The Last Final Girl

by Jones, Stephen Graham

  “Scruffy?” Brittney says to the janitor, stabbing for a name.

  Izzy elbows her.

  “Not Norman,” the janitor says, and salutes Izzy, turns around with his mop, whistling like he doesn’t know what’s going on in here, or who was here, or what they were doing.

  On the way out the door, Izzy’s already on her phone. Dialing the number off a card that has a Sheriff’s star on it.

  This time it rings and rings, Izzy and Brittney walking and walking, and finally a woman picks up.

  “Um, yeah,” Izzy says, “we just—I just heard you have somebody down there for something she’s supposed to have done last night? Named Crystal? Well, you can’t tell anybody, but, well. She was with me last night, okay? You can ask my parents, they were gone. She came over right after they left. We’re . . . well. They don’t approve, or wouldn’t, so she had to wait. Nobody got pregnant’s what I’m saying, if you follow? I kissed a girl and I liked it? But don’t tell her dad, please. Oh, oh, I’m Isabelle Stratford, I’m sorry, Izzy I mean, I thought you knew, I don’t know why, you don’t have caller ID? But listen, I saw her earlier at the station but didn’t know until now, I shouldn’t be on the phone at school, Deputy Dante’s already talked to me, he knows who I am, I’ve got to get to class, I just, just wanted to—”

  Dial tone. Izzy’s thumb the one that ended the call.

  “Camping at Crystal Blake . . . ” Brittney says. “Should I be jealous?”

  “Ladies,” Mr. Victor says, going the opposite way, his lab coat tucked around his waist, hiding his wet crotch.

  “What happened?” Izzy says to him, fake concerned.

  “Science can be a cruel mistress,” he says, leaving Izzy and Brittney trying hard not to laugh.

  “All right,” Izzy says. “Save innocent girl who hates me, check. Almost be involved in a school shooting, check. Get kidnapped into homecoming, check.”

  “Get a date to the big dance, check and mate,” Brittney says, swinging her hip over into Izzy, then sliding a condom package up like she always has it that handy: “Need anything for the big night?”

  “You still use those ones?”

  “Well, not the same one over and over . . . ”

  Izzy takes the condom and opens it, blows into it and ties it off so they can bat it back and forth as they walk, at least until Izzy says, “Hey, watch this,” and sticks her tongue out, unscrews a ball off her tongue stud, presses the bottom of her tongue to the balloon.

  It pops and they scream delight.

  She keeps her chin up to twist the ball back onto the stud.

  “We should really go to the pep-rally,” Brittney says, taking Izzy’s sleeve, redirecting them away from a harried Principal Masters jogging past, looking in all the classrooms, muttering to himself.

  He stops as if to ask Izzy and Brittney something, sees that Izzy’s still got a rubber in her hand then just “Never minds” them, like he knows better.

  They watch him step into the biology lab, then:

  “Pep-rally?” Izzy asks. “Why? Girls from Cheerleader Camp going to be there, or’s it like that one Nirvana video?”

  “Hope it’s the Nirvana girls,” Brittney says, “I’m fresh out of cigarettes,” and then’s rounding the corner with an unwilling Izzy. This time we don’t go with them, are

  → swooping through the halls, heading for that front door, faster this time. Instead of exploding out into the sunlight like we keep wanting to, we stop at the trophy case then back up off it, looking up, up, through the mirror glare and shiny trophies of yesterday.

  The sword.

  It’s gone.

  Again.

  We hear the sound of the pep-rally before it really focuses in— loud, screamy, chaos; very Mo-ny, Mo-ny—and then it’s not the actual pep-rally itself but the gym hallway leading to it, a slurry of people making their way that way, Izzy and Brittney wading it, floating it, drowning in it.

  “Remind me why we never come to these?” Izzy asks, getting jostled side to side.

  Brittney doesn’t answer, just pulls her ahead, to

  → a bubbling over Mrs. Graves, waiting at the doorway into the gym.

  She holds her hand out sideways and Izzy looks in fear to Brittney, who’s still got her by the arm.

