‘The first great thriller of 2017 is almost here: FINAL GIRLS, by Riley Sager. If you liked GONE GIRL, you’ll like this’
—STEPHEN KING
‘The FINAL GIRLS need you. You must sit down with this book, you must read. You must start flipping pages, faster, faster, faster. The FINAL GIRLS are tough, everything survivors should be. But the new threat is clever, ominous, even closer than you suspect. You are about to gasp. You might drop the book. You may have to look over your shoulder. But you must keep reading.
This is the best book of 2017, the FINAL GIRLS need you’
—LISA GARDNER
‘A great thriller that gave me goosebumps and kept me reading into the night. There were so many unexpected revelations that I had no idea where it was going. A must read’
—KATERINA DIAMOND, bestselling author of The Teacher and The Secret
‘An intriguing, original idea. We’ve all shuddered at bloodbath stories – but how does the survivor cope? It made me think outside the psychological box. Fresh voice, great characterisation and unexpected surprises. This stayed in my mind because it was different’
—JANE CORRY, Sunday Times bestselling author of My Husband’s Wife
‘Phenomenally drawn characters and an intriguing premise make this one of my favorite books I’ve read this year. An outstanding debut’
—HOLLIE OVERTON, bestselling author of the Richard and Judy pick Baby Doll
‘Original, fast-paced, and terrifying. FINAL GIRLS takes an unflinching look at the price to be paid for surviving. You will not be able to put this book down!’
—AMY ENGEL, author of The Roanoke Girls
‘Captivating and compelling, with a refreshingly brilliant premise, Riley Sager is one to watch’
—LISA HALL, bestselling author of Between You and Me and Tell Me No Lies
‘FINAL GIRLS is a compulsive read, with characters who are at once unreliable and sympathetic. Just when you think you’ve figured out the plot, the story pivots in a startling new direction … A taut and original mystery that will keep you up late trying to figure out a final twist that you won’t see coming’
—CARLA NORTON, author of The Edge of Normal and What Doesn’t Kill Her
‘Part psychological thriller, part homage to slasher flicks and film noir, FINAL GIRLS has a little bit of everything: a suspicious death, a damaged heroine, an unwelcome guest who trades in secrets, and not a single character you can trust. Plenty of nail-biting fun!’
—HESTER YOUNG, author of The Gates of Evangeline
‘Smart and provocative, with plenty of twists and turns, FINAL GIRLS will have the reader racing breathlessly toward its shocking conclusion’
—SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD, award-winning author of The Guilty One and The Missing Place
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473529915
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Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © Riley Sager, 2017
Cover design and imagery: www.headdesign.co.uk
Riley Sager has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
First published in the US in 2017 by Dutton, a division of Penguin Random House
First published in the UK in 2017 by Ebury Press
www.penguin.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN 9781785034022
Trade Paperback ISBN 9781785034039
To Mike
The forest had claws and teeth.
All those rocks and thorns and branches bit at Quincy as she ran screaming through the woods. But she didn’t stop. Not when rocks dug into the soles of her bare feet. Not when a whip-thin branch lashed her face and a line of blood streaked down her cheek.
Stopping wasn’t an option. To stop was to die. So she kept running, even as a bramble wrapped around her ankle and gnawed at her flesh. The bramble stretched, quivering, before Quincy’s momentum yanked her free. If it hurt, she couldn’t tell. Her body already held more pain than it could handle.
It was instinct that made her run. An unconscious knowledge that she needed to keep going, no matter what. Already she had forgotten why. Memories of five, ten, fifteen minutes ago were gone. If her life depended on remembering what prompted her flight through the woods, she was certain she’d die right there on the forest floor.
So she ran. She screamed. She tried not to think about dying.
A white glow appeared in the distance, faint along the tree-choked horizon.
Headlights.
Was she near a road? Quincy hoped she was. Like her memories, all sense of direction was lost.
She ran faster, increased her screams, raced toward the light.
Another branch whacked her face. It was thicker than the first, like a rolling pin, and the impact both stunned and blinded her. Pain pulsed through her head as blue sparks throbbed across her blurred vision. When they cleared, she saw a silhouette standing out in the headlights’ glow.
A man.
Him.
No. Not Him.
Someone else.
Safety.
Quincy quickened her pace. Her blood-drenched arms reached out, as if that could somehow pull the stranger closer. The movement caused the pain in her shoulder to flare. And with the pain came not a memory but an understanding. One so brutally awful that it had to be real.
Only Quincy remained.
All the others were dead.
She was the last one left alive.
My hands are covered in frosting when Jeff calls. Despite my best efforts, the French buttercream has oozed onto my knuckles and into the hammocks between my fingers, sticking there like paste. Only one pinkie finger remains unscathed, and I use it to tap the speakerphone button.
“Carpenter and Richards, private investigators,” I say, imitating the breathy voice of a film noir secretary. “How may I direct your call?”
