Slasher Girls & Monster Boys

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  As she turned from the doorway, she heard Jaycee settle on a chord, then another, pulling out a melody. It sounded familiar, but it was only when Kara was in her bathroom, putting on her face cream, that she remembered the song:

  They say you’re crazy, I’m crazy too

  Made crooked just like you

  Lost my mind, lost my way

  Found my crooked path to you

  A silly song, but it had been a big hit in the nineties. It brought back memories of that last summer before things had gone really bad, driving around town in Trent’s new Sebring. Who had recorded it? Some one-hit wonder, but she couldn’t remember the name.

  She wiped the lotion off her hands and sat down at her laptop to look up the lyrics. It was an easy find: “Malia Mayes Will Have Her Way.” Words by Rafe Beckman. Music by Rafe Beckman and Subterfuge. Now Kara remembered—Subterfuge. She hadn’t heard that name in forever. But that’s what the music business was like.

  She glanced through the search results and clicked on Rafe Beckman: The Invisible Man, skimming the first paragraph. In 1998, Rafe had split from Subterfuge and gone into the studio to record his first solo album. But he’d packed up less than a month later when the body of a young girl was found dead on the premises. He hadn’t released a single song since and had refused to join in the Subterfuge reunion tour. He’d been holed up in his Hollywood Hills house ever since. Kara clicked her tongue. Nasty stuff, but not really surprising, given all the drugs floating around. And these were hard drugs, cocaine and heroin, not the stuff Jaycee and her friends messed around with.

  Kara prepared to close the window and check her e-mail when two words jumped out at her: Las Brisas. She frowned. That was the town where Wellways was located, a sunny haven for surfers and retirees, all pristine California coastline and forested headlands.

  She clicked through and felt a chill settle in her belly. The website didn’t look like it had been updated in ages, but it bore a muddy image of an old photo. The caption read: 1998—Rafe enters the studio to record his still unreleased solo album. Rafe Beckman stood glaring at the camera in long hair and torn jeans. The building behind him looked like a Spanish mission, big and white with an arched colonnade. Kara recognized it from the Wellways brochure.

  Below that was a harmless-looking picture of trees that bore the caption: Starlet Malia Mayes hanged herself from this oak in the arboretum in 1952. In June of 1998, Rafe Beckman split from Subterfuge and rented the abandoned Central Coast Hospital and Center for Mental Hygiene, a former mental institution and site of the infamous Malia Mayes suicide that inspired Subterfuge’s hit “Malia Mayes Will Have Her Way.”

  Kara read on, frowning. Wellways actually had been a mission, then a girls’ school, a rest home for recovering tuberculosis patients, and finally a state mental hospital until it was closed down in the wake of the Mayes suicide.

  Rafe bought the notorious building and converted it into a recording studio, but left less than a month later when the body of a seventeen-year-old fan was found floating in one of the old therapy pools.

  Seventeen. Just a year older than Jaycee. Kara scanned down, the skin on her arms prickling cold. The next photo was of a body bag being wheeled out on a coroner’s cart. The death had been ruled accidental overdose, but an employee from the coroner’s office had leaked photographs that didn’t bear that out. There was a link that read: Photos after the jump. GRAPHIC MATERIAL. Kara hesitated, her cursor hovering over those capital letters. She could hear Jaycee singing down the hall, They say you’re crazy, I’m crazy too. She clicked through.

  × × ×

  Jaycee had been at Wellways nearly a week, but it felt like a year. No phone, no Internet, and only one hour of TV in the afternoons. They almost always ended up watching an NCIS rerun. She told herself to enjoy “disconnecting,” but she didn’t feel peaceful or free, only restless.

  Nights were the worst. It was after curfew now, and that meant that if you weren’t in your room, you had better be in the bathroom. No excuses. There was nothing to do but lie in bed and think or read something from the Wellways library. She’d grabbed a biography of the Dalai Lama, but she hadn’t gotten past the first page.

  That morning, they’d had to go around the circle in group and talk about their “real addictions.”

  The other kids had been there long enough that their group leader, Dr. Michaels, had them perfectly trained. One by one they’d spoken up like little barking seals:

  “My dad’s approval.”

  “Adrenaline.”

