My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(33)

Her plan is to wait until Theo Mondragon throws Letha down in the tall grass. Then Jade’ll step into frame, having filched a piece of rebar up from the scrap pile, limbered an axe up from a stump. There’s always an axe around when you need it. If there’s one thing horror movies have taught her, it’s that.

For now, though, she just lips her new cigarette, knows better than to spark up.

Already couples are traipsing out to the cars, steaming up the windows. Meaning all the beds inside must be occupied.

Normally, in a town the size of Proofrock, there’d be even money that she’d have gone to seventh-grade homecoming with one of those naked backs in the front seat, that she’d have a secret matching tattoo with the prom queen who’s just bare feet-on-glass, that she’d have written love notes to whoever’s in that car with the squeaky springs. Guy or girl.

There’s nothing normal about Jennifer Daniels, though.

By seventh grade she was already the death metal girl, the D&D girl, the devilchild, practically was the walking, talking cover for Sleepaway Camp II. She knew all the songs the other kids’ parents knew, had memorized all the movies those parents had screamed to in their own junior high, and she could reel them out on command, from the slightest provocation, like weaving a cloak of protection around her, and pulling tight.

Anyway, she doesn’t need the stupid rituals of parties like these, does she? All the laughter is nervous and forced, all the come-ons and invitations so inelegant.

It’s better to just watch, she tells herself. It’s better to hide in the trees, part the leaves, take notes in her head, not missing a single thing, because you never know what’s going to matter.

And then when it’s time, she’ll step out with that sharp piece of rebar, step out and drive it through a thick fatherly chest, and the blood is going to mist across her graduating class’s faces, and they’re going to thank her, because this night could have gone the complete other way.

Jade can see it all in her head, from every angle.

Hours later the bonfire is down to embers, though, and nothing’s happened yet, except in her head. There’s less cars, but there’s no dragon silhouette taking shape in the shadows.

She taps her knuckle on her hard plastic cheek like a metronome, to anchor herself in the moment, to stay awake, and, finally, thirty minutes before midnight, ten minutes after telling herself screw it, the side door off the garage opens, spills thready blue light.

Ah.

They’re watching movies in there, then. Horror movies, probably. What else would you watch in a garage, with a group, at this time of night?

It’s something she’s seen, Jade knows—she’s seen everything twice—but still, she wants worse than anything to just catch a glimpse, to make the movie out from a single frame. One of the Child’s Play s, maybe? Ringu? Dialing all the way back to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? She wants worse than anything to speak up from the back of the garage, let them in on the true story of this cursed production, on the trivia about the movie’s limited engagement in Italy, about how the soundtrack in the theatrical release isn’t the same as the one that was released on VHS. For reasons she can explain and trace and unfold for however long they’ll sit there listening.

Wasn’t meant to be, though. Either she’s one of the flock, or she knows horror movies. Not both. And they’re probably jeering at the effects anyway. Overplaying their reactions to the jumpscares. Not even paying the right kind of attention.

Jade’s glad not to be in there. She lifts her mask to spit, and when the eyeholes settle down again like binoculars, the doorway opens. A girl steps into it, two girls, three girls now, the second helping the first.

The second is Letha Mondragon in a pair of bright white shorts she must have borrowed at the party, since she didn’t have them on at the pier. And of course the second one is her.

She would never be stumbling drunk like the first one obviously is. But she would keep the drunk one safe.

The third one is Bethany Manx, the Jeep driver, the principal’s daughter, always trying to shake that mantle off.

Jade can tell it’s her from her rail-thin profile, her mod cut, longer in front than back, and the flash of silver from her mouth: the tongue stud Daddy Dearest doesn’t know about, that she only, famously, puts in for get-togethers like this.

Bethany peels off, has some errand back at the cars, leaving Letha and the drunk one—it’s Tiffany Koenig. She’s throwing up into the tall grass by one of the cars, which, if scuttlebutt heard over bathroom stalls is right, is kind of her party trick.

Letha is patiently threading Tiffany K’s hair back from the puke.

The good thing about people throwing up outside is that the janitor doesn’t have to clean it up. In the great outdoors, raccoons are the janitors. And they love their job.

After it’s over and Tiffany K’s crying—you do that when it comes out your nose as well as your mouth, you do that when you panic that you’re never going to be able to breathe again —Letha stands her up, steadies her a bit, and starts to lead her into the dark house, to clean up.

Tiffany K pulls away. It’s embarrassing, looking like this.

Vomit stringing between your fingers. Cheeks wet with hot tears.

This party is happening right by a giant sink, though…

Letha looks around for help, for guidance, for Bethany who’s nowhere, and finally just leads Tiffany K carefully around the coals of the bonfire. Because unsteady people shouldn’t lean out over the water alone, she takes her shoes off and squelches into the mud of the shore with Tiffany K, helps her splash her face.