→ ducks inside, clicking the light on.
It’s rows and rows of clothes.
Izzy glides her fingers along the shoulders of the blouses and dresses, finally pulls out a grey one with vague red accents.
“Is this evidence?” she says back to Dante. “I can take another if it is.”
“What did you mean it wasn’t Billie Jean. Twenty people recorded it.”
Izzy looks over to him, then to Brittney’s mom standing in the doorway, her eyes swollen and red.
“Think maybe you should come with me,” Izzy says, and the next time we see her
→ she’s in the back of Dante’s deputy cruiser, staring out with the blankest look, the dress hanging on the other side of the backseat from her.
“It’s over,” she says to herself, her POV now seeing all the helicopters hovering two or three miles out like flies over a carcass.
Dante readjusts his rearview to see her better.
“She took a movie home, if that means anything,” he says. “A videotape.”
“She didn’t go home,” Izzy says. “That reporter. She was talking to him when I was talking to you, last night.”
“Reporter?”
“You brought him to school yesterday.”
“ . . . Leslie, Casey—Jackie?”
“Sam, Chris, Pat, Max?” Izzy adds. “Tracy, Shannon, Dana Carvey?”
“What?”
“Jamie. Jamie Curtis. The ‘Lee’ is silent.”
“She was in Blue Steel, right?”
“Best slasher that never was.”
“Never was what?”
“Known as a slasher.”
“You’re really into this movie stuff, aren’t you?” Dante asks.
“Movies are the world, and I live in the world, yeah. You too, Blue Steel.”
“And she was into them like you? Britt?”
“She doesn’t like to be called that,” Izzy says. “That’s a boy’s name.” She winces then, to have said it, to have made her a Ripley, a Sidney. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“That horror movie she took home, it was . . . ” Dante says, working a flip pad up from his chest pocket to read from it, “My Bloody Valentine?”
“Love story. Figures. Old one or new?”
“It matter?”
“She liked the old one,” Izzy says, staring out the window again, then squints in pain, corrects herself: “Likes, I mean. She likes the old one. She likes it now, wherever she is, and she’ll like it later, when this is all over and done with.”
Dante studies her in the rearview again.
Izzy looks right up into his eyes.
“If homecoming wasn’t tonight, I might could bait him in for you,” she says. “The fake Billie Jean. I mean, not me, obviously, but whoever he really wants. Whoever this is all really for. Whoever’s worthy.”
“Lindsay.”
“Probably.”
“Doesn’t matter. Homecoming isn’t tonight anymore.”
“It has to be,” Izzy says. “It’s what he or she or they’ve been waiting for, planning around. Last night was foreplay. Tonight’s the money shot.”
“Billie Jean isn’t real,” Dante says, taking a turn especially slow, as if Izzy is that fragile. “It’s just Brooks Baker off his rocker, getting high off his own supply, playing Halloween. And I’ve got him in lockdown already.”
“Lindsay’s dad’s actually named Brooke?”
“Brooks. As in creek, plural.”
Izzy laughs about this without smiling, and a cut later
→ they’re crunching down through the trees and leaves behind Izzy’s house, towards the creek.
On the way, Izzy looks up to the house, sees her brother framed in his upstairs window, watching them, his arms black with ash and work, his face smudged.
“Well,” Dante says then, and stops, clears the leaf litter away from
→ the sheriff’s glinting badge.
“Hunh,” Izzy says, just walking past, not impressed.
Dante uses his pen to balance the badge up into his jacket pocket then follows Izzy, his eyes different now, but not different enough for his POV to catch Ben up in his window, even though it seems like his shadow’s still there. Or the ash he was wearing. Or his ghost.
And then they’re at the creek, Izzy and Dante, each of them breathing hard. A crisp, shiny morning.
“I shouldn’t have done it,” Izzy says. “You don’t have to lecture me. I should have called him in, I know.”
“You talking about the sheriff?” Dante says.
“I’m talking about him,” Izzy says, pulling hard on the yellow cord, the music climbing, a section of the leaves shifting away to show . . .
Nothing. Silence.
Izzy can’t process this.
“What?” Dante’s saying, stepping in beside her. “Your dad’s old turkey hunting blind?”
Dante reaches down to shake it all the way free.
It’s just a blind. Burrito wrappers all in it. And a smell that makes him cover his nose with the back of his hand.
“He’s wearing a leg brace,” Izzy finally says. “The real Billie Jean. That’s how you’ll know. When we get to the Scooby-Doo part and there’s two of them, that’s how you’ll be able to tell.”
Dante’s watching her.
“Or just shoot them both if you want,” Izzy adds, shrugging all his unasked questions off. “They both deserve it.”
Dante extracts the badge from his jacket with a tissue, hooks it on the rough bark of the big tree.
“I’m going to have to tape off this whole area,” he says, looking back up the steep slope.
“This whole town,” Izzy corrects, and he looks to her but she’s just studying the shimmering surface of the water, her face slack, only looking up
→ as if in response to the sudden sound of brakes hissing.
