Did Letha see her dad in that bear trap too, and walk away? Is this all a ruse? Did it really take her all day to dig Jade out, or did she need that time to bash holes in a few hulls? Was the swan boat really there by accident? Is the machete tucked behind the seat?
“What’s wrong?” Letha asks.
“Somebody threw your stepmother,” Jade blurts out, clasping hard to that certainty. Because no way was that Letha. And how to have choreographed that shotgun blast through the wall? Why cut it so close just to convince the horror chick, whom she could have just killed easy as anything?
Unless she can’t. Unless that horror chick’s about to get framed.
Unless that horror chick’s been the patsy all along.
Speaking of, shouldn’t Letha have been reduced to a crying ball of fear by now, not relaxed enough to be idly talking about horror movies?
“My dad would never do that to her,” Letha says, still talking about Tiara’s big slow-motion fall. “Not to anybody.”
“Did you… like them?” Jade asks. “The Saws?”
“I watched like this,” Letha says, doing her fingers over her eyes, still playing the horror wimp.
Jade breathes in deep once, twice, and on three she says it: “Is that Michael Myers?” When Letha leans forward to follow where she’s pointing—past the swan’s regally arched neck, to Hardy policing fireworks from the pier—Jade slips quietly over the edge, under the water, no splash at all for once in her life, she’s pretty sure.
Her gamble is that by the time Letha realizes she’s gone, she’ll spend thirty seconds or a minute standing in the boat, calling, before she dives in for a look around. But Indian Lake is big, and dark, and quiet, and it’s been swallowing bodies since forever.
Jade kicks to the side, reaches with her right hand and pulls ahead like gathering water into her hip bag, and then she does it again, and again, her lungs burning. When she finally comes up, she’s alone. Freezing, but alone, just a prickly-scalped seal bobbing in the water, her eyes barely above the surface.
She takes her apology to Letha Mondragon back.
Sure, she might have dreamed of and begged for a slasher to stalk into town one fine day, but that doesn’t mean she wants to pedal into the big crowd alongside that slasher.
Except—it can’t be Letha, can it?
You’re being paranoid, Jade tells herself, tracing slow figure eights with her hands. Paranoid and stupid. This is why nobody hangs out with you. This is why everybody hates you.
There’s only about a quarter mile to go to Proofrock, now. To Jaws.
After looking all around, certain no ostrich-size swans are about to glide up on her, Jade starts pulling for that glowing screen, trying not to broadcast her location with white water, praying she can get there before hypothermia sets in.
Halfway there, the dialogue of the movie is coming through clear. Quint’s just tacking that third barrel to the shark, and assuring Brody and Hooper that no fish can dive with three. When Jade looks behind her this time, she has to admit that it’s to see if she’s dragging a yellow barrel, as idiotic as that would be. But she is a monster, as far as this town is concerned.
What she sees instead of a yellow barrel is the dull silver prow of a sudden and completely soundless boat, bearing down on her. Not sucking air in this time—no time—Jade slips under, instantly clamping her hands to her head to keep her hair from tangling in the propeller, but then just having bare scalp to hold.
It’s just a little trolling motor burring past, though. Jade watches it churn past inches from her face, a turbid cyclone of bubbles ensconcing the whirling blades. It’s like a free-range garbage disposal, gone feral in the lake—it’s the last thing Jason sees, in The New Blood. Jade rotates in the water, tracking it until the darkness swallows it away, and… and, and standing in the shadows of Banner Tompkins’s party a week and a half ago, she was right, wasn’t she? This—a trolling motor, a light little boat—is exactly what Theo Mondragon’s been using to cross the lake under cover of night. With it, and especially if he’s got the sides blacked out, he might as well be walking on water.
She comes up a second after the aluminum hull’s gone and gasps air in, her vision swimming from lack of oxygen, and from certainty, from relief.
It is him. Jade was—she was wrong about Letha, she was reading the moment wrong. But it doesn’t matter, now.
