“Why did you go through with the game?” I asked. “After Lux got hurt, didn’t you know something might happen to Saundra?”
“By then I’d started to believe that what happened to Lux must’ve been an accident. I didn’t think Freddie was actually capable of really hurting anyone. But I was wrong.”
I felt a twisted sense of relief in knowing I wasn’t the only one who’d been fooled by Freddie. But the feeling was fleeting. “How could you go through with all of this?”
“The rules—”
“Screw the rules,” I snapped. I could chalk up Freddie’s reasoning to keep this messed-up game going to him being out of his mind, but Bram? He was trying to defend himself, even now. And I didn’t get it.
“The club was important to me,” Bram said, finally. “My life—my parents, Lux, my friends at school—I always had to live up to their expectations. The club let me breathe.”
I couldn’t relate to Bram’s woes of having everything but still feeling trapped. Though the way he’d acted at his after-party was starting to make sense. He’d looked like an actor in a play, and now I finally understood why. But I could immediately relate to the safe-haven part, and how important it was to have something you could always turn to. How absolutely life-sustaining it was. Selfishly, I’d figured I needed the Mary Shelley Club more than anybody. The comfort of a group of people who were like me, who understood me, who accepted me. I guess Bram needed that, too.
“I loved the club,” Bram continued. “I wanted it to keep going, just like it always had. That’s what I was fighting for. Even as Freddie started to poison it—I fought for it even more.”
I could get that. But in the end … “It was just a game, Bram. It was a stupid game.”
“It was more than that. I know you found the folder on my computer, the one titled Chaps.”
I’d forgotten about that. “Yeah?”
“Chaps as in chapters.” Bram looked me in the eye, the familiar unwavering stare that reminded me that he was still the same Bram I’d known. “There are chapters of the club all over the country. We didn’t invent the game.”
“What?”
“The game is much bigger than just our club,” Bram continued. “It always has been. Matthew Marshall was a member of a Mary Shelley Club on Long Island.”
What happened with Matthew had been a separate thing, something from my past life, before I’d come to the city, before I’d met anyone in the Mary Shelley Club. “That isn’t true.”
But Bram nodded. “It is. The break-in at your house was a Fear Test. Matthew’s Fear Test.”
I let the news wash over me. I’d always wondered what Matthew was doing at my house that night. Why a typical, popular high school boy and his friend would break into a house wearing masks. It was wild. But not any wilder than anything I’d participated in these last few months.
“So Freddie chose me because, what, he wanted to avenge Matthew?”
“That was only part of it,” Bram said. “When you broke that Fear Test—when Matthew died—the game got thrown off course. Freddie couldn’t have that.”
“So he had to punish me.”
“He thought that was the only way to reinstate order and to make sure nothing like this happened again. Freddie cared about the club more than anything else.”
I listened to Bram as though through a fog. He was supposed to be the incoherent one, on pain meds, but it almost felt like it should’ve been me in that hospital bed for how mentally and emotionally banged up I felt.
I couldn’t speak. I could barely even think. All I could do was look down at my hand, resting uselessly on my thigh, when Bram’s hand covered it. When I looked up Bram was leaning forward, closer than I expected him to be.
“Sit back, you’ll hurt yourself.” I didn’t mean it to come out like an order, but even so, Bram ignored me. His serious look was gone, replaced by something softer. “I’m sorry,” he said.
It wasn’t an apology from Freddie, but this was the closest I was going to get. And I needed it.
“Freddie was loyal to a club that’s bigger than all of us,” Bram said.
* * *
I stayed with Bram a little while longer, until he fell asleep, and then until his mother returned with his favorite sushi pajamas. I did it for him, but I also didn’t want to be alone. Eventually, though, my mom texted, wondering where I was, and I decided I’d given her enough scares to last a lifetime.
Outside, the Upper East Side of Manhattan got on with the day as usual. There were patients and their families leaving the hospital, nurses in scrubs coming back from their breaks, ambulances clogging the busy street. I passed them all like it was a normal day. But it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t be again.
I walked, thinking about this game I’d played, and all of those who’d died. I thought of Saundra, of Freddie, and even of Matthew.
Since the incident on Long Island last year, I had done everything in my power not to think about it. I didn’t ever want to revisit the ugliest moment of my life. Now I did just that, but from the perspective of the Mary Shelley Club.
Two high school boys in repurposed Frankenstein masks. One left, one stayed. I’d always figured Matthew wanted to hurt me, but if he was playing the game then all he’d wanted was to hear me scream. For a primal, guttural roar to be unleashed. I must not have ever screamed that night, not once.
I’d thought it was just the two of us alone on that kitchen floor. But now it occurred to me that there must have been other people from Matthew’s Mary Shelley Club somewhere around my house that night. They must’ve been watching the whole Fear Test go horribly wrong. Maybe they hid in the bushes outside. Maybe they saw everything through the windows. All of them quietly watching. All of them wearing masks.
I couldn’t ignore the creeping sensation of dread in my veins. Because if what Bram had said was true, then there was reason to believe that this nightmare wasn’t over.
As I walked away from the hospital and toward the subway station on the corner, I could have sworn there was somebody watching me.
I looked over my shoulder.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANK YOU:
To my agents, Jenny Bent, who believed in this story when I pitched it to her, and who worked tirelessly to find its perfect home; Gemma Cooper, who took it over the pond with love and care; and Debbie Deuble Hill, who loved this story before she’d read a word of it and got it into the right TV hands before anyone else had read it either.
To my incredible editor, Tiff Liao, whose suggestions and ideas (over plates of vegan cashew cheese) made this novel so much stronger. If not for Tiff, there would be no Bram after-party, and that would’ve been a real shame. And Sarah Levison for loving scary movies and finding that this story was a worthy homage to the genre.
To my family: my mother, Sonia, and my mother-in-law, Irina, for the invaluable gift of babysitting and giving me time to write. To Alex, for your time, your encouragement, and your impeccable brainstorming skills. You helped me figure out who the killer was! You rightly concluded that Bram should have had a shirtless scene! And I’m pretty sure you thought up the names for Freddie and Rachel. For all that, and more. It is so neat having a partner who thinks your work is amazing and valuable. I thank you. To my sister, Yasmin, who might be my biggest fan. My scary movie partner, since we were way too small to be watching scary movies. I really hope you like this book! And to beautiful, funny, smart, tender Tove! Hi, Tove.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Goldy Moldavsky was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where she lives with her family. She is the New York Times–bestselling author of Kill the Boy Band and No Good Deed. Some of her influences include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the esteemed works of John Irving, and the Mexican telenovelas she grew up watching with her mother.
Visit her online at goldymoldavsky.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 by Goldy Moldavsky
Henry Holt and Company, Publishers since 1866
Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271
fiercereads.com
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moldavsky, Goldy, author.
Title: The Mary Shelley Club / Goldy Moldavsky.
Description: First edition. | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2021. | Summary: “A deliciously twisty YA thriller about a mysterious club with an obsession for horror”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020021771 | ISBN 9781250230102 (hardcover)
Subjects: CYAC: Clubs—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M6396 Mar 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020021771
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First hardcover edition 2021
eBook edition 2021
eISBN 9781250230119
The Mary Shelley Club Page 29
