The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP VI:
The Next Generation
I don’t sleep, I don’t close my eyes, but somehow I go into a trance where time seems to be taken out in chunks. I don’t see the sun come up. I don’t hear birds start chirping. But then it’s morning and someone is trying to open the door, banging it into the elliptical machine over and over like a confused robot.
donk . . . donk . . . donk . . .
I’m awake, on my feet, gun in my hand, when Dr. Carol sticks her head around the door.
“Lynnette—oh, Jesus!” She ducks back around the door, leaving it open.
“Are you alone?” I ask.
“Did you bring a handgun into my home?” she calls from behind the door.
“. . . Yes?”
“Lynnette, are you still pointing that handgun at me?” she asks.
“No,” I lie.
“I appreciate that you feel threatened,” she says. “But my children are in this house. You need to let me lock that weapon in my safe while you’re here.”
“I’ll put the safety on and keep it in my bag,” I say. “But I’m not locking it up.”
I put it in my fanny pack but don’t put the safety on. That extra half second might be the difference between living and dying. Then I drag the elliptical away from the doorway. It feels heavier than the night before.
Dr. Carol stands in the hall wearing a soft charcoal sweater and light gray slacks. She’s already done her hair and makeup.
“Show me,” she says.
I unzip my fanny pack and show her the gun. She’s one of those people who has never held a gun before, so being this close to one makes her nervous. She doesn’t even check whether the safety is actually on before I zip my bag back up.
“I came to see if you want breakfast,” she says.
Upstairs in the kitchen, there’s a man with blond stubble and bed head standing at the sink in sweat pants, dirty white socks, and a lacrosse T-shirt, trying to open a package of bacon with the tip of a foot-long carving knife.
“Let me do that, honey,” Dr. Carol says, going over and taking the knife from him.
He watches her do his work for him and I realize that he’s her other son, Skye. Seeing how old he is makes me feel old. He’s stringy, not much body fat. He probably runs. He’s taller than I am, longer reach, good stamina; I could take him but I’d need to get in my first hits fast and make them count. These are the things I notice, not that he’s attractive for his age, not that he’s got a good chin.
“Why are you still here?” Pax asks, materializing on the other side of the counter, lipping a piece of toast.
“Because she is our guest,” Dr. Carol says. “Elbows.”
He takes his elbows off the counter and goes back to sucking his toast.
“Not my guest,” he says.
“Not mine, either,” Skye says from the sink. “I didn’t know you let patients into the house.”
“You both need to be respectful, Skye,” Dr. Carol says, finally getting the bacon open and taking it to the stove.
“Make sure you cook it long enough,” Pax says. “Extra crispy.”
It’s degrading to watch the woman who hauled us back from the brink reduced to the status of waitress for her children. Eventually they won’t have their mother to be their short-order cook and laundress and maid. They’ll have to trick some poor woman into marrying them to get all that for free again.
Dr. Carol makes scrambled eggs, bacon, whole wheat toast, and mango smoothies. I stick with fruit. I prefer my food prepackaged and when I’m in an unsafe environment the closest I can get is fruit.
Everyone sits at the table except Pax, who stays on his stool, spinning lazily from side to side, smacking his toast with his mouth open so I can see gummy brown gobs of bread. He’s looking at his brother when he starts to smirk. Skye smiles.
“What is it?” Dr. Carol asks, wanting to be let in on the joke.
“Pax has something to say,” Skye says.
“No,” Pax says, shaking his head, clapping one hand over his mouth.
“Don’t be shy, Pax,” Dr. Carol encourages him.
Pax looks over at me and tries to keep a straight face.
“Nice rack,” he says, then falls off his chair giggling.
Something inside my chest tightens.
“Pax!” Dr. Carol says, genuinely shocked. “That is not nice.”
I haven’t seen one of those T-shirts in a long time, but clearly someone’s been googling me. I refuse to let this useless little boy get under my skin.
