New York Times-bestselling author Goldy Moldavsky delivers a deliciously twisty YA thriller that's Scream meets Karen McManus about a mysterious club with an obsession for horror.
When it comes to horror movies, the rules are clear:
x Avoid abandoned buildings, warehouses, and cabins at all times. x Stay together: don’t split up, not even just to “check something out.” x If there’s a murderer on the loose, do not make out with anyone.
If only surviving in real life were this easy...
New girl Rachel Chavez turns to horror movies for comfort, preferring stabby serial killers and homicidal dolls to the bored rich kids of Manhattan Prep...and to certain memories she’d preferred to keep buried.
Then Rachel is recruited by the Mary Shelley Club, a mysterious society of students who orchestrate Fear Tests, elaborate pranks inspired by urban legends and movie tropes. At first, Rachel embraces the power that comes with reckless pranking. But as the Fear Tests escalate, the competition turns deadly, and it’s clear Rachel is playing a game she can’t afford to lose.
Release date:
April 13, 2021
Publisher:
Henry Holt and Co.
Print pages:
352
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I OPENED THE door and Saundra was there, her smile and outfit sparkling.
“Get dressed, Rachel, we’re going to a party.”
I’d only known the girl three weeks but here she was, showing up unannounced at my apartment like she’d been doing this for years.
“Sorry, can’t.” I was in my sweats and getting ready to relax with my favorite comfort movie of all time, Night of the Living Dead. Also, I hated parties. “My mom doesn’t want me going out on a school night.”
Like an apparition in a bathroom mirror, my mom appeared behind me. “Sunday’s not technically a school night, is it, Jamonada?”
Jamonada was a pet name my grandmother had given me because I was such a chubby baby. I’d tried to give it back but there were apparently no refunds, and anyway, my mom loved it. It was Spanish for “ham.” Not like “That girl is so funny and precocious—she’s such a ham!” Like literal lunch meat. And now Saundra had heard it, so there was that.
“Hi, Ms. Chavez!” Saundra said.
“There’s school tomorrow,” I muttered. “So, yeah, definitely considered a school night.”
“But you didn’t have school today,” my mom countered. “I’d say the jury’s still out.”
Saundra nodded emphatically while I stared at my mom like she hadn’t raised me for sixteen years. At first, I honestly could not figure out her angle. And then it hit me: My own mother was worried about my friendless-loner-patheticness.
“But you want me rested and refreshed for school tomorrow, right, Mom?” I did that clenched-teeth thing people do when they want someone to take a hint.
My mom did that bright-smile thing people do when they ignore hints. “You had the whole weekend to rest and refresh, honey.”
We were at an impasse. I wanted to spend the night with the living dead, and my mom wanted me to spend time with the actual living. Time to bring out the big guns.
“Saundra, tell my mom where the party is.” It was a risk. For all I knew Saundra wanted to take me to Gracie Mansion to hang out with the mayor, and with the circles she ran in, that wasn’t entirely implausible. But chances were good that the setting for this party would suck.
Saundra hesitated, but I pressed on. “Go on, tell her.”
“An abandoned house in Williamsburg,” Saundra said.
I swiveled back to my mom, glinting with triumph like a freshly polished trophy. “An abandoned house in Williamsburg. Hear that, Mom?”
It was a game of chicken now. My mom and I stared each other down, waiting to see who would give in first.
“Have fun!” Mom said.
Thwarted by my own mother. She’d had only two rules for me when we moved to New York City: 1) Keep my grades up, and 2) make friends. The fact that Saundra had shown up here should have been enough proof that I’d made friends. Well, one friend. Either way, I’d accomplished the impossible task of making a new friend as a junior at a new school. But to my mom, a party meant more possible friendships, so that meant I was being dragged to Williamsburg.
I got changed (I refused to take off my tie-dye pajama shirt, despite Saundra’s protests, but I dressed it up with cut-off Dickies and a jacket) and we left.
“We could walk,” I suggested. We were in Greenpoint, just one neighborhood over, and the weather was nice.
Saundra snorted. “What, and get murdered?”
“It’s pretty safe around here.”
Saundra dismissed me and the borough of Brooklyn with a laugh and took out her phone. “Yeah. Sure.”
The Lyft arrived in less than three minutes.
We sat in the backseat, Saundra multitasking by taking a dozen selfies, updating all her social, and telling me who’d be at the party. This also happened to be our lunch routine, where she told me all the gossip about people I still barely recognized in the hallways.
Saundra had decided we would be friends as soon as I walked into Mr. Inzlo’s history class at Manchester Prep. When I sat down, Saundra had leaned over and asked if she could borrow a pencil—a total front, I knew, since I’d spied a pencil in the open front pocket of her lavender Herschel.
At first, I’d wondered why Saundra wanted to be my friend, but I quickly realized that Saundra had started talking to me because she couldn’t handle the notion that there was somebody in her class who she knew nothing about. Because as I soon discovered, Saundra Clairmont’s defining characteristic was her burning compulsion to know absolutely everything about absolutely everyone.
So that day, I fed her some morsels about myself. Before Manchester, I went to public school on Long Island. I lived there with my mom until we decided to move to New York City.
Unlike the majority of the students, I was not rich or a legacy or technically a scholarship kid. I only got in because my mom was the ninth- and tenth-grade American History teacher. So, yeah—my mom had a knack for getting me to go places I didn’t want to go.
But now, as Saundra and I sped toward Williamsburg, I’d gone from not wanting to go to this party to dreading it. The thought of seeing all those people, not a single one of whom would talk to me—it made my throat tighten. Worst of all was knowing that I’d have to pretend. Pretend to be a part of their world, to be like them. I was about to tell Saundra that I wasn’t feeling that great, but then the Lyft pulled up to the place. Saundra bounced out of the car and I scrambled after her.
We walked up to the abandoned house, which looked straight out of a late-’80s urban horror movie. All of the windows were boarded up with weathered, graffitied wood and there were multiple signs stuck to the door, with tiny print that was surely warning us to stay away. It was crammed between a closed warehouse and an empty lot with a FOR SALE sign on its chain-link fence.
But there was one bright spot. A girl sat on the stoop, dressed goth-black, her ghostly face hovering over a book. Her fingers blocked the title, but the sharp corners of Stephen King’s name peeked out on the cover. I liked Stephen King movies. Maybe I could strike up a conversation with this girl. Maybe this was my kind of party after all.
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