This year, some of those long black habits have been recycled, but mixed with hag masks, with zombie make-up, with long stringy J-horror wigs.
The theme this year is “Lake Witch.” Stacey Graves.
Because of course.
Right as Jade drifts in behind the last line of floats, one of those Lake Witches even comes flying across the screen, which is another tradition: dressing up, pole-vaulting off shore, into the stretch of water left free specifically for this year’s jumper to splash down into.
Because jocks and the black t-shirt crowd don’t exactly trade phone numbers and social calendars, Jade didn’t track who this year’s Henderson High Graduation Day pole vaulter was going to be, but whoever it is—Lee Scanlon, maybe?— he’s silhouetted in front of the bright-bright screen now, his robe ragged and backswept, never going to catch him, and it’s like Stacey Graves has come back.
Good for her.
Just, this time, this cycle, the slasher’s more mundane, more human. More real. Sorry, Stacey, Jade says in her heart—she’s already seen this year’s killer, and he’s more from the Ghostface era than the Golden Age.
That doesn’t mean his blade is any less sharp, though.
Jade latches onto the first hull she can and uses it to pull ahead. It’s the librarian float: the boat’s papier-maché’d into a giant open book, but the gluey paper is mushy under Jade’s hand already.
Connie the Librarian looks over, crosses her index finger over her lips to shush Jade.
What Jade wants to yell back is to clear the beaches, that the theater’s on fire, that there’s a werewolf in the subway, but she doesn’t have enough breath, and Connie’s just playing the role that goes with her float, anyway. Shushing people on tonight of all nights would be hopeless. Like every Fourth, there’s elementary kids with shark fins tied to their backs, snorkels wrapped around their faces, there’s junior highers wading among the boats, sneaking up on ready-to-shriek friends, there’s sophomores making out in the water, seniors going further under cover of gunwales and blankets, and then there’s dads keeping one hand in the water, to guard the beer they’ve got on a stringer, and those dads’ wives drifting in innertubes, already on the day’s second bottle of wine.
Somewhere in there is a hero in yellow glasses, Jade knows.
He’s trying to save two little girls whose father is dead, whose whole lives have turned into a screaming nightmare, who are probably chattering their teeth with hypothermia right now, since no way do they have enough body fat. Jade’s not a good person, she knows she’s not and never can be, it’s too late for her, but that doesn’t mean she can’t try to find them, help them onto a boat, onto the pier, into one of Hardy’s crunchy silver blankets.
Shooting Glasses, Shooting Glasses…
She steps up onto a raft built to be a living room, complete with couch and standing lamp, the man on the couch in comical boxers, a swimsuit under them—it’s Lonnie, from the gas station—looking over to her in a drunken way, then lifting his beer to her as if to tell her, Look, I’m not in just an innertube anymore. Jade gives him a nod and holds on to the lamp, casing the crowd. Three or four boats over is a bass boat made into a bassinet, which must be someone’s baby announcement, and there’s Hardy’s airboat tied to the pier like a guard dog, and—seriously?
Her father and Rexall are in a wooden paddleboat draped in what looks like ratty old elk hides that are taking on water. But who cares about their stupid boat. It’s their idiot selves Jade is wincing from: her dad’s got his face painted like Johnny Depp from The Lone Ranger—half-black, half-white, all “Indian”— and is drunk enough already to be shirtless in the open air. The better to see his gut, the skin stretched tight as a drum, his ribs traced in yellow for some reason. Maybe he saw it in a vision, was told by an eagle that if he painted his ribs yellow like that then he could fit not just two or three more beers into his body, but a whole twelve-pack.
Score.
Rexall’s worse, and… maybe it’s because he’s white? The headdress he’s in says he’s the chief of their two-person tribe, though, and if beer guts are a status symbol, a sign of prosperity, of having enough buffalo to eat, then… he doesn’t even need the turkey-feather headdress, really.
Jade’s not sure how the eyepatch he’s wearing is supposed to be part of his Halloween getup, but the monkey-doll clamped onto his shoulder probably isn’t culture-specific either—what did she expect, really?