Jeff plays along, his tough-guy tone pitched somewhere between Robert Mitchum and Dana Andrews. “Put Miss Carpenter on the horn. I need to talk to her pronto.”
“Miss Carpenter is busy with an important case. May I take a message?”
“Yeah,” Jeff says. “Tell her my flight from Chi-Town has been delayed.”
My façade drops. “Oh, Jeff. Really?”
“Sorry, hon. The perils of flying out of the Windy City.”
“How long is the delay?”
“Anywhere from two hours to maybe-I’ll-be-home-by-next-week,” Jeff says. “I’m at least hoping it’s long enough for me to miss the start of Baking Season.”
“No such luck, pal.”
“How’s it going, by the way?”
I look down at my hands. “Messy.”
Baking Season is Jeff’s name for the exhausting stretch between early October and late December, when all those dessert-heavy holidays arrive without reprieve. He likes to say it ominously, raising his hands and wiggling his fingers like spider legs.
Ironically, it’s a spider that’s caused my hands to be coated in buttercream. Made of double-dark chocolate frosting, its stomach teeters on the edge of a cupcake while black legs stretch across the top and down the sides. When I’m finished, the cupcakes will be posed, photographed, and displayed on my website’s roster of Halloween baking ideas. This year’s theme is “Revenge of the Yummy.”
“How’s the airport?” I ask.
“Crowded. But I think I’ll survive by hitting the terminal bar.”
“Call me if the delay gets any worse,” I say. “I’ll be here, covered in icing.”
“Bake like the wind,” Jeff replies.
Call over, it’s back to the buttercream spider and the chocolate-cherry cupcake it partly covers. If I’ve done it right, the red center should ooze out at first bite. That test will come later. Right now, my chief concern is the outside.
Decorating cupcakes is harder than it seems. Especially when the results will be posted online for thousands to see. Smudges and smears aren’t allowed. In a high-def world, flaws loom large.
Details matter.
That’s one of the Ten Commandments on my website, squeezed between Measuring Cups Are Your Friends and Don’t Be Afraid to Fail.
I finish the first cupcake and am working on the second when my phone rings again. This time there’s not even a clean pinkie finger at my disposal, and I’m forced to ignore it. The phone continues to buzz while shimmying across the countertop. It then goes silent, pausing a moment before emitting a telltale beep.
A text.
Curious, I drop the icing bag, wipe my hands, and check the phone. It’s from Coop.
We need to talk. Face 2 face.
My fingers pause above the screen. Although it takes Coop three hours to drive into Manhattan, it’s a trip he’s willingly made many times in the past. When it’s important.
I text back. When?
His reply arrives in seconds. Now. Usual place.
A spot of worry presses the base of my spine. Coop is already here. Which means only one thing—something is wrong.
Before leaving, I rush through my usual preparations for a meeting with Coop. Teeth brushed. Lips glossed. Tiny Xanax popped. I wash the little blue pill down with some grape soda drunk straight from the bottle.
In the elevator, it occurs to me that I should have changed clothes. I’m still in my baking wear: black jeans, one of Jeff’s old button-downs, and red flats. All bear flecks of flour and faded splotches of food coloring. I notice a scrape of dried frosting on the back of my hand, skin peeking through the blue-black smear. It resembles a bruise. I lick it off.
Outside on Eighty-Second Street, I make a right onto Columbus, already packed with pedestrians. My body tightens at the sight of so many strangers. I stop and shove stiff fingers into my purse, searching for the can of pepper spray always kept there. There’s safety in numbers, yes, but also uncertainty. It’s only after finding the pepper spray that I start walking again, my face puckered into a don’t-bother-me scowl.
Although the sun is out, a tangible chill stings the air. Typical for early October in New York, when the weather seems to randomly veer between hot and cold. Yet fall is definitely making its swift approach. When Theodore Roosevelt Park comes into view, the leaves there are poised between green and gold.
Through the foliage, I can see the back of the American Museum of Natural History, which on this morning is swarmed with school kids. Their voices flit like birds among the trees. When one of them shrieks, the rest go silent. Just for a second. I freeze on the sidewalk, unnerved not by the shriek but by the silence that follows. But then the children’s voices start up again and I calm down. I resume walking, heading to a café two blocks south of the museum.
Our usual place.
Coop is waiting for me at a table by the window, looking the same as always. That sharp, craggy face that appears pensive in times of repose, such as now. A body that’s both long and thick. Large hands, one of which bears a ruby class ring instead of a wedding band. The only change is his hair, which he keeps trimmed close to the scalp. Each meeting always brings a few more flecks of gray.
His presence in the café is noticed by all the nannies and caffeinated hipsters who crowd the place. Nothing like a cop in full uniform to put people on edge. Even without it, Coop cuts an intimidating figure. He’s a big man, consisting of rolling hills of muscle. The starched blue shirt and black trousers with the knife-edge creases only amplify his size. He lifts his head as I enter, and I notice the exhaustion in his eyes. He must have driven here directly from working the third shift.
