The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP XVI:

Season of the Final Girls

Chrissy shows up half an hour early to scope out the Starbucks where we’re supposed to meet. That’s okay. We slept in the car last night and got up with the sun. By the time she rolls past the strip mall we’ve been watching it all day. Stephanie keeps playing with the radio. Every five hours she calls her parents but she’s learning. She talks shorter and cries less each time. Otherwise, I insist she keep her phone off. It’s making her testy.

“She needs to hurry her old self up,” Stephanie grumbles.

“Patience will keep you alive,” I tell her.

“Not if it bores me to death first.”

I’d had an idea that Chrissy was sticking close to home, so we’d made for southern Alberta, near the location of her original crisis, emailing her from Stephanie’s phone as I drove. It took a day and a half. We’d just crossed into Idaho when Chrissy let us know she’d moved away from Black Drum and lived south of the border now in eastern Montana. Stephanie would have thought I was an idiot if it’d turned out she’d moved to L.A.

Chrissy’s more cautious than me, which earns her my grudging respect, something I never thought I’d feel. To the rest of us, Chrissy’s a bottom-feeder and we try not to say her name. She’s a traitor, a masochist, a turncoat, a liar. She’s got Stockholm syndrome. We all feel sorry for her. We all despise her. But at least she’s cautious. That makes her one of us, after all.

“Can I at least go in and see what she does?” Stephanie asks. “She hasn’t seen my face before.”

“Chrissy follows mass murder the way Canadians follow hockey,” I say. “She’s seen you. We’re not blowing this now by underestimating her. This is how we survive. We look before we leap.”

It’s hot in the car but getting cooler as the afternoon shadows grow long. I only left the car for a little bit earlier today to use the bathroom in a Jamba Juice. No matter how often I wash my face, twenty-two hours in the car has covered it in a waterproof layer of grease. When this is over, the two of us will head back to Billings, maybe get a hotel room for a few hours where I can shower. My skin itches in anticipation.

“She’s coming back around again,” Stephanie says. Just a week ago, a maniac killed her friends in front of her and now she’s on task. We’re adaptable, if nothing else. “There, the maroon Chrysler.”

The growling Made-in-America steel box rumbles past the Starbucks for a second time, crop-dusting a big blue cloud of exhaust over the street. Then it noses down the rows of parked cars, two over from where we sit. There was so much back-and-forth on email, so much flirting and deal making and confirming that I wanted to scream. I tried to avoid talking numbers, instead offering to show her the stash in person so she could make an informed offer. I tried to play dumb and straightforward, just a woman trying to make ends meet by picking through thrift stores and mini-storage units, trying to buy low and sell slightly less low.

I avoided talking about where I got the stash, I avoided mentioning any names, but I couldn’t avoid telling her what I had. Hitting send on that email made me feel grimy:

THE ITEMS I HAVE ARE LABELED IN PLASTIC BAGS BY THE PREVIOUS OWNER. THEY ARE:

• SNEAKERS WORN BY RODDY TORRES (STAINED WITH DARK SUBSTANCE ON TOE OF LEFT SHOE)

• LIFE PRESERVER, BLOOD-STAINED, FROM CAMP RED LAKE (CAMP LOGO VISIBLE LEFT BREAST)

• COAT HANGER, TWISTED INTO BALL, WITH DARK STAIN ON END (WITH BILL OF SALE ATTESTING TO USE BY DANIELLE SHIPMAN)

• MASK WORN BY GHOST 1 (WITH BILL OF SALE ATTESTING TO ORIGINALITY)

• ONE FIRST EDITION “THE DREAM KING AND HIS KILLING KINGDOM” SIGNED BY HEATHER DELUCA, AUTOGRAPH READS “FUCK YOU VERY MUCH, HEATHER”

• FOUR HEADSHOTS, TOPLESS, OF ACTOR BARB COARD IN “SLAY BELLS” SIGNED BY LYNNETTE TARKINGTON

It was the last ones that pulled her out of hiding. I sent a photo of one of the headshots that Stephanie took on her phone. They’re the rarest items in the lot. When we went to L.A. that first time, Garrett got me to sign a few topless headshots of the actress who would play me in the movie. I stopped signing memorabilia after I started group, so these are heavy collector’s items. She could probably get close to five hundred dollars for each one. If I’d been an actual final girl they’d be worth more like eight hundred each.

“Are you actually going to give her those photos?” Stephanie asked.

“No,” I said. “But she’s going to want them. Bad.”

We were already leaving Nevada when I noticed Stephanie’s filthy bare feet. She hadn’t complained once. I sent her into a Walmart with forty dollars. My face was definitely on an APB by then, and besides, I wanted to see if she’d run.

