Chapter 10 Tiffany
Tiffany
Tiffany gaped at the empty knife block, which only moments ago had seemed like a godsend. The paring knife suddenly seemed small and laughable in her slender, manicured hand.
“You didn’t take it?” Tiffany said to Patrick, hopefully.
Patrick shook his head. “I haven’t touched it since we got here.”
“Wait a minute,” said Jason. “What’s this doing here?”
He bent down and picked up a hat off the floor under the shadow of the counters. A broad-brimmed hat, slightly dented on one side.
A ranger’s hat.
The bubble of dread that had been expanding behind Tiffany’s ribs threatened to burst. Carrie’s eyes grew so wide the whites were nearly visible in the dim light. “Russ took the knife—” she started.
“And dropped his hat,” Tiffany finished.
Panic rose up in her throat, scorching like she’d drunk too many cosmos on an empty stomach.
She wished she hadn’t smoked Freddy’s weed, because she didn’t know what was cannabis-induced paranoia and what was good old-fashioned terror.
Regardless of whether her fear was authentic or not, she had to get the fuck out of there.
“We should go,” Carrie said in a small voice, and it was the first thing she’d said since she’d arrived that Tiffany could get behind.
No one felt like packing snacks after that.
Jason put the hat down and Tiffany followed him out of the kitchen, her thoughts swinging wildly in a dozen different directions.
Patrick had promised this weekend was going to be perfect.
She’d believed him, because she trusted his obsessive attention to detail.
More fool her. This weekend was the very opposite of perfect.
Her new Keds were ruined and tendrils of her hair had escaped her ponytail and clung damply to her face.
The bikini was a mistake; it held water like a sponge and was cold and heavy against her clammy skin.
She kept her head turned away from where Ranger Russ had fallen.
She’d never been good with blood. If she didn’t look, maybe he could still be lying there.
As opposed to, say, hiding behind the curtains with the missing knife like the Slasher.
She pictured hulking Russ, his ranger’s uniform stained scarlet, and the shining blade flashing again and again like the killer’s knife in Psycho.
Pretty blondes like her never did well in Hitchcock films.
Once Tiffany was outside, however, she almost wished she were back in the cabin.
Her flashlight beam pierced the darkness but eventually dropped off, devoured by the night.
And then there were the noises. The rain had thankfully stopped, but that had lifted the curtain on a symphony of eerie nighttime sounds.
Rustling leaves and breezes sweeping through trees.
The blood in Tiffany’s ears, roaring like the crowd at a homecoming game.
She’d never realized how much sound a quiet night could make, because she’d always been laughing and chatting and, frankly, dead drunk every time the Jumpscare Society had come to the Slasher cabin.
Tiffany forced her straining lungs to breathe as the six of them stood awkwardly in the driveway. She eyed Russ’s SUV longingly. “I suppose no one knows how to hot-wire a car?”
“Surprisingly, no,” said Jen.
Patrick took his phone out of his pocket and checked it for the hundredth time. “We can’t even google it.”
Tiffany checked her phone, too, fighting tears even though she knew it would have no service.
Was Clive worrying because he hadn’t heard from her in hours?
Were her Instagram followers concerned because she hadn’t posted anything since modeling her new bikini before she’d left for the cabin?
Her phone wasn’t just a connection to safety, but a connection to her friends and admirers.
Without that tether, what did she have? She was a tree falling in the forest without anyone to hear it, except this ragtag group of old high school friends and her stubborn ex.
And possibly a park ranger with a knife and a grudge.
“Michael would probably know,” Carrie said, in that plaintive goody-two-shoes voice that made Tiffany sick.
A voice that said, I’m so helpless. Tiffany could never figure out if it was an intentional affectation, or if Carrie’s overbearing mother had weakened her spine.
“He was so brave, trying to protect us.”
Tiffany hid a snort. Mikey had tried to protect Carrie, not the rest of them. Because he’d thought Russ was her ex and wanted to get into her pants, as per usual. If Carrie only knew what Mikey had done in the past to protect her—
Well, if Mikey succeeded in winning her over, those sneaky little rats deserved each other.
Jason smiled grimly. “That’s further incentive to find him.”
“Okay, gang. It’s pretty simple.” Patrick held up his compass.