“It’s all right,” I say to Dr. Carol. Then I level my gaze on Pax. “You want to see the scars? You want to see how funny they look?”
Dr. Carol doesn’t know how to navigate this situation. Pax senses his mom’s discomfort and stops laughing.
I cross my arms at the wrist and grab the hem of my T-shirt. “I don’t mind showing you if you’re that interested.”
“Go upstairs and get ready for school, Pax,” Dr. Carol says.
We all watch him go. At the bottom of the stairs he looks back, sees us all watching him, then turns and runs upstairs.
“I do,” a soft voice says.
Skye is looking at me.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “When Mom told me who you were I googled you and Pax saw.”
“You cannot tell any of your friends that she is here,” Dr. Carol says.
“Duh,” Skye says.
I stand.
“Lynnette, I don’t want you to do this,” Dr. Carol says.
I turn around and lift my T-shirt to just below my breasts.
The scars on my lower back are the worst. They’re the ones I show Skye. I feel his eyes on me. He lets out a puff of air.
“Why is it so messy?” he asks.
“The brow tine and the bay antler were what took my weight,” I say, facing away from him, speaking to the window. “The royal antler dug out pieces of me while I swung there.”
“What did it feel like?” he asks.
I drop my shirt and turn around. My scars usually shut people right up. I’m impressed he’s still talking. His mom’s face is pale.
“It hurt,” I say. “And it was humiliating. But after the first five hours, the pain started to seem normal.”
“That’s enough of this kind of talk,” Dr. Carol says.
The three of us go back to eating, but I catch Skye sneaking glances at me. After we’re done, he disappears upstairs to his room. Both he and Pax left their plates for Dr. Carol to rinse and put in the dishwasher. Without my computer, without my guns to clean, without my systems and my schedule, I don’t know who I am. I stand in the corner, trying not to look awkward. It’s a relief when Dr. Carol finishes cleaning up after her sons and says, “Let’s go to my office.”
It’s a sunny extension with too many windows built onto the back of the house, looking out onto their walled garden filled with a bunch of bamboo. The giant windows and French doors make me very nervous.
I perch on an ottoman, putting my back against the one small scrap of wall, trying to see all around me. Dr. Carol sinks into an armchair and lays down the law.
“I apologize for Pax’s behavior,” she says. “He’s eight years old and doesn’t understand empathy. But I do not want you interacting with my boys the way you did.”
“He asked,” I say.
“And you lifted your shirt,” she says. “I know this is a challenging time, but this is my house, my family, and my rules. If you can’t respect that, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
I think about my options. There aren’t many.
“I’ll stay,” I say.
“And?” she says.
“I’ll respect your boundaries.”
“Thank you.”
She’s only a few years older, but she’s been treating me for so many years that I let her talk to me like a mom. I want her to be happy with me. I don’t ever want to lose group.
We’re interrupted by soothing digital wind chimes.
“Excuse me,” Dr. Carol says.
She picks up her phone and has a muttered conversation. I know it’s not good because she looks at me three times.
“Is it Heather?” I ask when she hangs up.
She stares at the hard straw carpet between us for a minute, then raises her eyes and studies my face. It’s clear she doesn’t like what she sees. Then her expression shifts back and she’s good old Dr. Carol again, public mask strapped on tight.
“Dani shot a police officer,” she says. “She’s in custody.”
“What?” I say.
I feel slow, I feel stupid, I feel like prey.
“I’m going to have to ask you to let me hold on to your firearm.”
“Don’t you see how much danger we’re in?” I ask. “First Adrienne, then Julia and Heather, now Dani?”
“Whether or not these events are connected,” Dr. Carol says, “I won’t have a weapon in my home.”
“No,” I say.
She sits up straight, meeting my eyes, going into her professional mode.
“Let me lock it up or I’ll have to ask you to leave,” she says.
