It’s a lie, of course, but the best kind, in that it’s the last question Hardy will ask, standing at the register of the dollar store in an official capacity.
“We’ll take my—” he says, reaching back to pat his hood while clamping his hat on, but Jade’s already brushing past.
Letha falls in, and then Jade hears Hardy and Mr. Holmes crunching through the gravel as well, and suddenly it’s like the four of them are doing some epic walk down to the OK Corral, Jade’s eyes slits to shoot arrows through, Hardy clamping his hat on tighter, Letha’s hair bouncing with her every step, and Mr. Holmes’s tie trying and failing to blow back over his right shoulder, his eyes both grim and, at the same time, amused, too aware of the absurdity of all this.
Jade does okay with the walk until all the eyes on Main could be clocking them through the plate glass windows. Like every time she’s ever been the center of attention, her legs go robot, so that she’s now having to give precise mechanical instructions to her hips, her knees, her ankles and feet, even to her arms that don’t know how to swing anymore. How does Michael do it, his Panaglide walk? He’s so inexorable, completely unstoppable, never wavering, always taking the most efficient line.
Jade decides that the reason he can do it— walk—and she can’t, not without practically having a seizure from all the brain activity required, is that he has that singular focus: the next babysitter. Whereas what Jade has is… it’s all the usual shit she drags with her, that she doesn’t want to think about, but now there’s even more tin cans dragging behind her: Letha’s sincere but misdirected pity, Hardy’s shrugging suspicion that Letha might be right, and Mr. Holmes’s not even remotely wanting to be here, just wanting to please be retired. And, worse, a complete blindside, does Jade feel responsible here? For all the lives this slasher can take, and how many more it can take if she doesn’t get Letha prepped right?
That’s the part that’s not tracking for her: she should be thrilled about the prospect of necks being opened, limbs being hacked, guts spilling their steamy delights.
Proofrock deserves it.
But Letha doesn’t, she decides. And, who knows, right?
Maybe every final girl in the history of final girls has had a horror chick whispering to her from just off-screen. Maybe this isn’t a deviation but the usual build. Just one nobody ever knows about until they’re smack-dab in the beating heart of it.
Jade nods, likes that.
It’s best she’s behind the curtain, too. Unless the play she’s in can be about robots, in which case her arms and legs have already got that down.
Thinking about what she must look like, walking like this, doesn’t help at all, either.
And—and the pressure building around them, around all of Proofrock. It’s like they’re trying to cross from one side of an inflating balloon to the other. But Jade knows the pressure-relief valve: the front door of Family Dollar.
She flails her arm ahead to haul it open, stop this moment from lasting any longer, please, but… Hardy has his meaty paw on her shoulder, is keeping her from pushing through, into the store?
“Excuse me?” Jade says, spinning away from his hand, probably making it more dramatic than it needs to be.
“Stay here with your favorite history teacher,” Hardy grumbles, not a hint of give to his voice, and then he’s barreling through the door alone, on a mission, only reaching back at the last moment to hold his cigarette up for whoever wants it.
In solidarity or at least an attempt at it after her betrayal, Letha slides in before the door can close, nodding to Jade on the way like she’s going to make sure this is all legit, that she isn’t going to let Jade fall through the cracks.
But the cracks are where bugs like me live, Jade wants to tell her back, and then have roaches spill from her mouth and eyes. Instead she brings Hardy’s cigarette up in frustration, draws deep on it, and turns her head to the side to blow a clean, pissed-off line of smoke. When Mr. Holmes is just standing there awkward and unsure, she offers him a drag.
“It’s not against the rules now,” she says about the cigarette.
“You’re not a teacher, I’m not a student.”
He looks away, down Main and across the lake.
“You really hate it, don’t you?” Jade says to him. “Terra Nova, I mean.”
He shrugs a noncommittal shrug.
“What’s the history there, teach?” Jade asks.
“No history.”
“There’s always history,” Jade says back. “A certain somebody might have impressed that upon my just-forming psyche once upon a freshman year. Nothing just pops into existence. Everything comes from somewhere. It’s all got a story. Just a matter of if we’re committed enough to dig it up.”