  “Attention from guys.”

  Then they’d gotten to Harper, one of those sad, soft, goth girls. Apparently the Wellways staff hadn’t let her keep her jewelry, because her ears and nose and lip were riddled with holes where her piercings should have been. Her black hair had grown out so that it was mostly a kind of sad gray-brown. Pathetic. She’d looked directly at Jaycee and said, “Shitty music. Can’t get enough of it.”

  Jaycee had smiled sweetly and given her the finger. But she’d felt vindicated. This was the proof that there was no point to her being in group.

  Dr. Michaels had shaken his head. “Harper, we’ve talked about this before. When you act out that way, you disrespect the group and you disrespect yourself. Come on.” He’d stood and beckoned to her.

  Harper had rolled her eyes. “It was a joke,” she said sullenly, shuffling after him. Then all of a sudden it was as if a current had passed through the little ring of chairs. The fat kid biting his thumbnail, the redheaded girl with the long hair, the boy with the out-of-control unibrow who hadn’t stopped staring at Jaycee’s chest for more than a heartbeat—they all sat up straighter. A stiffness came into them, like they knew they were on camera but were trying to act natural.

  Jaycee turned and saw Louise headed across the room. Today she had on scrubs with clusters of pink hearts and those same purple Crocs. Her reading glasses hung from a chain that bumped against her solid bosom. Jaycee hadn’t seen much of Louise since the nurse had checked her in that first day. The blunt she’d smoked before the drive and low blood sugar had made her all kinds of woozy and left her with a weird blur of memories. She’d shrugged them off, wondering if maybe it was a good thing that she had to detox a little. Louise was a bit of a hard-ass, but she was nice enough. As Dr. Michaels approached her with Harper in tow, the nurse’s face showed only resignation and concern.

  “Harper needs a time-out and a chore assignment, Lou,” said Dr. Michaels.

  Louise gave a small sigh. “We’ll get it sorted. What’s the infraction?”

  “Disrespecting her peers and violating the safe space of group.”

  “Gotta watch that tongue, kiddo,” Louise said. “Come on.”

  Harper glanced back once at the group. Jaycee was tempted to flash her another “fuck you,” but the panicked look in Harper’s eyes had been enough to wipe the idea from her mind. Jaycee knew that expression from the days when her daddy used to hunt—white-eyed and panicked, the look of an animal caught in a trap. That was when she’d realized the way the other kids were sitting—not like they were on camera. They were keeping still like small creatures when a predator was near.

  Jaycee hadn’t seen Harper again until right before sunset when she’d gone out for a run. It was the last thing she wanted to do, but if she got too lazy while she was away, she’d never hear the end of it from Mama.

  The kids from group had been clustered under the arches near the front steps, so she’d had to go around them: the fat kid, Unibrow, that vague redhead—Althea maybe? And Harper, red-eyed and chewing on a pen cap. Had she been crying? Big baby. Louise had probably just given her kitchen duty or something.

  They went silent as Jaycee passed and Unibrow moved his knees so she could get by. She could practically feel his eyes on her ass as she descended the steps. When she reached the gravel path, she was surprised to hear him say, “Steer c
lear of the oaks.”

  Jaycee turned, and bent her knee to stretch her quads. “Why?” Unibrow’s throat worked slightly, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Jaycee rolled her eyes. “Why is everyone here so fucking weird?”

  “It’s where Malia Mayes . . . you know,” he managed.

  “No, I don’t know.”

  He swallowed, a flush climbing up his cheeks. “Hung herself.”

  “Hanged,” said the fat kid.

  Jaycee switched legs, hooked her hand around her other ankle. “You’re messing with me.”

  “After they gave her the spike,” said Fatty with a snicker. “Icepick right through the eye.”

  “This place just keeps getting better.”

  Harper leaned back on her elbows, ankles crossed. “Lobotomies were all the rage back then,” she said around her mangled pen cap. “They did lots of them here. That’s what they used to do to bad girls in the forties and fifties.”

  “Not just girls,” said Unibrow.