I’m hyperventilating. I put my head between my knees. I try to relax my throat. I try to take deep breaths. I’ll be exposed. I’ll be defenseless. But I can’t leave this house. It’ll be worse out there. What happened to Dani?
I make my throat muscles relax, I pull oxygen into my lungs, and finally, I take my gun out of my fanny pack and hand it over, and then I excuse myself to the bathroom and go downstairs, where I unzip the bottom compartment in my go bag and take out my little .22 and hide it in my fanny pack. One is none.
When I come back upstairs she brings me up to speed.
A couple of weeks ago, the New Jersey State Police reopened their files on Dani’s case for some reason. They must have found something because they contacted the FBI, who contacted Dani’s local sheriff’s department, who assured them they had a good relationship with Dani. This morning at the crack of dawn the sheriff took the FBI out to Dani’s ranch and asked her to come with them for questioning. They didn’t count on Michelle.
Michelle’s cancer is killing her. The way Dani tells it, things took a turn two months ago and now every day is a deathwatch. She’s lucky if they can squeeze out a good half hour here, a tolerable twenty minutes there, and that’s how Dani spends her days, trying to patch together as much lucid time as she can while the woman she loves dies. They’ve been together for nineteen years, and there is no way Dani is going to let herself be moved from Michelle’s bedside for anything other than group.
The sheriff suggested they interview her in the living room. The FBI wasn’t having it. She was coming back to the station, period. Dani had just gotten back from L.A. She told them to get off her property. When they didn’t, she went back inside and got her gun. She started shooting.
I don’t believe Dani shot a cop. She’s a law-and-order values voter who lets the local sheriff’s department use a corner of her property for their annual barbecue. She sets up a shooting range out there for them and they run and gun on timed courses, plinking sheet metal targets she cuts for them while Michelle roasts a pig. Cops are her heroes, and I remember how hard she took 9/11. So I have a hard time believing she shot anyone in law enforcement.
Dr. Carol doesn’t quite believe it either, so she works the phone until she gets the real story.
“She didn’t shoot anyone,” she finally says with a sigh of relief. “There was confusion. She shot into the air. They Tasered her. I knew she wouldn’t point a weapon at police officers.”
It turns out that isn’t the only good news.
“And Julia is alive,” she says. “She was shot three times and she’s in the ICU, but she’s not awake yet.”
“I knew she was alive,” I say, and feel my shoulders relax. I hadn’t realized how scared I was.
Dr. Carol moves on.
“I have to tell you some more bad news about Dani. The reason they reopened her case. Someone else confessed to the crime.”
I meet her eyes.
“They need to put her on suicide watch,” I say.
Dr. Carol nods.
“I’ll make a call.”
—
Killing is hard. Killing your brother is even harder. Finding out you killed your brother for no reason is the most impossible thing of all. Dr. Carol is able to get through to someone and they move Dani to an observation cell. She fights them all the way, screaming for Michelle. The cops sent an ambulance and moved Michelle to hospice. In her condition, I can’t imagine that added much to her life expectancy. They love that ranch, and Dani promised Michelle she’d die there. There’s nothing Dani hates more than breaking her promises. She must be in Hell.
It’s a familiar place for her.
Back in the eighties, Dani’s older brother, Nick, liked to kill animals. He was big and hard to control and he thought it was funny to hurt things that were smaller than him. When Dani was seven, Nick hurt their babysitter one night. He hurt her so badly he got sent to an institution. Her parents took Dani to visit on his eighteenth birthday when she was ten. She says he was so doped up on Thorazine he couldn’t even swallow and the front of his shirt was soaked transparent with drool. She never went back.
“I was a kid, but that was no excuse,” she said in group. “I should have gone back.”
She didn’t see Nick again until she was seventeen. A storm knocked out the power at the institution and a bunch of inmates escaped. Nick stole some overalls and made his way back to their pretty little suburb, wondering why his little sister never came to see him. He had a mask. He had a knife. It was Halloween.
