I should have run. I should have called the police, a priest, the guy from the Discovery Channel who debunks myths. But Megan leaned in and pressed her cold forehead to mine. For one second, she smelled like the girl who let me copy her algebra homework. Then she smelled like the inside of a slaughterhouse.
And underneath that, smaller:
I didn’t run.
I closed my eyes. The wind smelled like her hairbrush. Jennifer--s Body -2009-
“The hunters,” I said.
She touched it, looked at the red on her fingertip, and licked it clean. “Am I?” That night, she showed up at my window. I didn’t hear the glass slide open. I just felt the cold.
Megan was at her locker when she heard the news. She smiled. I should have run
I flinched. She’d always called me “Needy” as a joke—because my name was Nidia, and I clung to her like a life raft. But now it sounded like a diagnosis.
JENNIFER CHECK — 1991–2009 SHE WAS A MONSTER. BUT SHE WAS MY MONSTER.
I walked to Megan’s house after school. She was in her room, painting her nails black. A red Gatorade bottle sat on her nightstand. I knew, without wanting to know, that it wasn’t Gatorade. For one second, she smelled like the girl
The night the fire department pulled two rabbit hunters out of a ravine, no one in Devil’s Kettle talked about the smell on their breath. The hunters said they’d been chasing a buck, lost their footing, and blacked out. But the nurses noted the way their chests caved in—like something had sat on them and gotten bored.
“Don’t tell,” she whispered. “Or I’ll start with your boyfriend.” The next morning, Chip was late for first period. By third period, his car was still in the lot, but he wasn’t. I found his letterman jacket behind the bleachers. It was wet. Not with rain—with something that had a pulse recently.
I picked up her hairbrush. It was crusted with something dark at the bristles. “The thing inside you. Can you feel it?”
“I’m hungry,” she whispered. Her eyes weren't human. They were the color of root beer bottles held up to the sun.