“We can watch a movie!” Letha answers back, and aims a remote at the flat-screen on the wall.
“What do you got?” Jade asks.
“Everything?” Letha answers, and, of course: her dad’s the media mogul. She tosses Jade the remote, says, “Just say a title to it.”
“To the remote?”
To remote, yes.
Jade looks down to it for a microphone hole, doesn’t see one, finally just says timidly, to test Letha’s “everything,”
“The Dorm That Dripped Blood.”
The movie rolls up by its alternate title Pranks, the cursor blinking on the play button.
“What’s it about?” Letha says.
“Kittens and rainbows, obviously,” Jade says, and falls through all the video shelves in her head, knowing this is her one chance, that she has to pick one single movie that can show Letha how to fight, how to survive, how to win tomorrow night. And Just Before Dawn is practically spinning its two reel hubs in her pocket. But no. Even though it’s 1981, it’s still too seventies for a newbie. No, Letha needs something she can recognize herself in, something where the killer isn’t a cartoon, something— “Kristy,” Jade says into the remote, with authority.
Which brings up all the actresses with that name.
“Kristy, 2014,” Jade corrects.
Same result, different shuffle of faces.
“Who you looking for?” Letha asks, snuggled into her blanket on the futon.
“Different dorm that dripped blood,” Jade says, scrolling through. “A Lifetime movie, actually.”
“Like Hallmark?”
“More stalkers and psycho grannies.”
Kristy’s not there, though. Probably because the copy Jade watched was downloaded onto her phone a bit at a time over five nights, and had two stacks of different-colored subtitles on it, neither of which she could read, all of which were in the way.
It would have been perfect, though. Justine, the girl in Kristy, fights. It’s probably more of a home invasion than a slasher, but Letha doesn’t need to know motivations or builds at this point, or what can count as “home.” She just needs to feel a girl insisting on her own life, and living through the night, and having that slow-down moment where she stops running, turns to face her attacker.
“Wait,” Letha says, rolling off the futon, pulling her phone up, dialing before Jade can stop her. “Dad?” she says, and repeats the title and the year to him, adding a “Pleeease?” at the end, batting her eyelashes even though this is audio-only.
“We really want to watch it…”
She sits up straighter from whatever her dad says back. Sits up straight and looks over to Jade like oops.
“Just—no, of course not, Ginn’s scared enough already. I’m talking to someone on the phone, Dad. We want to watch it at the same time… someone from school… no, it’s not… it’s a Lifetime movie? Thank you, just check, thank you.”
She hangs up, sits back hugging a pillow and making a face that Jade guesses means “parents,” and then before Jade can even ask what exactly that was about, the flat-screen on Letha’s bedroom wall fizzes, resolves back with what Theo Mondragon is pushing to it from upstairs, downstairs, “the bow,” Jade has no real sense.
“Where is he?” she asks.
“They’re probably up on deck?” Letha says with a shrug.
“He sleeps up there sometimes.”
Of course he does, Jade thinks. Because creeping out of a bedroom and down a hall can draw attention. Slipping over the railing when you’re already on-deck is nothing, though. And he probably does use a little Zodiac boat with a trolling motor.
Or, it’s not like he can’t swim the lake, or walk around it.
“How did he—？” Jade asks, about the shaky opening credits of Kristy starting up.
“Owns the network?” Letha says. “Parent company, I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.”
“Hunh,” Jade says, a little bit impressed. She settles back to watch, hugging the two-hundred-dollar pillow to her.
“Going tomorrow night?” Letha asks. “The movie thing?”
She’s sitting up now like she doesn’t want to, but there’s one pre-bedtime duty left to perform: wrapping her hair up for sleep?
Jade doesn’t understand, just answers the question instead: “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Thirty minutes later Letha’s asleep, snoring cutely into the futon’s backrest, one of her legs hiked up around her body.