I froze.
“I’m sorry,” Bram said, standing in front of me. By then I’d managed to blink back any wetness in my eyes. I could see Bram clearly. He seemed serious.
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” he said.
“You meant to make me feel weak,” I said carefully.
Bram shook his head, opened his mouth to say something, but then seemed to think of something else. “Did you say it was two people who broke into your house?”
“Yes, what does it matter?”
“You didn’t mentioned that before.”
I didn’t know why I hadn’t mentioned it at the initiation. But I knew I didn’t want to give Bram anything more. Not another bit of info, not another minute of time.
Except I didn’t move, and neither did he.
“My intention was not to make you feel weak,” Bram said. “It was exactly the opposite.”
The part of my arm that Bram was holding on to—still holding on to—hummed, but no longer with the memory of Matthew Marshall’s grip. I was hyperaware of the feel of Bram’s fingers, the pressure of them. We hadn’t stood this close, or touched, since that night outside the abandoned-house party. Just like then, he was close enough for me to smell the pine and lime in his hair. Close enough that neither of us heard the doorbell ring, the maid open the door, or even the sound of someone heading our way.
Not until Lux spoke.
“What is this?” she said.
Bram dropped his hand and I almost whipped around to ask what she was doing there before I remembered myself. It made sense that she’d show up. Bram spent so much time with the Mary Shelley Club it was easy to forget that he probably spent the rest of his nights with his girlfriend.
“We’re working on a school project,” Bram explained.
“With her?” Lux asked. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”
Bram glanced my way. “Didn’t seem worth mentioning.”
I looped my arm through my book bag’s other strap.
“See you in school,” I said to neither of them in particular. They didn’t seem to notice as I left.
22
I WAS AT work, manning the ticket line. The last of the night’s movies had already started playing, but I had to wait for any final stragglers. Saundra sat perched on my stool. She’d bought a ticket for the movie even though I would’ve just let her in for free. But she didn’t seem the least bit interested in seeing it. I was both jealous of all the money she had to burn and also kind of touched that she’d burn it just to hang out with me.
“I can’t believe you work with Thayer Turner. Is he as annoying as he is in class?”
I glanced back to see Thayer behind the counter. “I barely know him.”
Saundra shrugged and launched into something about one of the girls in her Calculus class. But I was only half listening, still thinking of my study session with Bram the previous night. Thinking of what I’d told him about the break-in. Thinking of his vague warnings about Freddie. And what had it meant that he ran after me? Why did that moment feel just as charged as that time we’d kissed?
“Do you have a massive crush on someone?” Saundra asked.
“What? No.” The idea that thinking of Bram registered in any way as full-crush mode made my stomach turn.
“So just a minor crush, then?”
I picked up one of the ticket stubs from the discard box and tore it into smaller bits. “Where is this coming from?”
“You have this look on your face. And you’ve been acting a certain kind of way, that’s all.”
“What kind of way?”
Saundra slurped her jumbo Diet Coke. “Like you’re hiding something.”
This was the only downside to the club. While I liked the secret aspect to it, I hated having to lie to Saundra. It was only a matter of time before she figured out that something was up. Saundra, who had her finger on the pulse of all things Manchester Prep—who wasn’t happy unless she knew every secret of every person in the school—was on to me. And I wasn’t sure my poker face could combat her discerning gossip radar.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I continued to tear more stubs into careful, tiny pieces while avoiding her eyes.
“Why were you talking to Felicity Chu earlier?”
Damn it. Felicity had slipped up this morning by talking to me in the hallway. We were both taking books out of our lockers at the same time. She wanted to confirm our plans for tomorrow night, when we were going to work on her upcoming Fear Test. The whole exchange must’ve lasted less than thirty seconds. It was so short that I’d forgotten about it. But Saundra hadn’t.
“She told me I had something in my teeth.”
“Felicity Chu?” Saundra said. “Doing something nice?”
Damn it again. I might as well have said she had stopped to give me a birthday present. Saundra was only going to keep digging deeper and deeper until she hit bone. I was about to come up with another lie, but Saundra spoke up.
“You know what, she probably said that just to embarrass you. Felicity probably loves pointing out food in people’s teeth.”
I glommed onto the idea. “Yeah, she’s the worst. Anyways, what’s going on with you?”
“I wanna try this new Jack Dewey smoky-eye tutorial,” Saundra said. “Do you want to come over tomorrow? I’m gonna need help because I never get those right.”
As I looked at Saundra’s hopeful expression, I realized I wanted to. Not because I could help perfect a smoky eye (I couldn’t), but because I genuinely missed hanging with Saundra. So having to turn her down made me feel terrible. “I can’t tomorrow. Sorry.”
“You’ve got other plans?” Saundra sounded deflated.
“Yeah.” I hoped it was enough of an answer because I didn’t want to actually lie to her.
“They don’t involve your nonexistent crush, do they?”
I looked her in the eye this time because this definitely wasn’t a lie. “No.”
“No plans with Felicity Chu either?” Saundra teased.
I blinked and began tearing up a new stub. “Definitely not.”
