Page 131 of Final Girls

Nurse Hattie put a hand on her shoulder and smiled. “Have a great life, Tina. Go make somethin’ of yourself.”

TWO YEARS AFTER PINE COTTAGE

There was no one home. Tina kept telling herself that as she knocked again on the sun-bleached door. There was no one home, and she should just leave.

But she couldn’t leave. She was down to her last dollar.

Tina tried to make a go of it, and for a while she had. Thanks to that nice lady at social services she had a job, even though it was bagging groceries at a gritty-floored supermarket, and a place to live at a boardinghouse built for people like her. But all those health-code violations killed the store, which meant she couldn’t pay for the boardinghouse. Those unemployment checks barely covered food and bus fare.

So now she was back in Hazleton, still knocking on the door of a duplex she hadn’t seen in four years, praying no one would answer it. When someone did, she almost ran away. She’d rather die of starvation than be there. But she willed her legs to remain on that worn welcome mat.

The woman who opened the door was fatter than when Tina last saw her. An ass as wide as a love seat. She held a baby on her hip—a writhing, crying, red-faced little shit in a drooping diaper. Tina took one look at it and her heart sank. Another kid. That poor, doomed thing.

“Hi, Momma,” Tina said. “I’m home.”

Her mother looked at her as if she were a stranger. She sucked in her fat cheeks, lips puckering.

“This ain’t your home,” she said. “You made sure of that.”

Tina’s heart seized up, even though this was exactly what she had expected. Her mother never believed that Earl did those things to her. The touching and the fondling and the sliding under her covers atthree in the morning.Shh, he’d say, with beer stench on his breath.Don’t tell your momma.

“Please, Momma,” Tina said. “I need help.”

The baby fussed even more. Tina wondered if the kid had been told about his half sister. She wondered if she’d ever been mentioned.

A man’s voice cut through the cries, coming from the living room. Tina had no idea who he was. “Who’s at the door?”

Tina’s mother stared at her. “No one important.”

THREE YEARS AFTER PINE COTTAGE

The bar was packed for a Tuesday night. All the stools were filled. Tables too. Nothing like two-dollar beers to bring in the barely functioning alcoholics. The crowd kept Tina hopping her entire shift as heaps of empty mugs and ketchup-smeared plates came her way. She washed them all, her hands submerged in the water so long her fingers had become shriveled and bleached.

When her shift was over, she whipped off her hairnet and shucked her apron, stuffing them into the laundry bin by the kitchen’s back door. She then headed into the bar itself, claiming the employee-eligible free drink that was supposed to make up for how the owner skimped on wages.

Lyle was tending bar that night. Tina liked him more than the others. He had a handlebar mustache, a sexy overbite, and thick, hairy forearms. He poured her drink without even asking what she wanted.

“And a Wild Turkey for Miss Tina,” he said, also pouring one for himself.

They clinked glasses.

“Cheers,” Tina said before downing the whiskey in a single gulp.

She ordered another. Lyle gave it to her for free, even though she told him she had enough cash to pay for it. She sipped this one, sitting at the far end of the bar, people-watching. The crowd was a nondescript blur—an interchangeable display of big hair, beer guts, and gin blossoms. Tina vaguely recognized most of them.

Then she saw someone she truly did recognize. He was slid into a back booth and getting grabby with a redhead who clearly didn’t wantto be grabbed. It had been a few years, but he looked exactly the same. Not even his laughable man perm had changed.

Matt Cromley.

The orderly who had groped her and Heather and God knows how many other women at Blackthorn. Seeing him after all these years unlocked the box in Tina’s mind where the bad memories were stored. It made her think of all the times he had yanked her into that utility closet, plunging his hand down her pants while hissing,You’re not going to tell anyone, you hear? I can make things bad for you, you know. Real bad.

The only person she told was Joe. It made him so mad he offered to stab the slime ball, which is what had landed him at Blackthorn in the first place. Some community college shithead had kept bullying him. Joe fought back by driving a steak knife into his side.

Tina declined the offer. Only now she wished she had taken him up on it. Pricks like Matt Cromley shouldn’t be allowed to go unpunished.

That’s why Tina downed her drink. She slipped into the kitchen for a few supplies. Then she sidled up to his booth, gave him a siren’s smile, and said, “Hey, stranger.”

Ten minutes later, they were standing in a patch of weeds behind the bar, one of Matt’s hands already snaked down the front of her jeans, the other furiously stroking that minuscule prick of his.

---