The Mary Shelley Club

by Goldy Moldavsky

  All I wanted to do every day was leave the world of Manchester behind so I could hang out with the club, where we could shed our itchy wools and stiff button-downs to slip into our real clothes and be our real selves. Occasionally some of us even slipped into something more extravagant, like when it was Thayer’s turn to pick a movie to watch and he chose Re-Animator. He said it was to honor Mary Shelley with “hands down the best modern reimagining of Frankenstein.” But I think it was so he could show up at Bram’s in a green surgical gown and skeleton mask split in half in homage to his favorite scene in the movie.

  The meetings were frequent, happening twice, sometimes three times, a week. The club had its own set of routines. Some, like the impromptu debates, were easy enough to grasp. There were times when I found myself in heated discussions with them about things like who was the worst Bad Guy, Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers.

  “Michael Myers hands down,” Felicity said. “He’s a dog killer!”

  “Jason killed a dog, too,” Freddie reminded her.

  “Kill all the humans, if you ask me, but dog deaths have no place in horror movies,” Thayer said. “I’ll start the petition on change dot org.”

  “There’s no way Jason even ranks as a good villain,” I said. “He was just a socially awkward loser who couldn’t swim.”

  “Wait, does being a good Bad Guy mean you’re nice deep down or that you’re perfectly evil?” Bram asked. “And does being a bad Bad Guy mean you’re not evil enough?”

  These were the kind of deep, existential questions all teenagers ask themselves.

  At first, I felt a bit daunted by their closeness. They had rituals, habits, and inside jokes that had been built up over time. But I soon found my rhythm. When we watched Hellraiser (Freddie’s choice), anytime one of the characters disparaged Brooklyn the club would throw popcorn at the screen and cry, “Anything’s better than Brooklyn!” And when we watched The Birds (Bram’s pick), everyone in the group mimicked Tippi Hedren’s over-the-top pose as the birds attacked, her arm arched all the way over her head so as not to block the view of her beautiful face. From that scene forward, we all kept our arms at that ridiculous angle for as long as we could until Felicity was the only one left with her elbow in the air. As the credits rolled, she bent at the waist and took a bow to mark her triumph.

  The club’s brand of fandom was wrapped around a healthy dollop of ridicule, the understanding being that we had the right to make fun of our favorite things because we loved them so much. It was something I understood innately, one of the moments when I felt seamlessly a part of the group. I’d never thought a feeling of kinship with a group of people could be so overwhelming.

  Just the same, there were times when I was glad I hadn’t been there very long, because some of their rituals were hard-core. The night we watched Us, Thayer involuntarily yelped when one of the doppelgängers showed up. Bram barked a laugh and smashed the space bar on his keyboard. The screen froze, Freddie and Felicity leaped up, and Thayer instantly buried his head in his hands and moaned.

  “Thayer, your time has finally come!” Bram said.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Come on, Thayer,” Freddie said. “Show Rachel what happens when a club member gets scared during a movie.”

  “But it’s cold,” Thayer whined.

  “Rules are rules,” Felicity said.

  The next thing I knew, four of us were standing on the balcony and one of us was in the street in his underwear, holding his clothes bunched over his crotch.

  “This is cruel and unusual punishment!” Thayer yelled.

  “Quiet,” Bram said, having way too much fun, “you’ll wake the neighbors. Now get on with it.”

  Thayer let out a final annoyed grunt, then dropped his clothes, threw his hands up in the air, and ran down the block making as much noise as a pack of cans rattling off a newlywed’s car. We watched him go and doubled over the stone railing of the balcony, filling the crisp air with the wispy plumes of our laughter. We laughed until we were dizzy, losing our equilibrium.

  After that, I learned never to get scared during movie night. And over the course of several movie nights, I learned something new about each of the members.

