Slasher Girls & Monster Boys

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  “Not a chance. And the scariest urban legend is the Bloody Mary one. Chanting her name three times into a mirror in a dark room, trying to conjure her blood-covered ghost . . . I still can’t look in mirrors when the lights are off. That story singlehandedly destroyed my childhood innocence.”

  “I thought I did that.” Asher.

  I turned around again. “Thanks for that, Asher. Now I have to beat the hell out of you.”

  “I’d like to see you try, painter-boy.” Laugh, laugh, laugh. “Both of you girls are wrong. The scariest urban legend is that one with the unpopular girl who goes to the prom with the hottest guy in school but a serial killer murders the dude after the first dance, guts him, and then dumps a bucket of his blood all over the girl while she stands onstage, calling his name. Brilliant stuff.”

  Scout reached back and hit Asher on the knee. “That’s not an urban legend, you idiot. It’s a book by Stephen King. And it was a bucket of pig’s blood. And they poured it on the unpopular girl because she was meek and naïve and pathetic.”

  Scout looked at me, quick. Her eyes went big, and she made a fake-scared face. “What about the one where the girl thinks her dog is under the bed, licking her hand, and she hears this dripping noise, drip, drip, drip, but she can’t figure out where it’s coming from. The next morning she finds her dog in the bathroom, hanging from the shower head, his neck cut . . . and then she realizes it was the killer, under her bed, licking her hand . . .”

  “Oh, fuck that. You win, Scout.” Asher reached up and high-fived my girlfriend.

  I looked out the window. The dark highway curved against the crashing Pacific, Portland back to Wolf Cove, the notorious 101.

  “Wait a sec, Gasher.” I grinned at them over my shoulder. “What about The Drowned Girl? You know, the one set right here on the Oregon coast—the shy girl that gets led on by a guy as a joke and when he dumps her in front of all his friends she throws herself off the cliffs. And then she comes back from the dead to haunt him. He keeps thinking he sees her in the water, and he can’t go swimming anymore, or even take a shower, and he goes stark raving mad, convinced she’s still alive, swimming with the fish down at the bottom of the sea, and someday she’ll turn up naked on the beach with her hair as long as seaweed and her eyes black and glassy like a seal’s, and she’ll drag him into the water, to swim with her in the darkness for all time . . .”

  Grace stuck her head up between the seats and scowled at me. “That story didn’t happen here. It was in the Caribbean. And her boyfriend lured her into the water knowing she couldn’t swim because he was eeeeeeevil.”

  Scout laughed, short and deep. “What kind of dick would lead a girl on as a joke? He deserved what he got.” And then she winked at me, right eyelid, long lashes, slow.

  Asher hit me in the side. Again. “No way, Theo. An urban legend needs blood, and a batshit-mad serial killer, and screaming chicks. Lots of hot, screaming chicks.” Asher leaned back in his seat and put his arms behind his head. “I’m calling this one, and I say the scariest urban legend is the one with the clown and the babysitter. The kids are in bed, and she’s watching TV, but she keeps thinking the clown statue in the corner of the room is staring at her, and she finally calls the parents to ask about it, and they say, WHAT CLOWN STATUE? Because, snap, it’s not a statue, it’s a killer dwarf dressed as a clown.”

  “Oh my god. I hate clowns. I hate them.” Grace shrieked right in my ear, just one long IHATECLOWNS wail.

  Asher rolled down his window and stuck his head out, hair whipping in the wind. “FUUUUUUUCK CLOWNS . . .”

  Scout had driven this road a hundred times, a thousand times, and she was laughing and I was laughing and my girlfriend was smart and going to Harvard and I’d gotten into an art school in Italy and everything was fucking awesome . . .

  And then I saw the girl out of the corner of my eyes—headlights sparking off her thick glasses, moon sparking off her blond hair as it whisked across the windshield.

  × × ×

  Canary London had a weird name and she seemed to embrace it, wearing tweedish wool skirts with pulled-up socks, and big glasses on a small nose, and letting her hair frizz in the ocean humidity until it looked like a blond cotton ball. She never talked in class but seemed to know all the answers when called on. I’d been going to school with her since kindergarten, but she was still a mystery to me, as foreign and unfathomable as the sea creatures that lurked in the ocean deep.

