“I know there’s at least one other person who doesn’t seem to mind you going full Jamie…” Laurie muses, pulling me out of my thoughts and drawing my eyes to the man standing on the edge of the dance floor with Billie.
“I like him,” she says, and it’s a little concerning that we both know who’s thehimshe’s referring to.
“Who?”My voice is a little too nonchalant when she turns her back to Wes and props herself against the front of the desk.She bumps her shoulder against mine and I grin until my ankle grazes the arm of the coat check attendant lying behind me.It’s hard to have boy talkwhen there’s a dead body in the vicinity.
“I don’t know if I should be thinking about that right now.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t,” she agrees, picking up another rubber band and passing it to me.I didn’t realize it, but the knots have turned into braids.Weaving the elastic is relaxing.As relaxing as any activity can be when you’re trapped and being hunted, so I keep doing it.“But just because you shouldn’t be thinking about it doesn’t mean you won’t.It’s called ‘attraction under aversive conditions.’?”
I look back toward Wes, the way the cotton of his shirt shapes itself against the broad shoulders of his back.“Attraction under aversive conditions” does seem like an accurate description of what I’ve been feeling the whole night.
“Essentially, fear makes you horny,” Laurie continues, and nope, scratch that.“Afraid and horny” is right on the money.I just know that stripping Wes of his shirt would unveil a gift to humanity.Like when Emma Stone has Ryan Gosling take his shirt off inCrazy, Stupid, Love.Wes must feel my eyes on his back because he glances at me.I drop my gaze down to where I’ve tangled my fingers into a knot and murmur, “I’ll have to look into it.”
“I would’ve thought you’d know all about it, being a romance-obsessed horrorphile and all,” Laurie says teasingly when I hold out my bound fingers for her assistance.
“How doyouknow about it?”I ask.
“I was looking up historical social psychology studies.”
“Why?”
She looks at me like I’m an idiot.“For fun.I’m the smart one, remember?”
When she frees my fingers, I go right back to fashioning the elastic into a longer braid.A sigh of frustration draws my gaze to John, his eyebrows stuck together in a cute furrow as he grazes a finger across the pin pad of the door.He steps back from the wall,his fingers combing through his hair, making it stick up in every direction.The sight makes me smile as I twist the rubber bands into another knot.
Laurie follows my gaze.“He’s nice, too.”
He is, and it makes my heart swell in my chest.I wonder if there’s a study about affection—rather than attraction—under aversive conditions.
“More my type?”I ask, even though I already know the answer.I’ve introduced a couple of “Johns” to Laurie in the past.All of them nice and cute and thoughtful.But I wouldn’t be here tonight if any of them had worked out.
“I don’t know if I invest much in types.”She pauses.“Stu is my type.”
“Stu is a douche bag,” I retort.
“Exactly.”
Laurie sighs, drawing my attention to where she’s picked up her own rubber band.Her gaze is hard on the back of the room as she mindlessly threads her fingers over and under each other until the elastic cuts into her skin.“So, if we get out of here—”
“Hey.No.”It’s one thing for me to think it as some involuntary, intrusive thought, but it’s another for her to say it out loud.
“Jamie—”
“Laurie.”I grab her hand, pull the elastic from her fingers, and watch as the blood flows back under the skin.When our eyes meet I can see the fear clearly behind the brown irises that stare back at me.
“Wearegoing to get out of here.If I need to smash every bottle in this fucking place or break every one of those rules from our poster or ruin my chances of having sex with any number of attractive men tonight,weare getting out of this place, we’re going to be okay, and you are going to live a long life making boring-as-shit documentaries.”
It’s a terrible, unfocused, slightly offensive declaration, but itpulls her away from that dark place.And even though her tone is sarcastic, I can tell she means it when she shakes her head and says, “That was beautiful.”
“I’m the dramatic one, remember?”
Maybe that’s why I’m finding this a little easier to navigate.Laurie likes certainty.She lives her life in reason and pragmatism, and none of what has happened so far tonight falls into those categories.
Laurie suddenly shifts away from the desk, and that’s my indication that Wes is moving back to the counter.She stays within earshot at the doorframe, though, because voyeurism is inherently linked to liking documentaries.
The chair leg slides into view on top of the counter while I’m twisting two braids together—so does the map—but Wes waits until I look up, until I meet his eye, before he says, “We’ll be as quick as we can.Maybe Dani and Colette have found a phone by now.There might be a flashlight, or an evacuation map.Something that can help us.”
I hadn’t thought of any of that, and it’s the kind of problem-solving you don’t see in most of the slashers I watch.What is “logical” doesn’t play a main role in the escapism I gravitate toward.
