“Thanks, but I’m gonna stay with Rina a little longer. She needs all the support she can get right now.”
Rina’s brain boils with baffling rage, but she keeps her head down, her hands clenched, until Ben’s footsteps disappear.
“Not that this comes as a surprise to you,” Tiffany says as if replying to a conversation taking place in her mind. “She’s doing stupid crazy things all the time.”
Jumping to her feet, Rina shoves herself in Tiffany’s face and backs her against the sink. “What the hell was that about? Why did you lie about me?”
She bats her large blue eyes. “Lie?”
“The bottles! Why did you tell him they were mine?”
Tiffany cocks her head and furrows her brow in puzzlement. “Tell who, honey?”
The cut on Rina’s scalp aches when her nostrils flare. She backs away, suddenly overcome by nausea. For a moment she thinks she’s still in the car after the accident, her swollen head bobbing on her shoulders and dust rising from the busted airbag. Tiffany’s image doubles before her, and she stumbles to the side, bracing herself on a wall decorated with a massive cartoon of a smiling sun.
“Help!” Tiffany screams. “We need help!”
Someone shouts from the main corridor, and footfalls echo in crescendo. Ben jogs into the break room, his face flushed with fear when he asks Tiffany, “Everyone okay?” But the fear vanishes again, souring to a twitchy pit just as it did the first time.
“We were just talking and it looked like she was going to pass out,” Tiffany says.
Ben helps Rina to the couch, where she flops forward on her lap and hangs her head between her knees. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not drunk. I swear I’m not drunk.”
“Of course you’re not,” Ben says, patting her back. “Where the heck would you find booze around here?”
When Rina lifts her head, Tiffany is crouched in front of her with concern etched into her expression. The bottles and caps she’s been tossing haphazardly around the room are mysteriously absent, along with the one Rina was working on.
Rina grips her head and whispers. “What’s happening to me? I feel like I’m losing it.”
“Hey,” Ben says, catching her focus, “we’ve all been through a lot. You’re hurt, you’re probably dehydrated. Why don’t you join us in the break room, Tiff, and let Rina take some time for herself?”
“Thanks, but I’m gonna stay a little longer. She needs all the support she can get right now.”
Ben shrugs and leaves the room, his squelchy footsteps again fading into the distance.
When Tiffany sits beside her, Rina buries her face in her hands. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Was there never any alcohol?”
“When? During your accident?”
“No! Today! Right now, goddammit!”
“Okay! I’m sorry! Jesus Christ, Rina, I don’t know what’s going on with you.” She grunts. “I hate suggesting this, but maybe we should get you to Ms. Fell.”
“I thought you said she was trying to kill us.”
“What? No!” Tiffany laughs and throws her arm around Rina’s shoulders. “No, no. I just think she’s not going to save us — if it comes to it, I mean. But I’d completely understand if you do want to go to her. Hell, maybe I even understand why she chose you over me for the part. You’ve both been publicly disgraced. You’ve lost everything.” She hums as she stands and looks down on Rina. “Now that I think about it, you probably don’t want out of here any more than Vic does. I mean, what do you have to go back to? I know your parents kicked you out.”
Rina doesn’t answer. She can’t. Her gut whirls with such incendiary acid, she feels like it might spurt out in a skull-dissolving geyser if she doesn’t lock her jaw.
Tiffany closes their distance with a smirk. “And I know what you want. More than anything in the world, I know you wish you could go back to the way things were — back to the ice, back to the team.” She crinkles her nose. “I can help with that, you know.”
Rina scoffs, her rage shrinking into laughter. “How? Your mom? The first Princess Papillon? If she couldn’t get you the part you wanted, what makes you think she has the sway to help me?”
“My mom’s dead.”
Rina drops her gaze and mutters an apology.
“She died down here, actually. In the first Ghost. The first Ghost anyone here remembers anyway.” She giggles and shrugs when Rina meets her eyes. “At any rate, it’s not about sway. People get that wrong all the time. It’s not even about who you know. It’s about sacrifice, Rina. Are you willing to give whatever it takes to restore order and joy to your life?”
Tiffany’s voice is deeper now, silkier, and her lips move with such deft subtlety, she could have a side hustle as a ventriloquist. The voice seems to come from all sides, echoing, dizzying Rina as she whispers, “Make a wish. Anything. Something big, something small. Make a wish.”
Holding her swirling stomach, she grunts. “Fine. Get us out of here then.”
Tiffany lifts her eyebrows and beckons Rina into the main tunnel. When she places her hand upon the wall, the structure changes, softens, and pores open in the concrete, amalgamating and forming a large dark portal.
Rina approaches the hole cautiously, hand outstretched, and a salty breeze sucks on her fingertips. She pulls back, panting. “Jesus. What is that? Where does it go?”
“You only said ‘out.’ You should really be specific next time.”
“But how—”
Tiffany’s smile drops suddenly, and sorrow creases her brow. “How isn’t important. Rather, why. Why would you want to leave, Rina? This, like many paths out of here, leads only to a life of loneliness and regret. The path before you will continue to crumble and rot, just as it has since the accident. There’s nothing out there for you. No one waiting. No one missing you. You’re a brat. You’re a drunk.”
“That’s not true.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s true. Labeling you is easier than letting you explain, and your gigantic fuck-up makes people like me feel better about my failures. That’s how America sees you, how they’ll always see you.”
Rina’s heart thumps madly in her breast. Tiffany Law is annoying. She’s bitter and sardonic. She can even be vicious if she’s backed into a corner, but she’s never been so cruel.
“You’re not Tiffany.”
She snorts. “You sure about that? You don’t actually know me very well. Or anyone, really. You don’t have any friends, Rina. Or family. Or prospects. This was all you had, wasn’t it?”
Rina’s hands are cold and trembling, and the apprehensive knot she used to able to ignore on the ice feels like a fist twisting up her guts.
“I can give you what you had and more, Rina Bestler. I can help you find your way back into the spotlight. Whatever you want, it’s yours. If you’re willing to pay the price.”
“What the hell are you?
Tiffany sighs as she saunters into the kitchen. “Harlan called us ‘hyperia;’ it was better than a lot of the names we’ve gotten over the centuries. He didn’t want to make sacrifices at first either, but he realized soon enough it was in his best interest. In everyone’s best interest. But he wasn’t strong enough to handle it in the end. It’s a balance: sacrifice and success.” With a nose-scrunching grin, Tiffany spins to face her. “But you know all about that, don’t you? It’s why you don’t have anyone. You understand what it takes to be great. It takes loss. It takes independence. And the hyperia enjoy rewarding that.”
“I don’t understand. What did you do to Tiffany?”
“Tiffany couldn’t handle the price,” she says. “She wanted to be Princess Papillon just like Mommy, and we would’ve given it to her if she’d been able to deliver.”