Dani was babysitting that night, saving money for her get-out-of-town fund. By then she already knew she was gay and wanted the hell out of New Jersey, the hell off the entire East Coast. She wanted to head for the Wild West where the air was clear, the horses ran free, and maybe she could find a rodeo romance.
Wearing his mask, Nick worked his way through their neighborhood, looking for Dani. Along the way he killed four people and two dogs. Someone told me he tried to eat one of the dogs. He finally found Dani. She put up a fight, trashed the house, stabbed him with his own knife. Cops showed up at the last minute and shot him so many times he went out the second-story window. They couldn’t find his body.
We get subjected to sequels. That’s what makes our guys different, that’s what makes them monsters—they keep coming back. Dani’s brother came back that same night.
The cops took her to the hospital, doped her up, and left her in a room with a cop at the door. Nick went through them like the wrath of God. Eleven people died. That’s what always upset Dani the most. They were doctors, nurses, cops, EMTs. These were people who ran toward natural disasters and car accidents, not away. According to Dani, some of them threw themselves in front of Nick to buy her time to escape. She says they never hesitated.
Out in the hospital’s parking garage, Dani found Nick. He was walking down one of the ramps, coming right at her, no mask, just plodding forward, smiling like an angel. She beat his brains out with a tire iron. She had no choice.
Nick’s fans formed a posthumous death cult around their fallen god. Over the years, they’ve spread the rumor that the masked man who committed the murders and Dani’s brother were two different people.
“Do you think it’s true?” I once asked Dr. Carol.
“It’s not my place to speculate,” she’d said.
That was Dani’s nightmare: she’d killed the wrong person. One of the inmates who got out of the institution that night was never found. Harry Peter Warden, a big guy, about Nick’s size, with a history of violence, bed-wetting, hurting neighborhood pets. What if this guy and Nick traveled to her suburb together? Nick telling this guy about his sister, about how he wanted to see her, talking about her all the way home. There’s no way to be sure. The killer never took off his mask.
What stuck in Dani’s head is what if that was just Nick coming to her in the parking garage? What if that was just Nick, veins still full of Thorazine, stumbling forward, wanting his sister to take him someplace warm and give him a chicken noodle Cup-a-Soup like their mom used to? What if that was her brother, come home at last, wanting to ask why she never came to visit, and she beat him to death with a tire iron?
When she told us that, it was the only time I ever saw Dani cry.
How did anyone know about this? How could someone know this was Dani’s worst fear?
They knew because she talked about it in group.
They knew because they read it in a book.
—
Music rattles Skye’s door in its frame. After a lot of irritating conversation, Dr. Carol has convinced herself that she’s convinced me that the best thing is to go to the police. With Adrienne dead, Dani in lockup, Julia in the hospital, and Heather missing (also: suspected of arson), the sooner we start sorting things out with law enforcement the better. The police will have questions and I should cooperate. I agreed.
“I’m fried,” I said. “Let me get my head together today and we’ll go first thing tomorrow morning.”
Dr. Carol hugged me.
“I won’t do anything to create a situation where you might get hurt, Lynnette,” she said. “I’m going to make sure you’re safe.”
I have no intention of being here come sunup.
Skye’s door isn’t locked and it swings open and his music runs over me like a truck. I’m lost on a freeway of bass beats and Auto-Tune. The noise bruises the air. I step inside and close the door behind me.
It smells like cleaning products in here: Febreze and carpet shampoo. No unwashed-boy funk despite the dirty clothes tossed all over the floor, piled high in one corner, spilling from an open duffel bag, jumbled into drifts on his bed. His carpet is some neutral color—Sisal? Seashore? Sandstone?—and Skye is at his desk, shirt off, back to me, worshipping his computer. The room is dark except for his halogen desk lamp. I shout his name but my voice gets lost in the music. How can people let themselves be so vulnerable? I’ve got a mirror taped to my computer so I can always see what’s behind me.
