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

My phone buzzed in the front pocket of my bag and I bent down to take it out. Another text from Freddie, asking how I was doing and if I wanted to talk. It was the latest in a string of texts he’d sent me, all of which I’d left unanswered. I couldn’t deal with him or anyone else in the club. Any last remnants of the Mary Shelley Club’s fun and playfulness had died with Saundra. If it’d ever really been fun or playful to begin with.

I slogged through my classes, wondering if I should’ve taken my mom’s advice to stay home. In art, our teacher, Paul, said we should let out whatever emotions we might be feeling today in whatever expression and medium we wanted. To my left, a girl who hadn’t stopped crying since the beginning of class was cutting a broken heart out of construction paper. To my right a boy was drawing Deadpool.

I went to the supply closet pretending to get materials, but mostly looking for a quiet place where I didn’t need to do anything. Not be brave or sad. I stared at the shelves in front of me, numb with guilt and grief.

It was a while before someone walked in. Of course, it was Lux.

“Oh,” she said. “You.”

“Oh,” I said flatly. “Me.”

I expected her to say something mean. Like how my freckles were too much, on account of how pale I probably looked. Or how my uniform somehow looked like it was still crumpled on my bedroom floor. But Lux only tugged on her ski cap, fixing it so it was perfectly centered over her forehead. Her mandatory accessory only made me feel guiltier.

“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” I said. It was the best I could come up with, short of admitting that I was pretty much responsible for her accident. Lux could be mean, but she hadn’t deserved to get hurt. Saundra hadn’t deserved to die. And I didn’t deserve to stand in the middle of this mess and remain unscathed.

Lux looked surprised by my statement. And she surprised me with her response. “Just FYI, I wasn’t, like, going to tell anybody about that boy you knew. Who died.”

It was like I had entered a different universe, or at least a different art supply closet. Because the last time we’d been here our conversation was kind of the exact opposite of this one. Last time Lux had chanted his name, taunted me. Now she avoided saying it. Maybe the accident had made her realize some things.

Or maybe I had Lux all wrong. She wasn’t the typical horror archetype. Not the Babysitter, not the Victim, not the Bitch. Just Lux. Mean one day, not so mean the next.

“And I’m sorry about your friend, too,” Lux added.

My first instinct was to say, Don’t be sorry, but that felt wrong. Thank you didn’t feel any better. Didn’t matter: Lux went on talking.

“It must be traumatic for you. I know what that’s like. I went through a trauma, too. That stuff stays with you.” She gestured toward her cap. “Like, I’m glad I survived, but now I have to wear this stupid thing until my hair grows out.”

I sighed. Even when she was trying to be sympathetic, she still found a way to make it all about herself. Plus, the cap looked amazing on her. I had already spotted several other girls wearing ones like it.

Lux cleared her throat. “When you go through a traumatic experience, it’s important that you have someone to talk to. Which is why I’m talking to you right now. In case you were wondering.”

Watching Lux attempt to be nice was like watching a baby giraffe attempt to walk for the first time. Still, I had to give her points for trying.

“Yeah, trauma sucks,” I said. “At least you have Bram by your side.”

“Is that a joke?” Lux said, her eyes narrowing, instantly looking more like her normal self.

“What?”

“Bram and I broke up.”

“You did?” I’d had no idea, but then why would I? Bram wasn’t exactly an open book. More like an old, thousand-pound tome that came with an ancient lock. “Why?”

“Um, that’s none of your business?” But then Lux looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was near the closet and turned back to face me. “But between you and me? Everyone thinks he’s some big hero and that he saved me the night the Masked Man attacked me. But he didn’t. Like, at all.”

Oh. Was that really enough to break up over? I wasn’t one to judge, but I guess to Lux, if you couldn’t run into a house and KO the madman, you weren’t worthy of her love.

“He doesn’t deserve the blame for what happened to you, though,” I said. “No one could have gotten there quick enough.”

“No, that’s what I’m saying. He was there quick. Almost too quick. Why?”

I stared at her blankly. “I don’t kn—”

“One minute there was some masked freak trying to kill me and I bump my head and black out. The next minute I wake up and Bram’s right there, with a mask and a coat tossed off to the side?”

I could feel my forehead crease, hear my heartbeat loud as an analog clock. Because I wasn’t sure I was actually hearing what Lux was telling me or, more accurately, what she was trying to tell me about her once-loving and now ex-boyfriend Bram.

“You think he was the one wearing that mask and coat?”

Lux looked at me for a moment, the seconds ticking by slowly. “I didn’t say that.”

“So what do you mean?”

Lux seemed to suddenly find it very important to study the tins of colored pencils and charcoal. She shuffled materials around like it was her duty to tidy up.

“Nothing. It just freaked me out,” she said. “One minute there was a masked man and the next minute there was Bram. It was not a good association.”

I swallowed. Why was Lux confiding in me?