Chapter 1 - The Shoe Above My Head
The marble never felt cold through my dress until my cheek found it. That was the first clear thing. Warm light from the wall sconces washed down the white panels and pooled on the black-and-white floor, and underneath that warmth the tile pressed hard against my face and ribs. Glass glittered everywhere around my hands. I could feel one small shard bite into the heel of my palm when I tried to push up, and I stopped trying.
Above me, she was still standing. The woman in the long magenta dress had her mouth open in a shout I couldn't fully hear through the ringing in my ears. Her dark hair was pulled tight in a low bun, a few strands loose with sweat. In her right hand she held a beige high-heeled shoe high over her head, the thin heel pointed down at me. The light caught the sequins on my own sleeve and the smear of blood on my forearm. I didn't understand how fast it had happened.
My name is Elena Ruiz. I was twenty-eight and face-down on a hallway floor.
The double doors at the end of the hall stood open to the dark outside. Cold air moved in around my ankles. I heard footsteps then, hard and fast on marble, not the soft slide of party shoes but someone running. The woman above me heard it too. Her head snapped toward the sound, her mouth still open, her arm still raised. The shoe cast a short shadow across my back. I tried to lift my head and a fresh sting cut across my cheek where something had already scraped it.
He came through the doors in a black tuxedo with a bow tie slightly crooked, short dark hair and stubble, breathing hard. For a half-second his eyes went from me on the floor to her standing over me. She turned her whole body toward him, swinging that beige shoe sideways off its arc above me. I pressed my forehead back to the tile because there was nowhere else to go with broken glass under my knees and blood drying tacky on my fingers.
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I wanted to say stop. I wanted to say I hadn't touched anything, that I hadn't meant to knock it over. My throat worked and nothing came out except a thin breath that moved dust on the marble. My left hand stayed curled around nothing, palm up, a cut open across the knuckles. The woman's shadow fell over me again as the man reached her, his hands coming up to block the shoe. Their shoes scuffed glass. Something tinkled and rolled.
The last thing I registered before they collided over me was how loud the silence felt in that hallway. No music from the party. No voices. Just his hurried steps stopping short, her sharp intake of breath, the faint shift of glass under my weight, and the cold air still coming in through the open doors behind him.
