by Leah Konen
But for the most part, even I have to admit the Catskills have been good. When I finish my shifts, my parents pick me up, and we have dinner together, sometimes hitting up an art event in Woodstock or just going on a walk around the neighborhood. I text Chrissy funny stories from my “fancy outdoorsy job,” as she has taken to calling it, and she responds with stories of her own. I keep up with the French Ladies text chain, seeing Katie’s photos from the city, Tessa’s from Paris, Eloise’s very rare updates from sleepaway camp (she is supposed to be meditating, after all), and Fatima’s even rarer updates from Africa. I even send a few Hunter Mountain pics of my own, my earlier anxiety about having sub-par summer plans having largely faded away.
When all that’s done, when I’m back in my room and on my own, I fully morph back into Carrie. I talk to Elm often into the wee hours—about movies, about my screenplay, about silly memes and the way Stephen King seems way too focused on female characters’ boobs in his books. It’s different from the way Jake and I talk at lunch—it’s freer, it’s funnier, and there aren’t any nerves involved. We trade movie recs, like we always do. We make jokes, exchanging barbs and banter.
And the best part is, no matter how long we talk, no matter how late we stay up, we never, ever run out of things to say.
On Thursday afternoon, just over two weeks into my new job and my new life, Jake finds me at lunch again.
“Seat taken?” he asks as he motions to an empty bale of hay.
“Pretty sure it’s got your name on it,” I say.
He smiles. “Glad to hear.”
We go through that same dialogue, or a version thereof, every day it’s just us, and it’s cheesy, movie-cheesy, but with him I don’t even care.
Taking a seat, he pulls out a sandwich and sets his phone on his knee. I can’t help it: I think about the messages from Carrie, locked away in there. It gives me a tiny thrill, that I’m part of his life in so many ways, one that immediately makes me feel guilty.
He nods down to his phone. “I usually try not to be glued to the thing but my little sister wants to FaceTime me. She won this art contest at her day camp, and apparently it’s a really big deal.”
I realize, for the first time, that he’s never mentioned siblings before. It strikes me then, as much as I think I know him, on Reddit and here at work, there is still so much to learn about him. The thought makes me happy. Knowing more, knowing everything there is to know about Jake. “How old is she?” I ask.
“Eight,” he says. “With the opinions of a twelve-year-old, I’d say.”
“Into movies?”
“YouTube channels, actually. She’s got a whole list of her favorites. She’ll watch a food blogger and then whip up this crazy flourless cake thing. She’s not even ten, and she’s already quite the Renaissance—er—girl, I guess. And here I am, seventeen, afraid of the dark and resigned to making dad jokes all the time.”
I laugh. “She sounds cool. Is it just you two?”
Jake shakes his head. “There are four of us kids, actually.”
“Damn. It’s just me and my parents.”
He laughs. “Yeah, it’s a lot, and I’m the oldest. My younger brothers are fifteen and twelve. I think that’s part of why my aunt went out of her way to get me the film thing. She knew it would be good for my college applications next year and all that, but I think she felt for me, living in all the craziness day in and day out. I also have the pleasure of having my own room for the first time in my life. Where, yes, I sometimes keep the lights on when I sleep.”
“Hey, no judgment here,” I say, biting into my sandwich and swallowing quick. “Anyway, that sounds pretty intense. I’ve had my own room my entire life. Only-child benefits, I guess. Although people say only children are weird. Socially inept or something.”
“Well, I think that’s quite obviously untrue. I mean, look at you. You’re amazing.”
His cheeks turn bright red, and he looks down.
I feel my cheeks burn as well. He probably didn’t even mean to say it. He clearly tripped over the words. And yet, he did say it, and went instantly red, as if he’d thought it before—maybe more than once.
I think the same thing about him.
His phone beeps then, and a photo of a little girl pops onto his screen.
“I gotta take this,” he says to me.
I nod. “Of course.”
