The Final Girl Support Group

by Grady Hendrix

  “. . . wish he was dead . . .”

  “. . . he’d be too scared to say anything to your face . . .”

  “. . . please save me . . .”

  Dad had been in the army and had definite ideas about law and order. Maybe he was stricter than he needed to be, but I don’t remember hating him this much. Every teenager thrives on conflict, however, and I can’t imagine I was an exception. After Billy Walker I sanded down our rough times and polished up Dad’s halo until it’s bright enough to blind me to the past.

  In fifth grade, Mrs. Margaret assigned pen pals. Most of them were in foster care, like Ricky. The other kids lost interest after a few months, but not me. Not Ricky. For six years we wrote back and forth and I never told him to kill my dad but I gave him my home address, I said we should run away together to L.A., I told him my dad yelled all the time and my mom was out to lunch. A few times I even told him I wished my parents were dead.

  Teenagers talk like this, right? Even if it’s ugly in retrospect. I didn’t know there was a bloody engine inside his head just waiting for someone to turn it on. I never knew the key was shaped like a sixteen-year-old girl.

  If I hadn’t written to him, if I hadn’t given him our address, if I hadn’t asked him to rescue me, Ricky Walker would have gone to some other house. He wouldn’t have killed the beloved police chief of a small town. He and his brother wouldn’t have killed five cops.

  In this freezing-cold police station, I’m surrounded by the only people on earth who hate me as much as I hate myself.

  When I woke up in the hospital I thought they’d have the letters, but no one said anything. So I didn’t say anything. I kept waiting for someone to say something, but they never did, so I never did, and after a while I began to forget I even wrote them. Sometimes I imagined them turning up because, after all, they had to be somewhere, and those were the bad nights. On those nights I’d make myself exercise until I dry-heaved, I’d force myself to clean my weapons until they were spotless, to scrub my entire apartment until sunup, to punish myself as hard as I could, but nothing I did hurt me as much as the thought of those letters coming out.

  But they never did.

  “Excuse me,” a soft voice says. It’s the cop, the one whose fingers I broke, the one who’s wearing a green metal splint on his left hand. He’s picking up my meal tray. “You finished?”

  I haven’t eaten anything except the apple. I can’t eat with the wall of letters staring down at me. I see everything still on my tray. I nod. I’m finished.

  * * *

  —

  How did the letters come to Garrett’s possession? Invite Garrett to a mall opening in Alaska and he’d be there in a flash, as long as he thought it might boost his book and DVD sales. Taking the bait has never been a problem for him, but someone had to throw the bait out there in the first place.

  When the young cop with the broken hand brings the lunch tray the next day, I stare at it for a long time. It’s the same two slices of bread, the same mayo, the same sugar cookies, the same fruit punch, but there’s turkey instead of bologna this time, and an orange instead of a banana. Who made that decision? There must be a kitchen somewhere in the station where there are people working to divide up loaves of white bread, counting slices of turkey, taking juice cartons out of the cooler. They’re looking at their order forms, going over the inmate list, checking their inventory.

  It’s a miracle of logistics when you think about it. I bet if I were kosher there’d be a kosher option, if I were Muslim there’d be something halal. That takes a lot of people. That takes a team.

  Heather got me arrested, but she got the idea when she saw Garrett on TV, and he was on TV because Billy Walker came forward with those letters. That’s less than twenty-four hours after someone tried to burn down Heather’s halfway house and Harry Peter Warden came forward and confessed to Dani’s murders. And that was less than twenty-four hours after someone followed Julia and Russell Thorn to my apartment and shot them both. And that was the same day Christophe Volker sat in Adrienne’s pantry waiting for her to come downstairs.

  One person isn’t doing this unless they’re the most organized, highest-functioning sociopath in existence. This isn’t a single monster. This is a convention of them.

