III Faces
A week passed. Eight days passed - actually.
The killer remained silent for the week. The teenagers panicked, moped, cried, mourned, and daydreamed of his presence, but he did not appear for eight full days.
During those eight days, Westfield wrote with all his heart.
He threw everything he was and everything he had into an attempt to write something resembling an intelligent one-act play.
He was a teenager - everything was heightened.
He needed to write something about love, true love, and have everyone die in the end.
He obsessed over this and decided that it needed to happen.
He panicked and threw everything out, restarted the whole thing twice, and restarted with the original draft towards the end.
It occurred to him that Mitchell was also writing a play in which everyone died in the end - so he decided that some of his characters would stop a bad guy.
He wanted that ending. He would believe in his characters in the tiniest bit.
He gave them a chance to do something wonderful.
During the week, Madelyne had no less than three total mental breakdowns in which she screamed in her head at Melody for perceived threats and insults and lies; she had to leave school and pretend she was just ditching for some reason in order to go to her car and cry and scream at the steering wheel and hope that no one would notice.
She also maintained honor roll-quality schoolwork and organized several hangouts and a volunteer charity function at the local museum.
Caitlyn got out of the hospital. She rededicated herself to being with Ai and to writing the one-act play with her.
They sat around late at night, coffee in hand, talking about life, writing a story about trying to get over loss and failure and being a fuckup who couldn’t fix a broken reality. They liked that story.
They fucked starting on Tuesday. Ai sort of forgave Caitlyn in that she continued to write a one-act play with her and resumed fucking her senseless. She did not forget that Caitlyn had cheated and been stabbed by an unnamed slasher killer.
Mitchell’s week was complicated and full of drama: he wrote a one-act play about a group of friends who are killed by a slasher killer who is never found or caught.
He thought that it would be dark and nasty and mysterious and something that reflected how fucked-up reality could get and could subvert the traditional tropes of these stories.
He wrote a story in which the final girl has her throat slit in the end.
He wrote the part for Madelyne but knew that Lilian and Caitlyn and a couple of other girls would all try out for the part.
Mitchell spent the mornings drinking lots of coffee - he varied between lattes, Americanos, and mochas. He liked all of them. He sat around school, being moody and worrying about the killer and doing his homework. His lover had been murdered, and he thought that everything was irrevocably broken.
Caitlyn made it out of the hospital on Monday and to school on Wednesday. She smiled a thin smile and hugged Mitchell in the morning, and then everything was back to normal. Life moved on.
A week passed, and then auditions happened.
Everyone gathered on the following Monday - eight days after Shotgun’s death - with three scripts in hand, and chaos started.
They gathered in the auditorium before school to discuss everything.
The auditorium had a few hundred seats for people to sit and watch a play or musical or presentation.
The stage was a large stage that was elevated about six feet above the seats.
The lights were glaring bright onto the stage, and that light darkened everything everywhere else where the teenagers gathered to talk about what to do going forward.
“My script sucks,” Westfield said. He desperately hoped that everyone would love his script. He needed it more than anything in existence.
“No,” Caitlyn said. “No, your script is fine. Yours isn’t the problem.”
“What’s the problem?” Madelyne asked, walking into the room, drinking a latte. Madelyne wore a white dress and looked ravishing. She made certain to look perfect - perfect presentation for the day in which they discussed who would be doing what part in which play.
“The problem,” Caitlyn said, drinking from a huge bottle of water, “Is that Mitchell, my beloved bestie, has written a terrible script.”
“The problem is not my script,” Mitchell said. “The problem is that there is no way to perform Westfield’s script, which is conventional and normal and mundane and says nothing at all about life or anything.”
“I like my script,” Ai said.
“Agreed,” Madelyne said.
“Yes,” Westfield said.
“No one doubts that your script is good,” Mitchell said. “The question is: how good? Is it good enough to be legendary, or is it just an interesting aside in a world full of great art? That’s what we need to figure out.”
“Thanks, guys,” Ai said. “I’m wondering if I should do more writing. I found it very cathartic. I ended up writing about a girl who forgives her lesbian lover for cheating on her and who is chased around by an ineffectual serial killer.”
