Page 25 of 6 Clues Your Nemesis Loves You

“He’s more petite than slender,” Delilah adds, earning herself a scowl from me.

“He prefers the term slight,” E offers loudly from behind me.

“Fudge you all,” I say since Max is here. “I have more muscle than E.”

“Maybe,” E admits. “But it’s too bad you don’t still have those braces. Your face was terrifying back then. Scarier than our gory tableau.”

Unable to give him the finger, I growl. Our Jaws-inspired Blood and Guts tableau is perfectly scary as is. He also knows having braces in my early teens was no picnic. Being the only one of my brothers to have braces was equivalent to walking around with a “kick me” sign on my back. E would regularly shade his eyes at dinner and shout, “The glare off those fuckers is intense. I can’t sit across from him.”

Then Des would make a crack like, “He’ll never get kissed with those train tracks. Guy’s gonna die a virgin.”

The assholes can suck on my straight teeth now.

“Sadie, babe.” Des grunts from his spot in front of me. “Can you pause riling Lennon and take the picture? My arm might fall off.”

His arm falling off would actually be a plus. Our gory tableau would go from grotesque to monstrous.

“But riling Lennon is so fun,” Sadie says, earning an eyebrow raise from me.

Laughing, she stands back, intensely focused as she snaps some shots with her phone.

Max wiggles in his spot. “Does it look gross from there?”

She lowers her cell, grinning her face off. “The grossest. We’ll for sure win.”

“Let’s see it.” I nod to her since my head’s the only thing I can move without ruining my makeup, although it’s more of a stiff twitch. It’s a chilly afternoon, and I’m wearing a bathing suit.

She comes over and holds up her phone, and hell yeah. My homage to Maggie—the little shark who hummed the theme to Jaws and stole my heart at nineteen—is hideous perfection.

Behind us is the outline of a wooden boat, which Des cut out and Max and E painted. They also painted the drop cloth in layers of blue for the water. Max is lying on his side, in a wetsuit to keep warmer than us grown-ups, with his bottom leg folded behind him at the knee. There’s beet pulp, chunky beets, and beet juice covering the joint, as though his lower leg was bitten off. E is behind me, his bottom half covered by a painted blue tarp to simulate treading water. His hand is wrapped up and gooped to look like it was bitten off at the wrist.

I’m the centerpiece, standing in the mouth of a ferocious great white shark created in papier-mâché by E, Max, and Sadie, with beets oozing from my abdomen. An intestine built from panty hose is hanging out of me for effect. Then there’s Desmond. He’s wrestling the shark with his knife lodged in the mighty fish’s throat. His savage expression suggests he’s either a surprisingly good actor, or he’s picturing the shark as our father.

“It looks great,” Delilah says, hugging a bucket filled with beet goop. “Judging starts in a few minutes, so nobody move. But Max needs a bit more gore on his knee.”

She takes her bucket to him, wearing plastic gloves that are doing nothing. Beet juice is up to her elbows and inside the gloves. Her hands will be blood red for a week.

From my position, I scan the other seven tableaux setup in the town square. All of them did some version of a zombie apocalypse, except for a creepy clown scene inspired by It that might give me nightmares. Smartly, they fenced off this event and set up a bouncer at the entrance, ensuring only people ages fourteen and up can enter, unless they’re accompanied by an adult.

Along Main Street, local farmers have set up booths, promoting their beets with beet baked goods, beet savory delights, beet sauces, beat marinades, and the like. All beets all day, thanks to Maggie’s ingenuity.

“Showtime,” Sadie calls with a little clap and full-teeth smile. “Maggie’s on her way.”

Sadie and Delilah skedaddle to the side, hitting play on the Jaws soundtrack as they go. Max starts moaning and flailing on the ground. E’s making a sound that’s a cross between a yowl and a crazed laugh. Guy can’t even get into character. Des still looks murderous. He definitely pictures the shark as Dad, which has me thinking about the two texts on my phone I still haven’t answered. I’m waiting for a sign to tell me if I should block his number, or text him to go fuck off, or agree to talk. So far, the sign gods have given me zilch.

Getting bitten in half by a wooden shark is an excellent diversion.

I amp up my performance, going for the shocked victim—frantic face, silent screams.

Then I see Maggie.

I break character. Just for a second, but damn. She’s wearing skintight dark jeans and a throwback green sweater that matches her eyes. Her straight hair flirts with her shoulders, those bonfire strands glinting in the late-afternoon sun. She’s with two other judges, assessing the tableau beside us, all of them writing on their clipboards. Maggie tells the participants how great they are. She’s lying. It’s a subpar effort compared to our masterpiece, and I can’t wait to see her reaction to our creation.

I resume my silent screaming.

She steps in front of us and jolts. Her emerald eyes dart from Max to E to Des, her grin growing as she takes in the gore-tastic scene I created for her. When her sights lock on me, fondness bursts from her gaze. I wink at her and amp up my acting, groaning in fake pain. She snorts, then laughs fully—so hard she has to walk around and catch her breath.

Good-natured shrieks and laughs drift from other displays. A headshake later, Maggie jots notes on her clipboard and sneaks another look at me. Pretty sure there’s heat in her steady perusal.