Two mugs are already on the table. Earl Grey with milk and extra sugar for me. Coffee for Coop. Black. Unsweetened.
“Quincy,” he says, nodding.
There’s always a nod. It’s Coop’s version of a handshake. We never hug. Not since the desperate one I gave him the night we first met. No matter how many times I see him, that moment is always there, playing on a loop until I push it away.
They’re dead, I had choked out while clutching him, the words gurgling thickly in the back of my throat. They’re all dead. And he’s still out here.
Ten seconds later, he saved my life.
“This is certainly a surprise,” I say as I take a seat. There’s a tremor in my voice that I try to tamp down. I don’t know why Coop’s called me, but if it’s bad news, I want to be calm when I hear it.
“You’re looking well,” Coop says while giving me the quick, concerned once-over I’m now accustomed to. “But you’ve lost some weight.”
There’s worry in his voice too. He’s thinking about six months after Pine Cottage, when my appetite had left me so completely that I ended up back in the hospital, force-fed through a tube. I remember waking to find Coop standing by my bed, staring at the plastic hose slithered up my nostril.
Don’t disappoint me, Quincy, he said then. You didn’t survive that night just to die like this.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “I’ve finally learned I don’t have to eat everything I bake.”
“And how’s that going? The baking thing?”
“Great, actually. I gained five thousand followers last quarter and got another corporate advertiser.”
“That’s great,” Coop says. “Glad everything is going well. One of these days, you should actually bake something for me.”
Like the nod, this is another of Coop’s constants. He always says it, never means it.
“How’s Jefferson?” he asks.
“He’s good. The Public Defender’s Office just made him the lead attorney on a big, juicy case.”
I leave out how the case involves a man accused of killing a narcotics detective in a bust gone wrong. Coop already looks down on Jeff’s job. There’s no need to toss more fuel onto that particular fire.
“Good for him,” he says.
“He’s been gone the past two days. Had to fly to Chicago to get statements from family members. Says it’ll make a jury more sympathetic.”
“Hmm,” Coop replies, not quite listening. “I guess he hasn’t proposed yet.”
I shake my head. I told Coop I thought Jeff was going to propose on our August vacation to the Outer Banks, but no ring so far. That’s the real reason I’ve recently lost weight. I’ve become the kind of girlfriend who takes up jogging just to fit into a hypothetical wedding dress.
“Still waiting,” I say.
“It’ll happen.”
“And what about you?” I ask, only half teasing. “Have you finally found a girlfriend?”
“Nope.”
I arch a brow. “A boyfriend?”
“This visit is about you, Quincy,” Coop says, not even cracking a smile.
“Of course. You ask. I answer.”
That’s how things go between us when we meet once, twice, maybe three times a year.
More often than not, the visits resemble therapy sessions, with me never getting a chance to ask Coop questions of my own. I’m only privy to the basics of his life. He’s forty-one, spent time in the Marines before becoming a cop, and had barely shed his rookie status before finding me screaming among the trees. And while I know he still patrols the same town where all those horrible things happened, I have no idea if he’s happy. Or satisfied. Or lonely. I never hear from him on holidays. Never once got a Christmas card. Nine years earlier, at my father’s funeral, he sat in the back row and slipped out of the church before I could even thank him for coming. The closest he gets to showing affection is on my birthday, when he sends the same text: Another year you almost didn’t get. Live it.
“Jeff will come around,” Coop says, again bending the conversation to his will. “It’ll happen at Christmas, I bet. Guys like to propose then.”
He takes a gulp of coffee. I sip my tea and blink, keeping my eyes shut an extra beat, hoping the darkness will allow me to feel the Xanax taking hold. Instead, I’m more anxious than when I walked in.
I open my eyes to see a well-dressed woman entering the café with a chubby, equally well-dressed toddler. An au pair, probably. Most women under thirty in this neighborhood are. On warm, sunny days they jam the sidewalks—a parade of interchangeable girls fresh out of college, armed with lit degrees and student loans. The only reason this one catches my attention is because we look alike. Fresh-faced and well scrubbed. Blond hair reined in by a ponytail. Neither too thin nor too plump. The product of hearty, milk-fed Midwestern stock.
That could have been me in a different life. One without Pine Cottage and blood and a dress that changed colors like in some horrible dream.
That’s something else I think about every time Coop and I meet—he thought my dress was red. He’d whispered it to the dispatcher when he called for backup. It’s on both the police transcript, which I’ve read multiple times, and the dispatch recording, which I managed to listen to only once.
Someone’s running through the trees. Caucasian female. Young. She’s wearing a red dress. And she’s screaming.
I was running through the trees. Galloping, really. Kicking up leaves, numb to the pain coursing through my entire body. And although all I could hear was my heartbeat in my ears, I was indeed screaming. The only thing Coop got wrong was the color of my dress.
It had, until an hour earlier, been white.
Some of the blood was mine. The rest belonged to the others. Janelle, mostly, from when I held her moments before I got hurt.
