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

because she couldn’t handle the notion that there was somebody in her class who she knew nothing about. Because as I soon discovered, Saundra Clairmont’s defining characteristic was her burning compulsion to know absolutely everything about absolutely everyone.

So that day, I fed her some morsels about myself. Before Manchester, I went to public school on Long Island. I lived there with my mom until we decided to move to New York City.

Unlike the majority of the students, I was not rich or a legacy or technically a scholarship kid. I only got in because my mom was the ninth- and tenth-grade American History teacher. So, yeah—my mom had a knack for getting me to go places I didn’t want to go.

But now, as Saundra and I sped toward Williamsburg, I’d gone from not wanting to go to this party to dreading it. The thought of seeing all those people, not a single one of whom would talk to me—it made my throat tighten. Worst of all was knowing that I’d have to pretend. Pretend to be a part of their world, to be like them. I was about to tell Saundra that I wasn’t feeling that great, but then the Lyft pulled up to the place. Saundra bounced out of the car and I scrambled after her.

We walked up to the abandoned house, which looked straight out of a late-’80s urban horror movie. All of the windows were boarded up with weathered, graffitied wood and there were multiple signs stuck to the door, with tiny print that was surely warning us to stay away. It was crammed between a closed warehouse and an empty lot with a FOR SALE sign on its chain-link fence.

But there was one bright spot. A girl sat on the stoop, dressed goth-black, her ghostly face hovering over a book. Her fingers blocked the title, but the sharp corners of Stephen King’s name peeked out on the cover. I liked Stephen King movies. Maybe I could strike up a conversation with this girl. Maybe this was my kind of party after all.

“Hey, Felicity!” Saundra said. Felicity looked up from the book, glaring from underneath micro bangs. She didn’t return Saundra’s greeting.

“Okay then, bye.” Saundra looped her arm through mine and pulled me up the steps. “Leave it to Felicity Chu to bring a book to a party.”

The living room was packed with a couple dozen people laughing, joking, and sloshing drinks in their hands. The inside of the house wasn’t much better than the outside. The wallpaper was moldy where it wasn’t peeling, the floors were sticky linoleum, the only light came from heavy-duty construction lights, and you could practically smell the asbestos in the air. But nobody seemed to care.

I didn’t know exactly what I had expected at rich-kid parties, but this wasn’t it. I found it kind of ironic that they’d all left their cushy palaces to get their thrills in a house that was falling apart.

“Gonna grab a drink,” Saundra yelled over the music.

“I’ll come with you.” But when I turned around, she was already gone, swallowed up by the crowd. The only thing worse than going to a party you don’t want to be at is being at that party solo. I wasn’t gonna hang around as the lonely buoy lost in a sea of friends. There was only one thing left to do: hide in the bathroom.

Walking up the stairs was like entering a portal. The sounds of bottles and bad pop music faded away, eclipsed by a dank darkness that thickened with every step. Usually, my anxiety dissipated once I walked away from a crowd and into a pocket of quiet. It was like breathing into a paper bag, a quick way to calm myself down. But not this time.

I stood at the top of the stairs, waiting until my eyes adjusted to the dark and I was able to make out shadowy shapes. I clicked my phone on for some light, enough to see that the hallway was covered in a flowery wallpaper. As I felt my way down the hallway, though, the faded blooming petals turned creepy, like wrinkled, witchy faces.

My breath hitched at the sight of a door slightly ajar. The crack was so black it was impossible to tell what was inside that room, and holding my phone up to it didn’t help. There could’ve been a person standing right there, watching me, and I wouldn’t have known. This place was getting to me.

I should’ve turned around and left, but I was at a party. I wanted to be carefree and normal and stupid. Not someone jumping at every shadow. So, I pushed my fears aside and shoved the door open.

It was the bathroom after all. No one inside. The lights didn’t work, and neither did the faucet, but it was quiet. I pulled out my phone and pulled up Instagram. Nothing good ever came from going to his page, but I couldn’t stop myself. I knew it was bad for me, but I downed the poison anyway.

I clicked on the picture of him and his best friend in their soccer uniforms. My eyes traced the strands of his hair, his dark amber eyes, nearly shut with glee. And the dimples. His wide, dimpled smile was a sucker punch to the gut. Below the post were hundreds of comments from his friends. I’d read every one of them, multiple times. If I started to read them again now, I could lose hours.

But then I heard a voice. It was indistinguishable at first, but it had an angry cadence.

I was clearly not the only one upstairs. I quietly left the bathroom and followed the voice to the room next door. I realized there were actually two people speaking in hushed, insistent tones. An argument.

The door swung open and I had just enough time to get out of the way as Bram Wilding stormed out of the room, his creamy skin flushed red. He didn’t notice me. But