Teen Hyde (High School Horror Story #2)(54)

I’d pulled closer to Lena as I spoke. She smelled sickly sweet, like overripe raspberries and Bath & Body Works lotion. I could hear the spit slide down her throat when she swallowed. “Okay.” Her breath tickled my face. “Okay, I can do that.”

She returned my gaze for another moment and then turned back to the computer and began a maddening flurry of keystrokes. She was possessed. It was like seeing a girl get sucked into a screen and disappear before my eyes. That was how entranced she was by the work. I watched her slice and cut reels of footage and rearrange them. She placed earbuds into her ears and replayed the bits until she made a decision about them. Occasionally, she’d twitch at what she was watching on the monitor, but mostly her face stayed neutral, businesslike.

I began pacing the room behind her. Late night hours slid into early morning. I leaned on the back of her chair and watched over her shoulder until at last she pulled the headphones from her ears and tilted her chin up to me. “It’s finished, I think,” she said.

I nodded and she pressed “play.” At the end, we had the story of three boys. Jessup Franklin, junior, “devoted” boyfriend, son of wealthy Silicon Valley parents, the one I’d called California. Alex McClung—the skeleton-faced, cigarette-toting Lucky Strike—senior, son of a respected professor at the university. Then there was the worst of them all. The face of nightmares. The smile with a forked tongue. Tate Guffrey, senior, former backup quarterback, son of a Dearborn congressman. Circus Master.

The faces flickered across the screen, each one prominently featured, zoomed in on, examined, and interspersed with taunts and jeers and girls. I was noticing that both Lena and I were missing from the reels when the final shot panned. It was Lena on her knees.

“You included yourself,” I said in a soft voice. “Why?” When there were so many girls to choose from, I wasn’t sure I understood. She hadn’t included me, after all.

“This is the part I can contribute to. This is the part of my story I get to direct. They have to watch. You’ll make them.”

She tapped the “escape” button and the video player disappeared.

Below us, the auditorium was empty, but as I stood behind Lena, I applauded. With the video clips, she’d created a movie. It was all I wanted and more. Now, they would have to come.

“It’ll work?” she asked, resting her hands in her lap and staring down at them. I could feel more than see the blush in her cheeks.

“It’s horrific,” I said. “Which is actually perfect.”

She stared up at me and I looked down at her, our eyes finding each other. And without asking, I bent down and kissed her.





NINETEEN

Cassidy

The second line had appeared sometime during the night because there was now another black mark drawn into the skin at my wrist, side by side with the first.

I knew what it meant by the wet clothes I’d found soaking in the bathtub yesterday and by the sick pit burning through the base of my stomach and chewing an ulcer there.

They were tally marks.

And if they were tally marks, I knew what the final tally would be.

Five.

My mom reached over to squeeze my hand during the chorus of “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Sometime after the song was over—I didn’t know how long—Dad tapped me on the shoulder to tell me the service was over. I realized then that I was just sitting there, staring at the cross over the pulpit with my mouth hung slightly open and my vision blurring into watercolor.

“What? Oh, sorry,” I said, startled when I looked up to find that the well-dressed, polo-wearing family beside us was trying to leave, but my knees were blocking the way. My parents shared a look over my head. I hadn’t caught a word of the sermon.

Honor and I hadn’t spoken since yesterday. Her shoulders were slumped and she stared at the ground, ignoring me with a mix of icy defiance and indifference. Not having the energy to make inroads with her, I trailed them up the aisle and out of the sanctuary as the organ played a recessional that sounded unusually melancholy to my ears today. I smoothed the wrinkles on my navy blue dress. Usually I would rush off to try to find Paisley or Ava so that we could quickly rehash what had happened that weekend and catch up on any gossip we’d missed out on before. But there was too much distance between Paisley and me, most of it put there by her, but I had to take credit for widening the gulf until there was no swimming back across it. And Ava would still be home nursing a leg that I’d helped break. She was probably BeDazzling her cast, I thought, and felt an unwelcome and bittersweet tug at my heartstrings.

Today, I just waited for the moment when my dad would start jingling the car keys and talking about traffic and I even vaguely hoped that there might be talk of waffles this Sunday given that there was no reason to care about my figure any longer.

Mom stopped the family in front of the table filled with store-bought Danishes and coffee dispensers. “Honor,” she said. “Why don’t you go find Meghan and thank her mom for helping with the Junior League bake sale the other day.”

Honor, who clearly had no interest in looking me in the eye, didn’t protest. Instead, she disappeared into the throng of churchgoers.

Mom smiled at me. She’d put her lipstick on crookedly this morning and the peaks were uneven. “Cassidy, honey, your dad and I thought that maybe it was time for you to talk to somebody. About your”—she lowered her voice—“well, about your depression. We’ve arranged for Pastor Long to meet with you.”