It looks like he’s rubbing his stomach, and when I get closer I realize his shorts are pulled down to his knees. Violence I can handle, but this makes my mouth go dry and my palms prickle. I think it’s a natural reaction when you see your therapist’s twenty-six-year-old son whacking off.
I’m suddenly extremely conscious of my body beneath my dirty clothes. I don’t know whether to tap him on the shoulder or turn around and walk out of the room. While I’m considering my options he catches me out of the corner of his eye and jumps out of his chair, electrified, scrambling to cover himself, backpedaling away from me, legs tangled up in his shorts, hands over his groin, losing his balance, arms windmilling, and he lands hard on his ass, penis flopping all over the place.
“It’s okay!” I shout, holding my palms out to show I’m unarmed.
I can’t hear what he’s saying over the music but I can see his lips making the shapes for “Jesus Christ!” and “Get the fuck out of my room!”
He wriggles his shorts up over his hips and throws on a dirty T-shirt that says Pablo Hunting & Bait. He picks up the remote and magic-wands the music down until it’s barely rattling my teeth.
“I’m telling my mom,” he says.
I notice he’s not throwing me out, though. That’s a twenty-six-year-old for you: strange woman catches you choking the chicken, but you don’t want to go all-in on outrage because maybe you’ll get lucky.
“Does she know you’re into this kind of thing?” I ask.
He furrows his brow like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about until I nod at his computer and his cheeks turn red and he lunges across his room and slaps his laptop closed. I’ll never stop being surprised at what the average American male finds arousing.
“What do you want?” he says, pissed off because he’s embarrassed.
I can’t have that. I need him helping me of his own free will.
“Trust me,” I say. “I’ve seen things that make your porn look like Dora the Explorer.”
“Will you please not say”—his voice drops quieter—“ ‘your porn’?”
I’ve been thinking all morning. I don’t like asking anyone, but I figure if he’s Dr. Carol’s son and he’s right here in the house, I’d be a fool not to try. And I need to get him back on my side.
“Are you actually good with computers?” I ask.
“I set up the website and all the email servers for my mom’s business,” he says.
“I need you to drive me to my apartment, help me sneak inside, and tell me who’s gotten into mine,” I say.
“Why?”
“I need you to drive because I don’t have a car, I need you to help me sneak inside because police are going to be watching my building, and I need you to tell me who’s gotten into my computer because I need to know who’s trying to kill my friends. I don’t expect you to do it for free.”
“How much?” he asks.
“Five hundred dollars.”
“Fine,” he says. “Meet you downstairs at ten. Get out.”
And he turns the volume back up until the jelly inside my eyeballs shakes.
I trust Dr. Carol as much as I trust anyone, and that extends to her kids. I wait until she takes a call in her kitchen, then I go back to that sunny extension and pop the lock on her office door with an old library card I hang on to for this kind of thing. If she can’t set up her own email I’m assuming she still keeps paper files, and sure enough there are filing cabinets under her wraparound desk.
I go through the top drawer immediately to the right of her chair first, assuming it’s where she keeps her family papers, and it’s nice to be right. Elliott, Pax, followed by Elliott, Skye. If I’m going to be cooped up in Skye’s car tonight, I want to know what kind of threat I’m facing.
Skye’s got a college transcript to UC Berkeley, no disciplinary actions, no arrests. No prescription medications except Patanase for hay fever. No psychiatric treatment except some time working with a speech therapist as a kid because he couldn’t say his Rs. He’s clean, or as clean as men get. He’ll do.
I take a minute to look through her other drawers. Patient names, last name first, one after the other: Dier, Sandra; Klein, Deborah; Mason, Tamara; Moraine, Violet; Sanchez, Vera. They’re all women, which isn’t so strange since Dr. Carol specializes in victims of violence and that’s the only thing women ever seem to get too much of. I flip through a few and see that they’re all women who encountered a monster but didn’t kill him. Fetal final girls.
