Leanna Dove's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Lindy's words hung in the bus. Someone was teaching the singers to starve. Leanna needed a name. She sat on the edge of the bunk and asked the two people who would know. Annie was awake now in the front seat. Lyndsey lay flat, the thyme tea cooling in her hands. "Who taught you to skip meals before a show?" Leanna asked. "Tell me. I'll go talk to them." Lyndsey looked at the ceiling. "Nobody taught us," she said. "We do it ourselves." She stopped, checked herself. "I get so nauseous before a show. From nerves. I can't eat. And if I eat, I'm scared I'll throw it up." Annie nodded from her seat. Her cowgirl hat sat on her knee. "Yeah," she said, plain. "It's nobody's fault. Don't blame anyone." Leanna's plan fell apart in her hands. There was no teacher. No porch to walk up to. No one to argue with. The sickness came from inside them, from fear, and fear had no address. Lindy crouched by the bunk. She had been so sure. Her soft eyes went quiet. "Poor things," she said. "I thought it was cruelty. It's just how scared they are." Then Annie broke. Her face crumpled all at once. The plain girl who spoke in short, firm lines was gone. She cried hard, like a child. "I want Lainey," she said. "I want Lainey Willow. She hums the start of the song so I can find my voice. She's home. She's not here." Lainey was the woman who traveled with her, who sang beside her when Annie's throat locked. Without her, Annie could barely stand on a stage. Annie climbed off her seat and crossed the aisle. She wrapped both arms around Leanna and held on like a koala on a branch. Leanna felt the girl shaking against her. She did not push her off. She held her. "I've got you," Leanna said. "You don't have to sing today." Annie cried into her shoulder. Lyndsey watched from the bunk, one hand pressed to her sore belly. "That's it," Lyndsey said softly. "That's the whole thing. We're just scared." Leanna held Annie and understood. She had come looking for a villain. There wasn't one. The enemy was the fear itself, and the empty stomach it made. You couldn't confront it. You could only teach around it. She looked at Lindy over Annie's shaking shoulders. "Then no one's poisoning them," Leanna said. "The fear does it. So we teach them to eat through the fear. Both of them. Every singer like them." Lindy nodded slowly. "A small meal. Before every show. Even when the stomach says no." Annie's grip loosened. Her crying dropped to hiccups. Leanna smoothed the girl's hair and did not let go. The mystery was closed. The real work had just changed shape. She was not hunting a person now. She was teaching frightened women how to stay fed.