Slasher Girls & Monster Boys

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  When I was ten, Dad came back for good and moved the two of us into this hellhole we live in because it was what he could afford. He got a gig playing jazz at a local club—and when he wasn’t playing, he was drinking away the money he made playing. We’ve been stuck here ever since. For a long time, I think I was waiting for Dad to start hating me for taking him away from the road. But he never did. Then at some point, I realized what I was really waiting for. Him to start loving me. But that never seemed to happen either.

  × × ×

  I curled up with our next book for class, Dracula. And I closed it when Dracula meets Mina for the first time. I felt a wave of sadness for the original vampire. He, like Frankenstein’s monster, wants to love and be loved, and that so wasn’t going to happen. I drifted off into sleep, a dream, where I’m back at some kind of gothic version of school, in the auditorium. Damien is there, sitting on a throne—for real, a throne—and looking down at me.

  He stands and reaches out his hand to me. A super-waify girl I’ve never seen puts a crown of thorns on each of our heads. Damien’s crown has small horns protruding from both sides. And music swells—some kind of cross between opera and electropop. We start to dance. Everyone’s there from school. But instead of making fun of me, they’re looking at us in a kind of awe. Except for Everly. She looks around, big eyes all disbelieving, and tries to cut in on our dance. I excuse myself and do something that surprises me and her at once. I punch her in the face. She stumbles, straightens, and pulls back her hand to fight, but her eye begins to bleed where I punched her. The blood gushes and she puts up a hand to stop it. But it isn’t just her eye that’s bleeding. Her whole face begins to welt and blood comes streaming out of every pore. She opens her mouth to scream.

  When I woke it was me who was screaming. The sheets were wet with sweat, and I thought I could smell smoke.

  What the hell was that? I threw back the covers and noticed the window was open. I could hear dogs outside barking.

  I hated Everly. Still, my subconscious had taken it to a whole new level.

  When I looked outside, the only thing staring up at me were the naked patches of dirt in our backyard. I slammed the window down and closed the curtains tight.

  × × ×

  I made it through half the next day without seeing Damien or Everly. By the time I got to the cafeteria I was half convinced that none of yesterday had really happened. Maybe him asking me out was just another dream, equally vivid. I still sat at the table closest to the kitchen, which was the equivalent of high school no-man’s-land. There were three of us. Me, Jenny Dash, and Silent Jason sat there every day and never became friends. Jenny was super-smart and too busy with maintaining her GPA to maintain basic social interactions. Silent Jason didn’t speak. Ever. He only communicated through really cool, sometimes scary drawings.

  After yesterday and the nightmare, I welcomed the silence, the total lack of attention. So it took me a few seconds to realize Jason was speaking to me

  “Just because you’re chosen, doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice.”

  I’d never even heard Silent Jason’s voice.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” he spat.

  I’d never seen him angry either. He was leaning too far forward, into my space, so close, I could smell the sloppy joe on his breath. Normally he was hunched over his tray or his sketchbook. I always assumed he of all people was on my side. Maybe it was yesterday’s brush with Everly, or last night’s lack of sleep, but out of nowhere, my words rose up to meet his. “If you have something to say to me, Jason, say it. Or shut the fuck up.”

  I stared at him, daring him.

  I thought about Marnie Monster.

  About Everly. About Dad.

  My hands had balled into fists and my nails dug into my skin. I was madder than I’d realized. Maybe I was always mad.

  If I heard one more unkind thing . . . from Jason, from anyone . . .

  Jason opened his mouth to speak. But something was wrong. He didn’t put his hands on his throat like they do in the movies, but I knew he was choking.

  I jumped to my feet.

  Jenny called for help.

  Shawn Coleman stepped in and pounded him hard on the back. When that didn’t work, he wrapped his arms around Jason and squeezed beneath his rib cage.

  Across the cafeteria I saw Damien staring at the commotion. Everyone was staring, silent.

  Then Jason coughed and choked up something that projectiled out of his mouth and onto the floor. It was black and wet and round. It looked like coal. Jason was weird, but what in the world? I remembered that Portia in Julius Caesar committed suicide by eating coals. But Silent Jason wasn’t exactly a Shakespeare nerd. Maybe it was some kind of drug?

  Mr. Harrison, the lunch monitor, was at Jason’s side now. Escorting him out. Another teacher picked up the small, black thing with a napkin and followed.

  “God, Marnie Monster.” I hadn’t even seen Everly standing by the next table over. She was wearing a short sequined dress and sunglasses in the middle of the cafeteria in the middle of the day as if she were avoiding the paparazzi. “Must you really try to kill the first guy that gives you the time of day?”

  The cafeteria, silent during the Jason commotion, now filled with sound. Laughter. Everly was a bitch, and I wasn’t going to sit around and watch this escalate into a chant. I started to pull my stuff together—I was going to the library—but noticed that Jason had left his sketchbook; it was on the floor. I grabbed it. Once outside the cafeteria, I flipped it open, telling myself that I just wanted to see what goth comic book heroine he had created today. But really, I wanted answers. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with me? My reaction was outsized—the weird shit Jason was saying had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him being crazy enough to suck down a coal briquette.

