Ah.
They’re watching movies in there, then. Horror movies, probably. What else would you watch in a garage, with a group, at this time of night?
It’s something she’s seen, Jade knows—she’s seen everything twice—but still, she wants worse than anything to just catch a glimpse, to make the movie out from a single frame. One of the Child’s Play s, maybe? Ringu? Dialing all the way back to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? She wants worse than anything to speak up from the back of the garage, let them in on the true story of this cursed production, on the trivia about the movie’s limited engagement in Italy, about how the soundtrack in the theatrical release isn’t the same as the one that was released on VHS. For reasons she can explain and trace and unfold for however long they’ll sit there listening.
Wasn’t meant to be, though. Either she’s one of the flock, or she knows horror movies. Not both. And they’re probably jeering at the effects anyway. Overplaying their reactions to the jumpscares. Not even paying the right kind of attention.
Jade’s glad not to be in there. She lifts her mask to spit, and when the eyeholes settle down again like binoculars, the doorway opens. A girl steps into it, two girls, three girls now, the second helping the first.
The second is Letha Mondragon in a pair of bright white shorts she must have borrowed at the party, since she didn’t have them on at the pier. And of course the second one is her.
She would never be stumbling drunk like the first one obviously is. But she would keep the drunk one safe.
The third one is Bethany Manx, the Jeep driver, the principal’s daughter, always trying to shake that mantle off.
Jade can tell it’s her from her rail-thin profile, her mod cut, longer in front than back, and the flash of silver from her mouth: the tongue stud Daddy Dearest doesn’t know about, that she only, famously, puts in for get-togethers like this.
Bethany peels off, has some errand back at the cars, leaving Letha and the drunk one—it’s Tiffany Koenig. She’s throwing up into the tall grass by one of the cars, which, if scuttlebutt heard over bathroom stalls is right, is kind of her party trick.
Letha is patiently threading Tiffany K’s hair back from the puke.
The good thing about people throwing up outside is that the janitor doesn’t have to clean it up. In the great outdoors, raccoons are the janitors. And they love their job.
After it’s over and Tiffany K’s crying—you do that when it comes out your nose as well as your mouth, you do that when you panic that you’re never going to be able to breathe again —Letha stands her up, steadies her a bit, and starts to lead her into the dark house, to clean up.
Tiffany K pulls away. It’s embarrassing, looking like this.
Vomit stringing between your fingers. Cheeks wet with hot tears.
This party is happening right by a giant sink, though…
Letha looks around for help, for guidance, for Bethany who’s nowhere, and finally just leads Tiffany K carefully around the coals of the bonfire. Because unsteady people shouldn’t lean out over the water alone, she takes her shoes off and squelches into the mud of the shore with Tiffany K, helps her splash her face.
Jade creeps closer, trying to see if this—“friendship”— looks like it does in the movies. Of the two of them, she imagines she’s Tiffany K here, the self-destructive one. Not the responsible one. Not the good friend.
It’s best she leaves now, she knows. It’s best she was never here. There’s no corporate tycoon trolling across the lake to rape anybody. There’s no dragon, using its mighty tail to cut through the water.
Jade turns, her breath heavy and close in her mask, knows that as soon as she’s twenty steps away she’s going to be lighting up, breathing deep, holding the smoke in for as long as janitorially possible—but then she stops, cocks her head back to the lake.
Someone’s walking through the water?
It’s Letha.
“What? ” Jade says out loud, on accident, but nobody looks her way. The problem here is that this isn’t on-script, this isn’t in the genre, isn’t a trope. The final girl in the first act isn’t curious. Curiosity is what’s going to get all those other girls killed, not her.
Jade steps closer, into the dull glow from the dead bonfire, the skin of her neck contracting in the heat, the plastic of her face impervious.
Letha’s wading out farther now, is getting her borrowed white shorts wet.
Jade shakes her head no, no, but then she sees what Letha’s after.