“Right on time,” she says to Theo Mondragon’s wake, and then watches as he does the impossible: stands up in the prow of the little boat like George Washington crossing the Delaware—the poster’s on Mr. Holmes’s wall, has been since forever, even after Jade used her pencil eraser to give him Little Orphan Annie eyes. In the poster, what George Washington has running down along his leg, ready for battle, is a long curving saber.
What Theo Mondragon has is the machete, the one Jade never bothered to tell Letha is the same model Quint uses to save the Orca. And, not only is Theo Mondragon standing up in the boat, his hand no longer to the steering control of the trolling motor, but the boat, unlike Washington’s… it’s sinking?
Because he took one of the boats with the crashed-in hulls, Jade can see now. If he was sure to keep his weight all the way in the back, then the nose of that boat would ride out of the water, the big hole up front in the open air. Theo Mondragon must have gambled the boat would wheelie up like that, anyway. And, like every stock purchase he’s taken a chance on, every merger, every takeover, every board meeting, his gamble is paying out.
Right as the boat swamps, he steps forward like he’s going to continue with that forward momentum, walk across the water, start the blood harvest now, meaning… Jade doesn’t even know what that would mean.
Luckily, instead of her whole world collapsing from a human standing on the surface of the lake, he drops into the water instead of balancing on top of it, is just a head like Jade now, pulling for shore. But, forty yards closer than her, his jaw probably not shivering yet.
Jade tries to fix on the shape of his head, track what part of the crowd he’s going to drift into first, but then has to whip her head around again, sure that great white swan’s about to pedal her under. By the time she spins back around to the crowd, locates a head bobbing in the water, there’s… two more beside it?
“No!” Jade says, trying to climb out of the water.
What she saw for an instant, she’s ninety percent sure, is the glint of glasses on that face barely holding itself above water. Yellow glasses.
Shooting Glasses.
He had been deeper underwater than Theo Mondragon’s golden nails could reach, hadn’t he? Because it’s steeper on that side of the lake. It drops off faster.
He’s alive.
And… and those two smaller heads it looks like he’s carrying, that must be Cinnamon and Ginger, the twins? Mars Baker’s daughters. Shooting Glasses has been swimming them across the lake for the last who knows how many hours, because… he’s not the final girl, is he? Not because boy final girls are illegal or break the machine, but because… because if Theo Mondragon’s the one with the machete, then that means that Letha can be what she was meant to be. What Jade meant for her to be.
Except Letha’s own words are echoing: this is the real world, not a movie, and the real world doesn’t have to follow any special rules. It just does what it does. You can’t pick your genre, no. Has that been what Jade’s been doing all along? Trying to shape an unwieldy string of dead people into a movie, just so she can have a minor role? So she can feel some sense of control?
If so, all her slasher homework has just been to delude herself, not to live through this night. Or, if she does live, then she lives knowing that there never was any slasher cycle, that slashers aren’t real, are just pretend, and what kind of life would that be?
Jade closes her eyes, shakes her head no, balls her fists by her face and sinks under, doesn’t know if she’s crying or not. Hanging under the surface like that the world’s so quiet that… what is that she’s hearing?
A choir? Ezekiel’s still down there in Drown Town, holding his last mass. And—and if that can be real, if Jade’s really and actually hearing music, then… then anything can be true, can’t it?
She reaches up, climbs the water handful by handful, finally surfaces a third time, her lungs hungry, her vision blurred, her nose running, skin number than numb.
She bobs, bobs, tries to jump up to see higher, not sure if her teeth are chattering from cold or from excitement.
He’s almost to the back of the crowd, Shooting Glasses. And, maybe twenty yards to the left of him, unaware of his escape, so is Theo Mondragon. And Letha must be already in the crowd, her unsteerable swan just another ridiculous float in a night of ridiculous floats. On-screen, Quint is screaming, the giant pissed-off shark chomping him in bite by bite, leg by leg, shutting him up once and for all.
“Somebody!” Jade screams, clapping her hand on the water, but she wasn’t lying: the movie really is cranked. And this is everybody’s favorite scene, anyway. In honor, the Proofrockers are singing farewell to Spanish ladies, their arms hooked into other arms over gunwales, across bows—was this what Jade was hearing underwater? And, zero surprise here, isn’t this where she’s always been? Way on the outside, everyone deaf to her cries? Deaf when she cried?
