Chapter 11 Jen
Jen
Jen was starting to reconsider volunteering as Patrick’s search party partner. She’d picked him because he was the most level-headed. She was fond of Tiffany and Freddy, but their hysterics would drive her batty. Ten minutes with them and she’d probably beg Ranger Russ to put her out of her misery.
Carrie, on the other hand, would be too serious.
She might have been their Final Girl, but if they were attacked by a killer she’d do something insufferably noble, like sacrifice herself so Jen could get away.
Jen would appreciate that, but the thought made her cringe.
She’d be expected to live her life indebted to Carrie’s selflessness and become a better person, yada yada yada.
No fucking thanks. She enjoyed being a dirtbag.
Jason, too, would sacrifice himself for Jen, but he’d probably try to talk to her about Tiffany and she didn’t want to play go-between. She’d had enough of that when her parents had divorced. Let Ken and Barbie figure out their own shit.
So Patrick was the best choice of the bunch. He was the perfect search party buddy because he didn’t believe they were in serious danger. He’d be sensible.
Plus, while he was dumbfounded at being proven wrong, Jen could easily push him in their stalker’s path and make her escape.
She hadn’t counted on his incessant complaining, however.
“Why do I have to be Velma?” Patrick said as their flashlights carved a path through the woods. Jen’s boots crushed twigs and cedar needles into the rain-damp soil, releasing a rich, earthy fragrance. “Is it because I’m nerdy? In that case, if anyone’s Velma, it’s Mikey.”
“Because you, my friend, are a little bitch. I say that with love. Take it as a compliment from a big bitch.”
“If I’m Velma, does that make you Scooby?”
“No way. I’m Scrappy-Doo.”
Patrick laughed. “Agreed.”
Jen took the compass out of her back pocket to check they were headed in the right direction. “Come along, Velma.”
“I liked it better when you called me Carlton,” Patrick grumbled.
Washed out by their flashlights, the woods took on a flat, surreal quality, as if they were inside a smudged charcoal drawing on cheap paper.
All the trees looked the same, and no matter how much they walked, it appeared as if they hadn’t moved at all.
They were in a world where the rules of time and space didn’t apply.
Yet in this environment, the kitchen knife felt right in Jen’s hand.
An extension of her body, like a paintbrush.
Ideas tumbled through her artist’s mind, one after the other.
She had a new appreciation for slashers now.
Maybe serial killers saw what they did as art.
It was art, in a way. A performance for an audience.
The best art evoked a visceral, emotional response, and was in conversation with others.
Is this how horror movie slashers felt with a knife in their hand? The comforting weight, the seductive shine of the blade? The urge to part skin, to slip it into flesh, to feel that delicious resistance? Jen shivered with gruesome delight.
“I figure if Russ is hell-bent on reenacting Slasher, we’ll be safe,” Jen said. “Like that guy says in Scream 4. You have to be gay to survive a horror remake. You and me, we’re sacred cows. Untouchable. Thank you, inclusive casting.”
“Didn’t that guy get killed anyway?”
The delightful shiver froze into ice. “Spoilsport,” she muttered.
“Let’s just hurry up and find Mikey. Mikey?” Patrick called out.
Jen hit him in the arm. “Shush! Russ will find us!”
“If he’s roaming the woods, he’s going to find us anyway with all the noise we’re making. And the flashlights.”
Jen hurriedly turned off her flashlight. “Seriously?” Patrick said.
“The clouds have lifted and there’s a full moon. Our eyes will adjust.”
Patrick grunted, but he turned off his flashlight, too. “Mikey?” he called again, this time in a hiss.
Fucking Mikey. He just had to run off. He was still so awkward, despite his buff new body.
Still that puppy tagging along after Jason and drooling over Carrie.
And running from responsibility. Everyone knew he’d been the one to set off those smoke bombs in the boys’ locker room, after some guys on the basketball team had been giving him a tough time about his parents.
Jen actually admired his fiendish revenge plot.
The kid had hair on his balls, after all.
But then he’d kept his mouth shut and let Jason take the fall.
Too bad MIT didn’t offer courses in accountability, because Mikey needed them.
Was it the fear of Ranger Russ or being back in Cedar Lake that had stripped them down to their basic selves?
Sticking them back in their roles, like they were playing Slasher’s character tropes at the Rialto.
The jock, the preppy, the goth. The cheerleader, the stoner, the nerd, and the good girl.
It was all very Breakfast Club. Patrick probably didn’t seem this uptight in his economics program, where everyone was probably a lot like him.
