by Mia Archer
There was something ominously final about the way she said that. I glanced out the window. I got the feeling nothing would get me out of this. Which wasn’t good considering what might be lurking out there waiting for me to be stupid enough to leave my dorm at night.
“You really don’t understand,” I said.
I could only think about that werewolf. How it had stared at me as it ran its clawed fingers down the window. How it’d looked like it would enjoy nothing more than to snack on me. How that grin seemed to say it was fucking with me, and only letting me off for the night because it enjoyed the thought of its prey hiding in terror thinking about our next meeting.
“You can’t hide in the dorm your entire college life,” Carrie said. “You have to go out and have fun, and I know Kirsten is going to be perfect for you.”
I opened my mouth to tell her that I didn’t think I was going to be perfect for her friend if I was turned into a diced meat on my way out to whatever party she was dragging me to, but then stopped.
Her friend had been at that theater. She’d faced down a werewolf if the rumors were to be believed.
“Do you really think she’s going to be there?” I asked.
“Of course she’s going to be there,” Carrie said. “What better way to get over a crazy experience like that than getting totally blasted so you don’t have to think about it?”
I wasn’t entirely certain about the logic there. Whatever. If this girl was so into drinking that she needed to do it to forget about what’d happened that was fine as long as I knew she was going to be at that party.
“Fine,” I finally said. “If she’s going to be there then I’m in.”
Carrie grinned and tossed me some things from her closet. A sparkly tank top that plunged way too low and a pair of shorts that looked so impossibly tight that I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to move in the things.
Okay, so maybe I’d lied just a little bit about some of the weight I had or hadn’t gained since the beginning of the year. I sighed. I really hoped I didn’t have much of a muffin top in these shorts.
I told myself the only reason I was interested in going to that party was to talk to that girl about werewolves, but there was also a part of me, a very small part of me mind you, that enjoyed the idea of looking good for this girl.
Hey, can you blame me? She was a total hottie. I figured if I was going to be risking a werewolf eviscerating me to get to this girl then the least I could do was look cute for her.
I might be dead soon enough, but it’s not like I was dead yet, to paraphrase an ancient Monty Python skit.
Besides, who knew? I might actually have fun at this party while I tried to pump this girl for information. It might be the last bit of fun I ever had before I died a messy and painful death, but you couldn’t have everything.
12
Kirsten
I sat in the corner nursing a drink. There were plenty of people around me having a good time, but I was left out.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the theater. All I could see was people getting clawed by that fucking werewolf. All those people had been there thinking they were going to have a fun time at a horror retrospective, and instead they’d seen something way more terrifying and real than any movie.
It was the same here tonight. People having a good time, oblivious to the horror lurking on campus.
“What’s wrong with you?” one of the players asked, his words slurring.
I looked him up and down. He had the looks of a guy who’d been pretty good at basketball in East Bumfuck, and he hadn’t gotten the memo that college ball was going to be about as good as it got before he went off to rejoin dear old Dad’s insurance business where he talked endlessly about the days when he was playing college ball and could pull any cheerleader he wanted.
Well, almost any cheerleader.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, buddy,” I said. “Stacy over there might be more interested though.”
“Oh come on,” the guy said. “You can’t tell me you aren’t curious.”
“Gonna stop you right there before you embarrass yourself,” I said.
“What?” he asked, swaying a little.
“This is the part where you tell me you heard I was into girls and you think a cheerleader who’s into other girls is totally hot and totally means you’ll get a threesome if you can only use your magic cock to convince me the error of my rug munching ways, right?”
The guy looked even more confused than before. His eyes scrunched up like he was trying to process what I’d just said, and then he frowned.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to say stuff like that,” he said.
“I get a pass since I’m talking about myself,” I said. “Sort of like how Mel Brooks gets to make The Producers.”
“Who?” he said, even more confused now.
I patted him on the cheek. I meant for it to be mock affectionate, but I was hitting a little harder than I intended. I wasn’t sure if that was because I was hitting harder than usual in general, or if it was because I wanted to hit him harder than usual in particular.
“This is why things wouldn’t work out between us,” I said. “You don’t know anything that would interest me even if you did have the right equipment. Which you don’t, so I’d appreciate it if you stopped barking up my tree because I’m really not in the mood tonight.”
The guy stared at me like he was trying to decide whether or not he should be insulted, then a look of dawning recognition came across his face.
“Wait a second,” he muttered. “I know you!”
I squeezed my eyes shut to chase away the look of dawning realization on the guy’s face. It was the kind of look that said he’d suddenly made the connection between my face and the face that’d been plastered across every major news outlet since last night.
“That’s right,” he said. “You’re the girl from the movie theater!”
Now he was even more interested, and it wasn’t the interest of a drunk basketball player talking to a cheerleader. No, he was hitting me with the same kind of interested looks I’d been getting all day from people wondering how I’d survived and managed to kill that bastard when so many other people had died.