She screams in fury, just to be heard, and when no official flashlight stabs a dusty beam of light out into the darkness to guide her in, she leans sideways, does her best approximation of a freestyle stroke until she pulls close enough to hear distinct words from the speakers.
And—oh shit.
This cannot be happening, can it?
Every year there’s a sort of last-minute theme, circulated in the halls of both schools, scribbled on bathroom walls, left in code on the bulletin board at the drugstore: this year’s costume. It’s a game the whole town plays.
The year she saw the high schooler in the Jigsaw getup, the reason he stood out was that everyone was wearing nun costumes.
This year, some of those long black habits have been recycled, but mixed with hag masks, with zombie make-up, with long stringy J-horror wigs.
The theme this year is “Lake Witch.” Stacey Graves. Because of course.
Right as Jade drifts in behind the last line of floats, one of those Lake Witches even comes flying across the screen, which is another tradition: dressing up, pole-vaulting off shore, into the stretch of water left free specifically for this year’s jumper to splash down into.
Because jocks and the black t-shirt crowd don’t exactly trade phone numbers and social calendars, Jade didn’t track who this year’s Henderson High Graduation Day pole vaulter was going to be, but whoever it is—Lee Scanlon, maybe?—he’s silhouetted in front of the bright-bright screen now, his robe ragged and backswept, never going to catch him, and it’s like Stacey Graves has come back.
Good for her.
Just, this time, this cycle, the slasher’s more mundane, more human. More real. Sorry, Stacey, Jade says in her heart—she’s already seen this year’s killer, and he’s more from the Ghostface era than the Golden Age.
That doesn’t mean his blade is any less sharp, though.
Jade latches onto the first hull she can and uses it to pull ahead. It’s the librarian float: the boat’s papier-mâché’d into a giant open book, but the gluey paper is mushy under Jade’s hand already.
Connie the Librarian looks over, crosses her index finger over her lips to shush Jade.
What Jade wants to yell back is to clear the beaches, that the theater’s on fire, that there’s a werewolf in the subway, but she doesn’t have enough breath, and Connie’s just playing the role that goes with her float, anyway. Shushing people on tonight of all nights would be hopeless. Like every Fourth, there’s elementary kids with shark fins tied to their backs, snorkels wrapped around their faces, there’s junior highers wading among the boats, sneaking up on ready-to-shriek friends, there’s sophomores making out in the water, seniors going further under cover of gunwales and blankets, and then there’s dads keeping one hand in the water, to guard the beer they’ve got on a stringer, and those dads’ wives drifting in innertubes, already on the day’s second bottle of wine.
Somewhere in there is a hero in yellow glasses, Jade knows. He’s trying to save two little girls whose father is dead, whose whole lives have turned into a screaming nightmare, who are probably chattering their teeth with hypothermia right now, since no way do they have enough body fat. Jade’s not a good person, she knows she’s not and never can be, it’s too late for her, but that doesn’t mean she can’t try to find them, help them onto a boat, onto the pier, into one of Hardy’s crunchy silver blankets.
Shooting Glasses, Shooting Glasses…
She steps up onto a raft built to be a living room, complete with couch and standing lamp, the man on the couch in comical boxers, a swimsuit under them—it’s Lonnie, from the gas station—looking over to her in a drunken way, then lifting his beer to her as if to tell her, Look, I’m not in just an innertube anymore. Jade gives him a nod and holds on to the lamp, casing the crowd. Three or four boats over is a bass boat made into a bassinet, which must be someone’s baby announcement, and there’s Hardy’s airboat tied to the pier like a guard dog, and—seriously?
Her father and Rexall are in a wooden paddleboat draped in what looks like ratty old elk hides that are taking on water. But who cares about their stupid boat. It’s their idiot selves Jade is wincing from: her dad’s got his face painted like Johnny Depp from The Lone Ranger—half-black, half-white, all “Indian”—and is drunk enough already to be shirtless in the open air. The better to see his gut, the skin stretched tight as a drum, his ribs traced in yellow for some reason. Maybe he saw it in a vision, was told by an eagle that if he painted his ribs yellow like that then he could fit not just two or three more beers into his body, but a whole twelve-pack.
