-2009- | Jennifer--s Body

I went home and sharpened my mother’s sewing scissors. The final scene happened at the town pool, after hours. Megan had lured the entire football team there with a text that said “skinny dipping and no consequences.” She was in the water, floating on her back, when I walked in. The boys were already gone. The pool was pink.

I didn’t run.

I closed my eyes. The wind smelled like her hairbrush.

She blew on her nails. “Chip was a boy. And he tasted like insecurity and AXE body spray. Next question.” Jennifer--s Body -2009-

“Not that kind of hungry, Needy.”

Because that’s the thing about surviving a demon. You swallow a little of its darkness. And once it’s inside you, you start looking at boys—at everyone—and wondering what they taste like.

Megan was at her locker when she heard the news. She smiled. I went home and sharpened my mother’s sewing scissors

I picked up her hairbrush. It was crusted with something dark at the bristles. “The thing inside you. Can you feel it?”

“Thanks,” she whispered, sinking into the chlorinated pink. “It hurt. Being that hungry.”

I’m still hungry too.

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.

“You brought scissors to a demon fight?” she laughed.

I stepped to the edge. “You brought a dead heart to a best friend fight.” The boys were already gone

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.

“Freak accident,” she said, tilting her head. Her hair, which used to be mousy and fine, now fell in a black curtain that seemed to drink the fluorescent light. “Poor guys.”