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

He’d run and stomp and slam the back door on his way out. But that was our backup plan. If Lux could get scared at the mere sound of buzzing flies, then I was pretty sure I could get her to at least scream at the sound of an abruptly slammed door.

Then, Thayer, Felicity, and Freddie would rendezvous at the outdoor benches of the Top of the Muffin café three blocks away.

Which left Bram and me.

We were staked out at the playground across the street, an optimal vantage point for us to watch the house, and for me to watch Bram watch his girlfriend get scared.

It was twisted and wrong, what I was doing—what I was forcing Bram to do—but it was the nature of this game. My Fear Test made this mean streak in me acceptable—expected, even—and I was going to embrace it.

But sitting together in silence wasn’t making this easy. I knew, though, that a part of me must’ve craved this tension, where the only sound between us was the straining squeal of the swing chains. I wanted to force this moment between Bram and me. We needed to have some words. I decided they were going to be on my terms.

Except neither of us said anything. Our silence was accentuated by the sounds around us. The distant patter of boots on pavement from beyond the playground gates, a car stopping at a traffic light, the swing chains with their piercing rhythmic screeches.

Bram sat cozy in the chunkiest cable-knit sweater I’d ever seen. With the sleeves pooling over his knuckles and his hair flopping over his eyes, he looked like a kid. An intimidating one. The longer we went without speaking, the stronger the sheet of ice between us became. I needed to crack it.

“Why do you want me out of the club?”

Bram had been expecting the question. He planted his feet in the ground and pushed off, swinging just slightly more than he had been before. “Is this why you assigned me this role? So we could chat?”

“You want me out of the club because you knew I’d go after Lux. Right?”

Bram’s legs quit pumping and he eventually slowed to a full stop. When he looked at me he leaned his cheek against the swing’s chain, which tugged down his skin, revealing the pink under his eyelid. His face morphed into something ugly. “I want you out of the club because you don’t belong.”

The bluntness of his statement, said without irony or shame, struck me hard. Did I not belong because I was a freak? Because we weren’t of the same class? If I’d had any doubt before that Bram hated me, I was clear on it now. “You’re a prick.”

His mouth twisted in a rueful smirk. “I’m sorry if that hurt your feelings, but what do you expect? You’re about to scare my girlfriend.”

“She’s my target. You, on the other hand, can walk away if you want to. No one’s twisting your arm to be here, Bram.”

“I have to be here. Those are the rules.”

I had hoped that talking to him would bring some clarity, peel back one of his masks so I could understand him better. But all he was doing was layering them on now. I was more lost than ever. “What kind of monster does this to his own girlfriend?”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“This isn’t the first time you’re doing this to her either,” I continued. “The séance Fear Test at the abandoned house—Lux was scared the most.”

“She wasn’t supposed to be at that party,” Bram said, and I thought I heard remorse trickling into his voice. “It wasn’t her scene.”

“You still went through with it.”

“I tried to get her to leave.” He pinched his sleeves between his fingers, the wool looking like the hand wraps boxers use. “We fought about it at the party.”

I remembered hearing them arguing in one of the rooms upstairs. He looked at me, his gaze sharp enough to cut. “Lux and I have our problems. We fight and we break up and we get back together. But I care about her.”

“You might care about her, but you don’t love her. Not really,” I said. “You wouldn’t be doing this if you did.”

“You really want to talk about monsters?” Bram said. He dug his shoulder into the chain and leaned toward me so that we were inches apart. My first instinct was to look away, cross my arms. But I couldn’t break eye contact. He wasn’t looking at me but through me. Like he saw in me what I spent every moment trying to hide.

“I find it really interesting that you chose this for your Fear Test. Not Lux—anyone could’ve guessed you were always going to choose Lux. But the fact that we’re staging it as a home invasion.”

“This isn’t a home invasion,” I corrected him. “No one’s going to be seen—”

“You went through something awful on a quiet night in a quiet house,” Bram cut me off. “And now you’re going to put someone else through that. So yeah, let’s talk about monsters, Rachel. Let’s talk about how fucked up this is.”

I was the one who’d wanted to talk, to air things out, to take the gloves off. And now it felt like I was backed up against the ropes. Guilt tugged at my edges, making my fingers twitch, making me want to reach for my phone and call the whole test off. Was I going too far? Was this still just a game?

But I knew why I’d chosen this for my Fear Test. A part of me wanted to have all this play out—the girl in a big, scary house—and be on the other side of it. I needed to look at what had happened to me from a different angle. I had the chance to be the puppet master this time, to change the outcome, to have everything come out safe and okay. This was catharsis.

“Lux may toy with people sometimes,” Bram continued. “But