Book Five, Chapter 111: E Cola

Anna was sitting in a chair, crying, her hand held out in front of her like she was getting a manicure, but she wasn’t.

Bobby was inspecting her injuries.

Kimberly was by her side as Bobby took off the makeshift bandage she had fashioned.

The reveal was stomach-churning.

She was missing the pinky and ring finger of her left hand. Even with all of her Grit, she was in pain.

“Bobby, get that thing wrapped up now!” Kimberly screamed.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” he said, rushed, nervous.

We were Off-Screen.

We had been Off-Screen for a few minutes.

That was not going to work. I hated myself for thinking it. I looked at Anna’s fragile, pained expression, her tears, and the blood soaked into her clothes.

“I’m bringing us On-Screen,” I said. “Everyone stay in character!”

I brought up my camera and pointed it at Anna; then, I moved to the side to get a better angle so that Kimberly would share the screen better.

“Don’t you dare,” Kimberly screamed. “She’s in shock.”

I started to lower the camera, but the sight of Anna’s injury reminded me of the stakes.

We needed to show the audience that we cared about her and that we were the type of people to help in a crisis.

Anna was the main character, and the more we could convince the audience that we cared for her, the more likely we were to succeed. We couldn’t skip over this vital character moment.

I felt inhuman. I didn’t blame Kimberly for wanting me to buzz off. Normally, we could just blame Carousel for pressing record and bringing us On-Screen at the worst times. Having to do it myself, having to exploit Anna’s injury, felt awful.

But it had to be done.

“Establish that we care about her. In character in five, four, three, two,” I said aloud.

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“Everything is going to be okay,” Kimberly cooed in Anna’s ear as she stroked her forehead.

Anna was not moving. She wasn’t dying. She was doing her best to stay calm.

The tears rolled down her cheeks.

Kimberly glared into the camera. “Do you have to do that right now?” she yelled.

I took a step back and then focused the camera on Bobby. Antoine was handing him some gauze from a med kit. Bobby took it and began wrapping Anna’s hand.

“This injury is substantial,” he said. “We need to get you to a hospital. I can’t treat you. My background is in animal medicine. I can patch up the wound for now, bu—”

“No!” Anna screamed. I didn’t think she would speak. I just hoped she was ready. “Not a hospital. Not a hospital. They keep records for years. They’ll report it. No hospital.”

“Come here,” Kimberly said. “It’s going to be okay. No one is going to do anything. Is there a man after you now? A boyfriend?”

Anna looked at her, too afraid to say.

“A stalker?” Kimberly asked. “Is it a stalker?”

Anna didn’t answer directly. She stared forward, her pain disappearing because of Bobby’s healing, but to my eye, it looked like she was lost in a memory.

■ STOP

That would work.

Stopping on a suggestion that seemed to trigger some response from her. That would be enough.

“Good thinking with the boyfriend/stalker thing,” I said.

Kimberly helped Anna to her feet and wrapped an arm around her.

“Come on,” she said. “The showers are this way.”

They walked past me and headed toward the employee bathrooms.

I was left with Logan, Bobby, and Antoine.

We just stared at each other.

“We needed that shot,” I said. “It’ll matter.”

“I know,” Antoine said. “Kimberly was just lost in the moment.”

He started cleaning up the soiled bandage that Anna had come with.

Logan, who had stayed out of the shot, was holding the book Anna had brought with her. It was the same Carousel tragedies book I was familiar with. He had it opened and said, “September 29. That’s when the carbon monoxide accident happens. Hmm.”

He shut the book and carried it with him back toward the offices.

Bobby stared at me.

“How’d I do?” he asked.

“You did great, Bobby,” I said. “You did great… Anna was talking about hospital records. This guy tracks you down from any record, I guess. He has unlimited time.”

Bobby bent down and grabbed the newspaper Anna was holding in her other hand.

“That’s unfortunate,” he said, as he stared at it.

He turned it around.

“CRIME MUSEUM UNEARTHS GRUESOME DISCOVERY” was the front-page story.

It was the paper from two days in the future.

“Guess he knows we’re here with the tapes,” Bobby said. “But the headline hasn’t changed.”

“Could be it won’t change until it is too late for the headline to come true like in Back to the Future,” I said.

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“Or future artifacts are just objects. They don’t change at all,” he said.

I nodded. “Guess we’ll see.”

Anna had appeared outside the museum minutes before she broke in. Antoine found her while he was waiting for us.

When he came in to talk to us, he signaled she was here.

It turned out that time had been different for her. Out of mercy or in an effort to preserve production value, Carousel had taken Anna off the board after the dance disaster. She wasn’t wandering around in pain for half a day.

Antoine only had a few moments to prep her for her introductory scene.

She had performed admirably.

I had pictured the moment we saw Anna and Camden again as being triumphant and cathartic.

These were my childhood friends: Anna had lived next to my grandparents and me, and Camden had spent nearly every weekend at my house during middle school so that he could get away from babysitting his siblings.

It didn’t just feel like we were rescuing people—it felt like we were also rescuing my happiest memories. My innocence, in a way.

But as I looked at Anna, and she was crying, all I could think was that there were still so many ways we could screw it up. This was not a victory. It was a tease.

We had not saved her yet.

But we would.

The downside of Anna participating in her own rescue was that she didn’t get a break.

To her, she had literally just fought for her life across multiple different interactions with a savage serial killer.

When she finally got to a place where she was safe—or at least safe-ish—she wept for half an hour. They were tears of joy, but they still felt so painful to watch.