Slasher Girls & Monster Boys

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  Damien was smiling broader now. He was proud of me.

  But what good had saying something done? I didn’t feel better. I felt angrier than I had before. I wanted her to know what it felt like. I wanted her to hurt like she had hurt me.

  “All right, let’s take out our books,” Ms. Demetrios said.

  The yellow paperback of Dracula sat on my desk dumbly next to the doll. This should have been when I reeled it in. Took deep breaths. Found my calm, focused on saying something smarter and better than Everly, than anyone.

  But my breath got more ragged. My hands flipped through the book, my eyes searching for the sections I’d highlighted. But the words blurred with the threat of angry tears, and I felt an overwhelming desire to turn and face her instead of hiding in the pages of the book or staring at Ms. Demetrios’s oversized cursive on the chalkboard.

  “You know what’s really sad?” Everly mock-whispered. “That you were right all those years ago.”

  I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. She caught it and continued.

  “When we first met. You said you were nothing.” She smiled, showing me her bright, white teeth. “And you were exactly right. You. Are. Nothing.”

  I turned back to face her again, my jaw clenched, and caught sight of Damien. His eyes were narrowed on her too. It wasn’t protective this time—it was as if we shared my anger. As if we were hating her on the same frequency. As if I wasn’t alone in this. It made me feel stronger, braver, when I said, “Fuck you, Everly.”

  The wall of windows that looked out on the parking lot shook at my words. “Excuse me?” Everly snapped.

  Ms. Demetrios was looking at us now, but I didn’t care.

  “You heard me,” I said louder. “After high school, girls like you become nothing—not girls like me. Enjoy it while it lasts, Everly. Because you’ve fucking peaked.”

  Everly snarled—actually snarled—and reached across her desk to grab my hair, but something inside me snapped and I blocked her arm and I moved to push her back. But I didn’t touch her. My hands froze just before I reached her. They were shaking. I was shaking. As if the anger I felt had frozen them in place. My arms jerked up toward the wall of windows. My limbs weren’t my own. They belonged to my anger.

  Everly tried to swipe at me again. A smile forming on her lips. She thought she had won.

  There was a sudden scratching sound and a crash.

  A giant branch from the oak tree outside smashed through the window, its twisted, heavy bark swinging through the air, inches from Everly. She leaped from her seat.

  If she hadn’t had the reflexes of a cheerleader, she would have been crushed at her desk.

  There was screaming. Stacey Blonder had a cut on her face from the falling glass, and Faith Sarah was torn between helping her and backing away. Ms. Demetrios was ushering people out of their seats to the classroom door. “Stay away from the glass and line up!”

  Everly didn’t move. She inspected herself for cuts before glaring at me. Her look was questioning, as if she was trying to figure out what had happened—as if I’d somehow had something to do with it.

  I was frozen in my seat, even though my head screamed at me to run. Damien got up, barely looking back at Everly, and made his way to me.

  The wind picked up and blew in through the broken window. Beyond it, tree branches danced as if they weren’t done with us, as if they wanted inside too.

  “Everyone out!” Ms. Demetrios put an arm around Stacey, who had her scarf pressed to her cheek, and began to lead her to the door.

  Damien took a deep breath, looking infinitely calmer than everyone else. He took my hand and yanked me to my feet, putting me back in motion. As we reached the door, the wall of windows crashed at our backs. Glass chased us as we rushed to clear the door.

  It was the wind. Of course it was.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Amazingly, no one looked further hurt.

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me deeper into the hallway.

  “What was that?” I didn’t just mean the glass. There was the dream. And the drawings. All of it.

  “Nature,” he said, still holding my hand.

  But since when did nature have such good timing? It didn’t feel like nature. It felt like the books we read in class—how the settings of stories reflected what was happening with the characters. If they were feeling dark and stormy, cue the storm clouds. But this was real life. And if I didn’t know better, I’d think that somehow I had made that branch reach out and almost smash Everly to pieces.