I’ll never forget the look on Coop’s face when he realized his mistake. That slight widening of the eyes. The oblong shape of his mouth as he tried to keep it from dropping open. The startled huffing sound he made. Two parts shock, one part pity.
It’s one of the few things I actually can remember.
My experience at Pine Cottage is broken into two distinct halves. There’s the beginning, fraught with fear and confusion, in which Janelle lurched out of the woods, not yet dead but well on her way. Then there’s the end, in which Coop found me in my red-not-red dress.
Everything between those two points remains a blank in my memory. An hour, more or less, entirely wiped clean.
“Dissociative amnesia” is the official diagnosis. More commonly known as repressed memory syndrome. Basically, what I witnessed was too horrific for my fragile mind to hold on to. So I mentally cut it out. A self-performed lobotomy.
That didn’t stop people from begging me to remember what happened. Well-meaning family. Misguided friends. Psychiatrists with visions of published case studies dancing in their heads. Think, they all told me. Really think about what happened. As if that would make any difference. As if my being able to recall every blood-specked detail could somehow bring the rest of my friends back to life.
Still, I tried. Therapy. Hypnosis. Even a ridiculous sense-memory game in which a frizzy-haired specialist held scented paper strips to my blindfolded face, asking how each one made me feel. Nothing worked. In my mind, that hour is a blackboard completely erased. There’s nothing left but dust.
I understand that urge for more information, that longing for details. But in this case, I’m fine without them. I know what happened at Pine Cottage. I don’t need to remember exactly how it happened. Because here’s the thing about details—they can also be a distraction. Add too many and it obscures the brutal truth about a situation. They become the gaudy necklace that hides the tracheotomy scar.
I make no attempts to disguise my scars. I just pretend they don’t exist.
The pretending continues in the café. As if my acting like Coop isn’t about to lob a bad-news grenade into my lap will actually keep it from happening.
“Are you in the city on business?” I ask. “If you’re staying long, Jeff and I would love to take you to dinner. All three of us seemed to like that Italian place we went to last year.”
Coop looks at me across the table. His eyes are the lightest shade of blue I’ve ever seen. Lighter even than the pill currently dissolving into my central nervous system. But they are not a soothing blue. There’s an intensity to his eyes that always makes me look away, even though I want to peer deeper, as if that alone can make clear the thoughts hiding just behind them. They are a ferocious blue—the kind of eyes that you want in the person protecting you.
“I think you know why I’m here,” he says.
“I honestly don’t.”
“I have some bad news. It hasn’t reached the press yet, but it will. Very soon.”
Him.
That’s my first thought. This has something to do with Him. Even though I watched Him die, my brain sprints to that inevitable, inconceivable realm where He survived Coop’s bullets, escaped, hid for years, and is now emerging with the intent of finding me and finishing what He started.
He’s alive.
A lump of anxiety fills my stomach, heavy and unwieldy. It feels like a basketball-size tumor has formed there. I’m struck by the sudden urge to pee.
“It’s not that,” Coop says, easily knowing exactly what I’m thinking. “He’s gone, Quincy. We both know that.”
While nice to hear, it does nothing to put me at ease. I’ve balled my hands into fists pressed knuckle-down atop the table.
“Please just tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s Lisa Milner,” Coop says.
“What about her?”
“She’s dead, Quincy.”
The news sucks the air out of my chest. I think I gasp. I’m not sure, because I’m too distracted by the watery echo of her voice in my memory.
I want to help you, Quincy. I want to teach you how to be a Final Girl.
And I had let her. At least for a little while. I assumed she knew best.
Now she’s gone.
Now there are only two of us.
Lisa Milner’s version of Pine Cottage was a sorority house in Indiana. One long-ago February night, a man named Stephen Leibman knocked on the front door. He was a college dropout who lived with his dad. Portly. Had a face as jiggly and jaundiced as chicken fat.
The sorority sister who answered the door found him on the front steps holding a hunting knife. One minute later, she was dead. Leibman dragged the body inside, locked all the doors, and cut the lights and phone line. What followed was roughly an hour of carnage that brought an end to nine young women.
Lisa Milner had come close to making it an even ten.
During the slaughter, she took refuge in the bedroom of a sorority sister, cowering alone inside a closet, hugging clothes that weren’t hers and praying the madman wouldn’t find her.
Eventually, he did.
Lisa laid eyes on Stephen Leibman when he ripped open the closet door. She saw first the knife, then his face, both dripping blood. After a stab to the shoulder, she managed to knee him in the groin and flee the room. She had reached the first floor and was making her way to the front door when Leibman caught up to her, knife jabbing.
She took four stab wounds to her chest and stomach, plus a five-inch slice down the arm she had raised to defend herself. One more thrust of the blade would have finished her off. But Lisa, screaming in pain and dizzy from blood loss, somehow grabbed Leibman’s ankle. He fell. The knife skittered. Lisa grabbed it and shoved it hilt-deep into his gut. Stephen Leibman bled out lying next to her on the floor.