  The question: who has a vested interest in making me dead? I refuse to accept that this is all a coincidence, that a bunch of different psychopaths are pursuing their separate agendas, taking advantage of the situation as it unfolds. Not seeing a pattern is what got me in trouble with the Walker brothers. I’ll never make that mistake again.

  Someone got Christophe Volker onto Camp Red Lake. Someone convinced Harry Peter Warden to come forward. Someone got Russell Thorn to show up at exactly the right moment. Someone attacked us in my apartment. Someone found my letters. Who hates us this much? Who could coordinate people inside prison and outside prison? Who knows every single one of our weak points?

  When the soft-voiced cop with the broken hand brings me my next tray he says, “You’ve got a visitor.”

  * * *

  —

  They take me to a warmer room with a long table running down the middle. There are partitions between plexiglass windows that look onto the other side of the room. There’s a phone on either side of each window. Wordlessly, I’m taken to one of the booths and sat down. On the other side of the glass sits Dr. Carol.

  She looks tired. She’s not wearing makeup. There’s a thick pile of papers on the counter in front of her. I drop the phone because my fingers are still numb and I’m so excited to see a human being who doesn’t hate me.

  “Dr. Carol,” I ask. “What’s going on? Did they tell you what’s happening? No one’s talking to me but I think I have this figured out.”

  “Stop,” she says.

  Even though we’re only a couple of feet away, the phone is a bad long-distance connection. I lean forward and lower my voice.

  “Someone is doing this,” I say. “More than one person. It’s the only way everything can be happening all at once. Someone is out to take down group.”

  I notice that she’s looking over my right shoulder. I look behind me, but no one’s there.

  “We have to get somewhere defensible and start figuring this out,” I say. “We need to get the visitor lists for Harry Peter Warden and Billy Walker. My guess is we’ll see the same name on both lists. I’m probably safe in here for another day or two, so focus on getting everyone who’s still at liberty together and to a defensible location. We’re soft targets as long as we’re scattered all over the place.”

  Dr. Carol looks at me with a complete lack of understanding. It’s getting hard for me to stay calm, but I know I have to. I take two breaths before she speaks.

  “Why did you do it, Lynnette?” she asks. “Why did you do this?”

  At first I think she’s talking about the letters, but then I read the top of the stack of paper in front of her. All I want to do is go back in time and undo everything, because I recognize the title page.

  The Final Girl Support Group, it reads. By Lynnette Tarkington.

  It takes all my strength not to hang up the phone.

  “I didn’t write that,” I say automatically.

  “It came in my email last night,” she says. “Everyone got one.”

  As long as I keep looking down at where the plexiglass meets the desk I can pretend her face is as far away as her voice.

  “Who?” my voice is very, very small.

  “I have no idea how Marilyn and Heather feel,” Dr. Carol says. “But I know that I am deeply hurt by your descriptions of me.”

  “This is what he wants,” I say. “Don’t you see? He wants us divided. He wants us confused so we don’t focus on the important things.”

  “I have never regarded you as trophies,” Dr. Carol says, ignoring me. “I don’t collect you. You are my patients and I
care about each of you deeply as individuals. I have devoted so much of my career to helping women like you. I have spent so much of my life trying to build a world where women like you don’t have to exist.”

  “The important thing is to figure out who’s doing this,” I say. “That book’s just a distraction. Someone stole it off my hard drive.”

  “You never should have written it!” she shouts, blowing out the tiny speaker in my ear. “To accuse me of neglecting my children by coming to group on Christmas Eve . . . how could you even think that? You’re the one who fought loudest for us to have group that day. You think I treat you like pets?”

  “I never said that,” I try.

  “It’s in your book!” she says. “How can you sit in group thinking so little of me? Laughing at me behind my back? Why do you hate me?”

  All my words keep coming back to hurt me. The letters. This book. Everything I ever wrote is a weapon turned against me. Everything I’ve ever thought comes back to make me bleed. Who’s the one person who would know how to coordinate all this, who would know all our fears, who would know how to cripple us psychologically?