  I looked down at Damien’s hand, still holding mine.

  Did I make this happen too? Damien Thorne didn’t even know I’d existed until a few days ago. And now Mom’s suicide-iversary was here. Had I subconsciously chosen this day to become her crazy mirror image? I looked at our hands again. His fingers, long and strong and sure, wrapped around mine. I couldn’t conjure this. I couldn’t conjure him, could I?

  “You sure you’re okay?” Damien asked again. I nodded. He let go, his face resigned, and turned to walk away. But suddenly, I didn’t want to run. I wanted company. And if whatever I was doing had brought him to me, how bad could it be? And why couldn’t I keep him?

  “Wait,” I said.

  × × ×

  He was a gentleman, if those still existed. He was a door-holding throwback to some other time or place. I was surprised, but pleased.

  We sat together in the dark at the local college theater. Annie Hall, my favorite. And we laughed at almost the exact same times and stole glances at each other’s profile. We walked out of the theater somehow closer. And he took me to the Diner on 5th, where the cool kids hung out on Friday nights. He wanted to be seen with me.

  “You don’t scare me, Marnie,” he said after opening the door to his ridiculously compact, ridiculously expensive silver sports car.

  I got out, trying to keep my knees together in my only nice dress, a vintage blue number that I had buttoned and unbuttoned a few times while debating my level of first-date modesty. I’d settled on three buttons unbuttoned.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You wanted to bite my head off in the cafeteria the other day. But I am not going anywhere.”

  Mercifully nothing about what happened in Ms. Demetrios’s class. Nothing about the Barbie Brides or the broken windows.

  “You want a gold star for that?” I squinted up at him as we approached the diner’s glass doors.

  “Nah.” He laughed, nose scrunching. Then his face went serious. “I just want to know what I did wrong so I don’t do it again.”

  I didn’t say anything. I felt myself recoiling. I didn’t want him to ruin it. The night was supposed to be so perfect.

  I stopped in front of the doors, knowing I was probably blowing it—but somehow I couldn’t help myself.

  “You didn’t do anything. I was the one who was wrong. I was—I guess I was comparing how you lost your parents to how I lost mine. Which is pretty awful. Your two accidents versus my one suicide. Which is worse? And I know better, I know that all that matters is gone. Not how.” My voice sounded harsher than I wanted it to. Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut?

  He didn’t blink. “A misery competition,” he said with a sad smile. “I think it all matters. How always matters.”

  I shook my head. “But to compare us—”

  “It’s no worse than using a dead-parents sob story to get a pretty girl to think I’m more than some spoiled rich kid.”

  He laughed, letting me off the hook. My heart unclenched. My date had surprised me. He was nicer than me. And it was the weirdest thing—there wasn’t an ounce of pity in his niceness. Just curiosity.

  When he pushed open the door and I stepped inside, no one was there. It was completely empty except for the waitress.

  “Weird, huh?” I said.


  But he owned it. Like he’d planned it.

  “It’s more romantic this way. We have it all to ourselves. Only the best for Marnie Campbell.”

  He picked out my favorite song on the jukebox, “Wonderwall,” by Oasis. It was like magic. How did he know that song was mine? How did he know about the movie? The questions floated up, but I didn’t think too hard about their answers. I was always too cautious, too careful. Tonight I didn’t want to think about my mother’s death. I wanted this distraction.

  The waitress delivered our milkshakes. Chocolate for me. Strawberry for Damien. I never ordered. Again, he just knew.

  “How did you know?”

  “Magic,” he said with a wink. Boys my age didn’t wink. But somehow he pulled it off. He was somehow immune to awkwardness.

  “Lucky girl,” the waitress whispered to me when she gave us the check. Even she knew he was out of my league.

  I checked my watch.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you home by a respectable hour.”

  I wasn’t checking for that. I still couldn’t figure out how not one person had come into the diner in the hour we’d been here.

