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I turned slowly towards him. “Excuse me?”

“I know that face.”

“What face?”

“The one right before you make something unnecessarily dramatic.”

I pressed a hand to my chest again. “Everything I do is necessarily dramatic.”

“Tell one,” Mason demanded. A chorus of cheers followed him.

“Story!”

“Story!”

“Story!”

I stood.

Darius muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Jesus Christ.”

I stepped into the center of the circle. “Ladies, gentlemen, and whatever weird little cryptids you identify as after lights-out…”

“Alvin,” Darius warned.

“…tonight, we discuss one of cinema’s most misunderstood men.”

A girl near the fire gasped. “Ghostface!”

Several kids immediately started yelling. “Voorhees?”

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t talk!”

“Neither does Mr. D’Angelo before coffee, but somehow nobody made nine movies about him.”

Darius stared at me.

I corrected myself. “Actually, twelve if we’re counting everything.”

“Jason wasn’t even the killer in the first one,” Trevor said.

I whipped around and pointed at him. “See? This child has culture.”

Trevor smiled.

I paced slowly around the fire. “Now. Jason Voorhees. Camp Crystal Lake. Hockey mask. Machete. An unhealthy obsession with murdering teenagers who make poor life choices.”

“That’s basically every horror movie,” somebody said.

“Correct. Humanity has spent decades producing cinema designed entirely around the message that teenagers should keep their pants on,” I replied. The kids groaned, and Darius covered his face but I continued. “Jason’s interesting.”

“How?”

“Because everybody remembers the monster.” I stopped and the fire crackled behind me. “Before the mask…” I glanced around the circle. “…he was just a kid.” The noise settled a little. “A kid who drowned.”

“Because the counselors weren’t watching him,” someone whispered from beside me.