  I look up and see Dr. Carol staring at me through the scratch-clouded plexiglass.

  “Why?” she asks. “I just want to know why?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “You should stay away,” she says. “No one in group wants to hear from you right now. I don’t want to hear from you right now.”

  And then I know. It’s something about her reaction. It’s too big, like a bad actor in a bad play trying to convince the audience of their grief by shouting. It’s something about the fact that she’s so upset yet she took the time to print out my entire book and bring it here like a prop. A bad prop. That stack of paper is too thick for the twenty-five thousand words I wrote.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask.

  Suddenly there are so many reasons: maybe she needs a bump in her career, maybe she’s a sociopath and thinks it’s funny, maybe she thinks we’re ingrates and wants revenge, maybe she just got tired of listening to us whine all the time.

  “I hope you get the help you need,” she says. She puts the phone down on the counter and there’s a hard knock in my ear. She bends over for her purse.

  “Dr. Carol?” I shout, trying to get her to hear me. “Dr. Carol!”

  There’s movement behind me. They’re coming to take me away. She sits back up, rubbing her forehead, saying something I can’t hear.

  “Pick up the phone!” I shout, banging on the plexiglass. “Answer me!”

  I shake the table and try to shout through the partition.

  “Dr. Carol!” I shout, and I’m furious in a way I’ve only ever been furious with myself before. “I know you! We trusted you!”

  Arms grab me at the elbows, hands press me facedown on the desk.

  “I trusted you!” I scream. “I trusted you!”

  They put cuffs on my wrists and grind the metal down into my bones and when they pull me up they twist my arms until it feels like my shoulders dislocate. I see Dr. Carol’s back, running out of the visiting room, and she can’t hear me no matter how loud I scream.

  * * *

  —

  I need a phone, I need to warn everyone that it’s her, but the harder I ask the less they listen. I smash the chocolate pudding from my dinner tray on the window of my cold cell and smear it across the glass. I clog my toilet with the green beans and the chicken patty. I bang the tray against my cell door for ten straight minutes.

  Three deputies in riot gear come in and put me in shackles. I’m moved to an interview room and when they pick me up and carry me back my toilet is unclogged and my cell has been hosed down. It’s still dripping wet. It’s still bitterly cold. No one speaks to me no matter how much I explain what’s happening.

  I have to get to a phone. If I can get to a phone I can warn Marilyn and Heather.

  I beg until my throat is raw and bleeding. I start to kick the glass and they send in the riot squad again. This time they take off my shackles and stuff me in a bright blue padded vinyl tube with armholes. It’s an anti-suicide smock. They call it a Fergie. I try kicking the glass again but just fall backward and crack my head against the floor.

  They leave me like that for a long time—on the floor, unable to move, facing my letters taped to the plexiglass wall.

  I can’t wait to see you again, the letter says in cursive girl handwriting. I can’t wait to make love with you again and you can tell me what you want to do to my dad.

  I was a virgin when Ricky Walker came to our house on Christmas Eve. I never slept with him. How would that have even happened? I didn’t write this letter. The handwriting is the same, and the stationery is Holly Hobbie, but she’s baking muffins. In all the Holly Hobbie stationery I remember owning, she’s gathering wildflowers. Conclusion: some of these aren’t my letters. Some of these are forgeries.

  When the cop comes in with my tray I try to tell him. I say I have to speak to someone. I beg him in my broken voice, pushing air through my shredded throat, but he doesn’t listen. No one listens. I am not worth hearing anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, dropping the tray on my floor without making eye contact, and scuttles away.

  * * *

  —

  For breakfast he brings me a log of Nutraloaf and a small bottle of water. I beg him to please get me a phone, just one phone call, that’s all I need. He doesn’t look in my direction, he acts like this is an empty room and I wonder if I’m actually talking. Maybe I only think I’m talking? Maybe I’m going insane?

