The Mary Shelley Club

by Goldy Moldavsky

  “Yes,” Thayer said. “You’re probably asking yourself, ‘Why is Thayer the only one who bothered to dress up for this momentous occasion?’ The answer is, I tried to get everyone else on board with the Skull and Bones robes—you know, proper attire, but as usual, I was the only one who bothered to follow the dress code for the initiation ceremony.” He flicked imaginary dirt off his velvety shoulder.

  “Initiation ceremony?” I looked at the others, searching their faces for clues. Felicity looked kind of ticked off. Bram looked the way he always looked: borderline bored. But Freddie smiled, and I couldn’t help but smile back, reassured in spite of the incredibly bizarre situation.

  “Have you ever heard of Mary Shelley?” Freddie asked.

  The question was so random it temporarily stumped me. Felicity pounced. “She doesn’t even know who Mary Shelley is.”

  I could hear the derision in her voice, and even though these people had just kidnapped me, I still wanted to belong. To have my shot. Or at least to hear what their ridiculous supersecret weird-as-fuck club was about.

  “I know who Mary Shelley is,” I said. “She wrote Frankenstein, right?”

  “Do you know the story of how she came up with the idea for Frankenstein?” Freddie asked.

  I hated to admit it in front of Felicity, who seemed to be looking for any chance to crucify me, but I shook my head.

  “Oh, but it’s such a good story,” Thayer said. He took a step toward me, his robe billowing behind him. I sensed a dramatization coming, like we were back in Ms. Liu’s class. Felicity rolled her eyes.

  “Mary Shelley and her boo, Percy—he was, like, full married by the way, quite the scandal—went on vacation to a villa in Italy—”

  “—Switzerland,” Felicity said.

  “That’s what I said, Switzerland. Anyway, they were there to stalk Lord Byron, who was the first real celebrity of the modern era, not to mention a pansexual literary Adonis who was also—spoiler alert—screwing his half sister, in case you didn’t know. Another scandal that people like to gloss over.”

  “Would you please get on with it?” Felicity said.

  “Chill,” Thayer said. “F ine, I’ll just skip all the lessers who were there and get to the good part. Anyway, they were crazy mofos ready to paint the town red, but they couldn’t because: rain.”

  Freddie leaned against the wall as Thayer talked, right beneath what appeared to be a neon zombie. He caught my glance and gave me a subtle nod, as if telling me that we should let Thayer have his storytelling moment and that he’d be getting to the point eventually.

  “It was the worst summer ever,” Thayer went on. “Like, on record. History-making, biblical proportions bad. It rained so much that the whole crew had to stay cooped up for their entire trip and they had no internet so they were super bored, obviously. And then Lord Byron was like, ‘Here’s a thought! Let’s see who can come up with the scariest story ever.’ Lord Byron thought he was going to win ’cause he was a lord or whatever, but nope, it was the godqueen of modern horror herself, Mary Shelley.”

  “She came up with the idea for Frankenstein as a result,” Freddie said.

  “And that’s where we get our name,” Thayer said, spreading his arms. “The Mary Shelley Club.”

  “So you guys are … Frankenstein fans?” I asked.

  “Not just Frankenstein. Horror,” Felicity said.

  “So what do you do in this club?” My gaze flicked over to Bram, who seemed to be more interested in the chipping paint on the Lizard Man hanging above him. Thayer and Freddie and Felicity—they seemed more like the type: misfits with eccentric interests. But Bram, the most popular guy in school, the rich lacrosse jock? Why was he here?

  “Did you miss the part about how Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein?” Felicity said. “We create scary stories.”

  I snorted. “That’s an interesting way of pronouncing ‘pranks.’”

  An instant uproar ensued, with Felicity, Thayer, and Freddie talking over each other to set the record straight.

  “We’re not twelve-year-olds.”

  “We don’t like the word ‘prank’ or even ‘pranksters’—that’s a misconception.”

  “It’s not just that. There’s also rigorous movie-watching practices.”

