Leading me to think you have some knowledge that we don’t.”
“They travel in pairs,” Jade tells him. “Common knowledge.
Casey and Steve in Scream. Barry and Claudette in—”
“ ‘They’ being… the Dutch?”
“I only said that because he was blond. Like on the paint cans.”
“So you were there.”
“I was at the party, yeah. Can I not go to parties with my ex-classmates?”
Hardy doesn’t like her answers, but neither can he take them out at the knees, Jade knows.
“Then I’m sure you know we made a list of everybody who was at the Tompkins place that night,” he says. “I don’t recall your name being on that.”
“I left early.”
“But stayed until the end, too? To see the color of that dead kid’s hair?”
“Was on my way out.”
“I’m sure the Koenig girl or one of the others can confirm this.”
“Tiff’s recall of that night might be… blurry.”
Hardy shakes his head, impressed—he must know Tiffany K was sloshed—but still, “So either you were at the party or you…” he leads off, using his fingers to pick words from the air, it looks like, “or you have unlawful knowledge about the events that led to that kid being there. Same as the golf club.”
“Would you believe a bus ran over my evidence, or is that too much like the dog eating my homework?”
“Excuse me?”
“Third option, I mean,” Jade says, opening her door, hanging a leg out for solid ground.
“I don’t—”
“I’ve watched too many horror movies,” Jade says. “I’m just making shit up left and right, because my dad did some unspeakable shit to me.”
Hardy just sits there, brake pressed in, eyes hidden behind chrome lenses.
“Are you saying that Mondragon girl was right about him?”
he finally asks.
“I’m saying something’s coming for us, Sheriff,” Jade says, stepping all the way down now. “I don’t know why, I don’t know who, but I do know when.”
“July Fourth,” Hardy recites. “Speaking of that.”
This stops Jade. Then she connects the necessary dots.
“You can beef up security all you want,” she says. “It won’t —”
“In hindsight, your letter is a credible threat to the proceedings that night,” Hardy says, using the official phrasing. “If you show up and try to self-fulfill your little prophecy, then it’ll look like I was negligent, just some country bumpkin law enforcement officer not paying enough attention.”
“But—”
“What I’m saying,” Hardy says, speaking over her, holding her eyes for this, “is that your presence will not be needed that night, Ms. Daniels. Rex Allen and Francie will escort you out if you try.”
“But you can’t. I’ve been waiting for this for my whole—”
“It’s for the best,” Hardy says, challenging her to tell him otherwise.
I’ve been waiting all my life, she wants to say, but can’t.
All she can do is stand there on the front sidewalk of her ex–high school, her world crumbling around her, all of it just falling away. Hardy tips his hat bye to her and eases away, and Jade can’t even think of anything sharp or cutting to say. She’s numb.
“Went ahead and clocked you in,” Rexall says in passing, carrying a crumbling pipe over his shoulder, both ends seeping unmentionable sludge. “Thank me later, yeah?”
Jade doesn’t have any clever comeback for him either, a silence he’s probably taking for acceptance of this deal— timecard-action for later, to-be- ascertained action…
That’s all distant to Jade now. Happening to some other girl.
Thirty minutes later she’s trudged back inside, is scrubbing profane words from bathroom stalls. By midafternoon, using her county razorblade, the metal wall by the urinals her dark blue canvas, she’s carving her own profanity, each letter a foot tall and deep, going down to bare metal.
THE LAKE WITCH SLAYINGS.
That’s definitely what they’re going to call it the morning after, when all the bodies are floating facedown in the water, blood blooming out from their sides like wings.
It’s going to be glorious.
SLASHER 101
What’s lucky is that you can go on teacher vacation for MY WHOLE JUNIOR
YEAR but when you come back all the same rules of the slasher genre still keep applying, and we can now finish your education, sir. Or should I say Night Flier.