Score.
Rexall’s worse, and… maybe it’s because he’s white? The headdress he’s in says he’s the chief of their two-person tribe, though, and if beer guts are a status symbol, a sign of prosperity, of having enough buffalo to eat, then… he doesn’t even need the turkey-feather headdress, really.
Jade’s not sure how the eyepatch he’s wearing is supposed to be part of his Halloween getup, but the monkey-doll clamped onto his shoulder probably isn’t culture-specific either—what did she expect, really?
From him: nothing.
From her dad, who actually is Indian?
Jade makes herself pull her eyes away from the insult they are, fixes for a moment on the cheerleaders in their matching bikinis, all of them sitting front to back on some giant shark built over a canoe, it looks like—real original, girls, nobody’s ever thought of that one for this movie. And talking canoes: like every year, Principal Manx is just past them in his clear plastic canoe, sitting alone, looking like he’s just floating there, like if you believe hard enough that you’re in a boat, then you can float.
And—
“Shooting Glasses!” Jade yells, her hands cupped around her mouth.
Which is when she realizes that she doesn’t know his name. That, to him, those are probably safety glasses. Maybe he’s never even fired a real gun, only knows nailguns. And more intimately than he ever hoped.
He doesn’t turn around to her plea, is just trying to push either Cinnamon or Ginger up onto the pier, but there’s no ladder on this side, Jade knows, and when that wood’s wet, it’s slicker than slick. But he finally does it, finally gets one of the girls up there enough that she can latch on, clamber up, and the other twin’s pushing too, and… shit, that’s not one of the twins turning around on the pier to help the other one up. It’s Galatea Pangborne. Meaning the other twin…? Jade sneaks a look across the lake, as if her mind’s eye can bore into the bowels of the yacht, pick one dead twin from that carnage. Or one hiding twin left behind by her and Letha.
Jade comes right back to the pier as if to apologize, ask for a do-over, she’ll just swim acros
s right now, make everything right. But she’s never been in time for anything, has she? Is this the “Indian Time” her dad’s always using to explain his lateness? Growing up, she thought “Indian Time” meant “just one more beer,” as in, Tab Daniels was going to be however late it took to cash another can, but maybe it covers leaving a terrified little girl on the wrong side of the lake, too.
Not that this is necessarily the right side.
Jade pushes up as high as she can in the water to get Shooting Glasses’s attention, but he’s… he’s already got others’ attention, doesn’t he? Three, four flashlights are holding on him, helping him help these kids, who probably fell off their own floats. It should be a good thing, a happy thing, except—except he’s Jada Pinkett Smith at the front of the theater in Scream 2 now, isn’t he?
Just, hopefully, without the slow, over-dramatic dying.
Either Cinnamon or Ginger is almost up onto the pier, though.
Which is when Jade’s Spidey-sense gets her head turning, her eyes zeroing in on… on… Theo Mondragon.
He’s bobbing in the water, using the baby announcement boat to see higher, and what he’s seeing is who everybody’s spotlighting for him: Shooting Glasses. Who’s supposed to be dead.
“No,” Jade says, but yes: in one of his bobs, or one of the water’s dips, the tip of Theo Mondragon’s Quint machete pokes up, is practically that long drill from The Slumber Party Massacre poster. And, on tonight of all nights, no one will take it seriously, everyone will think it’s a prop-weapon. There’s probably one that looks the same on every third boat, shit.
“There he is!” Jade calls out, slapping the surface of the lake with her hand, which is when the first scream comes. She looks over like she has to, and cheerleaders are bailing off the back of the shark, falling one after the other like a choreographed dance number.
But why?
Jade clambers up onto Lonnie’s living room float again, using his floor lamp to steady herself, the lamp’s chain evidently caught in her grip enough to pull the lightbulb on. Meaning there must be a battery on this raft somewhere—of course Lonnie would have a battery.
My Heart Is a Chainsaw Page 34