Fan Casting Alexis Barras in Dead of Winter - A Novel

It’s the woman with shoulder-length hair. Her fringe, which is lighter than her skin tone, grazes over her eyebrows. Two moles dot her left cheek. There’s something off about her and I can’t quite decide what it is. She’s no older than I am—midtwenties at the most—but crease lines border the corners of her mouth. She’s the kind of person I could imagine talking eagerly and laughing freely, but she’s hunched in the corner of the room, between an old bookcase and the seat the tall, shaggy man occupies, her knees pulled up to her chest. Until she spoke, she had very nearly vanished into the furniture. I’m struck by the idea that that was something she welcomed. That she would be invisible if she could.