  I glanced around. No one was paying attention to me. Then I looked down at the open notebook. And I laughed. There on the first page was an illustration of me, wearing some kind of superhero costume, with crazy-big boobs and a butt that even a Kardashian couldn’t compete with. I turned the page: me standing in front of my house. This time I looked normal, but my house looked haunted or something. Me in class. Me walking home. Drawing after drawing of me. A little creepy. But a little flattering. I kept flipping. The last drawing made me stop in the middle of the hallway.

  It was Damien and me, holding hands. I was wearing a white gown, and we were both wearing crowns. Like prom queen and king, only the crowns were made of thorns. And Damien’s crown had horns on it.

  Wait a minute . . .

  I felt someone fall in step beside me. Damien.

  I slammed the book shut.

  “I was just— This isn’t mine. Silent Jason—I mean, Jason dropped it.”

  “Jason’s quite the artist,” Damien said.

  “I was just returning it.”

  Damien nodded. “Can I see it?”

  I stammered a little, and quickly flipped through the images. “It’s really nothing. Just a lot of drawings of people.” When I got to the end, I was ready to slam it shut again, but I didn’t this time. Because the last page was different. Instead of me and Damien, it was some other couple. And there were no thorned crowns. Just a superhero couple watching a sunset.

  “What the . . .” I started flipping through again, but none of the illustrations were the same. Instead there were all different kinds of people—at home, in class, walking along the street . . .

  “Are you okay?” Damien touched my shoulder.

  “I—think so” was all I could get out.

  A school counselor told me once that Mom’s death was probably related to some kind of depression. But what if Mom was crazy? What if I was too? She wasn’t that much older than I am now when she hanged herself. I always thought of my mother as something separate from me. But wh
at if in addition to leaving me, she’d also left me with something else—some kind of madness?

  “Are you sure?” Damien looked genuinely concerned now. He put his hand on my arm.

  I felt a warmth spread from under his fingers and throughout the rest of me. It wasn’t just that no one ever touched me. It was that he was the one who just had. My insides strained for more. Do it again. Damien, unaware of the effect he was having on me, was still waiting for a response. What did he see when he looked at me? Did he see what the rest of them saw? A know-it-all? A mess of brown hair and brown eyes and sharp features that I was waiting to grow into? Not pretty, but not a monster either? Or did he see something else? Something that even I couldn’t see yet?

  “Marnie?”

  The bell rang. The hallway began to fill.

  “I’m fine.” I shook him off and opened my bag to shove the sketchbook inside. When I looked up, I noticed Everly walking by with her minions. She stopped talking and started staring. But not at me this time. At Damien.

  I didn’t know why I didn’t see it before.

  Everly didn’t go after me yesterday for the sake of going after me. She was defending her territory.

  “She likes you,” I blurted.

  “And?” he asked, frowning.

  “And she thinks you like me. Which is ridiculous. But she thinks it. So just stop and she’ll stop.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not ridiculous. And I can’t stop.”

  “Can you just go?” I said, even though my heart was suddenly speeding up and I could hear it in my ears.

  His face fell. He stepped out of my way, and I walked right by him. By the time I got to the staircase, Damien was already gone, swallowed into the stream of people.

  I wanted to follow him into the crowd suddenly, but Jason’s words, the ones he choked on, came back to me. Just because you’re chosen, doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice.

  × × ×

  Later, when I got to English, Everly was waiting, sitting pretty in her sunglasses.

  “Everly, please remove those. You are not famous here,” Ms. Demetrios said.

  I stifled a laugh.

  She kind of was.

  “Everly, do you want to remove them here or in the principal’s office?”

  Everly shoved the glasses down. A blue-and-black bruise had bloomed around her eye.

  Everly had a black eye.

  The same eye I punched in my dream.

  “Who did this to you?” Ms. Demetrios shifted into first aid mode. “We have a zero-tolerance policy at Harlow High for violence.”

  Everly turned to stare at me.

  “Marnie?” Ms. Demetrios looked stunned.

  “I didn’t do that. I didn’t touch her.” I did. But it was a dream. It was only a dream.

  I looked around for Damien. I’d told him I didn’t want his help. And what was he going to do? Flirt with her into making her change her story?

  Damien was flipping through his copy of Dracula, not even remotely interested in what was unfolding. Had I really hurt him that badly?

  “Marnie, I am shocked . . .” Ms. Demetrios started.

  “I didn’t do it!” I insisted.

  Damien sighed loudly from down the row.

  Everly sighed too. “She’s right, she didn’t touch me—just looking at her made me want to punch my own eye out.”

  Ms. Demetrios looked visibly relieved for a moment, before going into full-on angry-teacher mode. “Everly, go to the principal’s office.”

  When Everly reached the door, she cut a look to Damien and then back to me, as if I were indeed responsible. Her look said what I already knew. She was just getting started.

  × × ×

  That night I lay awake in bed. The events of the past two days were just too weird. Everly had a black eye, and it was after I dreamed about punching her right in that spot. And Jason choked on god knows what after I snapped at him. But none of this had anything to do with me. It couldn’t.