She came out forty sweaty-palmed minutes later wearing some knockoff black Chuck Taylors and carrying a family-sized bag of Sour Brite Crawlers.

“Breakfast?” she’d asked, offering me some.

“You need something more nutritious.”

“Who’s a grumpy girl?” she asked, dangling one in front of my face. “Does the grumpy girl need her nutrition?”

I snapped forward suddenly and sucked it out of her fingers. She laughed like a kid. Like Gillian.

She asks me questions; she wants to know about my life. I’m guarded at first, but she seems so genuinely impressed by my story and so upset when I show her my scars that I can’t help myself. It turns out I like having someone riding shotgun.

When I slept, Steph drove, and when she slept, I drove. She did most of the sleeping because she’s still wrung out, so by now I’m wired, eyeballs vibrating, smelling my own sleepy smell all the time. The inside of my mouth is coated with sugar from the Sour Brite Crawlers. I blindly reach into the bag and discover it’s empty. When Steph sleeps she twitches and whimpers.

I got her side of the story in bits and pieces as we headed toward Montana. Apparently, Christophe waited in his car off the property until sundown, then he found a blind spot in the security cameras that surrounded the camp and crept through the perimeter. After that, it was all pitchforks through the chest, people impaled on pokers, arrows through the throat, and harpoon guns in the eye. He crushed her boyfriend’s skull in a work clamp in the woodshop studio. They’d been dating for three weeks.

“We’d been dating for six weeks,” I told her.

“Who?” she asked, chin resting on her knees, feet on the passenger seat.

“Tommy,” I said. It was the first time I’d said his name outside group in over a decade. “I was a cheerleader. He was a football player.”

“That’s so Jack and Diane,” she said. “Were you in love?”

I think about that sometimes, too.

“We weren’t dating long enough to know,” I told her. “I feel like I was, but if I’m going to be honest we never got a chance to find out. I was planning to go all the way with him when Ricky Walker rang the doorbell.”

“I was a virgin when I met Paul,” Steph said. “I didn’t love him, but I think he loved me. Did you date anyone after?”

“Not really,” I said.

Realization flickered in her eyes.

“So wait a minute? If you were a virgin when you were dating Tommy and you didn’t date anyone afterward, are you . . . ?”

Her eyes and mouth yawn wide with horror.

“I had a boyfriend,” I said. “Kind of. Afterward.”

“Kind of?” she asked.

“Garrett P. Cannon,” I said. “And no, I’m not a virgin.”

I think about how Tommy and I never had sex. I think about how I’d never know if my parents’ Christmas Eve date saved their marriage. I think about how much Gillian loved horses and never got to ride one. I think about how I didn’t protect my sister. I think about protecting Stephanie.

Here comes Chrissy now, strutting across the parking lot, heading for the Starbucks. I haven’t seen her in more than ten years, but I’d recognize that cocky stroll anywhere. Chrissy struts like she has all the time in the world. Not like me, racing from one safe place to another, scanning the angles of approach, trying to make sure I spot any potential predators before they spot me.

“That’s her?” Steph asks.

“Stay low,” I tell her.

Chrissy wears mom jeans and a denim jacket. Big heavy purse over one shoulder, fifteen minutes early. She pushes her way into the Starbucks and disappears.

“Now we wait,” I say.

“She looks young,” Steph says.

She picks up the empty Sour Brite Crawlers bag and uses her wet fingertip to chase sugar from its corners, knees on the dashboard, watching the Starbucks door. Her phone sits in her lap. I hear it vibrate.

“It’s her,” she says.

I reach over and touch her wrist. I find myself doing this a lot, finding excuses to touch her.

“Don’t answer,” I say.

We sit in the hot car, the bag rattling as Stephanie extracts every single grain of sugar like some kind of methodical ant while her phone keeps vibrating. She shows me the emails as they come in, each one another stage in the process of being stood up. There’s the question (Am I at the right Starbucks?), there’s the begging (PLEASE let me know when u r coming!), then anger (Do NOT contact me again and I will make sure all buyers know u r a liar!), and then Chrissy comes storming out of Starbucks, heading for her car.

“That took almost forty-five minutes,” I say.

“So?” Stephanie asks.

“That means those pictures I signed are worth way more than I thought they were.”

Chrissy’s maroon beater sails past us, floating on a big cloud of pale blue exhaust. I wait until she’s way down the road before I twist the ignition and pull out after her. Earlier Steph and I had a long argument over who got to drive but I won. I’m the big sister, after all.

