“Darkness Falls, Jaws, The Ring, Scream, The Grudge, Halloween, Halloween II, Halloween III: the Season of the Witch, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, and Halloween: Resurrection…these all work for everybody?”
Sam was still rifling through her brother’s VHS collection upstairs when Chrissy swooped in and just grabbed the ones that Sam had already pulled out.
“There are like 30 fucking people in the basement, Sammy! Just grab this shit and let’s just get down there before Callie tries to start another Mr. Brightside sing-a-long.”
“Fuck that shit, these will have to do I guess,” Sammy sighed.
They split the 13 or so clunky tapes between them and hurried down the stairs.
“Hold up,” Chrissy stopped. “You don’t have The Exorcist or The Omen?”
“How the hell would I know? You’re the person who just grabbed everything on the ground and said we had to go.”
“That was before I realized you didn’t have those,” Chrissy stared at Sammy pissed.
“I. Am. Not. Going. Upstairs. Again.”
“Brian loves those movies and I want him to think I love them too so we can hook up.”
Sam just looked at Chrissy blankly. They legit weren’t even in high school and dating was all Chrissy could think about. It was only two months into 8th Grade and she already managed to have huge crushes on two different guys. It never even occurred to Sam to try dating. All the boys downstairs just felt like big friends who wore too much Axe Body Spray.
“I thought you two already watched The Exorcist together at your house a week ago?”
“It was the third one and it didn’t work out. I didn’t want him to think it was a date so I invited Lynn over. The part about him not thinking it was a date totally worked out. But instead of sitting by me, he kept talking to her about weird horror movie shit. They even started talking about serial killers. It was stupid as hell and what’s worse is that Lynn knew she was only there to be a buffer!”
“Bad luck. But you should’ve known that Lynn literally can’t stop talking if someone brings up witches, serial killers, or other dark crap like that. She’s worse than Callie when The Killers are brought up. I wouldn’t worry though. I doubt he’s into her.”
“Oh definitely not,” Chrissy laughed so hard she dropped at least half of the Halloween franchise.
Somebody Told Me started to slowly emanate from the basement.
“CALLIE,” both girls groaned together.
Chrissy and Sam scrambled to pick up all the movies so they could hurry down there to stop the horror that was surely happening. New wave. Pop-rock. Discussions about bisexuality. Pure anarchy for a group of white as-hell Catholic School kids. It had to be stopped. Besides, if they got too loud her parents would stop it instead and that would be way worse.
“Wait,” Sam was out of breath but grabbed Chrissy’s arm.
“Do you not want Lynn here? I thought she came here with you?”
“I’m cool with her being here. She’s our friend. The short and dorky friend. My sister told me every girl group needs one. But you just said it: if anything dark or messed up gets brought up, she’s unstoppable. I know she isn’t trying to make us look bad but the guys love talking about that shit. She’s the only girl they’ll even bother looking at.”
“Remember when we stayed at the hotel last year after our basketball season was over?” Sam prodded Chrissy.
“Yeah, we all ate pizza and watched movies like we’re about to do now…”
“And after that, Katrina and Lynn couldn’t sleep all night because they thought the hallway looked like the one in The Grudge. Scared them totally stupid. They were so freaked that we almost couldn’t get them to leave their room in the morning.”
“What’s your point?”
Chrissy was at the basement door and ready to be ignored again.
“If we turn on The Grudge first, Lynn will probably leave and Katrina won’t even show up…”
“Dude, it’ll humiliate her if we do that,” Chrissy looked at Sam but knew she had an insanely valid point.
They stared at each other so hard that they almost didn’t realize that Callie managed to get Mr. Brightside on…
Coming out of my cage
And I’ve been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all
Everyone down there was slowly getting jacked to the song in a kind of way that only white as-hell Catholic School kids could.
“Fuck it. Throw it on the second we get to the TV. Two birds with one stone. It’ll shut Callie up and Lynn will probably call her brother to pick her up within minutes of us turning it on,” Chrissy no longer cared.
“We’re pretty fucking terrible people,” Sam laughed.
“No, The Killers are terrible people. We’re just white as-hell Catholic School girls with a grudge…”