shaking in her fantasy garb, the next she was Sevyn, a girl who’d never been touched by anyone. A cursed girl who’d lost the only person who had ever been there for her: her brother. And now she knew he was in pain, but she couldn’t reach him.
I swear I could hear the harp solo from “Cosmic Love” and Florence singing of misery and light, and then the lights ebbed a tiny bit brighter, signaling that the CGI moon had come out, throwing silver brilliance over the whole scene.
Nolan leaned from the side of the tree as though he’d stepped from the bark—and he wasn’t Eamon. He was tan skinned, his ears blended into his short hairstyle. His whole arrow-sharp body was on show but for some shorts that looked like they’d been stitched from leaves. He crouched near Sevyn, watching her violent fever with an intensity that held the light.
And then he bent down and swept her into his arms, carrying her to the lake.
I’m not sure anyone was breathing. I wasn’t.
Nolan walked until he was waist deep. He lowered her into the water, and she gasped from the cool shock. From the view screen beside me, I could see the crane cam’s close up on Sevyn’s face…the moment she woke, finding herself wrapped in someone’s arms. Her fear came naturally, wonderfully. She reached up and placed a hand on Nolan’s chest. There were no bolts of lightning. No sizzles from the storm inside.
Just touch.
Sevyn’s eyes closed again, not in pain this time, but in the kind of release that only comes after a lifetime of imprisonment.
“Cut,” Cate whispered, and no one spoke.
Ryder sniffed beside me, and I found tears lining my eyes as well. Henrik and Cate leaned close to the monitors. She murmured, “Check the gate.”
Shoshanna and Eamon trudged out of the lake in silence.
Cate’s face was hidden in the playback for a minute. Another minute. The magic hour was definitely gone now, the sky