At first we’re driving through a sprawl of planned communities and retail outlets, but soon the name-brand stores are replaced by dollar stores and churches. We pass carpet stores that are eternally going out of business, judging by the sun-faded yellow banners in their front windows. We pass strip malls that are nothing more than a row of For Lease signs. I ride Chrissy’s exhaust, hanging back, making sure Stephanie has an eye on her phone’s map, always trying to keep at least four car lengths between us.

“She’s getting on Route 2,” Stephanie says, and I follow.

We merge and take off-ramps and on-ramps and construction detours, and as the sun sinks lower we get off the highway onto two-lane blacktop. I pray she doesn’t go over the border. I’m not sure my Dr. Newbury ID could handle the Department of Homeland Security. We pass something called the Troy Group, dozens of parking lots and warehouses spread out over acres of raw dirt. Then we pass houses with vinyl siding pressed right up to the street, limp, sun-bleached American flags staked to their porches, claw-footed bathtubs full of dead plants in their side yards.

The road winds back and forth, switchbacking as it rises into the hills, and we turn a corner and suddenly Chrissy’s not there. Then I see her car parked in front of a boxy brick church. We zoom past before I can stop, and wind up lurking in a side street about a quarter of a mile up ahead.

“Keep your head down,” Stephanie says.

“I know what I’m doing,” I say.

Even though I don’t have a valid driver’s license, and I’m making this all up as I go along, and I’m functioning on nothing but confidence, I want to project authority. Steph needs to think that I have this situation under control. I need to make her feel safe.

Chrissy’s car blows past us ten stressed-out minutes later and we pull out and keep following, blasting past thick runs of trees that give way to buildings clinging to rural intersections, and then we’re turning off the new blacktop onto old asphalt, and it’s nothing but trees lining the mountain road on either side. We’re in a deep trench of foliage, the orange sun blocked out by leaves, and it feels like the dark is coming fast.

The road winds and dips and climbs and dips again, and I figure we have to be getting close to where we’re going. I focus on keeping Chrissy in sight up ahead, and Steph focuses on not distracting me. We both know that if we lose her now the last two days will have been for nothing. Stephanie chews her nails. It’s healthier than candy.

There are no other cars on the road, so I hang back. There are occasional trailers set deep on overgrown lots, and plywood signs nailed to two-by-fours offering Bunny Meat—$10! and HairCuts for Man and Woman. I get the feeling anyone who could has long since moved away. I play Chrissy out in front of us, letting her take the lead, then reel her in closer, then let her run again. We drive deeper into the hills.

We come around a curve almost right on top of her as she slowly pulls onto a dirt track branching off one side of the road, and I scream past in the other lane and keep going until it feels safe enough to pull over. I make a three-point turn and idle next to a piece of rotten plywood leaning against a telephone pole that says Firewood in orange spray paint. From here we can see the head of the dirt road. Chrissy’s car is already deep in the woods. Five seconds later and we would have missed her entirely.

“What are we waiting for?” Stephanie demands.

“I don’t want to roll down that driveway like this,” I say. “She might be waiting for us to pass and in a few minutes she’ll pull out again. For all we know, that driveway’s a trap. We need to wait until dark.”

“More waiting?” she asks, throwing herself back against the seat.

“More waiting,” I confirm.

The woods are silent and their dimness shades into blue, then gray, then the road loses the last of the light. Darkness presses against the car windows from all sides. Chrissy doesn’t emerge from the dirt driveway and I can only hope it’s not a shortcut that leads to another stretch of blacktop running parallel through these hills. I have to hope this is where she’s gone to ground.

Stephanie folds the Sour Brite Crawlers bag over, then over again, folding it into increasingly smaller rectangles before unfolding it, pressing it flat, and starting all over again. I watch our blind spots, I watch the end of the dirt driveway, I watch the woods, and finally I can’t put it off any longer.

Opening up my fanny pack, I pull out my little .22 and make sure it’s loaded.

“I need something, too,” Steph says.

“I’m going in alone to talk to Chrissy,” I say. “I should be back in an hour. If not, I want you to come after me.”

“Unarmed?” she says.

“If I’m not back in an hour, or if I don’t call your cell phone by then, sneak in through the woods and find me.”

“Great,” she says. “So I’ll use harsh language, or what?”

I hand her a can of pepper spray from my fanny pack and zip it back up tight. I open the car door and the door buzzer screams in the night.

“This shit doesn’t work!” Steph calls after me.

I close the door fast to turn out the light and get my night vision back. The trees are full of shrieking crickets. I jog along the shoulder of the road and cut through the woods to where the dirt driveway turns off. My feet crunch loud through the dead leaves as I enter the darkness to find Chrissy, the fallen final girl.