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January 12 - January 16, 2025
If it turns out you’re from Proofrock, then either you were almost killed in the water watching Jaws, or you knew somebody who was.
She’s still in there, all right. Somewhere. Under everything that’s happened to her, everything that’s been piled onto her. Everything she’s still carrying, or trying to.
if you don’t have private little rituals, the days can lose their meaning real fast.
“Snake Indians would have called him a spirit elk,” Hardy says. “And he doesn’t show himself for just anybody.” “It’s the—it’s the storm,” Jennifer says. “It’s you,”
“Sorry,” Jennifer says. “You don’t need me reminding you.” “We haven’t seen each other for four years,” Letha says, making the slow turn left. “But you’re still you. Different name, same girl.”
“Last time I was the girl who cried slasher,” she says. “Gonna let somebody else ring that alarm this time.”
“Proofrock owes you,” Letha tells her, holding her eyes.
“You really are different, aren’t you?” “What? How?” “The old you would have opened up a can of trivia about that name.” “Family?” Jennifer asks, either innocently or fake innocently, Letha can’t quite tell. “Adrienne King played Alice in Friday the 13th. That’s still buried in your head. In your heart. I know it is.” “You must be thinking of some other girl.”
“I want you to be Aunt Jennifer,”
she’s concerned that Adrienne might develop a speech impediment, since I’m the one around her the most, and I—I talk like this.” “It’s not that bad,” Jennifer says. “Thank you,” Letha says. “But I can hear it too. Just, if Adrienne had another female voice, it might… help her?” “I mostly just know horror stories.” “Good,” Letha says. “I want her to be tough like you. Strong, I mean. A fighter.” “Guess she is going to need to learn to cuss right,” Jennifer says, flashing her eyes up to Letha’s.
Banner hasn’t really considered having a heart attack at twenty-two years old, but he has the distinct feeling that, pretty soon here, he’s going to be clutching his chest and falling sideways, hopefully into some less stressful place.
And the whole time Letha’s in the kitchen keeping dinner on-track, the flat-screen mounted in there mindlessly cycling all the horror movies she says calm her. Banner figures he knows what that’s about, though: Letha’s paying penance for not having listened to Jade—Jennifer, Jennifer—back when she was the girl who cried slasher.
She’s different now, though. This isn’t exciting to her anymore. It’s exactly as terrifying as it should be.
John W. Gardner says that History never looks like history when you’re living through it, yes. What does it look like when you can’t stop living through it, though? When it’s not even history to you yet?
Was Rexall supposed to just listen to people with the same skin color as his own?
And nobody in town would have crossed the street to piss on her, had it been her burning.
he’d whispered a secret deal to the lake, that if this girl could live, then anything else could happen, bring it, it didn’t matter: everything for her. Just don’t goddamn let her die. Don’t take her away too.
But Stacey Graves is gone, Jennifer reminds herself. The lake finally took her. Jennifer closes her eyes, makes herself say it the way it really happened: Ezekiel took her down to his holy church in Drown Town. And that’s that. And she wasn’t a monster any more than Jennifer was, when she was Jade. She just didn’t understand.
“My sister,” Ginger says. “She cuts my hair for me. If anybody else tries, I bite them.” She clacks her teeth as if Jennifer needs that sound. “It keeps them on their toes,” Ginger adds, and Jennifer can see one side of her mouth grinning in the reflection.
They’ve taught her to shoot first, ask questions never, because there’s no on-ramp to danger, there’s not any slow and boring escalation. It’s always immediately life and death, with Letha Mondragon-Tompkins.
Letha shrugs about this new rule that nobody’s shooting anybody: it’ll hold until it doesn’t.
“Can we lock him up?” Jennifer says to Banner, without breaking eye contact with Rexall. “Seconded,” Letha says flatly. “Thi-thi-thi—” Lonnie says. “It’s unanimous,”
“Robert Pattinson eyes, like a vampire?”
I AM ACTIVELY WATCHING TWILIGHT
