Everyone gets on their knees and bows down before me. It could be worse. If I’m gonna die a virgin, this could be the way to do it: with the adoration of my peers.
I squeeze my eyes shut and stick my tongue out, pretending to be dead. That’s what you do when you say Bloody Mary three times in the mirror, so that’s what I’m doing. I have to improvise here because I am in uncharted territory. I’ve never pretended to be dead before.
“Oh, shit,” I hear Katie say.
I open my eyes as there’s a scuffle around me. “What’s going on?”
I whip my head in the direction everyone’s looking, to see a dude on the back deck of that house in the distance, illuminated from behind with light coming through the windows. He’s a shadow, an apparition, a silhouette framed in light.
“I thought you said he’s never around!” I say as I struggle against the ropes in a panic.
“Shit,” Katie says, grabbing her bag and shoving her hoodie inside. “Shit, shit.”
Everyone takes off running except for Katie.
She races over and tugs at the ropes, crouching on the ground to untie the ones binding my ankles. My heart is pounding so freaking hard and my fingers are shaking. I rub my wrists together to try to loosen the ropes with friction, but those guys really did a number on me.
“Why did they do this so tight?” I hiss. “Howdid they do this so tight?”
“I think those guys are into BDSM or something, I don’t know,” Katie says.
She pulls out a switchblade, and my eyes grow wide. She flips it open to reveal the shiny blade reflecting the light from the fire.
“Our bare hands weren’t cutting it,” she says as she carefully starts sawing at the rope. “No pun intended.”
The guy from the house starts walking down the steps from his porch. He’s moving slowly. He’s cloaked in shadows from the porch light. The sky is darker than I thought. The fire is making everything around us glow, but beyond our little area, it may as well be midnight.
A flock of ominous birds circles overhead. The only thing that could make this worse would be one of them swooping down and stealing our candy corn.
“Hurry up,” I yell. “He’s coming!”
“I’m trying to do this as fast as I can without hitting a major artery,” she says with panic in her voice.
I writhe against the restraints as the guy gets closer. My long hair is whipping around my head in giant swoops that make him look like he’s walking toward me through a long, dark hallway with all kinds of bats and spiders swarming around.
I always loved my unruly, thick hair. Now it’s just framing this guy’s death-stare as he walks toward us.
He’s walking slowly, like a serial killer would. A serial killer can outrun you, even if he’s just walking. These movie villains have the uncanny ability to get closer and closer even if you’re running away like a bat out of hell. And this guy fits the bill.
“Any luck?” I say, looking down at the work Katie’s doing.
“Fuck,” she mutters. “No luck.”
She looks over at the guy, and her eyes grow as wide as two big, bright moons.
“Girl, I’m sorry, I love you, but I have to get out of here,” she says, backing away without taking her eyes off the guy.
“You are not just leaving me here!” I give my body one more big twist, and the rope burns my wrist badly enough to take me out of commission.
“If I get in trouble again, my dad is going to kill me,” she says as she grabs her backpack. “I’ll have to drop out. Then you’ll have no one to clean the microwave!”
“I’m not going to need a microwave if I’m dead!”
“I thought the microwave was haunted, right?” She shoves her hoodie into her backpack and swings it over her shoulder. “If I don’t see you again, I hope you come back as a ghost to fuck up our microwave.”
“You are not leaving me here to die alone on this hill!” I scream.
“He’s just some rich, lonely, weird, mysterious dude,” she says, still backing away. “You’ll be totally fine.”