  Whatever they wanted to call it, it didn’t matter. Because now all I could think about was Bram’s involvement in the séance prank. Had he willingly put his own girlfriend through that? I thought about when I’d first seen him that night: upstairs, having what sounded like a fight with Lux. Maybe he’d been trying to warn her to leave before the séance happened. Maybe he underestimated how it would affect her. Or maybe that fight sent him over the edge and he went after her on purpose.

  Then, I thought about how Lux had made my life miserable for the last two weeks and how he had done nothing to stop her. Maybe they deserved each other.

  Freddie and Thayer and Felicity were speaking so quickly now that their voices muddled together and canceled each other out. But then one line stuck out, clear as a bell over the rest. “The game is a lot more nuanced than that.”

  “What game?” I asked.

  “Enough,” Bram said, tired of the arguing kids. “No more info until we know you’re in.”

  The power that came with being the most popular boy in school seemed to extend beyond campus. I wondered if anyone had ever refused Bram anything before.

  While Thayer and especially Freddie seemed happy to have me there, Felicity and Bram were ambivalent, even a little hostile. Even though they’d gone to the trouble of getting me to this weird place—wherever we were—I could tell from the look of Bram and the way he spoke that he wanted me gone. The expression on his face remained the same as it had been all night: mild disinterest.

  I lifted my chin. “I’m in,” I said.

  Thayer pumped his fist in the dark air. “A new member is born! As formal invitations go, I think we pretty much nailed it.”

  “Yes, thanks so much for the ride. Very thoughtful. So can we get out of here yet?” I asked.

  “There’s just one more thing,” Freddie said.

  A devious grin formed on Felicity’s face. “Initiation,” she said.

  12

  I SAT ON the concrete floor in the dark. Felicity, sitting with the others a few feet before me, shined a flashlight on me. It felt like an intimidation tactic, because the beam of light was so bright that it prevented me from looking directly at her, or at any of them.

  As I waited for whatever they had in store for me, I went over the facts I knew:

  The Mary Shelley Club was small.

  It was exclusive.

  They occasionally watched movies together.

  They pulled off what they refused to call, but clearly were, pranks—scenarios of their own making in which they elaborately planned and executed pranks that seemed to be inspired by horror tropes.

  And there was a game. But I wouldn’t know more about that until after the initiation.

  I squinted against the glare from the flashlight. I wasn’t too excited about the shades of frat-bro hazing. I only hoped it was worth it.

  “Tell us what your greatest fear is,” Bram demanded.

  I thought about whether to laugh or to take the question seriously. It was hard to tell what the right thing was, being that they weren’t much more than shadowy figures. Literally. Also, one of them was in full-on cosplay robe.

  “Um.” I cleared my throat. “I’m afraid of spiders.”

  More silence. I imagined them turning toward each other, already regretting their decision to invite me here, and a small panic settled over me. After all this, I might have just messed up my one shot.

  “Try again,” Bram said. “And don’t waste our time.”

  The panic mixed with relief, both emotions tingling through me. I could’ve said anything. I had the same universal fears that most people had. I was afraid of something happening to my mom. I was afraid of losing everything I had. But in the end,
there was one thing that weighed heavier than everything else. The thing I thought about all the time.

  “I’m afraid of myself.” I blurted. “I’m afraid that I’m a monster.”

  After another moment of silence, Thayer quietly asked, “Why do you feel like that?”

  I’d thought if I gave them something real, they’d lay off me. If I’d known there would be follow-up questions, I would’ve stuck to spiders. Felicity’s beam of light shone higher up on my face and I flinched away.

  “I don’t know, I just … I feel like, what if I’m not normal? What if I’m capable of doing really bad things and that’s the real me?”

  I tried to keep it vague, turn my confession into a more common fear, something less uncomfortable. It didn’t work.

  “Tell us about Matthew Marshall,” Felicity said.

  Hearing his name made my blood run cold. “How do you know about that?”

  “We know everything,” Felicity said.