Details. They flow freely when they’re not yours.
I was seven when it happened. It’s my first memory of actually noticing something on the news. I couldn’t help it. Not with my mother standing before the console television, a hand over her mouth, repeating the same two words: Sweet Jesus. Sweet Jesus.
What I saw on that TV scared and confused and upset me. The weeping bystanders. The convoy of tarp-covered stretchers slipping beneath yellow tape crisscrossing the door. The splash of blood, bright against the Indiana snow. It was the moment I realized that bad things could happen, that evil existed in the world.
When I began to cry, my father scooped me up and carried me into the kitchen. As my tears dried to salt, he placed a menagerie of bowls on the counter and filled them with flour, sugar, butter, and eggs. He gave me a spoon and let me mix them all together. My first baking lesson.
There’s such a thing as too much sweetness, Quincy, he told me. All the best bakers know this. There needs to be a counterpoint. Something dark. Or bitter. Or sour. Unsweetened chocolate. Cardamom and cinnamon. Lemon and lime. They cut through all the sugar, taming it just enough so that when you do taste the sweetness, you appreciate it all the more.
Now the only taste in my mouth is a dry sourness. I dump more sugar into my tea and drain the cup. It doesn’t help. The sugar rush only counteracts the Xanax, which is finally starting to work its magic. They clash deep inside me, making me antsy.
“When did it happen?” I ask Coop, once my initial shock reduces to a simmering sense of disbelief. “How did it happen?”
“Last night. Muncie PD discovered her body around midnight. She had killed herself.”
“Sweet Jesus.”
I say it loud enough to get the attention of my au pair look-alike seated a table away. She glances up from her iPhone, head tilted like a cocker spaniel’s.
“Suicide?” I say, the word bitter on my tongue. “I thought she was happy. I mean, she seemed happy.”
Lisa’s voice is still in my head.
You can’t change what’s happened. The only thing you can control is how you deal with it.
“They’re waiting on the tox report to see if she had been drinking or was on drugs,” Coop says.
“So this could have been an accident?”
“It was no accident. Her wrists were slit.”
My heart stops for a moment. I’m conscious of the empty pause where a pulse should be. Sadness pours into the void, filling me so quickly I start to feel dizzy.
“I want details,” I say.
“You don’t,” Coop says. “It won’t change anything.”
“It’s information. That’s better than nothing.”
Coop stares into his coffee, as if examining his bright eyes in the muddy reflection. Eventually, he says, “Here’s what I know: Lisa called 911 at quarter to midnight, apparently with second thoughts.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. She hung up immediately. Dispatch traced the call and sent a pair of blues to her house. The door was unlocked, so they let themselves in. That’s when they found her. She was in the bathtub. Her phone was in the water with her. Probably slipped from her hands.”
Coop looks out the window. He’s tired, I can tell. And no doubt worried I might one day try something similar. But that thought never occurred to me, even when I was back in the hospital being fed through a tube. I reach across the table, aiming for his hands. He pulls them away before I can grasp them.
“When did you hear about it?” I ask.
“A couple hours ago. Got a call from an acquaintance with the Indiana State Police. We keep in touch.”
I don’t need to ask Coop how he knows a trooper in Indiana. Massacre survivors aren’t the only ones who need support systems.
“She thought it’d be good to warn you,” he says. “For when word gets out.”
The press. Of course. I like to picture them as ravenous vultures, slick innards dripping from their beaks.
“I’m not going to talk to them.”
This again gets the attention of the au pair, who looks up, eyes narrowed. I stare her down until she sets her iPhone on the table and pretends to fuss with the toddler in her care.
“You don’t have to,” Coop says. “But at the very least you should consider releasing a statement of condolence. Those tabloid guys are going to hunt you down like dogs. Might as well toss them a bone before they get the chance.”
“Why do I need to say anything?”
“You know why,” Coop says.
“Why can’t Samantha do it?”
“Because she’s still off the grid. I doubt she’s going to pop out of hiding after all these years.”
“Lucky girl.”
“That just leaves you,” Coop says. “That’s why I wanted to come and tell you the news in person. Now, I know I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but it’s not a bad idea to start being friendly with the press. With Lisa dead and Samantha gone, you’re all they’ve got.”
I reach into my purse and grab my phone. It’s been quiet. No new calls. No new texts. Nothing but a few dozen work-related emails I didn’t have time to read this morning. I shut off the phone—a temporary fix. The press will sniff me out anyway. Coop is right about that. They won’t be able to resist trying to get a quote from the only accessible Final Girl.
We are, after all, their creation.
Final Girl is film-geek speak for the last woman standing at the end of a horror movie. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. Even before Pine Cottage, I never liked to watch scary movies because of the fake blood, the rubber knives, the characters who made decisions so stupid I guiltily thought they deserved to die.
Only, what happened to us wasn’t a movie. It was real life. Our lives. The blood wasn’t fake. The knives were steel and nightmare-sharp. And those who died definitely didn’t deserve it.
