Final Girl by Michelle Schusterman (beach books .TXT) 📕

skEllen [member]

OMG THEY WOULD NEVER LET EMILY NEAR MY PRECIOUS SAM AGAIN!!!1!!!

WHEN it snowed a few days after we got to New York, it was kind of magical. Like being in one of those miniature Christmas villages set up in the department store windows, surrounded by cotton ball fluff. But a few weeks later . . . well, it was kind of gross. Along the curbs and sidewalks, the shoveled snow had hardened into dirty gray slush. It was frozen solid, and I could see piles of trash bags trapped inside like flies in amber.

Not so magical.

I pulled my hood over my head and quickened my pace as I turned onto West 96th Street. The bitter wind cut right through my gloves, and shoving my hands in my coat pockets only helped a little. Not for the first time, I wished the crew had just decided to stay in Argentina over the holidays.

Except not really, because Jamie wasn’t in Argentina.

I was walking so fast, I almost missed the sign for Madder’s Museum of the Paranormal. It was hanging over an otherwise nondescript glass door sandwiched between a gelato shop and a really expensive-looking boutique that apparently sold only the kinds of caps worn by old men and newspaper boys in movies set in the 1930s. Slipping a little on the icy sidewalk, I pulled open the door and hurried inside.

For a second, I thought I’d accidentally walked into someone’s home. All the museums I’d ever been to were spacious, usually with a giant foyer that split off into several halls. This looked more like an apartment—and a pretty small one, too. Except instead of sofas and chairs, it was filled with shelves and glass cabinets holding all sorts of creepy stuff: old dolls with cracked porcelain faces; jars filled with murky liquid; skulls and bones that might’ve been fake, but it was hard to tell. I spotted a stained wooden Ouija board and made a mental note to tell Mi Jin to check out this place before we left New York.

“Kat!” Jamie waved from the back of the room. Next to him, a petite middle-aged woman with bright blue hair and a Ghostbusters T-shirt beamed at me.

“Kat Sinclair!” she called, skirting around a cabinet and hurrying toward me. “Oh wow, it’s so cool to meet you!”

I blinked in surprise as she grabbed my gloved hand and shook. “Um, hi!”

“Carrie Madder. My mom owns this place, but she’s retiring next month so I’m basically running it now. I’ve been reading your blog since the beginning,” she rambled, helping me out of my coat and hanging it on a rack by the door. “I’m on the P2P forums all the time, too. We miss having you on there, by the way!”

I smiled, trying not to cringe. I’d stopped hanging out on the fan forums last month when this troll kept posting horrible things about me. Horrible things that I knew weren’t true, but that I still thought about every day.

“That’s so cool!” I said, hoping my face wasn’t red. “I’ve never met someone from the forums in real life before. What’s your username?”

“Presidentskroob,” Carrie replied. “Man, you and Oscar are so great. I’ve always loved this show, but it’s even better with you guys on it.”

Now I was definitely blushing. “Thanks!”

Jamie joined us. “Carrie was just telling me there’s supposedly going to be a guest star for the finale,” he told me eagerly. As usual, his smile set off a ridiculous amount of fluttering in my stomach. “Have you heard anything?”

“No, nothing.” I smiled back at him, resisting the urge to press my frozen hands to my flaming-hot cheeks. We’d spent a lot of time together the last few weeks, but always with his sister, Hailey, and Oscar. This was the first time it was just the two of us since our first date to a graveyard in Buenos Aires. Well, just the two of us and a really chatty museum curator. Part of me wished Carrie wasn’t around, but another part of me was relieved. I loved hanging out with Jamie, but calling this a date made it different. Exciting and a little bit nerve-racking.

“Well, if the host’s daughter and the network VP’s son don’t know anything, maybe it’s really just a rumor,” Carrie was saying. “That’s a bummer.”

“Not necessarily,” Jamie said. “My dad pretty much never tells us anything about the show.”

“But Kat’s a cast member,” Carrie said, grinning at me. “They wouldn’t keep her in the dark, right?”

I pictured my dad’s unsigned contract and shrugged. “I don’t know. They might, to be honest.”

“Well, if there is a guest, I know for sure it’s not Bernice Boyd.” Carrie lowered her voice, despite the fact that we were the only ones in the museum. “I saw her last time I went to the natural history museum and asked.” She snorted. “A few fans think it’s Emily Rosinski. As if they’d ever do that, no matter how wild the ratings would be.”

At the mention of Emily’s name, goose bumps broke out on my arms. “She’s in a psychiatric hospital,” I said, keeping my voice even. “There’s no way.”

“Oh, I know,” Carrie said hastily. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought her up.”

A slightly awkward silence fell, quickly broken by Jamie. “So, where’s all the thoughtography stuff?”

Carrie’s face lit up. “In the back room! Follow me.”

She led the way around the shelves to a corridor. Jamie took my hand and squeezed, and we smiled at each other. My frozen fingers finally started to thaw. But I couldn’t help getting chills as I pictured Emily the last time I’d seen her. Knocking Oscar unconscious, pulling out her knife, forcing me up the twisting staircase to the prison guard tower, and—

“Ta-da!” Carrie exclaimed, and I jumped, jerking my hand out of Jamie’s grip. He gave me a concerned look, which I pretended not to see. “Our psychic photography exhibit. I helped curate all of this—thoughtography’s kind of