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

moment that all the intensity I was feeling wasn’t just due to the movie. A lot of it—the nausea, the revulsion—was due to him.

I didn’t let my eyes waver. This dance of ours that started at the Halloween party continued here. As I watched Bram, I pictured the clamps from A Clockwork Orange on his own eyes, piercing beyond his eyelids, into his eyes themselves, making them bleed.

“Pause it.” I said it in a low voice, like I was testing it out. But Bram, who had been watching me and clearly waiting for me to buckle, heard it. It was only when the screen froze that the rest of the club realized what had happened. “Are you scared?” Felicity asked, her grin spread so far back I could practically see her molars. “You know what happens when one of us gets scared.”

Thayer looked at me with excitement, only to soften when he saw my expression. “This is obviously triggering for her,” he whispered.

“I’m not scared,” I said, standing up. I didn’t want them to see the lie on my face. Even Freddie, who tilted his head, trying to catch my gaze. But I avoided looking at any of them. The movie had shaken me. “I’m just realizing the time. I have a test to prep for, and not just of the fear variety.”

“You’re scared,” Felicity teased.

The words were Felicity’s but Bram might as well have been the one who’d spoken. I couldn’t stomach the idea that he’d gotten to me. That his mind games were working. I grabbed my book bag and coat.

“Hey, you’re not going anywhere,” Felicity continued. “We follow rules here. You can’t just duck out because you don’t like the movie.”

Was she serious right now? “You ran out of Urban Legend.”

Felicity dwelled on this for a moment. “That was justified.”

I was this close to going full Linda Blair on her.

“Lay off, Felicity,” Freddie said, then got up as if to follow me, but I left the study quickly and then jogged down the stairs and out the front door without stopping. When I was on the street I heard Freddie shout my name. He chased me for nearly an entire block before I spun around to face him. We almost knocked into each other.

“What’s going on?” he panted, catching his breath. “Why’d you take off like that?”

“Do you guys talk about the Mary Shelley Club outside of the club?” I asked.

“What? No. You know the rules.”

“Bram does,” I said. “Bram talks to Lux about it.”

“He wouldn’t.”

I breathed in. Getting air was still hard, but the swift shot of cold felt good. “Why would he choose that movie?”

Freddie exhaled in a puff of white and readjusted his glasses. “Bram likes art-house horror. But I don’t think he picked Funny Games thinking it would get to you.”

“Of course he did.”

“It’s just a movie, Rachel.”

Freddie’s words felt like a slap. No, like a pat on the head. Like I didn’t understand the difference between fiction and reality; between monsters and boys. Like my feelings didn’t matter. “I don’t need you patronizing me—”

“I wasn’t!” Freddie cut in, eyes wide.

“I’m not a toddler.”

Freddie stepped back and dug his fingers beneath his glasses, rubbing his eyes. I already felt ostracized by Bram—by Thayer and Felicity, who never related to a horror movie. Freddie had come after me, but it seemed like every word we uttered was another brick thrown on the wall forming between us. Freddie didn’t understand either.

But then he put down his hands. His eyes were filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry,” he said. He closed the gap between us, and when he put his arms around me, I let him. “I’ll talk to Bram if you want.”

I shook my head against Freddie’s chest. I wanted to put this night behind me. I didn’t want to spend any more time thinking about Bram. I didn’t want to think about Funny Games. And I especially didn’t want to think about the fact that my fears weren’t as gone as I’d thought they were.

 30

THE NEXT TIME I saw anyone from the club was at the Shustrine when Thayer and I worked our weekend shift. Both screens at the theater were well into their showings, which meant I could leave my post at the door and join Thayer at the concession stand. Immediately he brought up the last club meeting.

“The Mary Shelley Club is fun,” Thayer said. “But it isn’t a perfect little oasis. Now you know that.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.” A part of me felt like I shouldn’t have run out like I did. I’d let my emotions get to me. But the main reason I didn’t want to revisit that night was because I didn’t want to think about Bram. I went to the popcorn station and half-filled one of the small popcorn bags, keeping my hand on the butter pump for an unhealthy length of time.

Thayer was slumped over the candy counter staring at his phone. He’d designed his phone case himself. It had one of those Evolution of Man–type charts, but instead of sketches of a caveman and Homo erectus, it was called “The Evolution of Jason” and depicted the Friday the 13th killer in all his incarnations. There was Mutant Lake Child Jason, Pitchfork-Wielding Pillowhead Jason, and ultimately it evolved into Jason in Space with a fishbowl astronaut’s helmet over the hockey mask.

Thayer was watching Sleepaway Camp, a remake of the movie that held the distinction of being both the worst ’80s movie and the worst horror movie of all time. So of course, it’d been rebooted. Now it starred America’s teen sweetheart, Ashley Woodstone.

“I heard she got a dialect coach to nail the Brooklyn accent,” I said, hopping onto the stool next to Thayer and wiping butter off my chin.

“Real dedication, considering she barely has any speaking lines.”

“Truly the Meryl Streep of our generation.”

As far as weekend jobs went, this was a pretty sweet gig. All the movie-smell popcorn I