“The cabin is south, by the lake. Jen and I will head northwest, Freddy and Carrie, you head northeast. Jason and Tiffany, you can check around the lakeshore. He might’ve headed for the cottages to the east. We’ll meet back here in an hour. ”
“And then we can go? Whether or not we find Mikey?” Freddy said.
“And then we can go,” Jason said.
Jen twirled her knife with alarming skill and tugged on Patrick’s sleeve. “Come along, Velma,” she said.
“Be safe,” Jason said to Patrick, probably as troubled as Tiffany was by the gusto with which Jen was wielding her knife. Then he cleared his throat and said, more loudly, “Be safe, everyone.”
Patrick nodded and he and Jen tromped off, their dark figures slipping between the trees.
Carrie took out her phone, checked the time, and then tapped Freddy’s shoulder. “Let’s go, Freddy.” He nodded, hoisting the bread knife like an Olympic torch before they walked away.
Though not before Carrie took a long backward glance at Jason.
That bitch still couldn’t get over that Jason would never be hers.
Tiffany decided to be the bigger person, however.
She was above petty jealousy and there was nothing to be jealous of.
Tiffany outshone girls like Carrie nine times out of ten.
There was always that tenth time, though, if Tiffany wasn’t careful.
Carrie’s anxious doe eyes skimmed over her. Tiffany gave her an encouraging, queenly smile. Carrie gave Tiffany a small smile in return, and then she and Freddy disappeared into the woods, in the opposite direction to Patrick and Jen.
Tiffany realized then she was clutching the little paring knife so tightly the plastic handle had probably fused to her palm with her sweat.
She took a deep, shaky breath. The ominous feeling she’d never see the Jumpscare Society all together again settled over her like a cobweb, twitchy and unsettling.
Even though she’d totally expected they’d go their separate ways after this weekend.
Save for Jason, needless to say. The boy—now man—whose name she’d doodled all over her high school notebooks.
She’d written Mrs. Tiffany Ackerman so many times that sometimes she forgot it wasn’t her real name.
He was her soulmate. Antony to her Cleopatra.
Richard Burton to her Liz Taylor. Ben Affleck to her JLo.
They always found their way back to each other, no matter what, and tonight was no different.
She was pleased to finally get him alone, although she wished the circumstances were different.
Still, a little danger would be good for making him snap out of his stubborn mood.
He might have to literally come to her rescue, if Russ attacked them.
Though she hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
But the trick to drawing men, in Tiffany’s experience, was to make them believe she needed them.
That at the end of the day, despite her confident exterior, she was a delicate flower who needed a big strong man to take care of her.
Having Tiffany Podemski on his arm was the biggest ego boost a man could get.
She looked up through her eyelashes at Jason, fluttering them helplessly.
It wasn’t hard to pretend to be helpless, because she really was frightened of Ranger Russ.
Jason’s blue eyes were shadowed in the dark, and his boyishly handsome face, which she’d always thought of as an open book, was closed to her.
Closed and guarded. Like he knew something she didn’t.
The threat of Russ suddenly seemed far away. Shit. Had Mikey finally told Jason about her and Billy? It might explain why he’d pulled away this past year.
Jason knew she dated other guys during their breakups. They’d always been to make him jealous, but his older brother was different. Jason had tried to live up to Billy’s example for so long, under pressure from their father, and Tiffany knew how sore he was about it.
Jason would never forgive her if he knew she’d slept with Billy after her junior year of high school, when he’d come home from college that summer.
Billy had just seemed so much more mature, and so she’d picked a fight with Jason and run straight into his brother’s arms. It was only that one time, anyway.
And the blow job in his car. And getting to third base in her Jeep near the observatory on the outskirts of town, where they’d been interrupted by Mikey knocking on the steamed-up windows.
Who knew people actually went to the observatory to stargaze instead of hook up? He was such a geek.
That had been before Carrie’s infamous photo had leaked.
Tiffany wasn’t the only girl in town who could make spectacular mistakes.
For a brief time she’d fantasized being an NFL wife—Billy was a much better player than Jason—but Billy had ghosted her after returning to college.
Now at every family function with the Ackermans, she had to pretend nothing had happened between them.
He’d texted her when she and Jason split up earlier that year, but as he was now working as a lowly trainer at some grubby Fairvale gym, Tiffany had ignored the message. He wasn’t worthy of her, after all.