But somehow we screamed louder, ran faster, fought harder. We survived.
I don’t know where the nickname was first used to describe Lisa Milner. A newspaper in the Midwest, probably. Close to where she lived. Some reporter there tried to get creative about the sorority-house killings, and the nickname was the end result. It spread only because it was casually morbid enough for the Internet to pick up. All those nascent news sites starving for attention jumped all over it. Not wanting to miss a trend, print outlets followed. Tabloids first, then newspapers, and, finally, magazines.
Within days, the transformation was complete. Lisa Milner was no longer simply a massacre survivor. She was a straight-from-a-horror-flick Final Girl.
It happened again with Samantha Boyd four years later and then with me eight years after that. While there were other multiple homicides during those years, none quite got the nation’s attention like ours. We were, for whatever reason, the lucky ones who survived when no one else had. Pretty girls covered in blood. As such, we were each in turn treated like something rare and exotic. A beautiful bird that spreads its bright wings only once a decade. Or that flower that stinks like rotting meat whenever it decides to bloom.
The attention showered upon me in the months after Pine Cottage veered from kind to bizarre. Sometimes it was a combination of both, such as the letter I received from a childless couple offering to pay my college tuition. I wrote them back, turning down their generous offer. I never heard from them again.
Other correspondence was more disturbing. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard from lonely goth boys or prison inmates saying they want to date me, marry me, cradle me in their tattooed arms. An auto mechanic from Nevada once volunteered to chain me up in his basement to protect me from further harm. He was startling in his sincerity, as if he truly thought holding me captive was the most benevolent of good deeds.
Then there was the letter claiming I needed to be finished off, that it was my destiny to be butchered. It wasn’t signed. There was no return address. I gave it to Coop. Just in case.
I start to feel jittery. It’s the sugar and the Xanax, suddenly zipping through my body like the latest club drug. Coop senses my change in mood and says, “I know this is a lot to handle.”
I nod.
“You want to get out of here?”
I nod again.
“Then let’s go.”
As I stand, the au pair again pretends to busy herself with the toddler, refusing to look my way. Maybe she recognizes me and it makes her uncomfortable. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.
When I pass, two steps behind Coop, I snatch her iPhone off the table without her noticing.
It’s slipped deep into my pocket before I’m out the door.
Coop walks me home, his body positioned slightly in front of mine, like a Secret Service agent. Both of us scan the sidewalk for members of the press. None appear.
When we reach my building, Coop stops just shy of the maroon awning that shields the front door. The building is prewar, elegant and spacious. My neighbors consist of blue-haired society ladies and fashionable gay gentlemen of a certain age. Every time Coop sees it, I’m sure he wonders how a baking blogger and a public defender can afford to rent an apartment on the Upper West Side.
The truth is, we can’t. Not on Jeff’s salary, which is laughably small, and certainly not on the money my website takes in.
The apartment is in my name. I own it. The funds came from a phalanx of lawsuits filed after Pine Cottage. Led by Janelle’s stepfather, the victims’ parents sued anyone and everyone possible. The mental hospital that allowed Him to escape. His doctors. The pharmaceutical companies responsible for the many antidepressants and antipsychotics that had clashed in His brain. Even the manufacturer of the hospital door with the malfunctioning lock through which He had escaped.
All of them settled out of court. They knew a few million dollars was worth avoiding the bad PR they’d get from going up against a bunch of grieving families. Even a settlement wasn’t enough to spare some of them. One of the antipsychotics was eventually pulled from the market. The mental hospital, Blackthorn Psychiatric, closed its faulty doors within a year.
The only people who couldn’t shell out were His parents, who had gone broke paying for His treatment. Fine by me. I had no desire to punish that dazed and moist-eyed couple for His sins. Besides, my share of the other settlements was more than enough. An accountant friend of my father helped me invest most of it while stocks were still cheap. I bought the apartment after college, just as the housing market was recovering from its colossal pop. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen with a breakfast nook that’s become my makeshift studio. I got it for a song.
“Do you want to come up?” I ask Coop. “You’ve never seen the place.”
“Maybe some other time.”
Another thing he always says but never means.
“I suppose you need to go,” I say.
“It’s a long drive home. You going to be okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Once the shock wears off.”
“Call or text if you need anything.”
That one he definitely means. Coop’s been willing to drop everything to see me ever since the morning after Pine Cottage. The morning I, in the throes of pain and grief, had wailed, I want the officer! Please let me see him! He was there within half an hour.
Ten years later, he’s still here, giving me a farewell nod. Once I return the gesture, Coop shields his baby blues with a pair of Ray-Bans and walks away, eventually disappearing among the other pedestrians.
Inside the apartment, I head straight for the kitchen and take a second Xanax. The grape soda that follows is a rush of sweetness that, coupled with the sugar from the tea, makes my teeth ache. Yet I keep on drinking, taking several gentle sips as I pull the stolen iPhone from my pocket. A brief examination of the phone tells me that its former owner’s name is Kim and that she doesn’t use any of its security features. I can see every call, web search, and text, including a recent one from a squarejaw named Zach.
