Prologue
The sky is still blue.
That’s what seems impossible to me. Not the fact that I’m somehow flat on my back, when just minutes earlier I was standing upright, both feet planted firmly on the ground.
Or that seconds before that, I was staring at the business end of a gun (a gun!), pointed directly at me (me!), as if I were on a movie set instead of in a throng of strangers milling about, oblivious that their lives would all soon be inextricably connected.
I blink, squinting against the electric cerulean of the sky, marveling at its continued beauty, its steadfast cheerfulness, somehow unmarred by what it just bore witness to. And then my other senses come screaming back one by one. And I’m aware of the heavy weight against my chest, a body pinning me to the asphalt, the drumbeat of my heart thudding in my ears.
Twisting my neck, I tear my eyes from the sky, and immediately wish I hadn’t.
The blood is everywhere. Or maybe it’s not, but like a piece of spinach wedged in a tooth, it draws the eye. It’s the only thing I can see.
Panic grips me. I turn to the left, my eyes frantically searching. And that’s when I see him. The top of his head, anyway.
It’s still.
Like a fruit bowl in an amateur painting.
Like the sky.
Like my breath.
I try to inhale, to fill my lungs, but I can’t, and it’s got nothing to do with the weight on my chest.
Move, I think. Or maybe I say it out loud, but I don’t know if I’m talking to myself or to the body trapping me to the ground.
Regardless, neither obeys me.
“Get off!” I shout, pushing with all my strength. And finally, I’m free. I inhale again, the thick metallic smell of blood filling my nostrils.
I don’t think it’s mine.
But I don’t know anything for sure.
Or maybe, that’s not true.
I knew this was coming, didn’t I? The signs were always there, jumbled up like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, but there just the same.
I try to stand, go to him, but my knees buckle, as I realize the other thing I know for sure—and I can’t believe I ever questioned it, even for a second.
It’s him.
It’s always been him.
Chapter 1
The office is cool and sparsely decorated. I count the plants (three), watch the second hand of the brass clock on the bookshelf make two full circles on its axis, stare at the large canvas on the wall, a lone red smear of paint in the center. I look anywhere but directly at Nora, the pristine, chignoned, straight-backed woman sitting in the executive chair across the desk from me—not because she’s flipping through my portfolio and I’ve never quite gotten comfortable with witnessing the judgment of my work, but because she’s wearing a neck scarf. Just seeing it, wrapped tightly like a noose, knotted right at her clavicle, makes my skin crawl with anxiety. How do people wear things wrapped around their throats? I’ve never understood it. Even as a kid, if my mom put me in a turtleneck, I would grasp at it, wheezing and crying and carrying on until she let me change.
I’m pretty sure I was strangled to death in a previous life.
Harrison says that’s morbid, but I once heard one of those late-night television psychics say that a lot of the fears we’re born with stem from events in our past lives. Like, if you are terrified of swimming in the ocean, maybe you drowned or were ravaged by a school of piranha or something.
Harrison also says I should stop watching so many of those late-night television psychic shows.
The room is silent, save the sharp machine-gun-fire rapping of Nora’s pen against the desktop. A pattern has emerged. She pauses the pen when she turns a page and then resumes as she gazes—thoughtfully, I hope—at the photos of my paintings.
There are thirteen art galleries in Hope Springs, Pennsylvania (excessive for a town with two thousand inhabitants, if you ask me, and I’m an artist). Only three show contemporary work, this one, and two others who have already turned down my paintings. Translation? This is kind of my last shot. But I’m hopeful, because at least here, I actually have a third-degree personal connection—my old college professor Rick Haymond called in a favor to a friend, who in turn called Nora, and now here I am.
“Mia?”
“Yes?” I say, meeting her eyes.
“Is this a portrait of . . . Keanu Reeves?”
I clear my throat. “Um . . . yes.”
Her pen stills. She looks up at me, expectantly.
“That was part of my latest series.”
She waits, and I clear my throat again.
“Have you ever watched The $25,000 Pyramid?” I ask.
“I’m sorry?”
“The game show.”
“I—I believe so.” She narrows her eyes, unsure of where this is going.
“You know how the celebrities start saying a bunch of random words, like ‘wheels, buttons, beach balls,’ and then the contestant has to guess what the category is—like, in this example: Things That Are Round?”
“OK.”
“Well, I find that fascinating—the groupings of seemingly unrelated things that actually do have something in common. That’s how I choose the themes for my series.”
She continues to stare at me, and I can’t decide if she’s perplexed or bored. “And Keanu Reeves?”
“The theme was: Things That Are Mediocre.”
Her eyes remain locked on mine, but she doesn’t respond. She reminds me of a detective on one of those cop shows, the patient one, willing to wait out the suspect. I cave. I would be a terrible criminal. “Also in that series is the orange Tootsie Pop.”
“The orange Tootsie Pop,” she repeats.
“Right, because orange isn’t bad, but it’s nobody’s favorite, right? And then, let’s see, Capri pants, store-bought tomatoes—that’s why I painted them with the sticker still on—Easter . . .” She breaks eye contact as I’m speaking so I trail off.
She stares at the image for a beat and then looks back up, her face twisted. “You think Keanu Reeves is mediocre?” she says. “But he’s so handsome and self-deprecating and . . . respectful of women.” The last phrase she emphasizes so forcefully her hand clenches into a fist.
“Yeah,” I agree lamely. Because he is all of those things, and the way she’s gushing tells me it wouldn’t be prudent to explain that it’s his lack of acting range I’m referring to and not him personally. “It was funnier when I painted it. Before . . .” I trail off again because I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Before he became some kind of national treasure?