Same with Mikey. He’d be just another nerdy tech-bro-in-training.
At Jen’s art school, she was one of many goths.
Back in boring Cedar Lake, however, she found herself behaving more rebelliously to remind everyone she didn’t belong.
“Mikey?” Patrick said again.
This was fruitless. There was nothing around but more trees. “I don’t think there’s any point looking for him,” she said.
“But he could start Russ’s car and get us out of here. And Jason—” Patrick’s mouth clamped shut like he was afraid he’d said too much.
Jen rolled her eyes. Again, coming back to Cedar Lake had dragged them into the past. She bet Patrick never thought about Jason at all while he was at college. But as soon as he was back in their hometown, he was mooning over the football hero like a schoolboy.
“Speaking of Fred and Daphne, are you really gonna let them make up? I love Tiff, but we all know she treats him like crap.”
Patrick sputtered, and Jen took delight in having discomfited him. “It’s none of my business who Jason dates. Anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Isn’t there? Can’t you get him alone and show him the depth and breadth of your spreadsheets?” Jen elbowed him in the ribs, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.
“Ow! We’re just friends,” Patrick said, swatting her away. He was so precious when he was in denial. Fred and Velma—that was a ship no one would see coming, not even Patrick himself. “He’s not even into guys.”
“Mm-hmm.” She had her doubts about that.
She’d once spotted Jason at a hole-in-the-wall diner two towns over, gazing intently at Bruce from the basketball team over a tray of nachos.
But she didn’t tell Patrick, because the one thing she would never do was out someone who wasn’t ready to be outed. She had scruples. Sometimes.
“Let’s just find Mikey,” he continued. “You can worry about our friends’ love lives later.”
Jen snorted. “I doubt Pipsqueak’s gone for help. He’s probably on his way to Mexico, like he said.”
Patrick took out his phone and glanced at the time. “Even if he is, he’s probably still gotten lost.”
He swiped away a notification on his screen. Jen’s mouth dropped open. “Your phone works?” It would be just like Patrick to intentionally strand them at the cabin for some forced togetherness.
“It never works when I check. Data’s spotty. These news headlines must be slipping in the rare time it connects.”
“Anything interesting? Like a Slasher wannabe on the loose?”
He shrugged. “They found a dead guy in an alley in Fairvale.”
“So just another Friday night in the big city.” Jen made a face. “This is all your fault, you know.”
“Mine?” Patrick’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and hurt.
“We are never getting together at a remote house again. No one gets killed by slashers in shitty little city apartments. No one stupidly runs up the stairs, because there are no stairs. There are lots of people around who’ll hear you scream. And working cell phones.”
She stabbed her knife into the air to emphasize each word.
“Working. Cell. Phones! When I get my trust fund money, I’m renting a garret in Paris.
You never see slashers in Paris. Everyone’s having too much fun eating bread and having torrid affairs with hot girls named Céline or Ana?s to go on killing sprees. ”
“Come on, we still don’t know if we’re in danger from Russ. If he tried to drown Tiffany, wouldn’t his hair have been wet?”
Jen frowned, trying to remember Russ’s features. She’d just spotted the goofy uniform and immediately thought, Loser. “It wasn’t?”
“No. When I was trying to figure out why he looked familiar, I noticed his hair first. It was kind of bushy. Like my mom’s Pomeranian.”
Jen pursed her lips. Her earlier outrageous thought when they’d found the mask in Freddy’s van returned. No, it couldn’t have been Freddy terrorizing Tiff. He didn’t have the balls. She tried to remember who else hadn’t been by the lake when Tiffany had almost drowned.
Mikey and Jason.
Mikey could’ve been playing a practical joke, and in usual Mikey fashion wasn’t owning up to it for fear of the consequences.
But he wouldn’t do that to Tiff. She didn’t take jokes well and he’d be afraid to make her mad.
The only person Mikey would ever prank was Jason, because Jason would only laugh and not give him shit about it.
“Maybe it was Jason,” Jen said.
“What?”
“I’m trying to think of everyone who wasn’t by the lake while Tiff was swimming. Freddy, Mikey, and Jason. Freddy’s too much of a slacker to hurt anyone intentionally, Mikey’s too afraid of getting into trouble. That leaves Jason. Who actually has a motive as Tiff’s ex.”
“That’s impossible. He loves Tiffany!” Patrick said.
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. But they’ve split up again and maybe he’s jealous, or he’s had enough of her shit. She’s seeing someone new, you know. Again.”
Patrick was silent, and Jen could tell he was struggling with that thought. For many reasons.