  Grace told me once that Canary lived alone with her grandfather in one of the decrepit old sea captain houses on Widow Lane, the ones that flooded every time it stormed. The ones that smelled like salt and seawater on cool summer mornings, and rotting fish on hot summer afternoons. The ones with cockroaches and cat-sized rats . . . or so went the rumors.

  Canary and I were assigned an English project together when we were juniors—Jane Austen vs. Dorothy Parker: A Battle of Wit. Canary met me after class and told me to follow her. I did. I thought she was taking me to the study hall, but nope. I followed her into an empty room in a dark hallway between the stage and the teachers’ lounge. The door was hidden in shadows and painted the color of the walls. Nearly impossible to see unless you knew it was there.

  “It used to house theater props, but the teachers have forgotten it’s here.” Canary had a breathy, husky voice that surprised me every time I heard it. I expected a girl who rarely talked and lived alone with her grandfather in a rotting rat hole on Widow Lane to have a shy, high voice, I guess.

  I glanced around. Cardboard trees, a rack of dusty Renaissance costumes, Venetian masks, a stuffed raven, an old vintage sofa.

  “I found this nook last year. I was . . . sad, and needed a place to hide for a while. You’re the first person I’ve shown it to.” Canary looked up at me, and her hazel eyes were clear and pretty behind the chunky glasses. “I’ve added some of my own things,” she said, and waved a hand over an old star-patterned quilt on the floor, and a black lamp, and a pile of tattered paperbacks in the corner—Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, The Shadow over Innsmouth and Other Lovecraftian Sea Stories, The Folk Keeper, Bloody Jack . . . all books I’d read before. And liked.

  She sat down on the quilt, and I sat down next to her. I gave her a look like Thanks for showing me this place. She smiled, and I saw she had two cutely crooked front teeth. She pushed her glasses back up her nose with small fingers and my heart beat faster, watching her do it. I don’t know why.

  We lay on our stomachs, English literature books between our elbows, and studied in the soft light from Canary’s lamp. Theater kids walked by outside, talking, making noise, acting out scenes, oblivious to the door, and the nook, and us.

  I kissed her.

  She kissed me back.

  Her glasses pressed into my cheekbone.

  Her lips were soft.

  Canary London.

  The next day Scout asked me out after art class. She marched up, threw her black hair behind her shoulder, and said I drew better nudes than any kid born in Wolf Cove had a right to.

  Me and her, after that. Me and her. Canary and the nook and the kissing, forgotten.

  × × ×

  “What do I do? What the hell should I do? Do I just keep driving? I’m just going to keep driving, oh, god, WHAT THE HELL DO I DO?”

  Scout was screaming and screaming and Asher was shouting eff eff eff eff eff and Grace was saying my name over and over and gripping my arm, squeezing it, and I . . . I just stared straight ahead.

  “I’m so fucked, I’m so fucked, so help me god, I’m so fucked . . .”

  I put my hand on Scout’s leg. Pinched her knee between my thumb and pinkie the way she liked. “It’s going to be all right, Scout,” I said. Slow. Calm. “One step at a time. We need to see if she’s dead—she might just be stunned. Come on, keep it together. Think of Clarice.”

  Scout shut her mouth.

&nbs
p; Asher shut his mouth.

  We all got out of the car.

  Canary was a pile of clothes next to the yellow line, fifty yards ahead, right in the beam of the headlights, one leg splayed out, scuffed white oxford, striped sock slipping down her calf.

  My heart stopped.

  Started back up again.

  “Grace, check her pulse.” My sister was going into pre-med, and volunteered at the clinic on weekends.

  She shook her head. “No, Theo, no, I can’t, I can’t . . .”

  “Do it. Now.”

  Grace kneeled down on the road. She closed her eyes, reached into the mess of hair and clothes, pulled out a limp wrist, and wrapped her fingers around it.

  A pause.

  An endless pause.

  The waves beat against the rocks, a hundred feet below.

  Crash, crash, crash.