  Thayer loved gore, the more gratuitous the better, but he was also a sweetheart. When I mentioned I was looking for an after-school job, he hooked me up at the movie theater where he worked, a tiny cinema with two screens. The two of us worked weekends, him at the concession stand and me as a ticket taker. When there were no more tickets to take, I’d join him behind the counter and we’d talk and eat free popcorn all night.

  I learned that even Felicity, Mistress of the Dark, was capable of deep, silly, unconditional love. Just not toward humans. We walked to her place after a club meeting one night so I could borrow her Chem notes. (Felicity was a meticulous note taker.) As soon as we entered her apartment, two German shepherd puppies named Hitchcock and Häxan jumped on her and licked her, pawing at her clothes. She pretended to be annoyed, but as I headed toward the bathroom, I turned back and saw her get down on all fours and roll around with the dogs, digging her face into their fur and talking in a baby voice.

  But the person I got to know the most about was probably Freddie, just by virtue of the fact that we actually hung out together outside of club meetings. Whenever he decided to skip Film Club, we’d meet up after school to walk to the subway together, where he’d take the train uptown and I’d board the one going down. For the half hour between the double doors of Manchester and the automatic doors of the 6 train, we talked about everything. We theorized about Felicity’s core damage (there had to be something), found common ground that we didn’t talk to anyone else about (we were both Latinos but his Spanish was way better than mine), and argued about movies (he was a purist and a fan of the classics, while I was willing to give reboots and new movies a chance).

  As we grew more comfortable with each other, we got into animated discussions. Our most intense argument was about when a scary movie was most appreciated.

  “It’s in the moment,” Freddie said.

  “No, it’s after the fact.”

  “What are you talking about? Life is about living in the moment. And there’s nothing more in the moment than being scared—than being alone, out-of-your-mind-with-fear, really sitting with it as the scene is playing out.”

  “Yes, that’s good horror,” I said. “But really good horror happens when the movie’s over. If it sticks with you. If, long after you’ve stopped watching, you’re still looking over your shoulder. Then you know you’re really scared.”

  We couldn’t come to an agreement on that one, but it was still fun discussing it. But probably my favorite thing I learned about Freddie was that, sometimes, all I needed to do was look at him for a beat too long to draw out the color in his cheeks.

  I even discovered something new about Bram. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of horror. He was like Freddie in that way, but while Freddie could tell you how many frames there were in the shower scene in Psycho, Bram could probably tell you what kind of sandwich Janet Leigh ate on set before filming it. If he liked a movie, he’d find its script and commit every word to memory. And if he really liked a movie, he’d even recite the lines as he watched, which I discovered—to my immense amusement—one night when we all sat down to watch I Know What You Did Last Summer and I spied him silently shouting along with Jennifer Love Hewitt, daring the killer to come and find her.

  And during the most recent club meeting, I had also learned that Bram had a little sister. She showed up unannounced in the study while we were in the middle of The Omen, with the same slope to her nose and the same shade of brown hair as Bram. She couldn’t have been more than ten.

  Bram paused the movie, which was good because we were at the scene right before little Damien knocks his mother over the banister.

  “Where’s Celia?” he asked.

  “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “Millie.” Bram’
s voice instantly took on a parental tone and I hid a surprised smile behind a fistful of popcorn.

  “She fell asleep on the couch,” Millie said. “Can I watch, too?”

  “It’ll give you nightmares.”

  “I don’t get nightmares anymore.”

  “We all get nightmares.” Bram got up. “Let’s go.”

  As Bram and Millie headed upstairs, Freddie stood up, too. “Snack break,” he said.

  Freddie and Thayer went down to the kitchen for refreshment refills. I got up to go to the bathroom, but Felicity slipped inside before I could, shutting the door in my face.

  So I headed upstairs. I’d never been to the third floor of Bram’s townhouse but figured there must be another bathroom there. I heard voices as I walked down the hall and realized I must be near Millie’s room. I peeked inside. Bram was sitting on the edge of Millie’s bed and pulling the blanket up to her chin.