  “My dad doesn’t care. And my mom is long gone.” It was the first time I’d said that out loud to anyone—it didn’t feel good to say it. But saying it reminded me that I was free to stay and talk and drink my milkshake. I was free to enjoy this little bit of magic. Even if it was just coincidence. Even if it was just tonight. After today, I’d no longer think of this day as the anniversary of my mother’s suicide. After today, it would be the anniversary of my first-ever date.

  “Sometimes not caring is kinder than caring,” he said.

  For a second, I didn’t realize he was referring to what I’d said about my dad. I looked down at my shake.

  “My parents weren’t my parents,” he said. He was twisting a straw wrapper around his finger. “I was adopted and raised by the Thornes. My birth father has been in touch, but he always wants something from me,” he added, his voice suddenly distant. That intense stare he normally wore softened focus, as if he was thinking about the adoptive parents he lost. Or the birth father he’d found.

  “I—I’m sorry, Damien. I didn’t realize. What does . . . what does he want from you?”

  “My dad? He wants more. World domination,” he deadpanned.

  I laughed. “Oh, so politics, then?”

  He shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “Sometimes I think I just want what Frankenstein’s monster wanted,” he said. Then he leaned in and kissed me. Or maybe I kissed him. I wondered if he knew it was my first. I wondered if I should have warned him. But then I wasn’t wondering or thinking at all because I was all body, all lips, like I’d been somehow outside of myself all this time, and only now could I feel my heart beating in my chest, my ears, my throat. My skin alive, every nerve pulsing, every pore opening, so that when his lips left mine, my breathing was ragged. I wasn’t ready for it to end. I didn’t want him to stop.

  He exhaled and smiled at me. I blinked, gathering myself, finding my voice. His hands had made their way around my waist, and he did not remove them now.

  I swallowed. “The way I see it, you don’t owe him anything. The only person you owe anything to is you.”

  He nodded as if he appreciated my words but knew they didn’t change anything.

  “Hey, I should get you home,” he said, his arms, to my disappointment, loosening around me.

  × × ×

  “What about you?” he asked, back in the car. “How’s your big brain going to conquer the world?”

  I shrugged. “Lawyer maybe.”

  I could see my breath. Damien reached down and turned up the heat. The weather in Harlow always seemed about ten degrees colder than the city.

  “Don’t you want to be a writer?”

  I was going to pick something practical—something that made the most money, something that ensured I would never be like my father. Doctor. Lawyer. Wall Street. But Damien was right. I did always like stories. Writing them and reading them. Frankenstein, Dracula, The Metamorphosis—maybe I’d read one too many.

  “How do you know that?”

  He studied me for a beat, then said, “Been going to school with you for, like, seven years, Marnie. No one loves words like you do. I’ve seen it in class. You name-drop authors like other girls drop boy bands.”

  I felt myself smiling from the inside out. He noticed things about me. How had I gone this long without anyone noticing anything good?

  He turned to me when we got to Chambers, the street that led to my side of town.

  “Do you mind if we make a quick pit stop by my place?”

  We pulled into the drive of his house. It was massive. It was the size of one of those English castles, only totally modern. Skinny windows lined the facade. And manicured shrubbery bookended the house. His nanny had become his guardian after his parents died. I saw a light on in one of the upstairs rooms and wondered if it was her.

  He led me inside through the opulent foyer. There was a family portrait of a baby Damien and a happy-looking couple. I felt my chest clench for his parents and a twinge of guilt shuddered through me for ever doubting the magnitude of his loss. His might have been bigger after all.

  And then I heard the barking.

  Two impossibly lean, impossibly large dogs were racing toward us. Rottweilers, but enormous. I wondered if they had been bred that way on purpose.

  Damien broke into a smile. They leaped on him simultaneously and he rubbed their faces until they settled down. They turned their massive heads to me. A low growl coming from both of them at once. I took a step back.

