1
If this were a horror movie, Elle would be the first to die.
Sweet sixteen, the innocent preacher’s daughter, the nicest girl in school, the kind of pretty that makes us all sinners without her even trying. She’s the perfect sacrifice, standing there in her burnt-yellow sweaterdress, at the edge of the cemetery, the night after Halloween, lit only by the dancing orange flames of the campfire.
It’s the dimples, I decide. Or the eyes, open and secretive all at once. Or the way she listens with her whole being, facing me, leaning in. This is only the second time I’ve met Elle, and already I’d sell my soul to hear her whisper my name.
Which is exactly why the inevitably all-male writers’ room wouldn’t let her live past Act One. The campfire. The timing. The accidental sexiness. It’s too tempting to kill her off.
There are three other kids from school who’ve shown up to my so-called Halloween bonfire (read: campfire), and we look like monsters against the stabbing flames, our eyes hungry, shadows twisted, flickering with the pop-crash of the fire. But Elle is even prettier in the flickering light. An angel holding back the night.
I don’t say any of this, though. My family only moved to this town a week ago, but already I know my obsession with horror movies is unlikely to play well here. In a town of less than a thousand people that somehow needs seven churches. (Yes: seven.) Where the public high school has The Ten Commandments hung up on the walls (I guess the separation of church and state is overrated), and I got sent home on my first day there because purple nail polish is devil worship, apparently.
Tonight I’ve repainted my nails bloodred, with a coat of purple underneath as a special fuck-you to that teacher. Because, as Mom always says (with an edge of pride in her voice that I can’t help but love), Audre, you never do things the easy way.
I run my polished fingers through my new pixie cut and shift in my combat boots. I’m normally not this nervous. But, then again, I’ve never moved to a new town before. Never had to make new friends like this. Let alone in a town where I stick out like a pizza rat in a prairie.
“Anyone have a scary story?” I ask after we’ve all traded hellos.
When no one speaks, I glance at David, the one person here I can tentatively call my friend. And the only one who might get my horror movie references. I’ve been sitting with him at lunch ever since I heard him cursing in Spanish under his breath. Curse words! Spanish! My body beelined for him before I even knew what I was doing. It was like being back on my block in Brooklyn, in my best friend Elisa’s backyard, home. Where making friends was easy because we all grew up together and played dodgeball in packs and screamed “Cabrón!” at each other after we heard her uncle say it, finding the word tasted even more satisfying than her mama’s fried plantains or my mom’s homemade caramel.
“Is it just me, or is this school like that Stepford Wives movie—white, well-dressed, and vacant-eyed?” I quipped in Spanish, hoping that rogue curse words in halls made us allies.
He didn’t disappoint, laughing in surprise before he answered. “Right? When I first moved here from Puerto Rico, these dumbasses asked how I liked wearing clothes.”
“No.” I set down my tray across from him and planted my butt on the horrible plastic cafeteria stool.
“It’s true. One of the teachers nominated me for the African American scholarship. I’m Puerto Rican—and not even Afro-Puerto Rican—but I guess here they figure brown, African American, same-same.” His eye roll was of the epic variety.
“Ah, so the teachers are creepy Stepford robots too.”
“Definitely.”
So we’re friends. I think. David is wicked cool. He’d be the last one to die in a horror movie, because he’s the sole person in this town with a sense of humor (and you can’t kill off the character with all the best jokes too early). Also: he’s built like a linebacker, and even axe murderers know their limits.
Here at the bonfire, David saves me from the silence by turning to Elle. “You’ve got a story, right? That cabin thing with your dad?” He turns back to me and explains, “Elle survived a bear attack.”
A bear attack. Holy shit. I guess we’ll start the storytelling off with a bang, then.
Elle flushes in a way that makes my skin tingle, and I nod encouragingly at her. Everyone else watches, expectant. We wait: a heartbeat, two, three. Crash-pop goes the fire. And then the story spills from her with a nervous shiver.
“I was five. The memory is like a dream to me now.” She presses a hand delicately to her neck. “My dad took us hunting with him. He usually went alone, but this time we—Mom and me—were invited. I didn’t understand the hunting part. I was just excited thinking I’d be allowed to pet a baby deer.”
She laughs, soft, ironic, then goes on. “We stayed overnight in this cabin. Barely a cabin, really. A shack in the woods with a leather band to hold the door closed. Mom was nervous about it. But Dad said it was fine, said he’d stayed there a hundred times. Mom and I were in the cabin alone when it happened. Dad had taken the food and trash out to the car. I was asleep, and when I woke up there was this snuffling noise outside the door. Grunting. And something smelled terrible—like garbage, rotting meat.”
I’m leaning in. David’s eyes are dancing in a way that says see, told you this was a good story. The boy next to Elle—Ryan—is bouncing a little with nerves or excitement. And the other girl—Monica—stares off into the cemetery beside us, fingering the cross around her neck.
