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Even out on the stairwell, Juliet swears she can feel the steam. Hands suddenly clammy, the silky floral dress in her grip seeming to sweat just the same.
It could be nerves. She knows who’s in that locker room, taking a good, long shower before she gets put through hell.
She knows everything about her.
Kate.
All that knowledge slows her down, makes her feel sluggish. She should fight that feeling off and she knows it. She was supposed to get these clothes into the locker before Tom brought her in.
But she’s running behind. So his voice approaches, and she sees his face through the criss-cross wire covering the heavy door’s small window.
Heavy and impenetrable, like the whole damn complex. Cages of all kinds. None built to hold Tom, who jostles the doorknob and breaks free onto the landing. He sees her right away, face lighting up even as it falls.
“You’re late,” he scolds.
“Ben,” she says, and it’s enough.
Tom humphs, and adjusts a ball of dirty clothing tucked under his arm. Reaches the key towards her.
“Here—she’s in the shower.”
Juliet nods, taking it from him. She pretends to fumble with the lock the first time, so by the time she’s heading inside he’s already gone, disappeared down the same stairs she’d just come up.
The locker room is too warm, too damp. Her sneakers slide a little on the tile. She passes the corner which rounds into the washroom entrance, eyes lingering there.
She knows everything about Kate—almost. Because she can’t picture what she looks like, drawn behind a curtain.
Body taut and dripping, hands held above her head. Eyes drifting lazily shut.
Juliet keeps walking, passing locker aisles. Slowly, so she doesn’t slip and fall on her face in the middle of her empty fantasy. A void where the image of Kate should be.
If she slips and falls, everything will be ruined. The dress will be ruined, sopping with mildewy floor condensation. And then what would Kate wear?
Another aisle, another thing she doesn’t know.
She wonders which shower stall Kate chose. She wonders whether she faces the falling stream, or turns away from it. She wonders how precisely she shampoos her hair, how long she leaves the conditioner in.
She wonders if the freckles she could make out smattered across her face—even in Mikhail’s blurry, salvaged photos—spread over the rest of her skin, too. Her chest and shoulders, stomach and hips.
Her thighs. Her tight, strong thighs.
Another aisle, and Juliet licks her lips. She’s peckish all of a sudden.
This is the aisle, though. The last one. She sees the open locker, and trots over. Hangs the straps of the dress over a hook, and registers the towel folded in the bottom of the locker.
Oh no. If Juliet has the dress, and the towel, and Tom has Kate’s old clothes…
A creaking, clanking sound ripples through the pipes in the ceiling, and Juliet’s head snaps to the end of the aisle. The sound of running water fades to the sound of dripping water fades to nothing at all.
What does Kate have?
“Hello?” comes an unsure, almost fearful voice. The small, lingering note of bravery within it sounding shrill, like it’s holding on for dear life. About to be flung into the wide open sky.
Juliet pulls her gaze in, back to the dress. Back to the towel.
She can’t leave now, can she? Leave Kate to traverse the locker room nude, poking into every aisle before she finds the right one.
She can’t stay, can she?
At least if she leaves, Kate will be alone while she’s traversing the locker room nude.
“Hello?” comes Kate’s voice again—wavering. That note of bravery gone.
Juliet sighs through her nose, and picks up the towel. She clutches it in her hands as she retraces her steps, moving quickly now.
If she falls, she falls. Maybe she’ll hit her head and go unconscious, and Kate will come get the towel from her lifeless form. The next best thing, to really being alone.
So Juliet has to assume. Mostly—lately—she’s just been alone.
The U-shaped hallway leading into the washroom beckons like a maze. She thinks about the hedges in The Shining, and wonders if she’s Wendy. If she’s Jack, and Kate’s Wendy.
It doesn’t really matter. For she doesn’t get lost long enough to figure it out, instead being plunged so fast into lethargic fluorescence.
She knows she should fight it off again, and she does. Keeping her attention on the single closed curtain, the stall all the way at the far end.
(One more thing she knows.)
She should announce herself, somehow. Give a warning.
But what, exactly? Echo back Kate’s hello? Insist she comes in peace? Offer to bring her to their leader?
It’s where she’s headed, anyway.
Juliet saw him, setting up that romantic picnic breakfast on the beach. She wants to be glad the attention’s off her for a minute. But it only makes her sick.
She’s about to settle on something to say—really, she is—when Kate flings open the shower curtain.
She stands firm like a tree, and she has freckles all over. (One more thing Juliet knows.) Darkened hair propelling rivulets over the swell of her breasts, the lean lines of her flank. Her hands hang at her sides, halfway curled into fists. So different from the void, yet somehow even more ominous. Even more expansive.
For one short moment, her eyes settle on Juliet with a glimmer of curiosity.
Then, the color falls out of her face, and she screams.
“No,” protests Juliet, stepping toward her.
She jumps backwards, hands flying out as if to protect herself from a blow. It makes Juliet’s ribs ache, in a way she can’t quite identify.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I brought you a towel.”
“A towel?” Kate sputters, face crinkling up as if in distaste.
Juliet holds it up, shaking it out. “Tom took your clothes, and I thought—”
Kate snatches it away from her, and her distaste morphs into disdain. She winds the towel around herself, going too fast. Dropping her hold on one of the corners a few times before she’s able to tuck it in.
“Well, I have it. So you can go.”
“Okay,” says Juliet weakly, but she doesn’t move.
Kate waits for a moment, then rolls her eyes. “Fine. I’ll go.”
She stomps through the water puddling around the drain in the center of the room, clinging the towel to her chest. Her shoulder clips ever so slightly against Juliet’s as she passes.
It’s way too hot, too muggy. She’s not getting used to it. It’s getting worse and worse. But she stays there, until she hears them come for Kate.
She stays there, and runs over and over all the things she knows. Patricide and a perilous run from the law. The budding romances with Jack and James, all the ways they might be used against her.
(And—more likely—vice versa.)
She stays there, and remembers how Kate looked at her.
She stays there, and knows one more thing.
She knows that someday, Kate will look at her like that again.