How to Survive Your Murder

by Danielle Valentine

If you watched enough horrible things happen on-screen, you could figure out how to avoid them in real life.

Learn from Final Girls. Be a Final Girl.

I want to see lives ruined. People destroyed. I want to listen to other people screaming. It’s the only time I can drown out the screams still echoing through my head.

I heard somewhere that people say “I can’t imagine” only about things they can imagine perfectly and wish they couldn’t.

I was already with the police, so I didn’t see Eli that night, but I know from talking to him later that Millie called him right after Claire died. He raced right over to pick her and X up and take them home. It’s a small, strange detail that just makes everything that’s happening seem so much more real.

And then, just as quickly, it sinks. I recognize those street names, those curving, twisting roads. I should. I was just there. “She’s driving back to Erin’s house,” I say, numb.

Didnt their dad have claire's phone?? Omg is he killing girls he's cheated on the mom with??

“Tell me their names,” my mom is saying, as I ease the door open and slip back outside. “They were important enough to you that you were willing to destroy our family for them. I should at least know their names!”

I think im right oh my godddd

“Mark? Really?” Millie exhales a slow breath and says conspiratorially, “She should be careful, or her secret boyfriend’s going to get jealous.” I’m still thinking about Freddy Krueger, and it takes me a second to process what she’s just said. “Wait . . . what?” Next to me, Eli smiles and, in a perfect echo of this morning, he says, “Sierra has a boyfriend?” “Secret boyfriend,” Millie says, looking scandalized. “Key word being secret.”

ITS THE DAD

“Claire?” I choke out.

whaT