CHAPTER 32 #2
There are two of us. Three with Wes. Four, because Laurie is definitely outside.
Maybe more than four since there’s so many of the daters unaccounted for.
We’ve lost so many people, but some of us are still left and we’re going to get out of here.
Together. It’s not going to be just one Final Girl draped exhaustedly over the side of a boat or laughing hysterically in the bed of a pickup truck.
And the promise that Heart Eyes’s plans are going to fall to shit is the happy ending we all deserve.
“You’re okay?” The laugh that falls out of her mouth isn’t shocked like Stu’s was, it’s relieved. “Oh my god. Thank god you’re alive. And you found everything to set off the alarms.”
I can’t even respond. I can’t find the words to convey just how relieved I am that she’s okay, too. Not when I spot a figure behind her.
“Billie?”
My god, I almost forgot about her. She’s been gone for so long and now she’s leaning against the railing just like when we first came up to this level.
From the way she leans into the rail with her hip, her legs crossed casually at her ankles, I’d think our nights had played out in two very different ways since she left.
I glance down and notice the dark stains all over the black material of her pants, the way her chestnut-brown hair is more tousled than before. Maybe not so different then.
“Can’t say I’m surprised you’re still around,” she quips. Her bored stare moves to Wes. “You’re a different story, though.”
I can tell our time away from each other hasn’t made the heart grow fonder, but Wes and I are too exhausted and injured to get offended. We’ve all spent enough time with Billie tonight to know what she’s like.
“Billie said she’s found an exit.” Jennifer turns back to us as Billie pushes off the rail and moves forward, her steps unhurried.
“You found an exit?” I ask, shifting my attention between her slow, nonchalant walk and Jennifer’s tense, adrenalized stillness.
“Uh-huh.”
I’m struck by the way she seems so unaffected by the prospect of an escape.
She looks exactly like she did when she found out five people had died in the time it took her to hide behind a velvet curtain, and I feel like there should be some variation in her reaction to two starkly different scenarios.
“Why are you still here?” I blurt out. She said herself she wasn’t going to get slaughtered for anyone. Staying behind and putting herself in danger of coming face-to-face with Heart Eyes seems like a real contradiction to that.
“Because we’re in this together, right?”
The sentence is so… not Billie. I’m shocked.
“Where is it, then?” Wes asks, more focused on the prospect of getting out than Billie apparently having a lobotomy in the time she broke away from the group. “How do we get out?”
“I’ll show you,” she says lightly. “There’s only one way to get out of here.”
How does she know that?
“We should still set off the detector, right?” Jennifer says to no one in particular. “To get the police here faster?”
The promise of escape has made her fidgety, and she swings the first aid kit in front of her like it’s a cute purse she wants someone to comment on.
“I don’t think we want to do that,” Billie says as she keeps strolling forward. My eyes are drawn down to where her hand is shoved awkwardly into her pocket, clenched in a fist, and… it doesn’t look right.
“Why not?” Jennifer asks, her brow quirking up in an exasperated swoop as Billie steps up to her shoulder.
“Because this isn’t over yet.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up like someone’s gotten too close and breathed on my skin when her hand darts out of her pocket.
There’s a second when I know what she’s going to do.
A second when my breath gets caught in my throat as I try to sound the first syllable of Jennifer’s name.
But it’s a second too late when Billie swipes her fist across Jennifer’s neck.
There’s a glint of silver, a red line that appears on Jennifer’s throat, and then every nerve in my body ignites in terror as I watch her bleed.
It’s so quick. It’s so skilled. Jennifer only has the chance to take one soundless breath before the wound gushes and she collapses to the ground.
It brings me right back down to the basement, to Curtis and the matching arc on his neck before he bled out all over the table.
Back to the kill that started it all. I’ve been trying to block it out of my mind the whole night, but now it’s right in front of me again. Like a classic flashback.
Wes swears, and all I can do is gape at the woman standing at ease in a slowly growing pool of blood, a switchblade in one hand as the other reaches behind her and pulls a wad of pink material—the woolen mask I’ve become too familiar with—out of her back pocket and into view.
Billie tilts her head to the side, letting the mask unfurl until those heart-shaped holes are staring straight at me, and for the first time since we met I watch a slow smile spread across her face.
“Is the movie playing out like you thought it would, Jamie?”