My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #1)

by Stephen Graham Jones

“I didn’t do it because I wanted to die,” Jade says, the rise of scar tissue on her left wrist practically glowing in the sleeve of her coveralls. They’re watching ghost-versions of each other in the windshield now. Ghost versions that can waver away with one wrong breath. “I did it because I wanted to be part of the movie. Part of all of them. What was the day that it happened, you remember?” “Friday, we were just off work.” “Date, I mean.” “March?” “The number.” Shooting Glasses squints, trying to dredge it up, finally gloms onto it, says, “Friday the thirteenth, yeah. Radio kept talking about it.” Jade nods once, says, “Jason was supposed to rise up behind me, pull me across to Crystal Lake. Things make more sense there.” “That’s that old camp?” Shooting Glasses chin-points across the water. “Pretty much,” Jade says. “But everybody dies in those movies…” he says, pulling the headlights on now, blasting white out across the water. “But they really live first,” Jade says, popping her door open to fade into the night. “Now, remember what I told you, be somewhere else this Saturday, cool?” “What about you?” Jade presses her lips together and stands from the car, is about to shut the door on this, which feels one hundred percent like the perfect gesture, like what would happen in a movie, but then she flinches halfway around instead.