The Mary Shelley Club, Goldy Moldavsky [e ink ebook reader txt] 📗

someone got so scared when an undead hand popped out of the floorboards that they flinched and tossed their popcorn in the air. This seemed to encourage Freddie to offer his own popcorn to me. I hesitated, but Freddie shook the bag, prompting me. So I dipped my fingers into the buttery kernels and smiled gratefully around a mouthful. Freddie smiled back. All around us the theater broke out in screams.

It was late when the movie was over. As Freddie and I walked to the exit together, I began to panic as I realized that soon we would have to start actually talking. I couldn’t tell him that I had come here because I was stalking him on Twitter. And I definitely couldn’t tell him that I knew he was probably the Infamous Manchester Prankster.

Fortunately, Freddie broke the ice. “This was very Donnie Darko of us.”

I smirked. He was referring to the scene where Jake Gyllenhaal and that creepy-ass bunny sit together in a dark theater. “I’m not Frank, the bunny, in this scenario, am I?”

Now it was Freddie’s turn to smirk, and suddenly we were two smirking idiots on a grimy New York City street, beaming with horror-movie afterglow. After all the confused looks from Saundra, this small exchange was enough to make my heart sing. Or scream, so to speak.

“I’m Freddie.”

“Rachel.”

“So, Rachel, you’re an Evil Dead II fan?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can appreciate a good horror comedy.”

“Have you watched Shaun of the Dead?”

“Of course. Though I’d say that that one’s more of a comedy than a horror. Slither’s a better example of a pure horror comedy—oh—and Ready or Not, which was surprisingly fun. But Sam Raimi’s still the reigning king of the genre as far as I’m concerned.”

Usually when I talked to somebody (okay, my mom or Saundra) about horror movies, they’d stare at me blankly like I was speaking another language. Freddie was staring at me now too, but there was nothing blank about his expression.

He broke into a wide grin. “Nothing beats the unintentionally funny horror movie, though.”

“Which one are you thinking about?”

“Saw.”

“Are you serious?” I laughed.

Freddie nodded. “The bad guy’s a Pinocchio-looking thing on a tricycle. How is that scary?”

“Well, is Damien scary in The Omen? He’s a little boy!”

We both looked at each other for a beat, then mutually agreed that, yep, Damien was absolutely terrifying.

I had forgotten how nice it could be, finding someone to talk to about the things you love. It was like we already had a shorthand, and we’d barely just met.

Suddenly I wanted to talk about movies all night.

But we were the last ones left outside the theater and it put a point on the finite nature of the evening. I couldn’t leave without asking Freddie the question I had come to ask him.

“It’s actually funny that I bumped into you here because I wanted to talk to you about something,” I said, keeping my tone casual. “It’s about that abandoned-house party? The séance?”

“What about it?”

Maybe I was about to ruin the first real, genuine connection I’d made in a long time, but I had to risk it. The prank at the séance had kind of knocked my whole trying-to-fly-under-the-radar-as-a-normal-high-school-student thing out of whack and I needed his help.

“Well, I saw you with the speaker. You were the one playing buzzing noises. It was your prank.”

My attempts at sounding casual now took on an accusatory edge. I’d come on too strong, and now I would probably scare Freddie away. I tried to reel it in some.

“It’s just that Lux blames me for what happened,” I said. “And I figure, if she’s going to blame me then I guess I at least want to know what really happened.”

Freddie had one of those faces that revealed every emotion he was feeling, and now his expression completely changed from the grinning, happy one he’d been sporting a few seconds ago to something more guarded. He pushed up his glasses, his thick eyebrows knitting together. “Did you come here tonight looking for me?”

He’d seen right through me.

“What?” I said, cheeks totally, immediately flushed. “No?”

“You did, didn’t you?”

“I’m here because I love … Evil Dead. Look, it’s cool, I’m not going to tell anyone it was you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He quickly averted his eyes, but the dude did not have much of a poker face. He wanted to keep it secret. That was fair. But I couldn’t let it go. I’d found somebody who shared my interests: namely, horror movies, and a clear contempt of Lux McCray.

“I saw you with the speaker.”

Freddie kept his eyes glued to the ground. “I didn’t have anything to do with the séance. Someone else did.”

“Oh yeah? Who?”

“Greta. She was clearly upset that we disturbed her.”

I rolled my eyes, but when Freddie looked up, he seemed more amused than annoyed. I was glad I hadn’t completely scared him away.

“Okay, hypothetically, say it was me,” Freddie said. “You’re accusing me of setting up an elaborate prank to scare people. Why would I do something like that?”

“Because you don’t like those people. Because you’re not like them and maybe they deserve it. Because you like scary movies and maybe you’ve seen it all before and none of it really frightens you anymore.”

It was a lot. Too much to say to someone I had just met. And now that I’d said it I wondered if I was actually talking about him or me. But Freddie was smirking again. While I had found it kind of cute minutes before, it was completely aggravating now.

“You’ve been hanging around Saundra Clairmont too much, Rachel. There are no pranksters at our school. Do you really think all those millionaires would allow their kids to get terrorized?”

“How do you know I hang out with Saundra?”

“I’ve noticed you.”

I’d noticed him too, although I never would have admitted it. But Freddie didn’t look the least bit embarrassed, letting the words hang heavy between us.

But my mind snagged on something else he’d said. There are no pranksters