Up for a little fun tonight?
For kicks, I text him back: Sure.
The phone beeps in my hand. Another text from Zach. He’s sent a picture of his dick.
Charming.
I switch off the phone. A precaution. Kim and I may look similar, but our ringtones differ wildly. Then I turn the phone over, staring at the silvery back that’s smudged with fingerprints. I wipe it clean until I can see my reflection, as distorted as if I were looking into a fun-house mirror.
This will do nicely.
I finger the gold chain that’s always around my neck. Hanging from it is a small key, which opens the only kitchen drawer kept locked at all times. Jeff assumes it’s for important website paperwork. I let him believe that.
Inside the drawer is a jangling menagerie of glinting metal. A shiny tube of lipstick and a chunky gold bracelet. Several spoons. A silver compact plucked from the nurses’ station when I left the hospital following Pine Cottage. I used it to stare at my reflection during the long drive home, making sure I was actually still there. Now I study the warped reflections looking back at me and feel that same sense of reassurance.
Yes, I still exist.
I deposit the iPhone with the other objects, close and lock the drawer, then put the key back around my neck.
It’s my secret, warm against my breastbone.
I spend the afternoon avoiding the unfinished cupcakes. They seem to stare at me from the kitchen counter, seeking the same treatment as the two decorated ones sitting a few feet away, smug in their completeness. I know I should finish them, if only for the therapeutic value. After all, that’s the First Commandment on my website—Baking Is Better Than Therapy.
Usually, I believe it. Baking makes sense. What Lisa Milner did does not.
Yet my mood is so dark I know that not even baking can help. Instead, I go to the living room, fingertips skipping over unread copies of The New Yorker and that morning’s Times, trying to fool myself into thinking I don’t know exactly where I’m heading. I end up there anyway. At the bookcase by the window, using a chair to reach the top shelf and the book that rests there.
Lisa’s book.
She wrote it a year after her encounter with Stephen Leibman, giving it the sad-in-retrospect title of The Will to Live: My Personal Journey of Pain and Healing. It was a minor bestseller. Lifetime turned it into a TV movie.
Lisa sent me a copy immediately after Pine Cottage happened. Inside, she had written, To Quincy, my glorious sister in survival. I’m here if you ever need to talk. Beneath it was her phone number, the digits tidy and blocklike.
I never intended to call. I told myself I didn’t need her help. Considering that I couldn’t remember anything, why would I?
But I wasn’t prepared for having every newspaper and cable news network in the country exhaustively cover the Pine Cottage Murders. That’s what they all called it—the Pine Cottage Murders. It didn’t matter that it was more of a cabin than a cottage. It made for a good headline. Besides, Pine Cottage was its official name, burned summer camp–style onto a cedar plank hung above the door.
Other than the funerals, I laid low. When I left the house, it was for doctors’ appointments or therapy sessions. Because a refugee camp of reporters had occupied the lawn, my mother was forced to usher me out the back door and through the neighbor’s yard to a car waiting on the next block. That still didn’t keep my high school yearbook photo from being slapped on the cover of People, the words “sole survivor” brushing my acne-ringed chin.
Everyone wanted an exclusive interview. Reporters called, emailed, texted. One famous newswoman—repulsion forbids me from using her name—pounded on the front door as I sat on the other side, back pressed to the rattling wood. Before leaving, she shoved a handwritten note under the door offering me a hundred grand for a sit-down interview. The paper smelled of Chanel No. 5. I threw it into the trash.
Even with a broken heart and stab wounds still zippered with stitches, I knew the score. The press was intent on turning me into a Final Girl.
Maybe I could have handled it better had my home life been even the slightest bit stable. It wasn’t.
By then my father’s cancer had returned with a vengeance, leaving him too weak and nauseated from chemo to help soothe my ragged emotions. Still, he tried. Having almost lost me once, he made it clear my well-being was his first priority. Making sure I ate, slept, didn’t wallow in my grief. He just wanted me to be okay, even when he obviously wasn’t. Near the end, I began to think I had survived Pine Cottage only because my father had somehow made a pact with God, exchanging his life for mine.
I assumed my mother felt the same way, but I was too scared and guilt-ridden to ask. Not that I had much of a chance. By that point, she had descended into desperate housewife mode, determined to keep up appearances no matter the cost. She had convinced herself that the kitchen needed remodeling, as if new linoleum could somehow blunt the one-two punch of cancer and Pine Cottage. When she wasn’t grimly shuttling my father and me to various appointments, she was comparing countertops and sorting through paint samples. Not to mention continuing her strict, suburban regimen of spin classes and book clubs. To my mother, bowing out of a single social obligation would have been an admission of defeat.
Because my patchouli-scented therapist said it was good to have a stable support system, I turned to Coop. He did what he could, God love him. He fielded more than a few desperate late-night phone calls. Yet I needed someone who had gone through an ordeal similar to Pine Cottage. Lisa seemed to be the best person for the job.