  Asher paced up and down the highway, ten feet up, turn, ten feet back.

  Scout slumped to the ground, hands to her heart.

  I stood still, still as the body on the road.

  The waves crashed.

  Crash, crash, crash.

  I took a step forward, toward Scout . . .

  My foot went crunch.

  I bent down and picked up a pair of glasses. The right lens was smashed. I held the black frames in my hand, cradled in my palm.

  It started to rain. I looked at Scout. Drops slid down the side of her face, drip, drip. I realized then that I’d never seen her cry. All those nights of studying, slaving away in the diner to make tuition, and the AP classes, and the volunteering at a million non-profits to help her get that scholarship. She hadn’t cried. Not once.

  “She’s dead.” Grace’s voice cut through the waves and the rain. She stood. Turned toward Scout. “She’s dead. She’s dead, and you killed her.”

  Scout jumped up and ran at my sister. Ran right at her. Hands to shoulders, push, Grace stumbled backward, hit the car. She started crying and Scout started screaming again and the whole damn world was ending . . .

  “Stop it,” I shouted. “Stop it stop it stop it stop it.”

  But Scout screamed right over me. “How can you say that, Grace? You saw. You all saw. She came out of nowhere. You were distracting me. You and Asher, screaming fuck clowns. It’s your fault if it’s anyone’s. I’m not even drunk anymore. You and Asher are wasted and you weren’t wearing your seat belts. I was wearing my seat belt. I always wear my seat belt. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. IT’S NOT MY FAULT.”

  Asher stopped pacing. “We’ve got to call the cops.”

  Grace went to his side, leaned against him, and nodded.

  Asher reached in his coat and pulled out his phone—

  Scout, wiry arm white-blue in the moonlight. She smacked the phone out of his hand. It skidded down the road, and stopped an inch from the dip of Canary’s dead knee.

  “Fuck that. I’m not going to jail.” Scout stared at Asher, and she was bigger than him, she really was right then, with her five feet two facing his six feet three. “I’ve worked too damn hard. My parents have worked too damn hard. I’m not going to jail. I’m not. Where am I going, Asher?”

  Silence.

  “Where am I going, Asher?”

  “Harvard,” Asher said.

  “That’s right. And you don’t want to lose your football scholarship to Austin, do you?”

  He shook his head.

  She whipped around and stared at my sister. “You’re not going to get into a good med school with this on your record, Grace. You know you won’t.”

  My turn. “They won’t let you leave the country to attend that exclusive Italian art school, Theo.”

  We all just stood there, saying nothing.

  And the waves went crash, crash, crash.

  Scout screamed. One long, gut-wrenching scream. And then she slumped down to the road again.

  The rain made her hair stick to her face, and it creased her cheeks with black scars.

  Asher looked down and saw the crushed eyeglasses in my hand. “So who was it?” he asked, long, long after the fact. “Who did we kill, anyway?”

  “Canary. Canary London.” Raindrops down my face, across my neck, behind my ears.

  Scout. Knees still on the road. She looked up. Straight at me.

  “Canary lived near here,” I said. “Widow Lane is the next turn to the left, half a mile ahead.”

  “Shut up, Theo.” Grace hit me with one hand and pointed with the other. “Headlights. Someone’s coming. Someone’s coming.”

  × × ×

  Senior year. Prom. Note in my locker.

  Meet me in the nook.

  I went.

  She kissed me for an hour, not on the lips, everywhere else. Down my cheeks, across my neck, behind my ears, up my spine. She pulled on the loops of my jeans and kissed the skin she found underneath.

  I fiddled with the tiny buttons on her white shirt, which she called a blouse. “Put your hand in my blouse, Theo,” she said.

  I did.

  “Theo?” she said later, husky voice in my ear. “Do you remember that time in sixth grade, when Scout and her friends were making fun of my name and my thick glasses at recess?” She paused. “You ripped off your coat like a rock star and said you’d beat up the next person who made fun of me, girl or guy.”

  I nodded. I remembered. “I just did what needed to be done.”

  “I’ve always liked that about you.”

