“I know so much crazy shit has happened,” Wes pants, dropping his hand to his ribs when I don’t reach back for him.His shoulders rise and fall with the force of his breaths, and I can’t figure out if this is him getting riled up.Is he getting ready to put that knife in my chest if I reject him?
“But you need to trust m—”
“No, I don’t.”I stare at him as blood rushes between my ears, syncopated with the sound of someone breathing in quick, short, panicked pants.Me.I’mthe one who’s about to hyperventilate, but I also feel kind of removed from it.Removed from all of it.“I don’tneedto trust you.”
I don’t know what to do.For the first time tonight, I have no idea what the next logical step is.Even when I was being chased and cornered and terrorized, there was alwayssomethingthat would come to mind, but now everything is blurred by panic and hurt and shame and… What if itishim?
Less than an hour ago, he had me pressed against a wall and… Oh mygod.The rulesdoapply.We had something close to sex and now I’m going to die.
“Please, Jamie.”He looks at me with this crestfallen face that compels me to move back to him, to consider that maybe this is an overreaction, but I’d rather overreact than end up dead because I assumed a man who kissed me wasn’t capable of killing me.
“I just want us to get out of here… I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
I’m tempted to retort that if he wants that he should stop hurting people, but I can’t make my mouth work.I don’t know what to do.I can’t keep standing here.I can’t fight him.So that leaves me only one option.
Understanding dawns across his face, panic fills his eyes when he realizes my intention.
“Jamie, don’t…”
The last time he said that he ended up kissing me three seconds later, but this time I’m running away before he can move toward me.We’re in the third act now and alliances mean shit here, even if they’re sealed with a kiss, because the thing about being a Final Girl?
They always end up alone.
I don’t stop.
Not when I pass the hallway where I first saw Heart Eyes and spy the body still discarded at the end of it, or when the cuts in my feet open up again and make each step unbearable.Not until I find myself in the hallway John must’ve turned down earlier in the night and see the stairs that brought him back to us on the dance floor.I don’t go down them; I don’t want to go anywhere near the dance floor, but I have a clear exit if Wes comes looking for me.
The idea hecouldcome looking for me—hunt for me—makes the espresso martinis threaten to make a full reappearance.I push myself up against the wall and force myself to breathe.I need a clear head and my full aerobic abilities to figure out how the hell I’m going to end this once and for all.
Because Iamgoing to end it.I have to.I can’t deny it any longer.The movie only concludes when the lead fully embodies their character arc, when the Leading Lady gets her man, or the Final Girl… well, she gets her man, too.
They always do.
But, an insidious voice at the edge of my mind reminds me,you are not them.
I’m not the jaded, levelheaded Final Girl and I’m not the plucky, free-spirited Leading Lady.
Right now, I’m just a woman trying to survive the night.
And even before this I’ve just been trying to survive in a world that wants women to play the role of one of a few outdated archetypes.It’s taken a lifetime to learn how to tread the line between “not enough” and “too much,” years to memorize what it takes to be a Leading Lady and a Final Girl, and one night to force me to choose whether I’m capable of being either…
I really would be one of a kind if I could be both.
One of a kind and just my type.
The sound of Wes’s exasperated, awed voice is hard to forget, and I press my palm against my chest as it tightens at the memory.I hear an unnatural crackle and slip my fingers into the neckline to touch paper.The two match cards are still in my bra and I pull them out, trying to make my trembling fingers straighten the sweat-dampened cards without ripping them.I alternate between the one with the male names and the one with the female names to try to figure out who I know is gone and who could still be out somewhere in the club.The familiar names conjure a montage of brutal scenes, an “in memoriam” of who isn’t making it out of this club.
Curtis
Drew
Colette
John
Campbell
Dani