“Ineffectual?” Caitlyn asked. “Not sure if that’s what we want him to see, hon.
” “Agreed,” Westfield said. “We can’t call him weak and impotent.
” “We can and should,” Ai said. “He might attack us and do something stupid, and we might get a chance to stop him, hurt him, or, unfortunately, kill him.” “I’m playing the romantic lead in Ai’s play,” Madelyne said.
“We’re expanding Ai’s script and using her expanded version,” Mr. Simon said, walking into the auditorium.
“I’m sorry. We can’t use every script. We can’t give the lead to every student.
This is how the arts work. I had to make a call.
Ai had a ninety-minute version of her script, and it’s brilliant.
Westfield, Mitchell, I’m sorry. You should continue to write.
See if you can write something that moves people. ”
Westfield wanted to die at that moment. He had worn a nice pair of dress pants and a dress shirt for this day - his big day.
He worked so hard on that script, and it was called superficial by Mitchell and canned by Mr. Simon, the drama teacher.
He fucking hated Mr. Simon so badly just then.
He didn’t care if it was unfair. He hated him so fucking much. He wanted to do something about it.
“And I’m not the director,” Westfield said.
“I’m the director,” Mr. Simon said. “You can help, Westfield. Be a production assistant.”
“Great,” Westfield said. His world ended at that moment.
He walked out. He expected to die. His face was flushed.
He looked at his phone and noted that he had no new texts today.
No one had sent him a single message today, not even his emotionally abusive father.
He hated everyone in existence and wondered why he was alive if life just meant nonstop failure and loss.
He knew that Madelyne would get a leading role and date one of the guys who got a good role. Westfield didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t even fuck a beautiful woman - he didn’t have the confidence to ask anyone out because he felt like a miserable loser and a failure.
He left and went to his home and sat there, in his messy bedroom, with movie posters on the walls and a computer on the desk.
He loaded up a video game that he loved and turned it on.
He ignored life for a few minutes, playing a story-based game that he loved and wanted to pretend that he was in.
Anything was better than reality, terrible reality.
He turned off the game after an hour.
He went back to the script.
He hated his script. He read it and tried to figure out what didn’t work about it.
His father walked into the room with his brother Peck.
“Hi,” his father said. “You are not happy.”
“No,” Westfield barely said.
“Well,” Dr. Westfield said. “Life has kicked your ass. It does that. Life is a terrible existence, and we aren’t a particularly rich or famous or successful family.”
“Not at all helping,” Westfield said.
“I’m not trying to help,” Dr. Westfield said.
“No?” Westfield asked.
“No,” Dr. Westfield said. “I’m telling you the truth. Life will kick your ass. Fail you. Tell you no. Refuse to let you get what you want. Over and over, year after year. The question is: what is your response to terrible failure, death, and other people succeeding and becoming rich and famous?”
“What?” Westfield asked.
“You need to fight,” Dr. Westfield said.
“You have written a script that everyone hates. You can sulk and do nothing, or you can rewrite it until it’s Pulitzer-worthy.
You can sit around waiting to be slashed to death, or you can take action to survive the slasher killer.
You need to do something interesting and different with your actions.
That’s the key. Doing something interesting and different with your life.
Something that you can say, that was something that was the right call. ” “I understand,” Westfield said.
He wanted to survive then.
He didn’t know why. He just wanted to survive the slasher killer. He didn’t know how to do that. He wanted to find the courage to do something to survive it.
He grabbed his backpack and began to pack the essentials. He packed two pairs of clothes, one nice and one fairly casual; he packed his toothbrush and toothpaste, his hairbrush, his automatic razor, his Kindle, his laptop, and a few other essentials. Then he got into the family’s car.
Have courage, self, he told himself. Have the courage to run away.
Was it cowardice to run away and not tell anyone to try to survive? Until someone solved the murders? Or should he try to help solve them?
He decided that he trusted no one he could talk to about this. He thought that no one could possibly need his help fighting a serial killer.