  And then she asked. I don’t know why. She knew I was with Scout. Everyone knew I was with Scout. Scout liked to run her hands over me in between classes, staring down the born-again prudes with fight-me eyes. She’d kiss me against my locker while I quizzed her on upcoming tests, and slap me when she got a question wrong. Scout was noticeable. We were noticeable.

  Still, Canary asked me to prom.

  And I wanted to go with her, I really did, so I just said yes, fuck the consequences.

  × × ×

  Scout, up again, on her feet, screaming. “We have to get rid of the body, we can’t put her in the car, we’ll get DNA all over it, is she bleeding, did anyone check? We can’t get her blood all over my seats, my parents, we can’t, I’m so fucked, I’m so fucked . . .”

  I’d never seen Scout lose it like this. Not the day she took the SATs, not when she opened her acceptance letter from Harvard, not the autumn night we carved pumpkins and both lost our virginity with the sweet smell of spiced cider in the air. Not ever.

  I brushed the raindrops off my forehead, quick slap, and then pointed at the rock wall on the other side of the road. “Asher, Scout, drag Canary back into the shadows on the other side of the car and stay there. Now, right now.”

  The headlights got closer.

  Asher and Scout grabbed her arms, one each. Pulled. Back she went, out of the headlights, into the dark.

  I took my sister by the shoulders. “Grace, listen. Listen. If they stop, we’re going to tell them that we’re geocaching, all right? You have to act bored. You have to act like nothing’s wrong.”

  Grace nodded, fast.

  The headlights got closer.

  Closer.

  Slowed . . .

  Stopped.

  My heartbeat. Loud and big as the surf.

  Red truck. Window rolling down.

  “Anything wrong?”

  It was Mr. Dunn, our math teacher.

  “Hey, Mr. Dunn,” I said. Like it was nothing. “We’re geocaching. Asher and Scout are determined to find this ammo box.”

  “Damn rain. My hair is totally ruined.” Grace, right on cue, making me proud. She pushed wet brown strands behind her ear and scowled. “They’re both so stubborn. Had to get this cache, tonight. You know how Scout is. She has to get an A in everything, even geocaching.”

&
nbsp; Mr. Dunn stared at us. His eyes narrowed. He was one of the smartest teachers at our school. Grace had a crush on him, and so did Scout.

  “Geocaching,” he repeated. Slowly. He stared over my shoulder toward the car. I fought the urge to flinch. I knew he couldn’t see anything. It was all rain and shadows. “Well, get off the road, Theo. One of you could get hit.”

  I nodded.

  The window rolled up.

  The red truck drove off.

  A pause.

  Crash.

  Crash.

  × × ×

  I went to the prom with Canary. Scout said it would be good for her. That she deserved it, for asking me to go when she knew I had a girlfriend.

  I did nothing to stop it.

  Scout was waiting. She was ready.

  Half an hour in, and I was slow-dancing with Canary. We were out of the nook, out in the wide open, our classmates all around us, her gangly arms around my neck, my hands on her waist, fingertips along her spine, her cheek on my shoulder, her back bare to the waist, the edge of her old-fashioned dress swooping across the floor . . .

  I leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose. She smiled up at me, two slightly crooked front teeth. Her eyes behind the thick glasses were soft. Blissful.

  I felt someone watching me. I looked over Canary’s canary-yellow hair. There she was, standing at the edge of the gym. Black pants, black sweater, black boots, black hair tucked into a black cap, the brim pulled down low.

  She nodded at me.

  I dropped my hands from Canary’s waist and stepped back.

  Scout ran toward us, pail in hand. I smelled it, I gagged on it, the sea stench, clouds of it, everywhere, everywhere . . .

  Salt, rotting fish, sand, ocean.

  Scout threw the bucket of seawater. It arced up, came back down, splash. Canary’s green silk dress turned black.

  Scout threw the pail again. She got every putrid, stinking drop out, down to the rotting fish at the very bottom. It bounced off Canary’s small chest and landed at her toes.

  She just stood there, and took it.

  People screamed.

  People laughed.

  Scout left the pail on the gym floor and disappeared into the crowd, sliding into the shadows before anyone thought to stop her.