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It had made her want to suck the other girl’s dick right there, even knowing Margo’s roommates were asleep a wall away. She felt wrapped up in that moment as they rounded the corner onto Washington Avenue, the sun hitting their faces, people cheering and waving and holding up their phones to film the parade from behind the barricades at the curbs. Shelby was out there somewhere, probably being gross and corny with her new girlfriend, Sid, and John and Mal were supposed to meet them all later, after John’s physical therapy appointment. His scars had been bothering him lately. Felix hadn’t called in a few weeks. He was out in Colorado again, hanging around a wilderness discipline camp. He said he couldn’t sleep in the city.

That was when Abby saw him. A boy stood at the parade’s edge, staring at her. He was a little younger than them, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and dressed in tight black jeans and a ragged Mitski T-shirt. His hair was a vibrant green and in the shade of the awning beside him his face, except for the slight smile curling his lips, was difficult to see.

“You okay, babe?” Margo asked her. “Did you take your meds this morning?”

Abby watched the boy as he stepped down off the sidewalk and came toward them, and she thought as her heart came up into her throat that this was worse than cops or soldiers marching, worse than the Citibank float up near the front of the parade or some corporate PR mutant tweeting that the Keebler Elves were demisexual. None of it, no matter how it gnawed at everything they’d fought and bled and died for, was as bad as this. She tightened her grip on Margo’s hand, anxiety closing her throat as the boy drew nearer, sliding between marchers, his face hidden by wigs and signs and baseball caps. Was he coming for her, or had he only seen a friend somewhere nearby?

“Babe?” Margo asked.

Nothing was worse than this: to look at her people, her family, and not know if they were real or if their smiles would split, their skulls bloom red and stinking like corpse flowers as they bent to wrap the tendrils of their faces tight around her own. To never know, even in a lover’s arms, who was us and who was them.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my parents and grandparents, who kept trying to understand until it finally clicked, my brave and brilliant sibling Elliot and my kind and giving brother-in-law Huey, my writing partner and dear friend Sara, my beautiful Dana and Julian and Darcy and Ezra, my loving partners Sam and Carolyn and Quinn and Carta, my dear friends Josh and Lydia and Arielle, Vince and Alice and Jacey and Hazel, Millie and Sean.

My fantastic agent, Connor Goldsmith; my dynamite editor, Kelly Lonesome; the whole Nightfire team—Kristin, Jordan, Laura, Valeria, Dakota, Janine, Sara, Jaime, Rafal, Steven, Greg; cover designer Esther S. Kim and cover artist Sarah Sitkin.

Special thanks to Philip Kaufman, W. D. Richter, Clea DuVall, and Jamie Babbit.

ALSO BY

GRETCHEN FELKER-MARTIN

Manhunt

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

GRETCHENFELKER-MARTIN is a Massachusetts-based horror author and film critic. Her debut novel, Manhunt, was named the #1 best book of 2022 by Vulture and one of the best horror novels of 2022 by Esquire, Library Journal, and Paste. You can follow her work on Twitter @scumbelievable and read her fiction and film criticism on Patreon and in Time, The Outline, Nylon, and more. You can sign up for email updates here