But it’s not Letha’s fault, either. Jade should have anticipated this, shouldn’t she have? Letha’s a good-enough person—a pure-enough final girl—that if there’s even the possibility that what she thinks about Jade is true, then she has to try to right it. Balancing the world and avenging injustices is what the slasher does, after all, always and only. Yes, the slasher is the governor on unfairness, but the final girl is the governor’s governor, the one who puts a cap on the cycle once it threatens to bleed beyond its own initial scope, go full-on franchise. Which is to say: the final girl is all about justice as well, is all about righting wrong wherever wrong’s encountered. Even if it’s between the lines in a letter, if you squint just right.
“This isn’t over,” Letha says, somehow holding both Jade’s hands like they’re about to drift out onto a dance floor.
“You’re right about that,” Jade says, trying to make Important Eyes, except a crusty clump of black bangs is poking into her right pupil, it feels like. She bats it away, turns to sulk off but then stops, makes herself say it, to all of them: “Thank you. I know you’re trying to help. But, really, I just like horror. Not everything has some dark reason behind it.
And I don’t even do pranks anymore.”
“Except trying to convince us there’s a slasher on the loose,” Mr. Holmes can’t help but say.
“That’s no joke,” Jade says right back to him.
“I’ll give her a ride back,” Hardy announces, breaking the tension, his cop hand already around Jade’s left upper arm, so he can steer her.
Jade lets it happen, only looking back once to Letha, who’s watching her retreat, her eyes all about how she could have done more, she should have done more, it doesn’t have to end like this.
But it’s only just getting started, Jade assures her, then shakes free of Hardy, pulls ahead, hauling the passenger door of his Bronco open before he can.
“I’m working at the high school this afternoon,” Jade tells him once he’s easing them from the parking lot.
Hardy stops the left turn he was making, hauls the wheel over the other way.
“Jade, never mind what your mom told us. If your dad has ever—”
“Letha Mondragon’s the one with the overactive imagination,” Jade tells him, using his own words against him.
“Some mother hen complex where she wants to take care of all of us. And I’m the least likely chicklet to survive, so that means I’m the first she has to save.”
Hardy sighs, says, “I think what you mean there is ‘hatchling,’ maybe?”
Jade slumps down in the seat, chocking her knees against the warm dash.
“And she’s right,” Hardy goes on. “This isn’t over.”
“I was just—”
“I’ve got some questions, I mean.”
Jade looks over to him but he’s watching the road with every last ounce of his remaining attention, as if he hasn’t driven this stretch of Main ten thousand times. He switches hands on the wheel, nods to himself that it’s finally right in his head, and says, “You knew about the Maruman at the old camp, meaning either you were there when or right after it happened, or you somehow got hold of Meg’s transcription.”
Jade doesn’t say anything.
“And if you were over there,” Hardy goes on, reaching into the backseat to plop something on the console between them, “I know what you were wearing.”
It’s her dad’s muddy boots from the porch.
“I would shoot myself in the face before touching his boots,” Jade says, elbowing them away to prove how gross they are to her.
“History of suicide attempts, yes,” Hardy says.
Jade opens her mouth to ask him why doesn’t he just haul her dad in, since they’re his boots? But that would just be setting a red herring up, wouldn’t it? Because no way could it really be Tab Daniels. Slashers, in their own way, are as pure as final girls.
“What?” Hardy asks, letting his foot off the gas so Jade can say whatever she was about to.
Jade shakes her head no, nothing.
“Anyway, that’s not even the worst of it,” he goes on, stopping in the hug-n-go lane of the high school with her for the second time this month. “You said there was a Dutch boy and a girlfriend. When we only know about the boy, whose dental work is actually turning out to be European, at least in the forensic report that just hit my inbox two hours ago.