  “No,” she says to Brittney.

  “Do what scares you,” Brittney says back, guiding her into Mrs. Graves, who’s at the tail of a line of three girls:

  April Ripley, smirking.

  Mandy Kane, her thigh-highs striped red and white.

  Lindsay Baker, the definition of regal.

  “Take your place among high school royalty, check,” Brittney says, smiling for Izzy.

  Before Izzy can find a way out, she’s been pushed into line and they’re

  → making their way out onto the gym floor, the crowd chanting Ti-tans! Ti-tans!

  Lindsay parade-waves with her good arm, and Mandy tries to match that.

  April just looks out across the crowd coolly.

  Izzy’s glaring straight ahead, like this is a death march.

  Once they get to what can only be called a dais, Lindsay looking down to not catch a heel on the step, we

  → swing around behind them, get the full effect of this many screaming students.

  The stands are packed, the gym decked out.

  Up front, Izzy’s POV singles out Brittney, smiling for her. Izzy directs her eyes purposefully away, sees, off to the side, trying to get a good angle on all these people, Jamie. Taking picture after picture.

  “But you don’t have access,” Izzy recites,

  → tilting her head Jamie-ward for Brittney and Brittney already knows, steams her eyes up about it.

  “Go, Titans!” a woman up front screams into the microphone then, redirecting everybody’s energy to the front, letting them know this thing’s about to start.

  The noise dies down.

  Jamie’s camera POV swings around to the microphone, gets that woman in his crosshairs, and it’s . . . Izzy’s mom?

  His click cuts us to

  → Izzy, stepping back far enough that April has to reach back, catch her from splatting off the dais.

  “Mommy dearest, right?” April says, using her other hand to let her hair down, swish it all around dramatically, transforming her.

  “More like Pamela Voorhees,” Izzy says, and Lindsay turns her glittering smile over to Izzy, interrogating them with her smile.

  “Mrs. Voorhees loved her son,” Lindsay says primly, in a please- shut-up-now way, and Izzy’s so shocked that she lets April reel her back into this homecoming line-up.

  “As elected queen of . . . well, let’s just say a few years ago, shall we?” Izzy’s mom leads off, “it’s my pleasure to present to you this year’s homecoming court!”

  She turns to lead the clapping and everybody claps enough, anyway.

  “I thought pep-rallies were about football,” Izzy says, and Mandy accidentally grins.

  “Are we supposed to give speeches?” Izzy hisses then, but Lindsay’s already stepping up to the microphone, Principal Masters rising to adjust it for her in a way that—angling that mike to her mouth—looks especially lecherous. It doesn’t help that he’s having to reach around her sides to do it.

  Lindsay wows her eyes out at the awkwardness of this and takes the mike in her own hand, her good hand, and says, trying to take the attention away from Masters, already retreating to the wings, “It’s been a tough couple of weeks for us, I won’t lie. We’ve lost some heroes. But we can’t let that stop us, can we? No, we can’t. If they were here, they’d be on the field tomorrow night, or up here alongside me. But they’re not. So that leaves the burden on all of us to step up, doesn’t it? Now, as you can see, the homecoming court, since it was so last-minute, and since I was the last remaining member, I was given the honor of selecting it, isn’t that wonderful? And—and the past weekend taught me a lot. It taught me that a good horse will always go back to the barn at the end of the day
, no matter how far away that barn is. It taught me, it taught me who to value. It taught me that life isn’t a beauty pageant, or a popularity contest, that the least likely can be the most important, that friendship can come from the most unexpected places. Now, let’s hear it for your Danforth homecoming court!”

  Less excited applause.

  “Take it off!” somebody yells—a girl.

  “Where’s Crystal!” a lone guy yells, probably Davis, and other guys agree, and a couple of the male teachers.

  Lindsay leans forward for the microphone. “One of us is absent, yes, but she’s here in spirit, and sends her sincerest regrets, I’m sure. But you can still vote for her. The boxes are at the main office, and are due by school’s end tomorrow, okay? And please just vote once, no matter how much you love and believe in these girls!”

