“I am telling the truth!” he declared. The desperation in his voice was tinged with hoarseness, probably from denying his impotency all day. “I was attacked! That guy almost killed me!”
I spotted something white soaring in a soft arch toward him, landing at his feet. And then again. Napkins? Tissues? I followed Sim’s confused gaze to see where the flurry of napkins was coming from. Felicity pinched a new napkin and threw it at him, like it was a rose and he was a performer. Except weirder, obviously.
“What are you doing?” he shrieked.
Felicity shrugged and said in her patented monotone: “Cry me a river.”
Jennifer Abrams stood up then, too. She made a quick beeline toward Felicity, pinched a napkin from the stack in Felicity’s hand and started flinging them at Sim, too. And then other people joined in. Tissues flew like feathers from a pillow fight, the laughter and mocking applause drowning out anything Sim was trying to say.
“This is ridiculous!” he said. “I did nothing wrong!”
I spotted my mom walking up to Sim and trying to get him to come down from the table, and then more teachers joined her. As Sim was being pulled off, he bellowed, “It was a big, scary dude in a hood! A big, scary-as-fuck dude in a scary-as-fuck mask!”
Everyone else laughed or jeered or continued to throw their napkins at him, but everything in me stopped.
Mask.
None of us had worn masks to Felicity’s Fear Test.
I decided that Sim must’ve been mistaken. But that word stuck with me for the rest of the day, like a hot breath on the back of my neck.
* * *
It was the kitchen floor that came to me first. I could feel the familiar laminate, the coolness against the back of my head. My hands were preoccupied, fists clutching, fingers curled in black fabric as I tried to push him off me. But he was too strong. Every time I grabbed at a forearm, it’d slip out of my grasp. And there were his knees, locked on either side of me, pinning me down.
I reached up for his face, but the rubber mask of a muted monster stared down at me.
I woke up, skin clammy and breathing hard. I fought with my blanket as though I was still fighting for my life. It took a minute for my fingers to relax and unclench.
It also took me a minute to remember. Because it wasn’t a nightmare. It was a memory.
I buried my face in my hands. I hadn’t thought about that night in so long; I’d forced myself not to, but something had unsettled me. Since joining the club I thought I’d buried that memory deep but it had found a way to come out, like a zombie’s hand breaking through the surface of a fresh grave. I pressed my hands into my eye sockets until I felt pain. Until the blackness there burst with glowing shapes and patterns.
26
I COULD’VE TALKED to my mom about my nightmare. But I didn’t want to worry her. So I was back on my old bullshit. The moment I started to feel a creeping sense of anxiety, I shut it down by doing something really stupid. Tonight’s rendition of stupid was climbing down the fire escape outside my bedroom window, riding the subway into the city at two A.M., and not stopping until I was standing in front of a building in Washington Heights.
I held my phone in my hands, waiting for an answer to my text. I watched the screen, clicked it back on every time it went dark. Then three dots.
Be right down.
It was only then that it hit me just how stupid this was. But I couldn’t turn back now. I was here because I had thought that by joining the Mary Shelley Club, I was beginning to push past everything I’d been through last year. And for a while it had worked—I wasn’t rattled by fear, wasn’t thinking about what had happened to me and what I’d done. But that nightmare shook me up. The rumor of the Masked Man had triggered something, and now I couldn’t think about anything else. So I needed to stop thinking, period.
Freddie pulled open the door to his building. He wore black sliders over slouch socks, sweatpants, and an undershirt wrinkled by the sleep I’d just interrupted. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and when he looked at me, it was through a squint.
“I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“You can wake me up anytime. Want to come in?”
“Your family’s probably sleeping,” I said, though I remembered that he’d once told me his brother worked weeknights as a security guard.
“My brother’s working and my mom’s a deep sleeper. It’s way too cold to be out here.” His voice was soft but authoritative, like he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “Come in.”
We walked through the lobby, which was a muted pink and smelled like vegetable soup. The elevator was small, only a few feet wide, and dipped slightly as we stepped inside. Freddie hit number twelve and we sputtered and lurched upward.
The ride was slow, but neither of us spoke. My mind was still swampy with flashes of my nightmare. When we got out I followed Freddie to apartment 12C. The hallway light bathed a triangle of space inside the apartment, but when I closed the door behind me, it was pitch-black. I felt Freddie’s fingers encircle mine and he led the way to his room.
Freddie switched on a lamp. There were posters all over the walls—The Thing, The Evil Dead, Halloween. Two twin beds rested against opposite walls, both unmade. I didn’t know which one belonged to Freddie. There were two dressers, distressed from age, not by artistic choice. The furniture reminded me of my own.
In the world of Manchester, it was easy to forget that there were other people who lived like me. But then there was Freddie.
“So,” he said, taking in a deep breath. “Do you need a cheat sheet or something?”
“I’m not here for your services,” I said, then blushed. “I mean, I don’t need your help with school. Well, maybe Earth Science.”
“I got you,” Freddie said. “But why are you really here?”
