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

when I’d painted his face with my fingers and we’d discussed safe words, never thinking I’d ever need to use one with him. Back in a time before I really knew how screwed up this game could be.

I let out a shaky sigh as I felt the pressure of Freddie’s knife lessen, his hand dropping slightly. But then something hardened in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Rachel, I can’t break the rules. I can’t let you go.”

That wasn’t good enough.

Maybe my mom was right. Maybe I should join the field hockey team, because I kneed Freddie in the groin so hard that he groaned and dropped his knife. He stumbled, reached for the blade, but I got to it first. I grabbed it and swung, knocking its hilt into the bridge of his nose, which exploded with a satisfying crunch. It was enough to knock him onto his back.

I took off.

I hoped the trees and the darkness were enough cover. After everything, after the truth, after seeing who was really behind the mask, I kept coming back to the fact that all of this was just a childish game. Not just the club itself, but even this very moment, when I was at once running for my life, panting for breath, and basically playing a fucking game of tag. Only, if I was caught, I was dead.

My warring thoughts, my racing heart, the darkness of the park—it was all closing in on me, and before I realized it was there, I’d slammed into something. No, someone. I bounced back, expecting Freddie and already swinging my arms, but it was Bram.

I recoiled but then I remembered I didn’t have to be scared. I was still gripping the knife in my hand. I held it up over my head like Norman Bates had taught me.

“Rachel, wait.” Bram took a step back, his hands out, showing me that they were empty.

“I know everything!” I barked, my voice shredded. “I know I’m the target!”

“Rachel, I’m on your side.”

“Bullshit!” Of course he would say that. I aimed the knife at his lying mouth. “I don’t believe you.”

“You shouldn’t!” Freddie called, walking through the trees to us, a hand clamped over his bleeding nose. “Bram was in on it the whole time. He’s the Stu to my Billy Loomis!”

Freddie walked up next to Bram and I swung the knife between the two boys to keep them back. It felt as useless as swinging a twig between two approaching lions. Both of these assholes were dangerous and I didn’t trust either of them. But there was something I could do—a last-ditch effort to see if Bram was lying.

“Thayer told me we aren’t the only ones playing. What did he mean?”

“I’ll tell you everything,” Bram said, but before he could say anything more, Freddie tackled me. The next thing I knew my mouth was shoveling snow and the knife had flown out of my hand. I scrambled up, searching for it, but by then, the knife was back in Freddie’s hands like it’d never left. He was so close that I had no time to run, only to brace myself as he lurched toward me. I raised my arms to shield myself, expecting to feel the sting of the blade slashing through my thick sleeves. As the knife came hurtling toward me, I shut my eyes instinctively.

Instead, I heard a groan.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that Freddie’s knife was shiny with red. And that Bram was holding a hand to his chest. The scene in front of me almost didn’t make sense, but the blood seeping through Bram’s fingers painted the picture for me. He stumbled backward, looking just as shocked as I felt. He turned to Freddie, as though to ask him why he’d done that, but when he opened his mouth to speak, only blood came sputtering out.

As Bram slumped to the ground, Freddie turned to face me. “This is how it’s going to go,” he said, out of breath and sweating. “I’m going to tell the police that you were scared, kept talking about some guy from your break-in last year who followed you all the way to the city. You were afraid he was going to kill you. I’m going to say that it turned out to be Bram. I tried to fight him—I tried to save you, I really did—but I was too late. He got to you. He killed you.”

Hearing Freddie narrate my death made me choke back a sob.

“And when he came after me, well”—Freddie used the back of his hand to wipe the moisture from his forehead, never letting go of the knife—“We both know how easy it is to lie about ‘self-defense.’”

I shook my head, my ears ringing, my eyes stinging with tears. “I never lied about that.”

“Yes, you did.” The force of his words seemed to propel Freddie forward. “You want to know why all of this happened? Why I picked you? I did it because you lied, Rachel. You killed Matthew Marshall.”

It was like he’d just pushed me off a cliff. Matthew’s name sounded so foreign coming out of Freddie’s mouth. It didn’t belong to him. I wanted to reach out, stick my hand inside Freddie’s mouth, and pull his tongue out. I would hold tight with my fingernails. I would pull until it tore off, until his face didn’t look a face anymore.

I could’ve done that. And in another life I might have. But as I watched Freddie, fixing his grip on the knife, I recognized something in him. The monster inside.

Freddie and I were two sides of the same coin. Fear had created me, lured out the monster who reacted recklessly, who’d killed Matthew. For Freddie it was anger that made him this way. I could see it so clearly now. Freddie was a puppet to his anger. But I wasn’t going to let my fear control me anymore. I wouldn’t be reckless.

I would fight—I would do everything to stop him. But I knew