  Scattered laughter for that, anyway, and then the lights dim and we go tighter on Lindsay, a lone trumpet cueing up off-camera, ethereal and mournful

  → (Izzy’s underbreath response: “Seriously?” Her eyes incredulous that nobody’s calling foul on this);

  → Mrs. Graves grinning proudly, her tissue balled in her hand, her hand over her chest;

  → Jamie kneeing his way up to the edge of Lindsay’s disc of Tron light, to get her ascension from a low angle;

  → Mandy reaching the side of her hand for April’s, for sisterhood, for joy, April not letting that happen;

  → Izzy’s mom angling her head over, her POV looking away from a line of six guys lifting their shirts in unison, to show their chests;

  → Brittney holding up a fastmade sign—notebook paper, black marker—for Izzy: “my unicorn girl!” and blinking away tears above it, or acting like it, anyway;

  → Izzy slyly flipping her off in return, except now she’s turning her head, counting heads, whispering names: “Mandy, Ripley, Blake—oh shit.”

  “As many of you read in today’s paper,” Lindsay starts off, blinking the emotions away, it looks like, giving us a flash to zoom in on

  → Izzy’s mouth, no voice, just the shape, the realization: They’re all final girls.

  Brittney’s response is a truly lost “What?” but we heard Izzy loud and clear, are doing that mental math, trying to connect names.

  She’s right.

  “Last weekend was a harrowing ordeal,” Lindsay goes on, her voice almost cracking. “But what I learned from that experience is that every day, any day, can be a harrowing ordeal. But a worthwhile one, right? Tests, applications, jobs, relationships, doctors’ offices— sorry, Daddy—practices . . . football games . . . ”

  With her emphasis the jerseyed football players in the front row stand and she leads the applause for them, and, while they’re standing, the Titan mascot comes barreling out from a side door, stumbling as if pushed.

  And he’s got the sword, is leading a pretend charge with it.

  The crowd erupts,

  → Jamie wheeling to photodocument this, the lights still down so Titan gets kind of a strobe effect from his flash, and, those freeze frames . . . something’s not quite right, here.

  “They’re all final girls,” Izzy says again to Brittney, and this time Brittney gets it, looks down the line, finally swinging her POV back to Izzy, that POV switching to Izzy’s now, for Brittney’s question, fastwritten on the back of her piece of notebook paper: “What about U?”

  “What about Lindsay,” Izzy says to herself, looking over just as Lindsay invites Titan up onto the stage, latches onto his thick neck with her good arm, pulling him into her spotlight, reaching back for a . . . long black tube?

  The crowd stands, stomping—this is a ritual they know, evidently.

  But first:

  → the spotlight splits in two, tracks across the floor to the same side door that birthed Titan, holds there.

  “And of course, what’s a Queen without a King, right?” Lindsay says.

  → (“A woman?” Izzy asks, squinting even to hear Lindsay saying this.)

  And then Lindsay makes a show of turning to her court.

  “And, I’m kind of springing this on all of you, now, girls, I hope you don’t mind. Some of you didn’t even know you were going to be front and center for this, I know, so it would be too much for me to ask you to also bring a date.”

  “What?” Izzy says, with her whole face.

  April’s got a better response: “That bitch.”

  “Jerry, Jerry!” Mandy says, waving a football player up to stand alongside her.

  “Well, we know how to make do, don’t we?” Lindsay says, hitching the microphone under her arm to lead yet another round of applause.

  “Was that a compliment?” Jerry says to Mandy and April and Izzy.

  “This is all for her,” Izzy says, and she’s right: Lindsay’s already turned back around, commandeering the crowd’s attention.

  “But for me, as you all of course know”—that lone trumpet shifting down to melancholy, now—“my King can’t, he can’t be with us this weekend. Or ever again. Except in our hearts.” She touches her own to show, somehow managing to bring her halogen-white sling even more in the spotlight. “But this is homecoming, right? Right?”

  Mrs. Graves leads this round of perfunctory applause.

  “Wait,” Izzy, clapping, says to April, pointing to the mascot. “You’re him, aren’t you? Titan?”

