Bloody Mary

It was a pity invite, but Jess would take what she could get.

Once upon a time, all the way back in elementary and middle school, she and Megan had been friends. Best friends. BFF’s, even. At least, that’s how it had felt to Jess. They lived a block away from each other. They rode the bus together, sat together at lunch, played together after school. Hours of make believe, of being brave explorers in the deepest forests, of fighting the dark forces of evil, of weddings that turned sour with devastating revelations.

And then their middle school had dumped them into West Magnolia Junior High right along with four other middle schools and they had met Robin and Jasmine and suddenly it was like Jess didn’t even exist.

She remembered the exact moment it was all over, even if she hadn’t recognized it in the moment. The third day of seventh grade, sitting at the edge of a long table in the cafeteria. They’d barely even sat down before two other girls sat next to them. Those two.

In Jess’ memory they had barely introduced themselves. Maybe that hadn’t even. Maybe that had sat down, zeroed in on Jess’ lunch box, and immediately started sneering.

“Is that a Care Bears lunchbox?” Robin had asked, her voice incredulous and impossibly high pitched. Others at the table had turned to look at her. Even kids sitting at other tables. The entire cafeteria had been staring at Jess and her Care Bears lunchbox.

Had Jess said anything? What, exactly, had there been to say?

“Oh, no, I mean…it’s cute,” Robin had said, putting a slimy emphasis on the word. Not cute the way they were, with their pierced ears and spaghetti strap shirts that were definitely against school policy. No, when Robin said cute, she meant babyish. Care Bears were for babies.

Jess had locked eyes with Megan while Robin and Jasmine had whispered and giggled to each other. Megan, whose had was inside her backpack gripping the matching Care Bears lunchbox. They had gotten them together, before first grade. They were beat up and worn but they still worked. And no one had had a problem with the Care Bears until that exact moment.

She thought Megan would pull out the lunchbox. Maybe if she had, if there had been two Care Bears lunchboxes on the table, Robin would have backed off. Maybe Care Bears weren’t cool at whatever middle school she had come from, but at Woodland Middle they were…they were the shit, as the older kids said.

Instead, Megan flushed. Looked nervously at Robin and Jasmine. And then, ever so carefully, snapped open the lunchbox still in her bag and pulled out her sandwich, bag of chips, and juice box one by one. To Robin and Jasmine’s approval.

The next day Megan already had a new lunchbox. And, in hindsight, new friends.

A year and a half later the only reason Jess and Megan even saw each other anymore was because they still took the same bus. Sometimes they sat together – usually when Jess got on second – and would sit in awkward silence. Most of the time they sat separate, Jess reading and Megan struggling to finish whatever homework she had ignored the night before. She knew from rumors that Robin and Jasmine were demanding friends. There was always some dramatic breakup that the three of them needed to be on the phone about. Some party two towns over that they had to sneak out to go to. Some sale at the mall that the three of them absolutely could not miss.

All things Jess would like to do, too, but invitations were not forthcoming. It didn’t help that when the three of them had joined the school newspaper, Jess had fallen back on the A/V club, and the two were apparently rivals for some reason forgotten to time. She had given them a reason to hate her. Not that they needed it.

Megan had not actually invited her to her birthday sleepover. Megan’s mom had gotten in touch with her mom lamenting that she hadn’t seen Jess in ages and her mom had agreed she couldn’t remember the last time she saw Megan and the two women, in a fit of amnesia to their own brutal days of tweenhood, had agreed that Jess was invited to the sleepover.

Jess knew she shouldn’t go. She knew it would only make things worse. But she wanted to see her friend.

Robin and Jasmine were surprisingly civil. Cold, but civil. Even after Megan’s parents went to bed and left them to their party in the basement they managed to keep the venom off their tongues. And with Robin and Jasmine playing nice, so was Megan. It was the most Megan had talked to her at one time in…well, in a year and a half.

When Robin suggested they play Bloody Mary, Jess didn’t think another thing about it. The four of them rushed to the bathroom, the vanity barely big enough for them to crowd around. There was no time for Jess to think the fact that she had been pushed to the front was weird.