I slide the drawer closed and check out the desk. Over it hang framed diplomas, citations, pictures of her shaking Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hand, the cover of Time magazine featuring her and Adrienne and Julia. I didn’t do press the way the three of them did back in the day. The thought of being exposed to everyone’s eyes like that makes my skin crawl.
Next to her PC sits a file rack holding a single manila folder. I flick it open and see a familiar face paper-clipped to the inside cover: Fugate, Stephanie, grinning the way she’ll never grin again. Something about that smile, so dorky and unguarded, flips a switch and I’m seeing Gillian’s smile, and I try not to think about Gillian anymore, I try to keep her out of my mind at all costs, because then I think about what happened to her, and then I have everything back exactly the way it was and I’m out of her office, locking the door, before I start crying again.
I sit in the gym looking at the wall across from me, trying not to think about Gillian and how I couldn’t save her, definitely not thinking about running away and leaving Julia behind on my floor. I think about this for a long, long time. I can’t make a move until tonight, and the time just evaporates when I start thinking about all the ways I’ve failed the people I know. When Pax bangs on my door and asks if I’m coming to dinner I ask him to tell his mom I’m going to bed early. Big day with the cops tomorrow.
—
I know we’re Dr. Carol’s business, but seeing those files makes me feel like I’m a collector’s item, a limited-edition action figure, a butterfly pinned to a board. I skimmed Fugate, Stephanie’s file before I put it back. She was at Red Lake because three years ago, when she was thirteen, her school tennis coach started poisoning his players, obsessed with his champion racquet slinger, and Fugate, Stephanie figured it out during a meeting in his office before he could give her a fatal dose. Red Lake wasn’t her first crisis, it was her sequel. She’s like us now. Poor kid. Another doll in Dr. Carol’s collection.
When my watch says 9:57 p.m., I creep out into the hall, go bag over my shoulders, fanny pack around my waist. I can hear Dr. Carol in the back of the house on her phone, talking to someone in clear, confident tones. Her voice fades as I make my way to the side door where Skye waits.
“Ready?” he whispers.
I look down. He’s wearing heavy black tactical boots, way too clunky and noisy for sneaking out of the house.
“Change shoes,” I whisper.
“They’re my Under Armours,” he whispers back. “They’re badass.”
I roll my eyes. Boys and their toys. He pops the side door and we both listen, but Dr. Carol’s voice keeps echoing through the kitchen uninterrupted. That’s a good sign. We slip into the garage. His boots make exactly as much noise as I expected.
“Hey!” a shrill voice says before I can close the kitchen door behind me. “Where’re you going?”
It’s Pax. I start closing the door in his face, but he grabs it.
“Are you sneaking out? Are you guys going on a date?”
“Zip it,” I whisper.
But I don’t know what to do after that. Hit him? Tie him up and gag him? I turn to his brother.
“Do not tell Mom,” Skye whispers at Pax.
The little creep’s eyes sharpen into two black pinpricks.
“What’s it worth to you?” he whispers.
At least he’s whispering now.
“You’d better give him something,” Skye tells me.
“What do you want?” I ask.
Pax bounces from toe to toe, turning his head around to check out the interior of his house, and then he turns back to me with a jack-o’-lantern grin.
“Buy my book,” he says, waving the comic book he tried to push on me earlier in the day.
“How’s five dollars?” I whisper, reaching into my wallet.
“How’s a hundred?” he says.
I give him a look but he’s serious. I look at Skye, who shrugs. Helpful. Held ransom by a little brother, I count out five twenty-dollar bills and remember what it felt like to have a little sister. It hurts deep inside my chest and that makes me hate this ankle-biter even more. He shoves the comic at me; I take it out of his hand and cram it into my bag.
“Sayonara, suckers!” He laughs.
“Let’s go before he changes his mind,” Skye says, and we walk out of Dr. Carol’s garage into the night.