* * *
After school the next day, Felicity and I met on the steps of the Met. It had been her idea, so we could blend into the crowd. There must’ve been hundreds of tourists there, but I was pretty sure we both still stood out in our matching uniforms. Felicity in particular looked like an undercover PI in her trench coat. I had no idea what she had planned for us, but I was pleasantly surprised that she’d asked me to go on this top secret mission with her. She wasn’t exactly my favorite person, but it was still nice to feel wanted.
“So where are we going?” I asked.
“Meatpacking District.”
I checked my subway app to figure out the fastest way to get there. “We could take a bus and transfer to the West Side, or we could walk across the park.”
Felicity looked at me long and hard. After a few seconds she started down the stairs, without any indication that I should follow her.
My cautious excitement started to ebb as I realized I didn’t even know why we were going to the Meatpacking District to begin with. My mind filled with visions of a frozen locker filled with raw cow carcasses. And me in the middle of it. Alone. With Felicity. Maybe she’d asked everyone else in the club to help her with this. Maybe I’d been the only one stupid enough to say yes.
But this was part of the club rules. Felicity’s Fear Test was coming up, so she got to assign roles and tasks. I had to trust that Felicity had a plan for me that didn’t involve locking me in a meat locker, and in the meantime, I was taking notes for how to do things when it came to my own Fear Test. I followed Felicity down the stone steps, and by the time we got to the curb, a black town car with tinted windows had pulled up.
The driver got out and opened the back door for us. Felicity ducked inside without a word, but I hesitated. The last time I’d gotten into a vehicle with tinted windows, I’d had a hood yanked over my head.
“Get in!” Felicity barked.
I sighed and scrambled inside. The driver closed the door behind me.
* * *
As we drove through the park, Felicity made it very clear that she wasn’t in the talking mood. She pulled a worn paperback copy of Misery from her backpack.
“Stephen King is cool,” I offered.
“He’s the greatest living American writer,” Felicity corrected me. “Also, there’s the hotness factor.”
“The what?”
“Don’t pretend he’s not good-looking.” She flipped to the author photo on the back and looked at me expectantly. It was clear to me that I would have to choose my words carefully here, so I thought my best option was to just smile and nod appreciatively. Felicity turned back to her book.
“So, where are we going?” I asked. I had no idea if this was even Felicity’s car. Did she have a personal driver, or was there an app like Uber but for rich people who only wanted to ride around in huge town cars?
“I told you, the Meatpacking District, are you slow?” Felicity did not look up from her book as she said this.
“I mean, like, for what purpose?”
“Supplies.”
“Okay, and what do you need my help with?”
“Talking.”
“Talking to who?”
“People! Just people, Rachel!” She took a deep breath and composed herself. “I’m not great at … talking to people.”
“No kidding,” I muttered. Any excitement about doing something secret, maybe even dangerous, was all but gone. Now I was really regretting not taking Saundra up on her smoky-eye adventure.
Felicity dropped the book on her lap, let her head roll back, and let out a guttural sigh. “Okay, fine. I, like, snapped at you,” she said. It wasn’t exactly an apology, but it was probably as good as I was going to get.
“We could try again,” she said.
I was confused. “Try again?” Then I got it. “To have a conversation?”
Felicity nodded but also kind of squirmed in place.
“We really don’t have to,” I said. As awkward as this car ride was, we only had about fifteen minutes left and I was perfectly happy to spend them in silence. But Felicity was suddenly an open book.
“Ask me whatever you want,” she said. “We can bond. Or whatever.”
Okay. “Who’s your target for your Fear Test?”
“Sim Smith.”
I still wasn’t familiar enough with every student at Manchester, so it took me a minute to place him. “That sophomore who’s really into gold chains?”
Felicity gave a curt nod. “We dated at the end of last year. I was a sophomore and he was a freshman. You don’t have to say it—I know it’s embarrassing.”
That he was a freshman? Not that he looked like he raided his mom’s jewelry box?
“It’s not embarrassing,” I said. I tried picturing Felicity in a relationship, but all I could imagine was a praying mantis devouring her partner.
“Anyways, that little freshman turd cheated on me,” Felicity said. “So now he has to die.”
“What?”
“I’m joking,” Felicity said. As if her joking tone wasn’t exactly the same as her regular speaking tone. “I can’t kill him. But I can scare him. And I’m going to really scare him.”
“Great,” I said in what I hoped was an encouraging-girlfriend tone. “That’s really good for you.”
“Did anyone ever cheat on you?”
I shook my head.
“Did anyone ever date you?” Felicity asked.
“Well, there was this guy in ninth grade,” I said. “I was really into him and I was pretty sure he was into me. We flirted a lot, actually. He would write me these little notes in English class that were—”
“So you never dated anyone.” Felicity’s eyes roved over me. “Didn’t think so.”
The car came to a stop and the driver got out. He opened the door on Felicity’s side and she stepped out while I quickly opened my own door. Felicity slipped on a pair of jet-black oversize shades that covered nearly the entire top half of her face.
