Book Five, Chapter 71: The Eye Candy

~Kimberly~

Before I opened my eyes, all I felt was a pang in my heart.

Something deeply, deeply painful was on the horizon. Whether it was it something in the future or the past, I didn’t know. As my eyes began to focus, all I knew for sure was that this character I was playing was real once.

They weren’t always. Most of the time, it felt like they existed within the four corners of the script alone, but in this story and some others, I knew there was more to the character.

I could never explain it to Antoine or Riley, but sometimes I could just feel it—that this was a person, a person who had lived a life and whose story I was borrowing. I could feel the character I was playing in Stray Dawn, and her story was sad and painful and not over.

The others humored me the first few times I brought it up, but, not feeling it themselves, they didn’t have much to say. I never really blamed them for that. Bobby was the only person on our team that had felt it and he mostly just remembered small details like his characters’ favorite foods or nearby relatives.

I felt them under my skin, in my bones, no matter what anyone said.

I was Kimberly Madison, the girl with no real problems, just the Eye Candy.

Others at Camp Dyer had reported something similar, and the Atlas talked about it, but it never said anything concrete. So a lot of players just claimed it wasn’t real, that it was in my mind, that maybe I was sensing something in the script, or I was being scripted.

After all, I had to have some role that made me worthwhile. I wasn’t a fighter, and I wasn’t a planner. I was a face, a big ball of emotion, and I was beautiful, so I must not know what I was talking about. Gentle nudgings from the script, that was all.

I opened my eyes, still groggy.

“Ma’am, I asked you if you knew how fast you were going,” a voice said with an unnatural slowness, like a memory in a dream.

With a jolt, I realized what was happening.

I found myself behind the wheel of some kind of convertible. There was no reason to try to figure out what kind because the brand names in Carousel were knockoffs.

To my left, a man stood beside my door, not much older than me. He had a long nose, red hair, and adult acne.

And he thought I was attractive. My trope, Social Awareness, told me that, but so did his eyes.

He was smiling—no, smirking.

Ever since coming to Carousel, I had met so many NPCs that stared unapologetically. This place had monsters and ghosts and all kinds of dangers, but somehow, it was the NPCs who couldn’t get their eyes off of me, who couldn’t resist the opportunity to flirt, that sent my skin crawling.

The question was, was this in their script and Carousel was forcing them to make me uncomfortable, or was it in their nature, and that was the reason Carousel picked them to begin with?

“I’m sorry, officer, I didn’t notice if I was speeding,” I said, keeping my tone light and playful. I could play a dumb blonde.

“When you rounded that curve, you were going at least 80 miles an hour. I eyeballed it. Do you know how dangerous that is?” the man asked as if he were my father—as if he wasn’t admonishing me for breaking the law but rather felt the need to scold me and teach me a lesson.

“You don’t think I was going that fast, do you?” I asked, on the verge of tears. “It’s just that I’m not used to a car with a big engine like this one.”

“This tin can does not have a big engine,” the man said. He took the bait. He had no name on the red wallpaper, but he looked like a normal NPC to me.

Officer Stares-Too-Long was the only name I knew for him, and sure enough, not long after that thought passed through my head, that was what appeared on the red wallpaper below his poster: Officer Stares-Too-Long.

“You want to see a big engine? Look behind you.”

I turned my head and saw his gas-guzzling police cruiser, about twice as long and one and a half times the width of my little convertible.

“Wow,” I said. “I bet you could chase down just about anything in that car.”

“Of course I could,” Officer Stares-Too-Long said. “I know this area like the back of my hand.”

He smiled at me, and suddenly, whatever desire he had to scold me seemed to fade away.

Flattery it was, then.

“Have you ever been in a real police chase?” I asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t really call it a chase. I mean, I catch them so quick, you know,” he said, clearly lying. He had done nothing but write parking tickets and yell at people for littering; I was sure of it.

“Oh my gosh, I would be so scared to chase somebody down,” I said.

“It’s part of the job,” he said. “So, what brings you to Carousel? Are you going to be tubing on the river or…” He paused for a moment as he stared at something in front of me. I followed his gaze and saw a photograph tucked up under the windshield, clearly visible, of a group of people—one of whom was me—posing in front of an old, beautiful Gothic mansion.

“So you’ve been up to Witherhold Manor, huh?” he asked.

Apparently, I had.

“Yes,” I said. “It was really scary.”

“It’s not that scary,” he said. “Mostly just old. The wind howls over the busted roof and makes a whistling sound, and people get scared for nothing. We’re always chasing teenagers out of that place.”

He wasn’t that far from being a teenager himself.

“Well, you must know everything about it, then,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I’m from Carousel. I grew up here, and the stories about that place… Mostly just good for tourism. I’m not sure if I believe the stories about the werewolves, but there are definitely some odd things that happen in these hills.”

“Like what?” I asked, ever eager, smiling innocently.

“Hikers go missing every other year, it seems like. Sometimes they disappear forever, other times they turn back up a few months later with no memory of what happened, looking like they’ve seen a ghost,” he said.

“Do you think it has something to do with the wi—with…”

“Witherhold Manor?” he said.

“Yeah, that,” I said with an embarrassed smile.

“That depends on who you ask,” he said. “They say the place is guarded by werewolves, or ghosts, or maybe the ghosts of werewolves, I don’t know. But they’ve been coming up with rumors about that place ever since the family that built it died out. You know, in fact, that place just got sold. Some rich fellow came and bought it from the town. It was supposed to be a pretty big deal; he’s going to fix it up as a historical location. We’re supposed to stay away from it. I don’t mind. Let him chase the teenagers out.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

He was trying so hard to sound cool.

“You have more important things to do, right?” I asked.

“You know it,” he said.

“Well, I don’t know how fast I was going, but I promise, promise, promise that I will go the speed limit if you just let me go, just this one time,” I said.

I smiled at him, and he blushed, then said, “I’ll let you off with a warning this time, Miss…”

“Madison,” I said. “Kimberly Madison.”

“Well, Miss Madison, welcome to Carousel, and don’t you worry about those werewolves and ghosts. The most dangerous thing here is forgetting to wear your life jacket on the river.”

He smiled and laughed at his joke, and then I laughed, too. It was funny in a dorky way. Riley would have liked it.

Eventually, he walked back to his squad car and left me sitting in my convertible on the side of the road.

Witherhold Manor, huh?

That entire interaction was Off-Screen.