  I talk out loud for a few minutes, listening to my sandpaper voice bounce off the walls, but that doesn’t prove anything. I could be imagining that. I have no way of knowing if any sound is actually coming out of my throat.

  The anti-suicide smock is hard to sit up in because it barely bends, so I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and try not to think about the fake letters. I try not to think about the fact that we all trust Dr. Carol. We’ll open our doors to her, we’ll believe whatever she tells us, we’ll go anywhere she asks.

  I think about her files on all those baby final girls and I think about that file on her desk for Fugate, Stephanie, and I think about how long she’s been collecting us and the cold creeps inside my suicide smock and pierces my flesh and cracks my bones.

  But what if I’m wrong? What if Christophe Volker just finally snapped? What if some random stalker tried to kill Julia at my house? And Heather burned down her own halfway house and lied about it, and Harry Peter Warden made up a story to get out of prison, and Billy Walker finally decided to reveal the location of those letters, and I wrote that book, and I wrote those letters, and I’m trying to run from what I deserve.

  When I put shampoo in Gilly’s eyes, I saw that the label said No More Tears and I drew the wrong conclusions, then acted on them, and I hurt someone I loved. What if the only conspiracy exists inside my head?

  No.

  Dr. Carol is the only conclusion that makes any sense. It has to be Dr. Carol. It has to be.

  Otherwise it’s just me.

  They give me another log of Nutraloaf for lunch but I don’t eat it. When they come to drop the dinner tray it’s the young cop with the broken hand, again.

  “I brought you something,” he says.

  I struggle to sit up in the awkward fabric tube and manage to sort of prop the upper half of my body against the wall. My legs stick straight out in front of me. He checks over his shoulder, then quickly pulls a granola bar out of his pocket and drops it on my tray.

  “You need to stay strong,” he says, and gives me a smile.

  They’ll do whatever Dr. Carol Elliott says. They’ll follow her to an isolated location where she can terminate their therapy, one by one. She’ll take them to Sagefire, her wellness retreat in the mountains. That’s what
she’ll do. Trap them there and stalk them, and they’ll die, trusting her right up until the end.

  “I need a phone,” I croak.

  “I’m sorry,” the young cop says. “All I can do is the bar. That’s all I can do.”

  I’m sorry, too.

  * * *

  —

  The suicide tube keeps me immobilized and my muscles stiffen. My legs throb and ache with sluggish blood. I want to hug myself to stay warm but I can barely bend my arms. When the cop with the broken hand comes back, he looks at the uneaten granola bar and shakes his head.

  He puts the fresh tray on my slab bed and squats, regarding me.

  “Please,” I say through cracked lips. “You have to get me a phone.”

  “Did you really love him?” he asks.

  My brain is so numb I don’t realize who he’s talking about at first.

  “Ricky Walker,” he says. “Did you love him?”

  “No,” I croak, not sure where this is going.

  “Too bad,” he says, and reaches over and puts one big hand over my mouth.

  He pinches my nostrils closed. I can’t breathe. All I can taste is his salty palm. I can’t get any air. I try to sit up but he holds me down easily with his broken hand. He looks over his shoulder, then turns back to me and he has all the expression on his face of a man filling up his car with gas. He’s not angry. He’s insane.

  “Everyone’s going to be so jealous,” he says.

  Who said the police couldn’t be monsters, too? It’s the end of the road, but my body reflexively keeps fighting. I scratch at his wrists but can’t get any leverage in the Fergie. I try to kick but the fabric tube traps my legs. My skull throbs with black blood. Gray clouds rush in fast as I lose my peripheral vision and everything sounds so far away.

  I didn’t accomplish anything. I left Julia bleeding on my floor, I ran away, I got arrested, I wound up here, I died. All my plans were useless, all my strengths were weaknesses in disguise. I didn’t save anyone. I wrote those letters. I wrote that book. That’s all I ever did.