  I stammered, “Those records are—are sealed. I’m a minor.”

  “My dad’s the state’s attorney,” Thayer said, actually sounding vaguely apologetic. “It wasn’t that hard to find out.”

  My heart pounded against my ribs like it was begging to be let out. I couldn’t say anything. I could hardly breathe.

  “Rachel, you don’t have to tell us anything,” Freddie said. “But we can’t let you in unless you give us something real. It isn’t supposed to be easy. But it’ll prove something to us. And hopefully we can prove something to you.”

  “Yeah, you don’t have to tell us,” Felicity chimed in, less kindly. “But we already know.”

  “You can tell us,” Freddie said softly. “We won’t judge you.”

  I’d taken so much care to hide this part of myself. To leave my life on Long Island behind and start anew. But here was this group of people who wanted to hear it out loud. Now it felt like a challenge. They were daring me to talk about it. And I wanted to challenge them back. Dare them to hear it.

  “Last year my house got broken into while I was home,” I said, my voice steadying. “A guy with a mask chased me. Attacked me in my kitchen. His name was Matthew Marshall.”

  Something about the fact that I couldn’t see their faces made the words come more easily.

  “I tried to fight him off, but he grabbed me, and he was strong. We both fell. He pinned me to the floor. And I just remember how cold the tile was.” I took a deep breath as I felt it now, clear as if I was back there, helpless. It was like the flashlight beam was a tunnel leading straight to that moment.

  “I was kicking my legs and fighting as hard as I could, but I…” The memories were coming fast, but instead of squeezing my eyes shut and trying to keep my mind blank, I kept going. It was getting harder to talk, like hands were encircling my throat and tightening their grip.

  “He had a knife…”

  I was getting to the hardest part, the part that I’d only spoken about to my mom, the police, and my therapist before I had refused to go back. But I had come this far. I could either swallow the words or spit them out. “I fought to point it away from me. We both fought. He slipped and…”

  I scratched at my arms even though nothing itched. Actually, I couldn’t feel anything at all. I scratched harder and harder, unable to stop myself, waiting to feel something hurt. “The knife went in him. And he died.”

  The words sounded inadequate once spoken. But they contained within them an entire history. Of who I was. Of what I’d done.

  Of whose life I’d cut short.

  I did not say the words I killed him. Even though that’s what I did. I couldn’t say it, even now as I tried to free myself from the truth of it. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to.

  This was the part I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about for a year. The ghost that haunted me.

  “He was just a senior in high school. He’d been accepted to Brown.” I’d memorized the facts of his life like sports fans memorize stats. I was a masochist for it, hungry, devouring all of these details, all his social media, until it made me sick.

  “He was a middle child with two sisters. He was on the soccer team. He had a girlfriend named Ally. His favorite food was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but only with apricot jelly. He loved anime and books by James Patterson. He was…”

  I closed my eyes, trying to suppress the flow of tears. I’d torn my heart open admitting the worst thing I’d ever done—the worst thing that anybody could ever do. I felt hollow.

  “It was self-defense,” I said in a small voice.

  Felicity’s flashlight beam dipped, spilling over the dirty floor. Without the light shining in my face, I could make out the forms of the people in front of me again. I could not yet tell if they were full of judgment or disgust. Probably both.

  I was officially out of my daze and crashing back to the now, realizing with searing clarity that I’d just shared my darkest secret with four strangers. No, worse: with four kids from Manchester Prep.

  But then out of the darkness came Freddie’s voice. “Thank you for sharing that.” And then, “We accept you. If you’ll have us.”

  I blinked. It took me a minute to process what he had said. No judgment. No disgust. As I wiped the tears from my cheeks, I realized I felt different. Lighter.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “Yeah, okay.”

  “This is still strictly probationary,” Felicity said. “Until such time as we deem it unprobationary.”