“Okay, we all close our eyes. And then we chant Bloody Mary three times. And then we turn the lights off and we’ll see her!”

And then what? Who knew? Who cared? Such things were never asked. The girls all closed their eyes.

“Bloody Mary,” they said, the others giggling behind her.

“Bloody Mary,” they said, and now Jess could hear they were shifting around. She was, too. How was this stupid game so terrifying.

“Bloody Mary!”

Jess opened her eyes just fast enough to see she was alone. A hand reached in, flipped the light switch, and then the door slammed shut behind her.

They were all on the other side of the door, giggling and slamming their hands on the door over and over and over. Jess barely heard any of it over her screams to be let out and her own hands slamming on the door and jerking the doorknob.

“Let me out!”

“Come on, Jess, you’re not afraid, are you?” Robin said.

“Tell us what she looks like!” That one was Jasmine.

And then, as loud as the others, she heard the voice of Megan.

“Only babies are actually afraid of Bloody Mary!”

And they were giggling again, slamming the door, ignoring her screams. Shouldn’t her parents have heard by now? Where were her parents?

A light from behind her.

The shock had already started to wear off. Even the fear, if only a little. That massive dump of adrenaline had started to wane, letting her think again. Feel again. Slowly taking down that frozen feeling in her spine.

The light started the fear anew.

It was a basement bathroom. No windows. She didn’t remember seeing a nightlight. Just the light from above. And the light was not coming from above her. It was coming from behind her.

It was coming from the mirror.

“Guys,” she whispered, too low to even be heard over their relentless pounding.

“Guys, there’s something in here,” she said, a little louder.

The pounding continued but lost intensity. Someone had stopped.

“Jess?”

Megan.

“There’s…I think…there’s something…”

“Hey, stop it, we should let her out.”

The pounding did not stop. It got worse.

The light was getting brighter. A sickly orange. Pulsing. Jess didn’t want to look.

But she had to.

The mirror was no longer a mirror. She was not contained within it. Another girl, barely older than herself, with dirty clothes and frizzled hair and eyes completely scratched out of her face, blood dripping down her face like tears.

The scream died in Jess’ throat. The fear she had felt was gone, totally. It had been replaced with an odd feeling of sadness and comfort, like a blanket with a musty smell had been draped over her shoulders.

Bloody Mary didn’t have eyes, but somehow Jess knew. She wasn’t looking at Jess. She was looking beyond Jess. At the other three.

Something else filled her mind. A question. An offer.

And Jess, remembering every little slight, every time she’d been ignored, made fun of, talked about behind her back, every single time they’d gone out of their way to bully her, made a decision.

When the other girls finally opened the door, nearly ten minutes later, Jess wasn’t scared anymore.

“Jess, are you okay?” Megan asked, her arms crossed tightly at her chest.

“Of course she’s not,” Robin said with a smirk. “The baby got scared of the dark!”

Jasmine had worn a similar face, but it had dripped off when she saw Jess. There was something about her she noticed, that the other two didn’t.

“Jess? What happened in there?”

Jess passed all three of them, going to her sleeping bag and beginning to roll it up.

“I saw her,” she said.

“Oh, puh-lease,” Robin said. “Don’t go making shit up because you’re butthurt. It was a prank. It’s not our fault you got too scared. Did you wet yourself in there?”

Robin’s stupid face turned to small confusion when she realized the other two were not laughing.

“You…saw her?” Megan asked.

“Uh huh,” Jess said. Finishing with rolling her sleeping back she’d shoved it into her duffel along with the rest of her things. When she was finished, she tossed the duffel over her back.

“What are you doing?” Megan asked.

“Going home.”

“Oh, you can’t do that! My folks will freak if they find out!”

“I’m a block away and I’m not having a good time. I’m leaving.”

“Wait!”

“Oh, let the widdle baby go.”

“What did she look like?”

Jess stopped at the foot of the stairs at Jasmine’s question. She didn’t turn around. When she spoke, her voice barely sounded like her own, a dark, husky thing that shook the other girls to their soft middles.

“Don’t worry. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

The girls all stared at each other as Jess continued up the stairs.

She was barely out the front door when the screaming started.

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