He grabs the remnants of his lunch and walks off, and I can hear him, the uptick in his voice as he talks to his sister, the way he obviously cares about her—that makes me happy, too.
I stare down at my sandwich, replaying every minute of our interaction, delighting in it.
I know I’m playing with fire. I know that this is unsustainable, that it can’t go on this way. Only it’s so lovely, it’s so wonderful, seeing every side of him like I do. How his awkwardness, his nerdiness, his cheesy humor play out in different sides of his life.
The truth is, I liked Elm first, but now I like Jake, too.
And when push comes to shove, I don’t want to lose either of them.
The Haunting of Sophia Blaine
That night, Katie and I finally get a chance to FaceTime. I’m sitting in the living room, tucked up on the couch. My parents are out at a documentary screening, getting dinner after, so for once, I have the house to myself.
“Hey, girlie!” Katie says, flipping the camera around so I can see her dorm—linoleum tiles, cinder-block walls, a poster tacked up of Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter. Across the room, a girl waves to me.
“That’s Hallie,” Katie says, turning the phone back so she can see me and sliding her earbuds in. “She’s a fellow Meryl fan, too. It’s her poster—can you believe that?”
I can, given that Meryl Streep is only the most popular actress in the United States, but I don’t dare say that to Katie. “That’s amazing.”
“So let me get this straight,” she says, jumping right in. “You’re actually into the whole camp counselor thing, per your pic the other day? I told you it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Zip line,” I remind her. “Not camp.”
Katie smiles. “Yes, yes, I know.” Her hair shines, catching the evening light, and in the background, I can hear the honk of a horn, followed by the wail-shriek of a siren. She’s practically radiating the energy of the city. “Let’s just pretend it’s camp, though, because I think it’s great fodder for your screenplay. Isn’t horror always about people dying at summer camp?”
I laugh. “That’s one franchise. Friday the 13th. There are plenty of movies that have been inspired by it, but that’s not everything.”
“Yes, yes,” Katie says, tilting her head to the side. “Horror is nuanced and feminist and cutting-edge and all that. It’s not just a bunch of blood and gore.”
“Ding, ding!”
“So give me the deets—you tie up kids and send them flying into the air?”
“It’s actually mostly adults,” I say. “And I’m not an instructor, so I don’t have to tie up anyone. I usually just hang out in the office and check people in, that kind of thing.”
She smirks. “Any hot guys?”
I feel myself blush.
“Oh my goodness, I-told-you-so number two.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Katie shrugs. “Some best friend you are.” She scratches at the corner of her mouth; she’s sporting a new color of coral lip gloss. I imagine her heading to the flagship Sephora on Thirty-Fourth Street, playing with pots and pots of colors, getting one of the employees to do a demonstration on her. I hear another honk, picture a yellow cab chugging by, just below her window.
“He’s really sweet,” I say finally. “But it probably won’t work out.”
“Why so negative?” She pouts.
A million reasons, ones I’m not ready to share with her. “I’m working on my screenplay,” I say, changing the subject.
Her smile is genuine this time. “That’s awesome. How far are you?”
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“A hell of a lot further than before.”
“So the mountain setting has been good for you!”
I nod. “Indeed it has.”
“Perhaps romance has inspired you as well.”
My blush deepens. “Enough about me,” I say. “Tell me about your program.”
And she does. About the rigorous classes, the Method style of acting, how she had to eat twenty-five blueberries because her character was supposed to be really into them. She tells me they’re putting on a play at the end of the summer and auditions were last week—she’ll soon find out what part she got, and she’s hoping for the lead or the second lead. She details summer evenings, wandering through Washington Square Park, ordering extra-large slices of pizza on Bleecker Street, hitting up the smarmy dive bar that doesn’t ask for ID if you go before five.
Her eyes light up as she paints a picture for me, one that could have, in part, been mine. I could have been connecting with would-be writers just like me. I could have been wandering around the city, too.