  Althea reached out and brushed her fingers along Jaycee’s hand. Jaycee flinched back, then blushed, embarrassed. “They fed it,” Althea said. “They shouldn’t have done that.” Her freckles stood out on her pale skin like punctuation. She was pretty, Jaycee realized, model pretty with those giant eyes and her cloud of red hair. “It learned appetite.”

  Jaycee’s brows shot up. “Wow. Someone’s fuses are blown.”

  Harper shrugged. “Whole lotta lobotomies,” she said, lingering over the syllables and earning another laugh from the fat kid. “All that rage and aggression had to go somewhere. Maybe this place just sopped it up.”

  It learned appetite. Jaycee suppressed a shudder.

  “Straight shot to the frontal lobe,” said Harper, pantomiming a jab with her pen cap. “Sure cure for misbehaving celebrities.”

  Malia Mayes. The name came back to Jaycee now. She’d been some kind of actress, really young when she hit it big. So they were messing with her. “Hilarious.”

  “I’m not kidding,” said Harper. She was smiling a little, as if she was enjoying herself, but her voice sounded tense, like a string tuned too tight, like she was daring herself to keep talking. “You know what the friars called this place back when it was a mission? Casa de Sangre. They abandoned it. Said there was something living in the walls.”

  “Oh my god, spare me your creepy goth crap.”

  Harper lifted a shoulder. “It’s getting dark. Sure you want to go for a run?”

  “Am I supposed to be scared? I have a tour coming up—” Fatty and Unibrow exchanged a glance. “What?” Jaycee said, hands on hips. “It’s my job.”

  Althea shook her head. “You leave when it lets you go.”

  Jaycee started to laugh. “What have you been smoking?”

  No one else was smiling. Harper uncrossed her ankles and Jaycee glimpsed some kind of tattoo. “None of us were supposed to be here this long,” she said. “Those gates shut, people forget about you.”

  Jaycee snorted. “They’re not going to forget about me.” But was that really true? Mama wouldn’t. Everyone else? If she just disappeared? Stopped making music? Stopped doing shows? Whatever happened to Jaycee Adams? She overdosed, joined a cult, strung herself up on an old oak tree. Jaycee glanced toward the oak grove at the southern end of the lawn—stout limbs, leafy branches casting shadows on the sun-dappled grass. California-postcard pretty. But there was something off about those shadows. She blinked. There was no breeze, but they were moving, swaying slightly. Jaycee shook her head, annoyed. “What is wrong with you guys? And what’s the deal with Louise? You all looked like you were going to piss yourselves today.”

  Nobody said anything. Fatty stared at his feet. Althea’s gaze was soft and unfocused. Unibrow’s eyes darted from Jaycee’s boobs, to her shoulder, to the lawn, and back to her boobs.

  Harper fiddled with the pen cap. All the daring seemed to have drained out of her. Her voice was barely a whisper when she said, “She’s just one of its faces.”

  “You can make a trade,” said Althea. “If you want to go home. Sometimes.”

  Unbelievable. Had all these kids been crazy before they got here, or had this place made them nuts?

  “Yeah. Okay,” she said, and took off at a jog. But she’d headed north, away from the oaks, and she’d made sure to be inside before dark.

  Now she gathered her hair into a bun and grabbed her little plastic basket of toiletries, the only things she’d been allowed to bring—her special facial cleanser, toothbrush and toothpaste, sweet-smelling shampoo, and her favorite conditioner.

  She headed down the hall to the girls’ bathroom wearing a soft gray Wellways T-shirt and sweats. They’d given her three sets when she arrived. It was like living in pajamas.

  The corridor was dark and cold. The dorms were in the older parts of the building and they felt more like a hospital than a spa. Jaycee’s flip-flops made loud smacking sounds on the linoleum. Somewhere she could hear a low chuffing, like someone trying to stifle sobs. She thought of Althea’s fractured stare, of Harper’s red eyes, the bravado in her voice as she’d talked about Malia Mayes and the old mission. Something living inside the walls. Whatever. It wasn’t a warning; it was a joke. Besides, Harper was a bitch.

  Jaycee pushed open the door and set her basket down on the row of metal sinks. The mirrors were spotless, reflecting the empty, white tile room, silent except for the clank of pipes and the drip of water. She brushed her teeth, plucked a few stray hairs from her eyebrows. Her cheeks were already filling out. The other kids complained about the food, but Jaycee couldn’t get enough of it—soft white rolls and vats of instant macaroni and cheese. Mama was going to kill her.