  “Past tense,” April says, clapping as well. “I guess Masters found a replacement.”

  Izzy studies this Titan, but this show’s still the All-Lindsay Power Hour:

  “Now, there was some excitement at school this morning— another test—but real tragedy avoids the pure of heart, as I’ve learned, but what many of us failed to acknowledge this morning was the true hero of the hour,” the lights dipping down to even darker, “my date for tomorrow night, my running mate on the ballot, as it were—vote Lindsay and Jake!”

  Absolutely silent on Izzy’s face, even though the whole gym’s screaming.

  The betrayal, the shock, her head shaking no. Her POV watching mummy-faced Jake walk out like he didn’t deserve that intro, that he was just doing his job, the applause swelling louder and louder, everybody standing to do it.

  He hops up onto the stage, slips an arm around Lindsay’s waist.

  “Hey, hey, really,” he says, “I was just fucking around, right? Oops,” Mrs. Graves trying to blink this profanity away, clapping

  louder as if she can erase it with school spirit.

  Jake manages to wave all the clapping down, then steps away— we can tell this is all scripted; the revulsion is Izzy’s and ours both— presents Lindsay, who raises her shoulders as if this is a departure.

  “Real heroes, they don’t fuck around,” he says, and, reaches behind her for a rope that should just be for gym class, for climbing.

  But it’s been repurposed.

  Now what it does is dislodge something big and bulky up in the rafters.

  Instead of getting to see it at first, we watch the crowd’s reaction. It’s mostly screaming. Some of it real, actual scared screaming. Then back to

  → whatever’s . . . . not falling, but unfurling.

  The spotlight finally settles on it.

  A banner, the words on it The Night He Came Home in a spooky font, except “He” is crossed out, “Bulldogs” in its place.

  “Beat the Bulldogs!” Lindsay screams into the microphone, and then Jake pulls on the rope harder.

  This time an obvious body tumbles down through the spotlight, jerks to a hung stop about five feet off the gym floor, jouncing on its rope, its neck somehow holding.

  The spotlight tracks down the rope, tracks down, and . . .

  It’s Billie Jean.

  But different.

  He’s clothes stuffed with rags, a dummy, the mask tied to a broom-as-backbone.

  “Billie Jean” swings back and forth, close enough to Lindsay and

  Titan that they have to duck sideways.

  That lone trumpet’s gone, replaced by a
line of trombones like a heartbeat, speeding up, the tuba punctuating it, jacking our nerves up higher, so that it’s almost a comfort to look over to

  → the source of all this: the shape of the band teacher, his fore- head sweaty, brass glinting in the darkness all around.

  “But the good side always wins, right, Lindsay?” Jake goes on, his lines memorized, and Lindsay makes a show of remembering that long black tube she’s holding. That this is a pep-rally, not real life.

  She thrusts the tube out at Titan, holding the open end to him, and he looks to the crowd again, waiting, waiting, and, because they’ve done this before, their stomping swells and swells—Mandy and Jerry having to lean over to duck “Billie Jean” now—and, finally, the mo- ment they’ve all been waiting for: Titan steps up to Lindsay, leading with the sword, to push it into the tube she’s wedged under her sling for him, but she has to guide the sword with her good hand

  → (“everything’s phallic,” Izzy narrates)

  → Lindsay raising her hand to her mouth to lick a small line of blood that we file in our heads, for later, just because that’s what we do, and then, like this isn’t already sexual enough, Titan thrusts the sword into that sheath, and thrusts it again even deeper, the crowd absolutely going wild now.

  When he pulls it out it’s dripping with liquid. “Is nothing sacred?” Izzy says to April.

  “That doesn’t smell right,” April says back, her clapping slowing, her POV flashing out for the wall of the gym, it looks like.

  For what?

  “But who, who,” Lindsay says, leaning forward to peer into the darkness, talking with the kind of voice you’d talk to Lassie with, telling us this is part of the ritual, “we need a flame, don’t we? Does anybody out there have one? Not at school, surely? Whatever shall we do?”