We get off the phone, promising to talk again soon, and I can’t help it, I feel a teensy bit . . . deflated. I know I shouldn’t. I’ve been making really good progress on my screenplay, and I’ve been making friends, too. But at the same time—I don’t have anything to put on my college applications, for all I know my screenplay could be awful, and I’ve been lying my ass off to Jake—both in person and online.
So I do what I always do when I feel that way, the one thing that usually manages to shake me out of it: I decide to watch a horror movie.
Stephen King said we make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones, and he’s right. A good horror movie will make me scream at a jump scare and laugh at ridiculous dialogue and spurting blood. The shadows, the spine tingles, the sheer intensity make me feel something outside of me. Not by tugging on heartstrings, like drama, or plying me with one-liners, like comedy. Instead, horror plays on something I know well: fear.
My life is not full of horrors; I know that. It’s good, really. But there’s a kind of horror in the everyday. Horror in having to acknowledge to your family and friends that you let them down, that you didn’t push yourself to the limit—in my case, didn’t even give it a real shot. In lying to someone you’ve grown to care about. In talking to your best friend and feeling jealousy when you know you should be happy for her.
Sometimes just being a teenager, trying to cross that invisible bridge between childhood and adulthood, plagued with acne, with new curves that don’t feel right, and not fall face-flat on the ground, is a horror of its own.
I head to the kitchen, grab the cash my parents left out on the table, order a pizza, and turn on the TV in the living room, perusing my options—I’ve never watched a horror movie on the screen in here; it’s too close to their bedroom. Usually, I’m holed up in my room, laptop close to my face in a desperate attempt to make the screen feel bigger.
I feel a prickle of excitement at what’s to come—greasy pizza and a scary movie on a real screen, lights off and everything, no worries about the screams or the score being too loud. A combination that promises to set all my feelings about Katie adrift.
The pizza arrives in thirty minutes, and by then, I’ve made my selection, a movie Elm recommended a couple of weeks ago, that cost too much to rent then but is free now on Netflix—a ghost story, but maybe it isn’t a ghost story—one where the main character is constantly questioning her reality. I grab two slices, turn off all the lights, and sit on the couch.
I message Elm:
CarriesRevenge01: Finally starting The Haunting of Sophia Blaine. Will keep you posted!
He responds almost right away, a fact that brings my blush right back, gets my heart pumping fast again.
ElmStreetNightmare84: I hope you like it. No pressure!
ElmStreetNightmare84: Well, a little pressure.
ElmStreetNightmare84: TBH I’ll be heartbroken if you hate it, I loved it so much. Sophia’s story is SO INTERESTING. I’ll probably re-watch it soon. Shit, I’m overhyping it, aren’t I?
CarriesRevenge01: A little!
ElmStreetNightmare84: Okay, I’ll stop, but I demand a full postmortem once you’re done. Deal?
CarriesRevenge01: Postmortem, good one ;)
CarriesRevenge01: And you’re on
CarriesRevenge01: On like King Kong
He sends me a silly emoji face, I send one back. Then, face still hot, pulse still thumping, I set my phone on the arm of the sofa, just in case he says anything else, and press Play. I have a feeling this is going to be good . . .
It is good. Too good, in fact. Or maybe it’s my setting. Pizza eaten, there’s nothing to occupy me but the movie. It’s eerily quiet up here, not a single background noise, like I would have in Brooklyn, and I can hear the house settling, almost like a ghost is walking back and forth in the attic upstairs—or that awful husband from the movie Gaslight.
In the film’s quieter parts, I can’t help but hear it—the crack of a twig outside, probably from a deer, or the whir of a solitary car cruising down the rarely trafficked road, its lights casting an unsettling glow through the whole room.
By the time the credits roll, I’m good and scared.
I like to talk a big game about how horror movies never scare me. Most true fans will say the same. We’re always chasing that rush, trying to get that thrill, and it almost never works. Only now, it has. Now, I kind of wish my parents would get home sooner rather than later.
