Chapter 5 Carrie #3
Carrie almost laughed out loud. If Freddy knew how obsessed her ex was, he’d drive off in his van and refuse to see her ever again.
She’d met Daniel at a campus screening of Scream and they’d hit it off right away, as he knew even more about slasher movies than her dad.
It was only after their relationship became serious that Daniel had admitted he’d chatted her up because he’d recognized her from a photo he’d seen on a horror film subreddit. The photo.
Slasher movies were nothing. The real horror was not being able to escape who you were in high school.
“Yes,” she said.
Tiffany’s face whitened. “When I was underwater, I swear I saw a man wearing a Slasher mask.”
Freddy violently stubbed out the joint. “I told you, man. The Slasher.”
“Freddy, it was a movie.” Patrick’s voice wavered, although his words were rational.
Carrie was surprised. Calm and organized Patrick, who ironed his button-down shirts to perfection, was actually rattled.
She remembered his sister had been the victim of a random attack.
Nothing disturbed him more than the unknown, and this was a situation he couldn’t iron his way out of.
“It’s not really the Slasher,” he added, although it sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
“It’s someone pretending to be the Slasher, which is just as fucked up.” Freddy tugged off his hat and ran his hands through his messy hair. “We gotta get outta here, man, before Carrie’s ex turns us into mincemeat.”
A dam seemed to break then. Tiffany rounded on Jen and reamed her out for inviting Carrie.
Jen snapped that she was just trying to get the band back together.
“Don’t blame Carrie!” Michael interjected.
“It’s not her fault her ex turned out to be a psycho.
” Carrie couldn’t help thinking this would be the perfect time for a horror movie killer to creep up on them, while they were all distracted.
Freddy started to rock back and forth, moaning that he couldn’t die because he hadn’t finished writing his screenplay yet.
Patrick turned to Carrie and bombarded her with a dozen questions about Daniel.
His personality, his strengths and weaknesses, his willingness to hurt people to get to her.
Carrie inched backward from his interrogation.
Thinking about Daniel triggered a flood of unwanted anxieties.
“We don’t know if it’s actually him—” she protested, but Patrick kept the questions coming. Carrie clenched her eyes closed as if that would shut out the memories of Daniel. His cool conviction that she belonged to him, and only him.
A piercing whistle broke the hubbub and Carrie opened her eyes.
Jason took his fingers from his mouth and put his hands on his hips, legs slightly apart.
She recognized the stance. Jason the star athlete, always the leader.
She hated that like everyone else, she instinctively waited for what he had to say.
He’d broken her heart into a million pieces, leaving her vulnerable to Daniel’s toxic attentions, and yet she was still swayed by his magnetic presence. It was so unfair.
“Everyone, calm down,” he said. “Take a step back and listen to yourselves. Even if it’s Carrie’s ex, there’s only one of him and there’s seven of us. He’s not a big guy, is he, Carrie? Or into guns?”
Carrie shook her head. “He’s an arty, sensitive type.
Or at least I thought he was. His bark is worse than his bite, really.
” He’d been all words and no action. That was how he’d won her over, with pretty phrases and promises he never saw through, and eventually she saw the other half of the equation.
“He’d probably just want to talk to me, to try to win me back. ”
Jason nodded. “Okay. So between me and Patrick and Mikey, we can take him.”
It was cruel that Jason should want to jump to Carrie’s rescue now. Maybe he was trying to atone for his past actions. Carrie’s stomach flipped with sadness and regret.
“And you too, Freddy,” Jason added.
“S’okay. I’m a lover, not a fighter,” Freddy whimpered.
“I can help, too,” Jen said.
“Jen will mortally wound him with her words,” Michael said.
Jen punched him in the arm. “You know it, Squeaks.”
Carrie’s stomach flipped again. It was cruel that everyone wanted to jump to her rescue. Cruel, yet touching. “There. It’s settled,” Patrick said. “And we can always call the police if he shows up.”
He took his cell phone out of his back pocket and scowled. Carrie guessed he’d seen there was no reception.
He cleared his throat. “There’s a landline in the cabin. We can call from there. In the meantime, we’re at this gorgeous cabin in the woods with a beautiful view of the lake. We’re here to have fun and take it easy. What could go wrong?”
Carrie flinched as a jagged bolt of lightning flashed across the lake, followed by an earsplitting crack of thunder. Her heart rate picked up.
The last time the seven of them had been together, her world had fallen apart.
What could go wrong?
Everything.