  In school, Bram was the popular kid. In the club he was just as big a geek as the rest of us. At home he was apparently a sweet big brother. He wore a different mask depending on who he was with.

  Bram looked up and caught my gaze. I immediately ducked out and kept walking, but Bram was right behind me.

  “What are you doing up here?” All traces of loving big brother were gone.

  “I was looking for a bathroom.”

  “Downstairs.”

  “Taken,” I said.

  Bram just gave me a look and the awkwardness nearly pushed me down the stairs. He knew I had been lurking.

  “Um, I also wanted to talk to you about our paper,” I said.

  Given the subtle furrow in Bram’s brow, he clearly didn’t believe me.

  “We could set up a time to exchange notes, narrow down the topics we want to include,” I suggested.

  “You want to talk about our paper? Right now?” Bram asked.

  I was starting to get less intimidated and more annoyed. “Okay, Bram, good talk.” I skipped down the rest of the stairs, Bram right behind me the whole way.

  “Wait,” Bram said finally. “Come by after school tomorrow. We can work on it then.”

  No club meeting. Just me and Bram alone for the first time. I was already regretting bringing the paper up at all.

  “Looking forward to it,” I said.

  21

  WE DECIDED TO work in the dining room.

  Bram sat at the head of the table and I sat to his left, the silence stiffly squeezing itself between us now that we didn’t have other people as a buffer. The only other signs of life were outside the room: A woman who was not Bram’s mother was prepping dinner in the kitchen, and Millie and her babysitter were rushing between after-school programs and lessons.

  When my phone buzzed with a new text, I picked it up with relief.

  Updates!!!

  I never should have told Saundra about this study session. I knew that I would have to tell her everything. Not the important things, like how awkward it was to sit here with Bram, but the little things, like what he was wearing.

  What is he wearing? came Saundra’s next message. And then, immediately after that: What is his mouth doing right now??

  I made a face at my phone. I glanced at Bram, who was reading something on his laptop. His lips were parted slightly, and I could see the small gap between his front teeth.

  Bram reads with his mouth open, I texted, and then instantly deleted every word. I looked back at Bram. He must’ve been concentrating hard because now he was biting his bottom lip. I bit my own lip, an involuntary response. His eyes flicked toward mine and I clamped my lips shut and put down my phone. I would not be answering any more of Saundra’s questions.

  And I would not look at Bram’s lips again.

  Right. Back to Mary Shelley.

  “Here, I started typing up her bio,” Bram slid his laptop over to me.

  I quickly scanned what he’d written. Mary Shelley was the daughter of a radical anarchist father and a feminist mother. She’d run away from her father’s house with her married lover when she was just a teenager, and written Frankenstein when she was a teenager, too.

  “Are you going to mention her marriage to Percy Bysshe Shelley?” I asked.

  “He’s a footnote,” Bram said.

  “He was an important part of her life. We have to at least mention him.”

  “We can mention him, but there’s no reason for him to take up so much space in our paper. He’s not the focus here.”

  “He rounds out her story.”

  “Not the focus.”

  “I don’t get why you’re dismissing him so much.”

  “I don’t get why you’re defending him so much.” There was a slight narrowing of Bram’s eyes. He managed to deliver the statement with so much judgment even without raising his voice a single octave. It was a talent.

  “I’m not defending him,” I said, “but he was present for Mary’s formative years. She wrote Frankenstein while she was with him—”

  “You’re giving him too much credit.”

  “And you’re trying to erase him from her story.”

  “Maybe he should be erased. He was an asshole.”

  I’d never seen Bram this combative. I mean, he kind of always was, beneath the surface, but while everything about his body language was as cool as ever—the way he slouched against the antique dining chair, the way he barely bothered to look at me as he spoke—he was more riled up than I’d ever seen him. I watched as he took a golden Zippo lighter out of his pocket and repeatedly flicked it open, the movement small but fiercely methodical.

  “I had no idea you had such strong feelings about a Romantic poet.”