I grab my phone, message Elm.
CarriesRevenge01: I finished!
He writes back immediately.
ElmStreetNightmare84: Nice! How was it?
My fingers shake as I type.
CarriesRevenge01: I gotta say it’s a lot creepier watching horror in the woods
The phone drops from my hand, clattering onto the floor, and I realize, instantly, what I’ve done. It’s like I didn’t think, like Carrie and Olivia were once again one, and I forgot, for a moment, that Elm is not supposed to know I’m here. I grab my phone from the floor and search for a way to delete the message, but there’s nothing I can do; it’s been sent.
ElmStreetNightmare84: Huh? I thought you were at NYU
CarriesRevenge01: I am
CarriesRevenge01: I mean, we took a weekend trip out to the Poconos
Shit. It’s only Thursday.
CarriesRevenge01: A long weekend!
There’s a hesitation on his part, and I wonder if, somehow, he’s put it all together; then he writes me back.
ElmStreetNightmare84: Oh
ElmStreetNightmare84: Sounds cool!
We talk about the movie, dissecting its ins and outs like I promised we would, but I can’t help but chastise myself for revealing too much.
I have the sinking feeling I’ve already gotten in too deep.
Just like Sophia Blaine in the movie—for me, it’s probably going to get a whole lot messier before it gets any better.
The Invitation
The next afternoon, just after returning from a lunch that unfortunately—or maybe fortunately, given my flub last night—didn’t align with Jake’s, Steinway greets me with a smile: “Tell me you don’t have plans tonight.”
It’s just me in the office, the two-thirty tour crowd’s all checked in, Tennyson off to supervise the lift.
“No plans,” I say. I don’t tell her that I never have plans, apart from hanging out with my parents, shooting the shit with Chrissy, and, of course, chatting with Elm—although, after last night’s mishap, I’m kind of a little scared to do that.
“Perfect,” Steinway says, tugging at the end of her braid. “A bunch of us are going to Pigeon’s Landing tonight. It’s a swimming hole nearby. I would have texted you last night, but I don’t even have your number. Speaking of, we should correct that.” She takes out her phone, and I rattle off my digits. She keys them in with freshly painted blue nails. “It’s only a little ways up from here.”
“I don’t have a swimsuit,
” I say. “Not on me, at least.”
Steinway shrugs. “Don’t your parents come to pick you up? Just tell them to bring one.”
I hesitate. The idea of putting on a swimsuit and splashing around with my coworkers, including Jake, sounds almost as scary as having to jump off that cliff.
“You don’t even have to swim,” Steinway adds. “It’s really about the camaraderie. And I already told everyone you’d come. They can’t wait to get a dose of our dear Olivia off the clock. You know, outside work, when we can just be ourselves.”
For a second, I imagine Jake and me, splashing around, him moving closer to me in the water, my insecurities drifting away, summer skin on summer skin . . .
Not to mention, I told myself I’d be less afraid.
“Olivia?”
“Sorry,” I say. “Sure, sounds great. I’ll come.”
“Awesome,” Steinway says, then turns on her heel, sauntering off, her braids bouncing against her back as she does.
Almost immediately, my walkie beeps twice: “Jake to Olivia. Come in, Olivia.”
“Go ahead, Jake,” I say, holding down the button and ignoring the uptick in my pulse. He probably just needs a different-size helmet for one of the people in his group. I release the button, and there’s another beep.
“Steinway says you’re coming to Pigeon’s Landing with us tonight. Over.”
Jake never radios just me, and yet here he is, asking me over the walkie so everyone can hear. I feel heat rise in my cheeks.
I hold the button down. “Affirmative, Jake. Over.”
A smile breaks across my face as the walkie beeps again. Jake’s voice: “Cool.”
Then immediately, another beep. “Let’s keep the walkie to work business, kids.”
I push the radio aside. Why would he go out of his way to make sure I’m going to be there unless . . .