He put everything he had into that punch. The hurt and betrayal, the disgust and horror, the fury and grief. All the frustration and rage he’d been holding back for the past months, because, why not? Now he could funnel it into good. There was a satisfyingcrunchas his knuckles met Mikey’s face. Mikey dropped the phone and howled like an injured dog. For a split second, Jason enjoyed that both Mikey and Carrie had broken noses. Only for a second, however.
He tried to run, but Carrie blocked his path, wielding that damned axe.
“Nuh-uh,” she said, smiling sweetly.
“You fucker!” Mikey screamed. He grabbed a fistful of Jason’s T-shirt, the chef’s knife curving downwards, and Jason’s right arm suddenly blazed with icy fire.
Jason had never thought much about what being stabbed would feel like. Apparently it was cold and hot at the same time. The painreceptors in his right shoulder shrieked. He cried out, left arm flying up to block additional attacks, anticipating the knife slashing his lungs, his heart, his guts.
“Michael!” Carrie snapped. “We agreedIwas going to kill him. It’s the only way I can get closure.”
The knife stopped midair. A coppery taste filled Jason’s mouth and he realized he’d only bitten his tongue. He wasn’t coughing up blood from a pierced lung. His shoulder was in bad shape, though. Hot blood oozed between the icy fingers of his left hand while his right arm dangled uselessly, debilitated by severed tendons and agony. He’d probably never be able to throw a football again, and the thought oddly flooded him with relief.
“I did it in self-defense!” Mikey whined. But he lowered the knife and picked the phone off the ground.
Carrie paused, regarding Jason thoughtfully. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, and if she hadn’t been carrying the axe, Jason would have believed she was the same shy, demure girl of his high school years.
“Good idea, Michael,” she said.
Mikey’s shoulders straightened and he even preened slightly. It made Jason nauseous.
“We could pin the killings on Jason instead of Russ. It would be more believable,” Carrie continued.
“What’s my motive?” Jason demanded.
“You’re the guy whose girlfriend broke up with him. Tiffany told us she was scared of you, didn’t she, Michael.”
Mikey nodded vigorously, that bastard. “I saw him in the boat with the axe.” Fuck. Jason’s fingerprints were all over that boat, as well as on the axe. “He was so angry. He’s been so angry lately.”
A look of innocent confusion crossed Carrie’s face. “Who would’ve ever guessed? He was such aniceboy.”
The bottom fell out of Jason’s stomach. It was an easy sell. Tiffanyhadbeen afraid of him, near the end. Jason had thought she was afraid of change, but he could see how it could be construeddifferently. She might have even believed it washimin the Slasher mask, coming for her in the boat. The thought cracked him in two.
Carrie patted Jason’s cheek as condescendingly as she’d patted Mikey’s earlier. Then she bared her teeth in a grimace and ground her gloved fingers into the bloody gash in Jason’s shoulder. Jason bit back an agonized howl as the pressure sent shooting stars of pain down his arm. “Not nice enough to keep a lady’s personal photos to himself.”
She released him, and Jason twitched from the effort to keep his reactions under control. The tension in his jaw ratcheted to a new level as he gritted his teeth against the hysteria that threatened to spill out.
It was no good. He couldn’t hold it in any longer. His body spasmed, and he began to laugh.
Mikey and Carrie stared at him, which only set him off more. He laughed long and hard, even though every twitch sent a white-hot spike through his wounded shoulder.
He knew something Carrie didn’t.
“I never showed that photo to anyone,” Jason wheezed. “I deleted it as soon as I saw it. I swear I did. But someone else got to my phone first.”
He looked right at Mikey.
Carrie’s eyes widened. Jason nodded.
“You’re lying!” Mikey said, his nostrils flaring. “Kill him now, Carrie. Get it over with.”
Carrie didn’t move. Jason took that as encouragement to continue. “I drank too much that night.” That moment in the toolshed with Patrick had left him confused, and slipping into his usual persona as the partying popular jock was easier than questioning his feelings. “Mikey drove me and Tiff home. I didn’t check my phone until the next morning.”
“It was Tiffany!” Mikey said. “She was jealous!”
Jason shook his head, accepting that Mikey hadn’t changed at all in the past four years. People never changed, did they. Notfundamentally. He and his friends really were, when painted with broad strokes, the roles they’d played in theSlashershadow cast. The jock, the preppy, the cheerleader. The bad girl, the stoner, the nerd. The whole eighties stockpile of archetypes.
And Carrie, who was set up to be the Final Girl in more ways than one. A good girl who hadn’t known how to get rid of her halo, and so when she did, she went too far. Probably with her therapist’s encouragement.