It’s a school bus, rolling into Danforth High School’s trash- strewn parking lot. The bus’s windows are shoe-polished with Beat the Titans and Release the Kraken kind of stuff.
Behind the bus is a parade of decorated cars.
The bus stops before the main entrance, a tennis shoe stepping down onto the asphalt.
We back off slow and the polyester shorts and tucked-in gold shirt ID this as a coach, and the paunch says head coach, and, by the time we finally make it to this coach’s head he’s turned away from us, studying this big emptiness, trying to make sense of it, so all we can see is some salt and pepper hair.
But then he reaches up, peels his hat off to scratch his scalp with a pinky and turns around so casual, squinting against the sun.
Robert Englund.
Hell yes.
An instant later
→ he’s shaking the chained front doors.
Nobody answers.
He scowls, cups his hands around his eyes, peers in through the glass, his POV able to make out the trophy case.
The sword’s still there.
“They turn tail when they heard it was us?” a deep voice asks, and
→ we reverse, look up, and up.
Tony Todd.
The Bulldogs’ coach is Freddy Krueger, their assistant coach the Candyman.
“We never had a chance, did we?” Izzy says to Dante over the top of Dante’s cruiser.
“Don’t call it yet,” Dante says, opening his door, his hand reaching in for a big roll of police tape, his police radio crackling to life.
“What now?” he says, sitting sideways in the front seat, holding the radio mike to his mouth.
“You might want to get over here,” the woman deputy says, and he gingerly sets the mike back in its place
→ is already pulling into the parking lot of the high school, driving slow like this is a trap, Izzy in the front seat beside him, the roll of yellow tape in her lap, her fingers pulling at the leading edge of it, her POV tracking the female deputy’s car, already cocked at an angle in front of the bus.
Sitting in the back of
it, watching Izzy back, is Lindsay, locked up safe just like Dante said.
Her eyes are puffy and red, her face washed out, no make-up.
She blinks hopefully across the parking lot to Izzy, puts her hand to her bulletproof glass, and Izzy looks purposefully away,
→ to some of the Bulldogs out on the field, running drills in half pads on their own, because
→ their coaches are under the overhang sheltering the main doors of the school.
With Dante.
“I’m sorry you came all this way, Coach,” Dante’s saying. “Maybe you should have tuned in some news.”
“We left at five,” the assistant coach says. “No cell phones on the bus. It’s policy.”
“Even for us,” the head coach adds, pushing away from the wall, watching his boys out on the field, a cheerleader just past them launching up into the air, towards our skybound POV, then falling back, but we don’t get to see her get caught, are
→ back at the school.
“We can spot you however many players you need, Deputy,” the head coach is saying. “First stringers, even, keep it fair.”
Dante looks away, to Izzy, walking from his cruiser to the other one.
Izzy sits down in the front seat, adjusts the rearview to center Lindsay in it.
“And then there were three,” Izzy says.
“What?” Lindsay says.
“You were there,” Izzy says.
“Which time?” Lindsay says, sobbing a little smile.
“They’re deciding whether tonight’s grindhouse double feature’ll happen or not.”
Izzy stares at Lindsay in the mirror.
“What are you wanting out of it all?” Izzy says.
Lindsay dabs the corner of her eye in that way that means she doesn’t want wrinkles, shakes her head no.
“I just want it to be over,” she says. “For all—all my friends to be . . . ”
“Ditto,” Izzy says, her POV settling on Dante and the assistant coach, in each other’s faces now, their voices obviously getting raised.
“Who you think would win?” Izzy says, about the two giants, squaring off.
“It’s all my fault, right?” Lindsay says, coming up to the wire separator.
Izzy turns around so they’re face-to-face, Izzy’s eyes hot, her left hand using the upright shotgun for support, the slide racking back by accident.
She doesn’t look over to it. Just at Lindsay.
“It’s my dad,” Lindsay whispers. “I mean, it’s not him anymore, he could never—but it’s him. I should, I should just—”
“Let the villagers Fay Wray you out at the edge of town?” Izzy smiles. “Maybe, yeah. But not yet.”
Lindsay cocks her head, doesn’t follow.
“Unless it does turn out to be you, of course,” Izzy adds. “Then I’ll spit on your grave myself. Take you to the last house on the left just before dawn.”
Lindsay presses the heel of her hand between her eyes for a long moment, finally comes back up with “I’m guessing that’s a clever threat of some sort?”
“You knew who Jason Voorhees’s mom was,” Izzy says.
“And—and that means I’m choreographing all my friends dying? You know what? I know who Krusty the Clown is too, does that mean I’m a cartoon? Do animated characters find their fathers stomped nearly to death in a stall? Do cartoon people have to go to six funerals in one week? Do their horses get blinded in swordfights, by Michael Jackson? Just because you and your little friend light candles for serial killers, don’t think the rest of us do, okay? I was giving you a chance, with homecoming. I thought you deserved it. That it might get you back on the path. That you might be somebody. You’ve got it in you, you know?”
Izzy just stares at her until she looks away.
“I don’t even want to be, to be queen anymore,” she says, almost sobbing.
“Crown hanging heavy?” Izzy offers.
