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

their cars and make out? It was always at some scenic point. And there wasn’t anything like that in Brooklyn. So. He made it happen.

It was kind of what he was known for at Manchester. If somebody at school wanted access to a car for fooling around, all they had to do was either pay up or do Sim’s homework for a week. And nobody ever tried to steal the cars ’cause they knew if they did, Sim’s stepdad would break their legs. So. Win-win-win.

The moral of the story was that Sim loved his stepdad, like, a lot. Just for making Sim’s Point possible. And right at this moment, Jennifer Abrams seemed to love Sim a lot, too. She was hanging all over him as they walked among the cars. It was after eleven, and in this part of Brooklyn, that meant there was no one and nothing around to disrupt them, just the changing traffic lights and the B47 bus passing every twenty minutes beyond the chain-link fence.

Sim checked himself out in the darkened driver-side window of a Toyota Corolla. Hair was properly coifed with a good two inches of height. Supreme Playboy pocket tee hanging mostly loose, except for the strategic French tuck in the front of his Burberry slim fit jeans. His midnight-blue velvet bomber jacket by—

“Can we go?” Jennifer said, tugging him toward a cherry-red Jaguar. “Let’s get in this one.”

Sim pretended to consider it, tilting his head, cocking his eyebrows as he examined the car. It was nice, definitely, but … no reclining seats. So. “I got just the car for us, babe.”

His turn to tug on Jennifer’s arm now, but she stood her ground like a boulder. “This is a Jaguar.” She said it like she was out of a Mary Poppins movie or something. Jag-you-AHH.

Sim huffed. There was one car out deep in the lot that he liked to use. It was just a 2004 Volvo. A junkbomb. But there was room. No stick shift to poke him at the worst possible time, and the seats were worn polyester, which was really so much more comfortable than it sounded. Way more comfortable than the reupholstered stuff, which could be slippery and always squeaked. The 2004 Volvo was his lucky car. It got him lucky. The Jaguar was all wrong. So.

“This other car…,” Sim said, trying to think something up quick, “it’s got a surprise for you.”

Jennifer’s lips turned up at the corners and her eyes sparkled behind her glasses. “What kind of surprise?”

“You’ll see.” Sim didn’t know what it was about glasses, but he loved them. Anybody ever asked, he told them it was a librarian fetish or something, but he just liked that it made girls’ eyes look big and bright. Any time there was a magazine lying around and he was bored, Sim would draw glasses on the girls in the pictures.

The last girl Sim had dated didn’t wear glasses, but he liked that she had a temper. It was hot. He def/prob should’ve ended things with her before starting things up with Jennifer, but Sim wasn’t smooth like that. Didn’t know the proper formula for the how and when of sidepiece management. So instead of figuring it all out, Sim had bounced. It was like his stepdad always said: Don’t fix your problems—dump ’em. And Felicity Chu was a problem.

Sim led Jennifer to the Volvo, which was surrounded by prettier cars like no one would notice the difference. Jennifer could tell, though. She didn’t look impressed. “What’s the surprise?”

“The car’s name is Jennifer,” Sim said. “I named her after you.”

He waited. And then Jennifer jumped on him, her hands all over the sides of his face and her mouth all over his. Worked. Every. Time. They got in the car but—

Wait.

“Did you hear that?” Sim said, breaking their kiss.

“Hear what?”

“There was, like … a thud.”

“That was my heart,” Jennifer said.

Whatever, a girl was on top of him. Sim wasn’t about to waste any more time. He peeled off his midnight-blue blue velvet Armani bomber jacket and focused on the important stuff. More lips. The two kept kissing, but then Sim heard it again. Not the exact same noise. A sort of scratching this time.

And it was closer. Right on top of them.

“You didn’t hear that?”

“Sim.”

“No seriously, there was scratching on the roof. You didn’t hear it?”

“All I hear is my doubt, telling me that maybe I shouldn’t be in a car with a guy who is making excuses not to make out with me.”

“But I heard—”

“You want to hear something so bad, fine!” Jennifer took out her phone and Lady Gaga’s voice drifted into the Volvo, telling them they couldn’t read her poker face.

Sim wasn’t about to sit here with a totally hot girl and just listen to music all night. So. He flipped her over, reached to the side of Jennifer’s seat, and pulled its lever. He hovered over her as she slowly reclined backward. He started kissing her again, proving how focused he was on nothing but her.

And the noise he’d heard. Yeah, he couldn’t get it out of his mind, like, at all. Which made Sim keep his eyes open. Which was a weird way to kiss someone, but it allowed him to spot a shadow looming just beyond the rear window. And soon, there wasn’t just a shadow, but movement. Something dark flashed outside the car. Sim’s lips stopped moving. Had he closed the gate in the chain-link fence? But he always closed the gate. Did he forget to lock it, though?

“Why aren’t you kissing me back?” Jennifer asked. “It’s like I’m kissing a dead fish.”

The closer the shadow got, the more it looked like a person. Someone must have snuck in. No telling if it was male or female, just someone wearing a thick black coat, a hoodie pulled so low it obscured their face.

Sim crouched over Jennifer, frozen, as she continued to paw at his clothing obliviously. The shadowy figure was ten paces away.

Five.

Jennifer let out