“A bear,” Elle whispers, eyes flashing in the firelight, shadow twisting over the headstones behind her like it’s running for its life. “It was a bear. And then a second bear. You could tell there were at least two. Maybe three.
“Then the door started rattling. A little at first. Then a lot. Mom took me off my cot and held me on the bed and told me not to make any noise. I don’t know if I was scared. It was just strange. I was just so…surprised.
“And then the leather strap holding the door closed gave way.”
A pause. A heartbeat. The fire stabs at the sky.
“It was so flimsy. So little to keep out a bear.” Her voice is the barest whisper. Her eyes flit toward the cemetery and the woods beyond it.
Elle is here. Alive. Unscarred, as far as I can tell. But I’m holding my breath, pressing my fingernails into my palms. The hair on my neck rises with anticipation, like the woods beside us might erupt with bears of their own any second.
“And then the doorway was full of bear—black fur, hot breath. The smell so much stronger.” She closes her eyes, remembering. “But before the bear comes in, there’s a noise, louder than any noise I’d ever heard. That was when I really felt scared. I thought god sent a lightning bolt to kill it.”
Her laugh is short, cut off at the end. “It was a gun. My dad had come back from the car with his gun. They ran off, but he swears he shot one. He said he saw three, and they were the biggest black bears he ever saw.
“He was so calm.” She presses the back of her hand to her cheek. “He just said, ‘Come on, now, let’s go home.’ Like it was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing to me by then. Or to Mom. We were both crying. The next day, she told me she thought there was a darkness after us. That the devil wanted to swallow us up.
“You’d think I’d hate the woods now, but I still love them. I spend as much time as I can on the trails.” She waves a hand as if she could diffuse the tension of the story like smoke.
Three bears. A shot. The devil wanted to swallow us up. She sweeps the words aside and laughs like it’s funny instead of terrifying. And now I think I understand her better.
The first time I met her, I was sitting in the cemetery behind us, staring at the headstone of Martha Walters, Wife, Mother. Wondering why her relationship to other people was how we decided to define her in death. Wife, Mother. Not: Professor, Revolutionary. Not: Dreamer, Sings Her Heart Out in the Shower. Not: Poet, Martial Artist. Elle was walking past on the hiking trail that skirts the cemetery. She stopped beside me and asked what I was thinking.
She barked a surprised laugh when I told her, then dropped to the ground beside me and asked, “What would yours say, if it was true?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Audre Weaver. Skeptic, Pain in the Ass.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Elle Mason. Hiker, Confused as Hell.”
Now, after a week in this place, I think I understand how scandalous she must have felt using the word hell. At the time, I just reached out a hand and shook hers. “Nice to meet you, Elle-Confused-as-Hell.”
As Elle finishes her story, the fire cracks and Ryan barely waits a breath before he jumps in, like he’s been holding back the words, wanting to talk over Elle this whole time. Little twit. “And then the next week, her dad gave this epic sermon about it, about how even terror, even a force of nature, can’t stand up to god’s will.”
Elle’s wearing an irritated smile, not real enough to coax out her dimples. The kind of smile that says This isn’t the first time this guy’s taken over my stories. And God, does he ever shut up?And I hate it but not enough to start a fight.
I’m not surprised. It’s exactly what I’d expect from him. Ryan, the teen worship leader, who looks every inch the part: floppy hair, preppy clothes, guitar case leaning behind him on a stump just in case anyone needs an impromptu round of “Amazing Grace.” Guys like that always think they have the most important ideas in the room. In my horror movie, he’d fake-die halfway through the plot and turn out to be the axe murderer in the end. Wandering through the movie with us all the whole time, seeming hella normal. Perfectly sane. So very white and male and trustworthy.
“I have a story,” Monica, the fifth member of this bonfire circle, interrupts before Ryan can repeat the whole damn sermon. I kind of like her in this moment, even if she did stand up in our so-called science class two days ago with that same over-certain tone to say that “FYI, evolutionists are just plain evil.”
In a horror movie, she’d die second, after calling the rest of us fools, so sure that her theory about the killer was the right one. I can picture it perfectly: Monica, hands on hips, telling us all that the axe murderer is a hoax just before he appears around the corner and splits her in two.
She’s too certain to live long. Women in horror aren’t allowed our certainty.
(Of course, in reality, the still-all-male writers’ room wouldn’t greenlight Monica for a horror film at all. Because Monica is fat, and everyone knows slashers only murder girls who are a size zero. Certain or not, neither of us would make the horror-movie cut.)
We turn our attention to her, and she raises her eyebrows, serious. “Well, it’s less a story and more a warning.”
“A warning?” I ask.
“For you. To stay out of the woods.” She waves a hand toward me, then to the cemetery behind us and the woods beyond. Her voice is even, matter-of-fact.
“There are secret Satanists here. They sacrifice animals in those woods.”
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