“Cute. Shakespeare?”
“Think it’s Conan,” Izzy says, pushing her unholy cell phone back through the wire.
Lindsay catches it, doesn’t know what to do with it.
“My little friend, she remembers you from third grade,” Izzy says.
Lindsay closes her eyes, is crying now.
“And she’s MIA right now too.”
Lindsay looks up about this, says, “Last night?”
“The longer she’s missing, the more likely she’s not coming back,” Izzy adds, speaking forward now, her hands at ten and two on the wheel. “We need to get to the third reel of this before somebody goes all Hostel on her, understand?”
“Third reel?” Lindsay says.
“The big game,” Izzy explains. “The big dance. The end of all this.”
“Homecoming.”
“My last chance to be somebody, yeah,” Izzy says. “Now, get your mom on the phone. Who can say no to an almost widow?”
“She’s a councilwoman too,” Lindsay says, dialing, blinking, sniffling in then dialing some more.
“All the better. Any chance Crystal’s dad is too?”
Next is Dante, whipping Izzy’s battered cell phone away from the side of his head. Like pulling a scab. Izzy and Lindsay leaning on the deputy’s car behind him, their arms crossed.
Dante looks up slow and grim, to the players and cheerleaders watching him through the white letters of their windows. Waiting.
He nods once to them: okay.
Out on the field, the quarterback, who can hear the cheering from the bus, nods, steps back to punt the ball in pure, unadulterated joy, blasting it up into the sky, so it hangs, hangs, hangs some more, and somewhere under that perfect spiral punt, a montage is going on, complete with gearing-up music:
→ Crystal’s swank, mob-lawyer dad setting his phone back down on its cradle, nodding once to Crystal, standing in the doorway;
→ a helmet being snugged down hard onto some player’s head;
→ a 1972 ragtop Cadillac easing up the packed red clay of the track around the football field, the Cadillac all ticker-taped out for the big halftime show, Mrs. Graves behind the wheel
→ her POV studying the gathering clouds;
→ Izzy’s mom in the living room, dancing with the dress she’s chosen for Izzy;
→ Dante, opening the gun safe at the Sheriff’s offices, passing shotguns back to other officers;
→ the assistant coach’s hands slamming down on a player’s shoulder pads in that way coaches do, when they won’t hug;
→ Lindsay, stepping out of the back of the deputy’s cruiser and into an exclusive hair salon, somebody already holding the door for her;
→ Izzy in Brittney’s bedroom, one of those bulletin-board photo collages in her lap;
→ Ben in the basement wearing a welding helmet, whatever he’s doing glowing in the dark glass he’s looking through;
→ the Bulldog cheerleaders, circling their upper arms with simple black ribbon;
→ the creek, purling gently past, a few raindrops splattering into its surface;
→ somebody in a light raincoat laying down chalk lines on the football field, the wind pulling at his clothes;
→ Dante, walking out of a bathroom with the newspaper and a small, still-wet key;
→ a bunch of football players praying on one knee in a locker room;
→ that Cadillac, just sitting there in front of the empty stands, it’s top up against the thunder reverberating all around;
→ Izzy’s mom putting a bottle back into the liquor cabinet and wiping her mouth, then reaching in for one more slosh, then pushing the door shut, inserting the key, snapping it cleanly off and kissing the part she still has, for luck;
→ Crystal’s locker in the dark high school, her homecoming’d photo on front X’d out;
→ the cliff Billie Jean fell from, nobody there;
→ a deputy’s cruiser parked outside Brittney’s house, the woman deputy leaning against the side of the car, waiting;
→ Izzy, standi
ng in what’s obviously Brittney’s bathroom, an X of eyeliner already dragged across her face in the mirror. She looks at herself through it for a beat or two more then down to what-all beauty supplies Brittney has;
→ her hand reaching down through this dream, for a hair brush; g a different hand taking that wall-mounted sword by the handle; g dusk settling over things, the stadium lights glowing on
through the drizzle, and we stay there in that nostalgic moment.
Just another Friday night in small-town America. At least until
→ we go tight on a horse’s whiskery nostrils in some kind of tight darkness.
They blow hard and mad, startle us up in our seats.
This is it.
A ct 3
Helmets slam into each other silently in the rain, and then the sound catches up all at once.
The game. Titans defending homecoming against the Bulldogs. Rivershead showing the world that it’s not dead, that it’s not giving up.
We go from the visiting head coach’s face, looking away from the rest of the play like it hurts him
→ to the Bulldog cheerleaders, soaking wet but cheering on the home side, right in front of the Cadillac, their faces intensely happy, their movements precise
→ the packed stands above them clapping, insisting on the happiness of tonight. A sea of umbrellas and tarps, everybody up there desperate to ignore
→ the respectful pan across all the framed portraits stood up at the inside curb of the track, right before the field starts.
Some of these school photos have empty helmets in front of them. Five others, pom-poms—why the Bulldog cheerleaders are working the Titan stands, probably.
One photo, Mandy’s, has a nicely folded pair of red and white tights, a rose laid across them, the rain beading off it.
The Last Final Girl Page 15