Rather than flee the scene of her trauma, Lisa stayed in Indiana. After six months of recuperating, she returned to that very same college and earned a degree in child psychology. When she accepted her diploma, the crowd at her graduation ceremony gave her a standing ovation. A wall of press in the back of the auditorium captured the moment in a strobe of flashbulbs.
So I read her book. I found her number. I called.
I want to help you, Quincy, she told me. I want to teach you how to be a Final Girl.
What if I don’t want to be a Final Girl?
That’s not your choice. It’s already been decided for you. You can’t change what’s happened. The only thing you can control is how you deal with it.
For Lisa, that meant facing the situation head-on. She suggested I grant a few interviews to the press, but on my terms. She said talking about it publicly would help me deal with what had happened.
I followed her advice and granted three interviews—one to the New York Times, one to Newsweek, and one to Miss Chanel No. 5, who ended up paying me that hundred grand even though I didn’t ask for it. It went a long way toward buying the apartment. And if you think I don’t feel guilty about that, think again.
The interviews were awful. It felt wrong to be talking openly about dead friends who could no longer speak for themselves, especially when I couldn’t remember what had actually happened to them. I was as much of a bystander as the people eager to consume my interviews like candy.
Each one left me so empty and hollow that no amount of food could make me feel full again. So I stopped trying, eventually landing back in the hospital six months after I had left it. By then my father had already lost his battle with cancer and was simply waiting for it to make the knockout blow. Still, he was by my side every day. Wobbly in his wheelchair, he spooned ice cream into my mouth to wash down the bitter antidepressants I had been forced to take.
A spoonful of sugar, Quinn, he’d say. The song doesn’t lie.
Once my appetite returned and I was released from the hospital, Oprah came calling. One of her producers phoned out of the blue saying she wanted us on her show. Lisa and me and even Samantha Boyd. The three Final Girls united at last. Lisa, of course, agreed. So did Samantha, which was a surprise, considering how she was already practicing her vanishing act. Unlike Lisa, she never tried to contact me after Pine Cottage. She was as elusive as my memories.
I too said yes, even though the thought of sitting before an audience of housewives clucking with sympathy almost made me plummet back down the rabbit hole of anorexia. But I wanted to meet my fellow Final Girls face-to-face. Especially Samantha. By that point, I was ready to see the alternative to Lisa’s exhausting openness.
I never got the chance.
The morning my mother and I were scheduled to fly to Chicago, I awoke to find myself standing in her recently remodeled kitchen. The place had been completely trashed—broken plates covering the floor, orange juice dripping from the open refrigerator, countertops a wasteland of eggshells, flour clumps, and oil slicks of vanilla extract. Seated on the floor amid the debris was my mother, weeping for the daughter who was still with her yet irrevocably lost.
Why, Quincy? she moaned. Why would you do this?
Of course I had been the one to ransack the kitchen like a careless burglar. I knew it as soon as I saw the mess. There was a logic to the destruction. It was so utterly me. Yet I had no memory of ever doing it. Those unknown minutes spent trashing the place were as blank to me as that hour at Pine Cottage.
I didn’t mean it, I said. I don’t know what happened, I swear.
My mother pretended to believe me. She stood, wiped her cheeks, gingerly fixed her hair. Yet a dark twitchiness in her eyes betrayed her true emotions. She was, I realized, frightened of me.
While I cleaned the kitchen, my mother called Oprah’s people and canceled. Since it was all of us or nothing, that decision scuttled the whole thing. There would be no televised meeting of the Final Girls.
Later that day, my mother took me to a doctor who basically gave me a lifetime prescription for Xanax. So eager was my mother to have me medicated that I was forced to swallow one in the pharmacy parking lot, washing it down with the only liquid in the car—a bottle of lukewarm grape soda.
We’re done, she announced. No more blackouts. No more rages. No more being a victim. You take these pills and be normal, Quincy. That’s how it has to be.
I agreed. I didn’t want a troop of reporters at my graduation. I didn’t want to write a book or do another interview or admit my scars still prickled whenever a thunderstorm rolled in. I didn’t want to be one of those girls tethered to tragedy, forever associated with the absolute worst moment of my life.
Still buzzing from that inaugural Xanax, I called Lisa and told her I wasn’t going to do any more interviews. I was done being a perpetual victim.
I’m not a Final Girl, I told her.
Lisa’s tone was unfailingly patient, which infuriated me. Then what are you, Quincy?
Normal.
For girls like you and me and Samantha, there’s no such thing as normal, she said. But I understand why you want to try.
Lisa wished me well. She told me she’d be there if I ever needed her. We never spoke again.
Now I stare at the face gazing from the cover of her book. It’s a nice picture of Lisa. Clearly touched up, but not in a tacky way. Friendly eyes. Small nose. Chin maybe a bit too large and forehead a touch too high. Not a classic beauty, but pretty.