  I heard my father stumble in around three a.m. This was the way he celebrated the anniversary of Mom’s death. She was his wife. But she was my mother. Why didn’t he get that? He didn’t make it to the stairs—I heard him crash onto the couch in the living room. He mumbled to himself, and then one shoe after the other hit the hardwood floor.

  I wanted to wake him up. I wanted to ask him about Mom. It was suddenly important to know the details of her crazy, and not just because tomorrow was the anniversary of her suicide. Was she like me? Was what was happening to me—had it happened to her? I’d always figured that Mom was depressed. But now my mind spun a new scenario. Mom had become a danger to herself and others. What if I was the danger now?

  × × ×

  When I got to my locker in the morning, I was still trying to shake it all off. I was not my mother. There were logical reasons for everything that had happened. I could think my way out of this, I could think my way out of anything. I took a deep breath, feeling calmer, more anchored, and then I opened my locker and stifled a scream.

  A doll hung, bloody, suspended by a tiny noose. The doll looked like a Barbie, only its hair had been bleached and teased on top of its head, standing straight up. The Bride of Frankenstein.

  Behind me, there was a cackle of laughter—led by Everly—and the flash of cell phones.

  I didn’t turn around at first. I didn’t want them to see me. I didn’t want them to capture the redness in my cheeks or the tears in my eyes so they could Snapchat it to everyone in school who didn’t get to witness it for themselves. I stood there, face burning, throat aching, and a hand reached past me, into the locker, and yanked the doll down.

  Damien didn’t say anything. He just grabbed the doll and my chemistry book and slammed the locker shut. He steered me past Everly and her laughing minions. And they parted for him.

  I let myself be steered. Then he dropped me at my chemistry classroom without a word before walking away.

  There was another “bride” doll on my seat in AP French.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est, Mademoiselle Marnie?” Mrs. LaCroix frowned at me. What is that?

  I bit back my answer, saying only, “Je ne sais pas.” I don’t know.

  The nightmare continued in AP calc, where Brian Marks proceeded to pick up the doll and put it down his pants before putting it back on my desk. And in AP history, I managed to get to class in time to hide the next doll in my backpack. At least they weren’t hanging by the neck. But by the time I marched to the cafeteria and found a doll in my seat at the loser table, I felt the anger grip me so hard, I saw white. I grabbed the doll and shoved it headfirst into my mashed potatoes. Stupid doll, stupid life, fucking Everly.

  But before I could leave, Damien sat down at my table.

  I shook my head at him. “Thanks for earlier, but I thought we agreed that you would stay away.”

  He ignored that, saying instead, “Do you want me to make her stop? I can. Just say the word.”

  I searched his face. How could he stop her? Everly was Everly. I took the seat beside him. “Don’t do that. Don’t come to my rescue. Don’t sit with me. Don’t talk to me.”

  I stared him down. He didn’t move.

  “I can handle myself.” It was a lie. I was doing a terrible job so far.

  “I know. There are a lot of things you can do. But your approach is all wrong.”

  “I’m not approaching, I’m avoiding. And if you would just—”

  “Everly is a lot of things, Marnie . . . but she is never, ever ignored.”

  I shrugged.

  Damien kept talking. “You think it’s like a storm. Like you’re driving through it, and all you have to do is pull over and wait for it to pass. But it’s not like that. It’s like being in the woods with a bear and you can’t remember if you’re supposed to make yourself big
or small or run. What if doing nothing means you get eaten alive?”

  I stared at him. Who did Damien think he was? It was easy for him to say. He was a rich kid with perfect grades and a perfect life. I breathed heavily through my nose and clenched and unclenched my fists. I needed to keep my shit together.

  “Trust me, Marnie. It’s time to stand up for yourself.” He sounded like one of those assemblies about bullying that everyone nodded along to at the time but ultimately ignored.

  I felt my eyes prickle and my fists ball tighter. What did he know? He’d lost people he’d loved, but they hadn’t taken themselves away. And everyone left . . . they adored him.

  The glass bottle of apple juice on the table in front of us suddenly shattered.

  I jumped.

  “What the hell?” Jenny Dash leaped up from the table.

  Damien’s mouth dropped open for a second. Then he just shrugged. “That wasn’t you?” he asked as if he was kidding, but his look was as serious as a grave.

  × × ×

  When I walked into English, I got that sinking feeling of dread again. Maybe it was the singing.

  “Here comes the bride. Here comes the bride. Here comes the bride,” Everly sang. The others joined in.

  On my seat was another Frankenstein Bride Barbie.

  “Everly, you have been warned,” said an exasperated Ms. Demetrios.

  What was wrong with her?

  I bit my lip, but what Damien said bubbled up in me. Riding it out wasn’t working. I couldn’t tell if I was going crazy or what, but I felt myself facing a rising ocean of anger. I didn’t just want it to stop. I wanted to be the one who stopped it. I looked at Damien—who smiled up at me. Like he understood what I was thinking. Like he was encouraging me. I turned back to Everly.

  “Aren’t you a little old to be playing with dolls?”

  She blinked, surprise spilling over her features. And then she laughed.