And then Theo Mondragon’s gone, calling his daughter’s name elsewhere.
Jade lets Letha’s mouth go and Letha sucks air in.
“Now we can—” Letha says, pushing off either Mismatched Gloves or Cody to escape this fetid pit, but Jade blocks her in, whispers, “What slashers do is make you think they’ve left.”
Letha stiffens, is maybe going to make a break for it, but then she falls back, sobbing.
It’s the proper response, really. And why Jade isn’t best friend material, even if she’d ever had one? It’s because she’s not thinking about consoling Letha right now. What she’s running through her head is that paper she wrote for Mr.
Holmes, about how final girls curl up into a chrysalis before emerging as their true killer self. And what is this elk pile but a custom-made transformation chamber, right?
Everything’s working out. It doesn’t smell good, it’s dangerous as hell and twice as hot, but it’s also just what Letha needs in order to become her truest self.
“We need a high school annual,” Jade says. “Henderson Hawks, 198—when did your dad graduate?”
“You’re trying to distract me,” Letha says.
“No—”
“Keep going, please.”
“He must have passed through here for a year, a semester,”
Jade says. “And—and I don’t know. Something happened while he was here. Maybe he took a history class, maybe one of those four kids who bought it at Camp Blood back when were related to him, maybe he was there when Hardy’s daughter—”
“I wasn’t looking for you,” Letha says.
“Say what?” Jade says, trying to see through the darkness.
“I told you I was looking for you earlier, in the Pangbornes’
house,” Letha says, sobbing now, but quietly, thank you. “I— the sheriff did call, but, but—”
“Shh, shh,” Jade says, reaching across for Letha’s mouth, finding her shaking shoulder instead. Letha’s hands immediately clamp onto Jade’s own.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Letha’s saying.
“You were looking for your dad?” Jade asks, trying to give her a way out—trying to be sort of a friend, anyway.
“I was going to burn it all down.”
Jade tries to process this, finally says, “With that candle?”
She feels Letha nodding.
“Why?”
“We shouldn’t be here,” Letha says, shuddering now, holding the back of Jade’s fingers to her mouth, speaking warmth right onto them.
“In Proofrock?”
“This side of the lake,” Letha whispers, the hush of her words rushing up Jade’s arm to the base of her jaw, the center of her chest.
“But—”
“People, I mean,” Letha goes on. “This side of the lake isn’t for people.”
“Why do— why?” Jade asks.
“I’ve seen her,” Letha says, barely able to get it out before pulling Jade closer all at once.
“No, no,” Jade says, letting herself be drawn in. “This isn’t the Golden Age, that’s—it was your dad in a wig. I saw him too, from the water. That’s how these things—”
“On the water,” Letha says.
Jade’s skin prickles.
“Paddleboard,” she says.
“He doesn’t know how,” Letha says back.
“Where’s your mom?” Jade asks, her lips right against Letha’s neck, she’s pretty sure.
Letha stills, then pushes Jade’s hand away from her lips.
“You think she can paddleboard?” she asks, and like that, the possibility crystalizes for Jade: Letha’s real mom, the left-behind ex–Mrs. Mondragon, the left-for- dead Mrs.
Mondragon, follows her philandering husband and spirited-away daughter out to this mountain retreat, and she—she starts taking her revenge throat by throat, maybe even boiling a rabbit in the process.
It fits. No wig necessary.
“Could it be her?” Jade asks.
“She’s… I went to her funeral,” Letha’s barely able to get out, make real.
Like slashers can’t rise from the grave.
“Next you’ll think it’s me,” Letha says, but Jade can still see her in her bedroom, unsure how to hold the machete.
The machete she… left behind? Not “dropped on purpose.”
Jade forces her eyes shut, won’t allow that to be true.