  They rose to their feet. Apparently, the initiation was over and I had passed. I stood too, wiping the back of my jeans. Someone opened the door, and the room was flooded with moonlight. They filed out and I followed, weaving through clunky cars sitting on the weird railroad tracks I hadn’t been able to identify before. We were surrounded by boarded-up game booths and derelict amusement park rides, the peaks and valleys of a log flume rising up in the distance like a mountain. When I looked up over the entryway of the building we’d just left I saw the words SPOOK-A-RAMA.

  All the emotions I’d been holding back—the fear, the tension, the desperation—came bursting out in a laugh. It was just a silly, stupid haunted house. Not so scary after all.

  Freddie hung back and waited for me.

  “I’ve never been to Coney Island before,” I said.

  “Well, how’s this for a first impression?”

  “How’d you get the keys to this place anyway?”

  Freddie pointed his chin to the rest of the club up ahead. “You can get the keys to anything if you can pay.”

  Made sense.

  “What you talked about in there,” Freddie said. He pushed up his glasses. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  There was so much he could’ve said, but I was so grateful he’d chosen that. He sounded like he really meant it.

  “Welcome to the Mary Shelley Club,” he said.

  13

  BY THE TIME I arrived at school the next morning, everything that had happened the night before felt like a dream.

  Because A) it’d been incredibly weird. All of it—the hood, the abduction, Coney Island. It got even weirder the more I thought about it.

  And B) no one in the Mary Shelley Club said a word to me. No more texts from Freddie with further instructions, not even a glance from Bram when I passed him in the hall. Though that might’ve been because he was with Lux, who would probably burn the school to the ground if I dared make eye contact with her.

  But for once, I wasn’t worrying about Lux or that everyone else at Manchester thought I was a freak, because right now, there was space in my mind only for the Mary Shelley Club. I was still trying to figure out why they were all in the club. Was it just to create havoc? Or maybe this was simply the way bored rich kids had a good time. But that didn’t explain the game, something that required skill, strategy, and some kind of scoring system. It was shrouded in an element of horror, but it sounded kind of innocent. Kids play games.

  Apparently, I was in the club, but I had no idea
when the game would begin. I guess I shouldn’t have expected an orientation packet and a syllabus, but still, they were being kind of over the top with the secrecy thing. By the time my first morning class let out, I felt like I was going to burst out of my skin with impatience.

  I spotted Felicity at her locker after second period and sped up. She was stashing her books like they were a body she was desperate to bury. A Stephen King paperback fell out. I bent down to pick it up for her.

  “Doctor Sleep,” I said cheerfully. “Haven’t read this one yet.”

  Felicity cast me a look very much in the family of the stink eye and snatched the book out of my hand. She slammed her locker door shut and skulked away without a word.

  “It’s bad form to talk about the club in school,” Thayer said. I jumped. He was suddenly next to me, but just as quickly as he’d appeared, he was on his way again. I chased after him.

  “I wasn’t,” I said quickly.

  “It’s an unwritten rule. No fraternization in public. It avoids suspicion.”

  “Got it.” I didn’t point out that talking and walking down the hall together might be misconstrued as fraternization to the objective observer. “Does Felicity hate me for some reason?”

  “Of course not. Maybe. Probably. Felicity’s the devil,” Thayer said casually. “You look terrible, by the way.”

  “Uh, thanks. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

  “Why not?”

  Was he serious? “I was kidnapped by a band of psychotic assholes in a catering van.”

  “Well, aren’t you kinky.”

  “Look, I know we’re not supposed to be talking about it, but when do I hear more about the club?”

  “Sorry, New Girl, can’t share anything yet, but soon,” he whispered. “My Fear Test’s in two days. Lots to do. Exciting stuff.”

  “Fear Test?” The words sent a sudden thrill through me. But Thayer didn’t answer. Instead he walked into Ms. Liu’s class and took his seat, which left me to look for mine. Bram was in the back. After the weirdness with Felicity and Thayer, I wasn’t sure how to greet him, or even if I should. I decided to follow Bram’s lead of continuing to ignore each other’s existence.