Figment by Elizabeth Woods Read Free Book Online Page B

the alleys. She glanced over her shoulder as if someone was following her and then slipped into a nearby doorway. We stopped.
    “What . . . ?” Davis said. Then a man in a tuxedo with slicked-back hair ran out of the alley, too. He had something small and black in his hand, and before I realized what it was, two sharp reports echoed against the building walls around us.
    “Oh my God,” I gasped, my blood turning to ice water. I clutched at Davis.
    “Wait, look.” He pointed at a crowd of people, some in 1930s dress, streaming from the same alley the man and woman had come from. A few of them had cameras, but none looked particularly alarmed. They tramped across the cobblestones and filed into the doorway. Davis caught the sleeve of a girl wearing a sparkly flapper dress at the end of the line.
    “Hey, what’s going on?” he asked.
    “It’s a Secret Cinema performance.” She gestured at the doorway where the last of the crowd was going in. “They pick an old movie, and the actors actually perform it live in a secret location around London. They play parts of the movie on a huge screen, too. It’s so amazing.” She smiled at us and turned to follow the others.
    “Definitely not something that happens in Stanton.” Davis grabbed my hand. “Let’s check it out.”
    We ran into the building and up a narrow flight of stairs. The building appeared to be abandoned, but we found the audience clustered in a large room at the top. The woman actor in the beaded dress was now standing over the man in the tuxedo, who lay on the floor. She had the gun in her hand. Eerie music played from some hidden sound system.
    Davis wrapped his arms around me from behind and rested his chin on my shoulder as we watched the “movie” unfold in front of us. Here I was, in one of the most amazing cities on Earth, with my boyfriend, my leg finally feeling better, seeing something so different from anything in Connecticut. I twisted around to tell Davis how happy I was, when a man standing at the edge of the crowd caught my eye. He was small and slim, wearing a narrow gray suit, and he was staring at us with what looked like unusual intensity.
    “Davis,” I murmured.
    “Hmm?”
    “That guy there . . .”
    But when I looked back, the man was gone.
    “What guy?” Davis asked.
    “ Shh,” whispered the person in front of us.
    I stared at the spot where the gray-suited man had been standing, then shook my head, turning back to the action. He must have been one of the actors. “Nothing,” I said.

Six
    Every day, Davis and I were out in London. He’d wait for me in our spot by our building, and we’d get our coffee and pastry from Harold, the gap-toothed vendor with the green awning. We ambled every street we could find, sometimes strolling randomly, sometimes studying the Tube map and picking some neighborhood with an interesting name, like Bromley, and riding there on the train. I didn’t dare sneak out at night again, but when I lay in my bed and pictured Davis one floor above me, I was comforted.
    If it wasn’t for the nightmares, I’d have been perfectly happy. But each night when I closed my eyes, they claimed me, sending me back to that slick black road over and over again. Each time, I watched Davis with one hand on the wheel, and the curve of the road looming ahead. He would talk to me emphatically, gesturing, but I could never understand his words—just an infuriating gibberish. Then the crash, the impact, tumbling down the hill again and again. Always, I woke up as the car hit the dirt with a thud.
    Davis had been in London for four days when I kissed him good-bye in his empty flat upstairs one evening. Behind us, a gray blanket I’d snuck up was mussed, evidence of our long, sensuous afternoon. I tried to comb my hair with my fingers and rubbed at my chafed lips. “How do I look?” I asked.
    He leaned over to kiss me one last time. “Like a girl who’s spent the whole afternoon alone with her