“I had a nightmare.” I felt ridiculous saying it out loud, but Freddie deserved the truth of why I’d woken him up. “I couldn’t go back to sleep and I needed to clear my head and you gave me your address once, to meet up for Thayer’s test, remember? And I really wasn’t thinking.”
Freddie seemed unfazed by my rambling. “What was the nightmare about?”
“Just … it was more of a memory. I dreamed about what happened last year.”
There was a look on his face like pity, which bothered me. I didn’t need anyone feeling sorry for me. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shrugged. “I guess it was on my mind because of what Sim said about Felicity’s Fear Test. That he saw a guy in a mask.”
“I wouldn’t really trust anything Sim says. He got scared and left his girl to fend for herself. Of course he’s going to make up stories to maintain his cred.”
He was probably right. Felicity had done a good job of hiding her face in that giant hoodie. Sim probably didn’t know what he’d seen. Speaking of Felicity.
“Is what she said at the last meeting true? Did you only let me into the club because you were worried I was going to expose you?”
Freddie’s face fell. “You know you belong in the club just as much as any of us.”
I could tell he meant it, but no matter what he said, Felicity’s words had burrowed deep. “I just still feel like an outsider sometimes.”
Freddie sat on his bed and scooted over to make space for me. I sat beside him. The lamp bathed the room in a warm glow.
“My mom used to work as a housekeeper for Bram’s family,” Freddie said. “Did you know that?”
I shook my head, but it made sense given their dynamic. There was a familiarity between Freddie and Bram, like two different species of fish that swam in the same bowl. I always attributed their dynamic to the club, but now I knew it was more than that.
“It’s actually how I ended up at Manchester,” Freddie continued. “Mrs. Wilding was kind of, like, my sponsor. She put in a good word for me. Anyway, sometimes after school I’d go over to their house and Bram was always there. I’m the one wh
o got him into scary movies.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We’d watch them on his laptop every day after school until it was time for my mom to go home. The first time I ever watched Amityville Horror was at Bram’s house. Coming from this tiny apartment, big mansions in scary movies didn’t ever get to me. But at the Wilding place? We were, like, eleven, all the way up in Bram’s room, like three floors away from the rest of civilization. It was pouring out and we both thought we were going to die that night. It was amazing.”
Freddie’s eyes flashed with excitement and I understood exactly the feeling he was describing.
“That’s what it’s supposed to feel like,” I said. “Nerve-racking, pit-in-your-stomach, shaky like someone’s got you by the heart, squeezing it ’til you feel like you can’t breathe and then … air. You know?”
“Yeah,” Freddie said, nodding emphatically. Somehow his hand found its way to my knee, but just as quickly he took it back again.
“You never told me how you got into scary movies,” he said.
Right. My story wasn’t as fun as Freddie’s. “I only started getting into horror … after what happened. The break-in. I thought that maybe if I watched enough scary movies I could train myself to become numb to fear.”
Freddie watched my face, his eyes searching mine. It made me realize how close we were sitting.
“Did it work?” he asked softly.
“At first, yeah,” I said. “The club worked better, though. Or, I thought it did. But as much as I love being in the club, sometimes I feel out of place. Felicity and Bram—they’re not the most welcoming people.”
“Bram?” Freddie’s eyebrows furrowed. “Did he say something to you?”
I thought of telling Freddie what Bram had said about him, his warnings about getting too close. But I didn’t want to stir anything up. “Just his general attitude toward me,” I said.
“Look,” Freddie said, “I’ve been in this world for a while—the world of Bram Wilding, the Mary Shelley Club, Manchester—and I still feel like an outsider, too. I mean, look at where I live.”
“I like your room. It looks like mine.”
Freddie smiled like he didn’t believe me. “I didn’t invite you to join the club because I thought you were a threat to us. I invited you because I wanted you there.”
I held on to the fact that he’d said “‘I” instead of “we.” Even if it was just him who wanted me in the club, it was enough. It was everything.
“I’m sorry I woke you up,” I said for what seemed like the millionth time. “I feel like I forced my way into your room.”
“No, I’ve been meaning to get you in here.” As soon as he said it, he lit up red like a siren. “I don’t mean … not like that. There’s something in my bedroom especially for you.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but I could swear even the tops of Freddie’s ears looked sunburned.
“You know what?” Freddie stammered. “I’m gonna stop talking now and just show you.”
He crawled toward a clunky machine on the windowsill behind his headboard, his bed squeaking with the movement. I wondered what his mom might think if she heard the noise. She might think we were doing something bad, even though we weren’t doing anything bad, but really, would it even be so bad? I let my mind wander, let my face get hot.
I stayed very still.
Finally, Freddie flipped a switch, sending lights dancing on my arm.
“Is that a film projector?” I whispered.
“Yeah.”
Freddie took a sheet off the floor on his brother’s side of the room and flung it over the closet door to create a makeshift projector screen. He turned off the lamp.
The film was black-and-white and there was no audio, but I recognized it instantly. The stark brightness pulled me in like a moth to a flame even if part of my shoulder and head blocked the projection.