With her shades and her Burberry trench, her gray school uniform was almost beside the point. Felicity tromped across the cobblestone streets like she owned them. I followed her past the Stella McCartney and Diane von Furstenberg storefronts all the way to the edge of the district, where the loading zones of factories butted up against the West Side Highway. There apparently were still meatpacking places in the Meatpacking District. My fear of being trapped in a meat locker with Felicity reappeared.
The farther we waded into the loading zone, the stronger the smell of thawing flesh got. The place was busy, with men in rubber boots climbing from the backs of open trucks to enter the cavernous warehouses. On the other side of us there was just a chain-link fence separating us from the highway traffic that whizzed past. There was grunting. Shouting. Anyplace I looked I saw grime. The trucks, the workmen’s clothes, their hands. Cow blood everywhere.
Felicity seemed to see none of it, though. She strutted through the loading zone like it was her living room.
There was a man with a dolly unloading a truck and Felicity walked right up to him. “I’m looking for Roger,” she said.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Just tell Roger that Dolores Claiborne is waiting for him,” she snapped, then added reluctantly, “please.”
The guy looked her over for a minute, but then went inside to get this mysterious Roger.
“Dolores Claiborne?” I hissed.
“One of Stephen’s seminal works.”
“You’re on a first-name basis?”
“If you so much as—”
“What?” I said, fighting back a laugh as Felicity got riled up. “It’s cute.”
She looked like she wanted to kill me.
“What kind of supplies are we picking up here?” I asked.
But before Felicity could answer, another man came outside, wearing a rubber apron covered in questionable juices. It should’ve been gross, but Felicity and I exchanged glances—it’d make an amazing costume for a Fear Test.
He jumped off the loading dock and met us on the asphalt. “Dolores?”
Felicity raised one finger. “You got it?”
Roger looked to see if anyone was watching us. There were other men milling around the loading zone, but all of them seemed too busy carrying boxes, and in some cases, whole slabs of meat. He reached into a plastic bag and took out a hook.
A big hook. The kind you could stick in a pig and use to drag it across the ground. It looked like the same hook the fisherman in I Know What You Did Last Summer used to kill all those ’90s heartthrobs. Except this one had a—
“Neon-orange rubber grip?” Felicity said. “We didn’t agree on that. And it’s not very sharp.”
“This is a quality boning hook,” Roger protested. “The handle is for your comfort.”
“I don’t want comfortable,” Felicity said. “I want menacing. I want someone to see it and pee their pants. I want it sharp and without that ridiculous rubber grip. And I want it now.”
There were no ifs or buts about it. While her obvious sense of privilege would normally make me roll my eyes, I had to admit that I kind of admired Felicity here. Not the brattiness, but the asking for what she wanted. Demanding it.
Roger opened his mouth to argue with her, then seemed to think better of it. He he let his shoulders slump and said, “Okay. But it’s gonna cost you extra.”
Felicity flicked her wrist dismissively. “Whatever.”
“What does a nice girl like you need a boning hook for anyway?”
“Is this the News at 5? Just get me the hook.”
Yeah, Felicity really wasn’t good at talking to people. Roger plodded back into the plant and Felicity and I were left outside to wait.
“We came down here for a hook?” I said. “Couldn’t you find one online?”
“What, and leave a paper trail? Naïve
te is not cute, Rachel.”
When Roger came back out, he pulled another hook out of the plastic bag. This hook didn’t look new at all. There was no gleam to the steel. It was smudged and almost rusted in parts. But the sharp curve matched Felicity’s smile perfectly.
“I’ll take it,” she said.
23
SIM SMITH
SIM SMITH’S STEPDAD was a used-car salesman but dressed like he operated a lot full of brand-new Porsches. Tie pin, bespoke suit, a fat gold Rolex on his wrist, which, according to him, was the only piece of jewelry a man should wear besides brass knuckles. Sim didn’t agree with that.
Sim liked chains. Skinny chains, thick chains, gold, silver, whatever. Chains were hot. He had one necklace with a little vial that had a single grain of rice inside it with a single teeny word inscribed on it: “valor.” It wasn’t Sim’s favorite chain but it looked good on him and he learned real early that girls dug it. So. He wore a necklace.
The necklace made Sim stand out, and so did the fact that his stepdad owned a car dealership. It wasn’t the bougiest job, especially when compared to everyone else’s parents at Manchester (there was a kid in Sim’s grade—Steeper Carlyle—whose dad was a friggin’ sportscaster), but Sim enjoyed the perks. It wasn’t because he could have whatever car he wanted. No, the best perk about Sim’s stepdad owning a used-car lot was the fact that Sim could take girls there.
There were so many cars—at least a hundred—but squeezed together, they looked like a sea of thousands. And you could just get in one and then lots of stuff could happen inside. Plus: reclining seats. The most beautiful two words in the English language. Hooking up with girls here was a total win-win. You had complete privacy and new(ly refurbished)-car smell, and all Sim had to do was wait ’til his stepdad was asleep and then swipe his work keys.
Sim had a name for this little spot on Flatlands Avenue where the lot was: Sim’s Point. ’Cause he figured, all those old movies where the teenagers park their cars and make out? It was always at some scenic point. And there wasn’t anything like that in Brooklyn. So. He made it happen.
The Mary Shelley Club Page 13