“We’re done here,” I muttered.
“Wait!” he said, and his voice suddenly went quiet for the next bit. “Is it true?”
I paused and squeezed my eyes shut. I knew and dreaded the question even before he asked it. I’d seen the same rumors going around all the usual online gossip boards.
“I don’t want to have this conversation,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Come on,” he said. “You were there last night! You can tell me what really happened.”
Now his voice was taking on a tone that said he was the kind of conspiracy theorist who’d believe just about anything. I’d seen it plenty of times with conspiracy theorists confronting my dad.
Usually dear old dad was trying to convince those conspiracy theorists that they hadn’t seen what they thought they saw, and usually he was trying to convince them after they’d definitely seen something that was a lot more real than a normal person’s sanity could deal with, but still.
“You’re drunk,” I said. “You’ll believe anything you hear when you’ve had too much to drink.”
“Come on,” he growled. “You can’t just leave me hanging like that! What about the werewolf?”
And there it was. The thing I’d been trying not to think about ever since I saw that giant slobbering clawed and fanged creature stepping out of a movie theater. And yet here we were. I couldn’t escape.
“Go have fun,” I said. “Enjoy your life at college. Try not to think about things that go bump in the night.”
He stood there swaying back and forth for another moment. Then he seemed to realize I wasn’t going to tell him anything. His look went from drunken curiosity to drunken anger. I’d seen it plenty of times before. Usually when I’d made it clear to some guy who was hitting on me that
he didn’t have a chance.
“Fine,” he spat. “Be a bitch about it.”
“Gladly!” I said, reaching up to pat him on the cheek again.
I figured there’d never be a better opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge, so I moved towards the kitchen. There was some booze in the kitchen, though most of it flowed from a bar in the basement, so hanging out there would make it easy for me to top of my drink on the regular without having to worry about some other guy coming up and offering to do it for me.
I rolled my eyes. Men. They thought getting a drink or holding the door or any of a number of small gestures that was just basic humanity meant they should get their dicks sucked. It was exhausting enough for me being into the ladies, and I couldn’t imagine what it was like for the women who had to actually sift through a bunch of entitled assholes to find a date.
I was really starting to feel sorry for myself when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I grabbed that hand, but my brain immediately made the connection that something was wrong.
It wasn’t the clawed and hairy hand I was expecting. I didn’t feel those claws squeezing down and crushing my shoulder. I didn’t feel the bloom of pain as fangs sank into my neck.
I shivered. I could’ve done without this PTSD bullshit, but that was another thing the universe hadn’t bothered to ask me about, so fuck me, right?
I wheeled around, my hand still on the hand on my shoulder, and tried to play it off as a natural reaction.
From the way Carrie blinked as she stared at me, she thought it was anything but natural.
“Damn Kirsten,” she whispered. “Are you okay?”
I blushed. “Sorry. I’m on edge after everything that happened… Well, you know.”
“I know,” she said, glancing around. “I haven’t seen Brad around here, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” I muttered, not believing a word of it and wondering if he was lurking at this party somewhere despite everything that’d happened earlier.
“Right,” Carrie said. “I’m not worried about him, though. Seriously. Are you going to be okay?”
I let out a little laugh that ended up sounding a hell of a lot more desperate than I’d intended. There must’ve been something about that laugh, because Carrie shook her head and stared at me like I was losing it.
Hell, I was losing it. I’d gone off to college to get away from this bullshit, and yet that bullshit had waltzed right into my life with big fangs and claws whether I liked it or not.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I’m fucking fine.”
“Right,” Carrie said, her tone making it clear she didn’t believe a word.
I took another drink. What else was there to do? I knew in a detached part of the back of my mind that drinking to forget my troubles was the worst thing I could do. I’d seen a few people in my dad’s circles who’d totally lost it. They’d crawled into the bottle and never crawled out. How could you crawl out after some of the shit they’d seen?
I knew I was going down that dangerous path, and yet as I took a sip of that drink I couldn’t bring myself to care. Not to mention I’d been drinking straight whiskey for the last half hour and it hadn’t so much as given me a buzz.
“I’ll be fine,” I lied.
“Okay…”
“Seriously,” I said, irritation creeping into my voice. “Weren’t you all telling me I needed to lighten up? That I needed to have a drink to forget everything? Well, here I am having a drink. I figured that would make you happy!”
“Maybe just take it a little easy?” Carrie asked, looking at the drink with concern.
It was enough to make me laugh. It was an empty laugh. The kind of desperate laugh that could only come from someone who was trying to drown her sorrows in the drink.
I glanced around the kitchen, suddenly wanting to be out of this conversation. Dave was off in a corner holding court with a few girls who were probably here because they were expecting to get with someone on the basketball team.
I couldn’t help but smile. It wouldn’t be the first time some girls had come to one of these parties with the expectation of becoming basketball groupies, only to realize the guys on the cheerleading squad were in way better shape.