“Old film reels and canisters are kind of, like, prized possessions in Film Club,” Freddie said. “One of the guys found this at a flea market. I traded him my reel of Goldfinger for it. But you’ve probably seen this one anyway.”
I watched the scene play out on the wrinkled sheet. Something about how old it was, how silent, made it more magical. “Bride of Frankenstein.”
It was the scene where the Monster walks into the laboratory to meet his mate. Freddie and I had to sit apart so the beam of light could pass between us, but we still caught parts of the images on our bodies, the lightning-streaked tips of the Bride’s hair splayed on my sleeve, part of Dr. Frankenstein on Freddie’s cheek.
I realized that being there with Freddie had helped me shake off the bad feelings from my nightmare. Now I was feeling something else, and I wanted to feel it even more.
Freddie turned to look at me, as if he could hear my thoughts. I didn’t know what images were playing on my face but he couldn’t seem to look away.
“¿Te puedo besar?” he asked.
He smiled, and on his face, Dr. Frankenstein let out a soundless cry. I grabbed him and the doctor both and pulled them toward me. Like Freddie had said, I’d seen this one anyway.
We kissed long enough for the Monster to feel hope and love and rage, the scene playing out against our moving arms and faces, painting us in dramatic grays. Finally, the Monster met his bride for the first and last time, and their silent screams were awash on our skin.
27
“WHO ARE YOU TEXTING?” Mom asked. She plopped down next to me on the couch and tried to peek at my phone screen, but I held it out of reach.
“No one!”
“Is No One cute?”
I rolled my eyes. “Mom.”
“What? I’ve noticed that your texting activity has skyrocketed exponentially all of a sudden. And I know it’s not Saundra.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’d tell me if it was her.”
She had me there. I didn’t particularly want to tell her about Freddie, especially since I didn’t know if there was anything to tell. We’d made out in his room. On his bed, to be exact. For a while. But that had been two days ago, and now it was the weekend, which meant that I didn’t get to see him again in school, which meant any number of things could’ve happened. Like, he could’ve forgotten about me. Or changed his mind. Or had a long forty-eight-hour think about how much he really wasn’t into my kissing style.
But at least we were texting. He sent me cute memes and asked about my plans for Halloween, and we chatted back and forth about a whole bunch of topics that were not about how we’d kissed. Hence, all my questions and doubts.
This was probably the kind of thing my mom could theoretically help me sort out. She was starting to ask a lot of questions about where I was running off to most nights. And I was pretty sure she wasn’t buying my knitting club excuse. If I was going to keep lying about the club, I could at least be honest about who I was texting.
“Do you know Freddie Martinez?”
A slow smile crept onto Mom’s face and I was already regretting my decision to tell her anything.
“I taught him last year,” she said. “Are you guys … hanging out?”
“Kind of.”
Mom tucked her lips between her teeth like she was biting back a grin, but a little squeal still managed to slip out.
“Mom!”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You were thinking it.”
“So Freddie’s the knitting club?”
“Mom.” I grabbed a couch cushion and tried to fuse my face with it, still hearing my mom’s giggles as I did. She pulled the pillow away. “I’m happy you’re … making connections.”
“This isn’t, like, a Craigslist ad, Mom. We’re just friends.”
“Well, do you like him?”
I gave a noncommittal shrug. Which I knew my mom would know how to read. She confirmed that with another little squeal.
“You know, most parents would be war
y of high school boys,” I said.
“Well, I know Freddie. He’s a very upstanding gentleman. And most parents don’t have a daughter as responsible and smart and not-quick-to-rush-into-things as you.” She squeezed a hug out of me and leaned her head on my shoulder. I let her because it felt nice, and because my mom deserved a normal moment with me. After last year, I guess this was like her hitting the Normal Teen Daughter jackpot.
“Are you two going out tonight?” Mom asked. “It’s Halloween!”
That was actually what Freddie had just been texting me about. The Mary Shelley Club traditionally halted all proceedings on October 31, but there was a party that lots of people from Manchester were going to. I had my own Halloween tradition, though.
“Gonna watch Halloween,” I said.
“Again?”
“They don’t call it a classic for nothin’.” Also, I needed inspiration for my upcoming Fear Test and I was hoping Michael Myers and Laurie Strode could provide some.
* * *
I was all ready and settled in. I had grabbed the big bowl of candy that Mom had prepared for any trick-or-treaters because I was pretty sure no costumed kids were going to show up at our door.
Actually, there had been one kid about half an hour earlier. A tiny Minion from down the hall, who was only allowed to collect goodies from floors two through four. I put a mini Twix in her plastic jack-o’-lantern and sent her on her way.
Just as I was about to hit play, there came a knock on the door. Mom snatched away the candy bowl and went to open it.
Catwoman walked into the apartment. Specifically, Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, complete with shiny black latex and white stitching. Behind the mask, Saundra winked and said, “I am Catwoman, hear me purr.” And then she purred.
“Saundra!” Mom said. “You look great.” Which she would still have said if Saundra had walked in wearing a potato sack.
The Mary Shelley Club Page 15