  She lathered her face and when she bent to rinse away the soap, she heard a faint high whine, then a little pop. She stood up straight, water dripping down her neck into the collar of her T-shirt. She looked to her right, to the swinging door that led to the showers. The high whine came again, then a pop and a bright flash of light through the circular window in the door. Was someone taking pictures?

  She turned off the faucet.

  Pop. Pop. Pop. Jaycee looked around the white tile bathroom. If Harper was pulling some kind of stupid prank—

  Pop. She could hear a voice now, a man’s voice talking. Good, good. Arch your back a little. Better. Keep your eyes on me.

  Jaycee pushed the door open. The light was bright enough to make her squint. But even as her eyes adjusted, she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. She’d been in the shower room before—a big space with stalls along the walls and benches in the middle where you could set down your belongings. But now the benches were gone and there was just an old-fashioned claw-footed bathtub full of bubbles sitting in the middle of the white tile floor. The room was flooded with light—not the steady gray buzz of the fluorescents overhead, but the hot, intense glare of stage lights.

  “Come on in, kiddo,” Louise said from behind her.

  Jaycee startled and stepped forward, the door swinging shut behind her as she did. Louise was there in those scrubs with the pink hearts, her reading glasses hanging from a purple chain.

  “Go on, kiddo,” she said. “Water’s getting cold.”

  Jaycee’s mouth felt dry. She’d begun to sweat. “I already showered.”

  “I don’t have all night.” The echo deepened Louise’s voice and the words chimed an ugly chord inside Jaycee. She remembered the feel of her legs slick with soap. I don’t have all day.

  “I—”

  “You’ve done it before, Jaycee. Get in the tub.”

  Jaycee looked back at the bathtub, the bubbles piled high around the rim. Louise was right. She had been it in before, or in a tub just like it. It was the tub that had made her famous. She’d been fourteen when they did the photo shoot, her new album about to drop. No one had expected much. She had done okay with her first
single, and landed a minor role as a minor character in a minor kids’ television show. Her publicist had pulled in a ton of favors to get her into the Slide summer music issue. It was supposed to be a kind of girly, retro look with her sitting on the edge of the tub in a fluffy pink towel, talking on a pink cell, and they’d even landed Gary Todd as the photographer.

  From moment one, he’d made it clear that the job was beneath him. He’d complained that she was stiff, that she looked nervous, that there was nothing new here. She’d known she was failing, but the angrier he got, the more awkward she became. She could feel herself flushing, her chest going blotchy. It had been hard not to cry.

  What’s next? he’d snarled. Engagement portraits? Kids’ birthday parties? Then he’d kicked over a chair and shouted, “Clear the room.” Jaycee hadn’t wanted her mother to leave, but Kara had reminded her that Gary’s assistant would be there the whole time, a slender girl wearing a long black sweater with sleeves so long, it looked as if she had no hands.

  “I don’t have all day,” Todd had grumbled, and Jaycee’s mother had grabbed her chin. “Shape up, Jaycee. You can do this, babygirl.”

  After the others had left, he’d taken a few more shots, scowling and swearing. Then finally he’d said it: “Let’s try it with you in the tub.” The funny thing was that Jaycee had almost felt relieved.

  He swore that the shots would only be her in the water, that the bubbles would hide everything, but the lights kept going pop pop pop as she removed her panties and the bra she’d kept on beneath the towel. He wasn’t shouting anymore. Now he was just crooning, Good, good, beautiful, beautiful.

  She’d gotten in the tub. The water was cold and felt strangely slippery. They’d used dishwashing liquid to get the foam to pile high.

  Good, he’d said. Lean back, open your mouth, look at me like you want me. Her heart had been hammering, but she’d done it anyway. Lift your leg up on the edge. That’s it, point your toe. Beautiful. Beautiful. We’re going to get the cover, gorgeous. You want that, right? And when he’d rolled up his sleeve, and put his hand in the water, when he’d pushed her thighs apart, she’d let him as the assistant looked on and the camera went pop pop pop. Shape up, Jaycee.