The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky (ebook reader for manga TXT) 📕

my own door. Felicity slipped on a pair of jet-black oversize shades that covered nearly the entire top half of her face.

With her shades and her Burberry trench, her gray school uniform was almost beside the point. Felicity tromped across the cobblestone streets like she owned them. I followed her past the Stella McCartney and Diane von Furstenberg storefronts all the way to the edge of the district, where the loading zones of factories butted up against the West Side Highway. There apparently were still meatpacking places in the Meatpacking District. My fear of being trapped in a meat locker with Felicity reappeared.

The farther we waded into the loading zone, the stronger the smell of thawing flesh got. The place was busy, with men in rubber boots climbing from the backs of open trucks to enter the cavernous warehouses. On the other side of us there was just a chain-link fence separating us from the highway traffic that whizzed past. There was grunting. Shouting. Anyplace I looked I saw grime. The trucks, the workmen’s clothes, their hands. Cow blood everywhere.

Felicity seemed to see none of it, though. She strutted through the loading zone like it was her living room.

There was a man with a dolly unloading a truck and Felicity walked right up to him. “I’m looking for Roger,” she said.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Just tell Roger that Dolores Claiborne is waiting for him,” she snapped, then added reluctantly, “please.”

The guy looked her over for a minute, but then went inside to get this mysterious Roger.

“Dolores Claiborne?” I hissed.

“One of Stephen’s seminal works.”

“You’re on a first-name basis?”

“If you so much as—”

“What?” I said, fighting back a laugh as Felicity got riled up. “It’s cute.”

She looked like she wanted to kill me.

“What kind of supplies are we picking up here?” I asked.

But before Felicity could answer, another man came outside, wearing a rubber apron covered in questionable juices. It should’ve been gross, but Felicity and I exchanged glances—it’d make an amazing costume for a Fear Test.

He jumped off the loading dock and met us on the asphalt. “Dolores?”

Felicity raised one finger. “You got it?”

Roger looked to see if anyone was watching us. There were other men milling around the loading zone, but all of them seemed too busy carrying boxes, and in some cases, whole slabs of meat. He reached into a plastic bag and took out a hook.

A big hook. The kind you could stick in a pig and use to drag it across the ground. It looked like the same hook the fisherman in I Know What You Did Last Summer used to kill all those ’90s heartthrobs. Except this one had a—

“Neon-orange rubber grip?” Felicity said. “We didn’t agree on that. And it’s not very sharp.”

“This is a quality boning hook,” Roger protested. “The handle is for your comfort.”

“I don’t want comfortable,” Felicity said. “I want menacing. I want someone to see it and pee their pants. I want it sharp and without that ridiculous rubber grip. And I want it now.”

There were no ifs or buts about it. While her obvious sense of privilege would normally make me roll my eyes, I had to admit that I kind of admired Felicity here. Not the brattiness, but the asking for what she wanted. Demanding it.

Roger opened his mouth to argue with her, then seemed to think better of it. He he let his shoulders slump and said, “Okay. But it’s gonna cost you extra.”

Felicity flicked her wrist dismissively. “Whatever.”

“What does a nice girl like you need a boning hook for anyway?”

“Is this the News at 5? Just get me the hook.”

Yeah, Felicity really wasn’t good at talking to people. Roger plodded back into the plant and Felicity and I were left outside to wait.

“We came down here for a hook?” I said. “Couldn’t you find one online?”

“What, and leave a paper trail? Naïvete is not cute, Rachel.”

When Roger came back out, he pulled another hook out of the plastic bag. This hook didn’t look new at all. There was no gleam to the steel. It was smudged and almost rusted in parts. But the sharp curve matched Felicity’s smile perfectly.

“I’ll take it,” she said.

 23

SIM SMITH

SIM SMITH’S STEPDAD was a used-car salesman but dressed like he operated a lot full of brand-new Porsches. Tie pin, bespoke suit, a fat gold Rolex on his wrist, which, according to him, was the only piece of jewelry a man should wear besides brass knuckles. Sim didn’t agree with that.

Sim liked chains. Skinny chains, thick chains, gold, silver, whatever. Chains were hot. He had one necklace with a little vial that had a single grain of rice inside it with a single teeny word inscribed on it: “valor.” It wasn’t Sim’s favorite chain but it looked good on him and he learned real early that girls dug it. So. He wore a necklace.

The necklace made Sim stand out, and so did the fact that his stepdad owned a car dealership. It wasn’t the bougiest job, especially when compared to everyone else’s parents at Manchester (there was a kid in Sim’s grade—Steeper Carlyle—whose dad was a friggin’ sportscaster), but Sim enjoyed the perks. It wasn’t because he could have whatever car he wanted. No, the best perk about Sim’s stepdad owning a used-car lot was the fact that Sim could take girls there.

There were so many cars—at least a hundred—but squeezed together, they looked like a sea of thousands. And you could just get in one and then lots of stuff could happen inside. Plus: reclining seats. The most beautiful two words in the English language. Hooking up with girls here was a total win-win. You had complete privacy and new(ly refurbished)-car smell, and all Sim had to do was wait ’til his stepdad was asleep and then swipe his work keys.

Sim had a name for this little spot on Flatlands Avenue where the lot was: Sim’s Point. ’Cause he figured, all those old movies where the teenagers park