If We Were Villains: A Novel

The following night’s dress rehearsal was our first on a finished set. Twelve grand Tuscan columns made a half circle on the top platform, and a flight of shallow white steps led down into what we called the Bowl: a flat faux-marble disc on the floor, eight feet in diameter, where the infamous assassination took place. Behind the columns the scrim glowed softly, cycling through a full spectrum of celestial colors, from dusky twilight purple to the orange blush of sunrise.

A new set always presented challenges we hadn’t anticipated during early rehearsals, and we all returned to the Castle short-tempered and sore. James and I went immediately up to the Tower.

“Is it just me, or did that run somehow take about ten hours?” I asked, falling backward onto my bed. The mattress caught me and I groaned. It was after midnight and we’d been on our feet since five.

“Feels like it.” James sat on the edge of his bed and ran his hands through his hair. When he lifted his head again he looked tousled and tired, even a little bit ill. There wasn’t enough color in his face.

I propped myself up on my elbows. “You okay?”

“Why?”

“You seem really, I don’t know, worn out.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Something bothering you?”

He blinked at me, as if he hadn’t understood the question, then said, “No. It’s nothing.” He stood and pulled his shoes off.

“Are you sure?”

He turned his back to me as he unbuttoned his jeans and let them slide to the floor. “I’m fine.” His voice sounded flat, wrong, as if someone had struck a false note on the piano. I pushed myself off the bed and crossed slowly to his side of the room.

“James,” I said, “don’t take this the wrong way, but I kind of don’t believe you.”

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “I never in my life / Did hear a challenge urged more modestly. You know me too well.” He folded his jeans and dropped them on the foot of his bed.

“So tell me what’s wrong.”

He hesitated. “You have to promise me you’re going to keep it to yourself.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“You won’t want to,” he warned.

“James,” I said, more urgently, “what are you talking about?”

He didn’t answer—he just pulled his shirt off and stood there in his underwear without speaking. I stared at him, bewildered and inexplicably anxious. A dozen different questions tangled together in my mouth before my own awkwardness made me glance down and I realized what he was trying to show me.

“Oh my God.” I seized both his wrists and pulled him toward me, the abashment of the previous moment forgotten. Bruises in raw, vivid blue spotted the undersides of his arms, all the way to his elbows. “James, what is this?”

“Finger marks.”

I let go of his left arm like I’d been electrocuted. “What?”

“The assassination scene,” he said. “When I stab him the last time, he goes down on his knees and grabs my arms and … well.”

“Has he seen this?”

“Of course not.”

“You have to show him,” I said. “He might not even know he’s hurting you.”

He looked up at me with a flash of annoyance. “When was the last time you left a mark like this on someone and didn’t know you were doing it?”

“I’ve never left a mark like that on anyone, ever.”

“Exactly. You’d know if you had.”

I realized I was still holding his other wrist and abruptly let go. He rocked backward, unbalanced, as if I’d been pulling him forward before. He brushed his fingers along the inside of his arm, biting hard on his bottom lip like he was afraid to open his mouth, afraid of what might come out.

Suddenly I was furious, my pulse throbbing softly in my ears. I wanted to give Richard ten bruises for every one he’d put on James, but I could never hope to hurt him, not like that, and my own inefficacy made me angrier than anything else.

“You have to tell Frederick and Gwendolyn that he’s doing this,” I said, more loudly than I meant to.

“Like a snitch?” James said. “No, thank you.”

“Just Frederick then.”

“No.”

“You have to say something!”

He pushed me back a step. “No, Oliver!” He glanced away, into some empty corner of the room. “You promised me you wouldn’t say a word, so don’t.”

I felt a little prick of pain, as if something had stung me. “Tell me why.”

“Because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction,” he said. “If he knows how easily he can hurt me, what’s going to make him stop?” His eyes darted back to my face, a glint of gray. Imploring and apprehensive. “He’ll give up if he doesn’t think it’s working. So promise me you’re not going to say anything.”

My guts clenched like someone had kicked me in the stomach. What I wanted to say was elusive, inapproachable, just out of reach. I grasped the nearest bedpost and leaned on it. My head was heavy with confusion, fury, and some other fierce thing I couldn’t identify.

“James, this is so fucked up.”

“I know.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Nothing. Not yet.”