  Bram actually rolled his eyes. “Romantic. He repeatedly threatened to kill himself if Mary didn’t love him back. He manipulated her into liking hi—”

  “Now who’s giving him too much credit?”

  Bram let out a bitter laugh. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you like Percy.”

  I sat back, mouth slack. It sounded like an insult—it definitely had to be. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Forget it.” He pushed his chair back and stood, heading directly for the bar cart that seemed to be in every room of his house.

  “Isn’t it too early to drink?” I muttered as Bram grabbed a bottle.

  “It’s club soda, if that’s okay with you.”

  I looked down at my paper, which was filled mostly with useless notes and a whole bunch of nothing. We weren’t getting anywhere, and to top it all off this was just as uncomfortable as I’d been dreading. But the worst part—the part that I hated—was that I knew Bram was right about Percy. The guy didn’t sound that great, but at this point I was in too deep. We were at an impasse, and I wasn’t about to be the first one to lay my sword down.

  So basically we were going to fail this assignment.

  Damn Percy Shelley and damn Bram.

  I grabbed my phone off the table and typed out a quick message to Freddie. This study session is a disaster.

  Sounds about right, he wrote back.

  Is Bram even human? I typed.

  “I’m half vampire,” Bram said, suddenly peering over my shoulder. I dropped my phone and it bounced on my thigh before clattering to the floor. By the time I sat back up, face bright red, Bram was back in his seat. He didn’t seem the least bit bothered by my text.

  “You and Freddie seem … close.”

  Of all the things that could’ve come out of Bram’s mouth right then.

  “We’re not…” I wasn’t sure what to say. “We’re not—”

  But it didn’t matter what I said—or tried to say—because Bram kept talking. “You sure that’s a good idea?” he asked.

  “I said we’re not…” I trailed off, becoming less concerned with forming a complete sentence than with the fact that Bram was trying to dictate how I should live my life. “Why is it any of your business?”

  Bram shrugged vaguely, and my annoyance grew exponentially. Were club members not allowe
d to be close? Was this another version of the unspoken no-fraternization rule or one of Bram’s personal hang-ups?

  “Freddie’s been nothing but nice to me since I met him,” I said. “You, on the other hand, have been kind of a dick.”

  His expression soured and I was glad I’d finally drawn a stronger reaction than a furrowed brow or a smirk.

  “I’m just saying,” Bram began, “it’s not healthy. All your downtime, all your friendships, all your relationships shouldn’t revolve around the Mary Shelley Club.”

  “I have a life outside the club,” I said, indignant but also a bit humiliated at even having to point that out. “I have other friends.”

  “Who?”

  “Saundra Clairmont.” He seemed to consider the name, as though he hadn’t been in school with my lone friend since kindergarten, which incensed me further.

  “Look, I don’t need your advice on how to live my life. Or your warnings about getting too close to people. I’ve been through enough stuff in my life. I know how to take care of myself.”

  “Your attack.”

  The words hit me like cold water on my face, and I felt the fresh prick of tears in my eyes. I didn’t understand why he’d bring up that awful part of my past. The one I’d told him about—been forced to tell him about—in confidence.

  If he’d been trying to shock me, give me some sort of jolt to throw me off-balance, it had worked. But I didn’t have to stick around for this. I flipped my notebook closed and started gathering my pens into my book bag.

  “Rachel.”

  “Why would you—” I took in a shaky breath, surprised to find I was winded. I stood and swung my book bag strap over my shoulder. “You don’t—you don’t know how you’d react if two people broke into your house. And you were alone. And—” I stopped talking. I didn’t like the way my voice sounded, didn’t like that I was still standing there, in front of him. My face felt hot and unshed tears blurred my vision. At least I wouldn’t have to look at Bram as I shoved past him.

  I made it to the foyer and the foot of the grand staircase before Bram caught up to me. His fingers closed around my arm and it was like I was back in my old house on Long Island, Matthew Marshall’s gloved hand pulling me down.