My eyes continued across the kitchen, and that’s when I saw her. My breath caught. The girl was a little shorter than me, and she was dressed in a halter top and a pair of impossibly tight shorts that looked straight out of Carrie’s wardrobe.
She had dark hair with streaks of purple running through it. She had a drink, and she was holding it like a talisman to ward off evil.
I was captivated. She was beautiful, and she looked entirely out of place. She was glancing around the room like she was expecting an attack.
“Kirsten?”
I pulled my attention back to Carrie. Right. I’d been talking with her. She’d been lambasting me for drinking too much, even though she was one of the people who’d pressured me into coming out to this shindig in the first place.
I also wasn’t close to being drunk no matter how much I downed, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I was trying to avoid more uncomfortable questions.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What were you saying?”
“I was saying I was thinking about what happened to you last night,” Carrie said.
I rolled my eyes. Everybody was thinking about what happened to me last night. I was getting sick and fucking tired of people thinking about what had happened to me last night.
“All I want to do is forget about what happened last night,” I said, taking another drink.
“I’m not talking about that,” Carrie said. “I mean I am talking about that in a way, but I’m not talking about… That.”
I frowned. She was talking fast, and nothing she was saying made sense. How could she be talking about what had happened last night and not talk about it at the same time? I was sober despite my best efforts so her half drunk talk wasn’t making any sense.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What are you talking about?”
“I was thinking about how your date didn’t go well,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. “Now that’s the fucking understatement of the century right there.”
“Right,” she said. “And I was thinking about how since your date didn’t go so well, I guess that means you’re still on the market, right?”
I looked at Carrie. Then I looked down to the drink in her hand.
“Carrie,” I said, talking slowly. “I don’t think you’ve had nearly enough to drink to be considering that. I’m not necessarily above being some straight girl’s college experiment, but it’s definitely not something I’m going to do with someone on the squad. Sorry.”
Carrie blinked in half drunk confusion. Then she shook her head. Perhaps a little too quickly, but whatever.
“Oh no,” she said. “It’s not like that. Not like that at all.”
Well then. I’d gone from being annoyed to insulted.
“What’s going on here Carrie?” I asked.
“I was trying to set you up with a friend. I brought my roommate along. Cara is a really nice girl, and she’s…”
“A lesbian?” I asked. “Or are we talking bisexual? Or maybe she’s straight but questioning?”
Straight but questioning could be fun. I’d known a lot of straight but questioning girls who were totally into the idea of getting with a cheerleader. I guess society had internalized the whole sexualization of the cheerleader to the point that some girls went for the opportunity just to say they’d done it.
I wasn’t going to knock it, but dating or even having a fling was the farthest thing from my mind tonight. That pretty girl over by the entrance notwithstanding.
“She’s totally a lesbian,” Carrie said. “So the two of you would be perfect for each other!”
I took a sip of my drink in lieu of rolling my eyes. This other girl, whoever the hell she was, was a lesbian, so of course that meant she’d be
perfect for me since I was a lesbian. It’s not like two lesbians could meet and not be attracted to one another. Which was something that never seemed to occur to straights trying to set me up.
“Listen Carrie,” I said, trying to let her down easy. I wasn’t in the mood, but that didn’t mean I wanted her to stop trying to set me up. Just that I wasn’t in the mood for it tonight. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do here. I really do. But…”
“Oh no you don’t,” Carrie said. “You have no idea what I had to go through to get Cara out here tonight, and you’re not going to shut her down without at least talking to her!”
“You know that doesn’t sound very promising that you had to convince her to come out here,” I said.
“Trust me,” Carrie said. “The two of you are going to get along just great!”
I wasn’t so sure of that, but I also figured the only way I was going to get Carrie to give up was to agree to meet her roommate. I could politely decline and let her know I wasn’t in the mood, and from there I could continue drowning myself in alcohol. For all that the alcohol didn’t seem to want to drown me.
So I allowed myself to be pulled across the room, even though I’d almost rather face down another werewolf than have to deal with some stupid set up. But I went along because I didn’t want to insult my friend.
It was rare enough that someone tried to set me up. I figured that was the kind of thing that deserved a little bit of attention, even if I wasn’t in the mood.
Only we didn’t go out into the party proper. We didn’t go down into the basement where some of the lesser players ran a bar in the hopes it might draw some female attention. We didn’t go to the backyard where they had a small fire going. We didn’t go into the front yard where there were some people smoking but no one drinking because that was a good way to draw the wrath of the campus cops.
No, we crossed the kitchen to that girl. The one with the purple streaks in her hair wearing an outfit that looked like it came straight out of Carrie’s party wardrobe.
Which made sense as Carrie pulled me in for an introduction. Of course she’d be wearing something straight out of Carrie’s party wardrobe if she was Carrie’s roommate.