  Damien gently chastised them. “We like her.”

  The growling stopped. One of them licked my hand.

  “A lot,” he added. “Dogs, meet Marnie. Marnie meet Dogs.”

  “Don’t they have names?”

  “I call these two Cerberus and Erebus. But there are more. Security.” He looked toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, and I thought I saw dog-shaped shadows prowling the manicured, tastefully lit grounds in the distance.

  Damien grabbed my hand and pulled me down the hall. More photos lined the walls—pictures of his parents in happier times.

  When we got to the great room, I gasped. Not just because it was grander than any room I’d ever been in, but because of who was standing in it.

  “What is she doing here?” I said. Everly was wearing a flimsy nightgown down to the floor. And she was standing in the center of what looked like a star with a circle around it that had been scarred deep into the elaborately inlaid wood floor. A pentagram.

  There was no furniture. Only a massive black marble fireplace and dozens of lit candles. What the hell? I looked at Everly, lit by the flickering light. I could see she was wearing nothing underneath the gown. A pentagram equaled witchcraft or devil-worship or something, but what was it doing in Damien’s living room? And Everly equaled trouble, but what kind?

  “What is this?” I was breathing heavy now.

  Was she Damien’s girlfriend? Was he hoping for some kind of creepy fantasy come true?

  “You know what? Never mind, I don’t need to know.” I took a deep breath and prepared to storm past the killer guard dogs. Facing them seemed less scary than whatever was going on in here.

  “I got her for you,” Damien said, and I stopped. “What happens here,” he continued, “is entirely up to you.”

  I turned. “I don’t want anything to happen here. Not with her. I hate her.”

  “Exactly,” Damien said simply.

  Everly picked up a knife from the nearby table and held it to her neck.

  “What? Wait—Everly, don’t!” I took a step toward her. What was this? Some kind of bizarre proposition? But the pentagram.
And the knife . . . Was she depressed? Crazy? Was I?

  I looked from the shiny blade to her eyes and I got my answer. My stomach twisted.

  Her gaze was utterly vacant.

  Which could mean only one thing.

  I was doing this to her. It was true. It was me.

  “I am sorry for calling you those names,” Everly said, sounding sincere.

  I always knew it would take nothing short of a knife to her throat to get Everly to apologize to me, but I didn’t think she would be the one holding it. I didn’t know I’d be the one . . . what? Compelling her?

  “What names?” Damien asked.

  A tear fell from Everly’s mascara-smeared eyes.

  “Monster, Monster, Monster . . .”

  The word stung, even still. But I ordered myself to be calm, to stop this.

  “It’s okay, Everly. Listen. Don’t do this. I’m not mad at you anymore.” And I realized I meant it.

  “Monster, Monster, Monster . . . I—I don’t even know how you can show your face in public, and those clothes.” Her mouth was moving, but her eyes were pleading. Part of me wanted to hate her. Part of me wanted to remember how nasty she was. And I did remember, my anger was there just beneath the surface as always—as predictable as a reflex. But . . .

  My knees felt weak and I righted myself. I tried to concentrate on pushing it back down. I didn’t understand what was happening. Damien had brought her here. He’d put me and her and my anger all here in the same room. But why? Because he’d figured out my—my power or whatever it was, and wanted to see it in full bloody array? Because he liked me and wanted to support me in getting a little revenge?

  “I don’t want her to die, I want her to suffer,” I said to him quickly, trying to find a way out, a way that didn’t involve blood.

  “You do the very same thing in class. You hit a wall and it doesn’t stop you. You just keep looking for another solution . . .You should see your face . . . it’s so pretty when you’re thinking so hard,” he said, sizing me up, oblivious to how weird his flattery was next to the girl with a knife.

  Why was it still at Everly’s neck? I did not want this. No part of me wanted her to die. I didn’t feel anger anymore. I felt fear. Was I still doing this? I wasn’t. I couldn’t be. I turned to Damien.