Jennifer--s Body -2009- < TESTED >

“I’m hungry,” she whispered. Her eyes weren't human. They were the color of root beer bottles held up to the sun.

And underneath that, smaller:

I stepped to the edge. “You brought a dead heart to a best friend fight.”

She touched it, looked at the red on her fingertip, and licked it clean. “Am I?” That night, she showed up at my window. I didn’t hear the glass slide open. I just felt the cold. Jennifer--s Body -2009-

“Don’t tell,” she whispered. “Or I’ll start with your boyfriend.” The next morning, Chip was late for first period. By third period, his car was still in the lot, but he wasn’t. I found his letterman jacket behind the bleachers. It was wet. Not with rain—with something that had a pulse recently.

I knelt beside the pool and held her hand as the water turned clear again. Her face softened back to the girl I knew. Then it went slack.

“You said boys,” I said. “Not Chip.” “I’m hungry,” she whispered

JENNIFER CHECK — 1991–2009 SHE WAS A MONSTER. BUT SHE WAS MY MONSTER.

She lunged. I stabbed. The scissors went in just below her ribs—the place where, in fourth grade, she’d been stung by a wasp and I’d carried her to the nurse’s office. Black blood geysered. She didn’t scream. She sighed, like a tire letting out air.

I didn’t run.

“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.”

I smiled.

The night the fire department pulled two rabbit hunters out of a ravine, no one in Devil’s Kettle talked about the smell on their breath. The hunters said they’d been chasing a buck, lost their footing, and blacked out. But the nurses noted the way their chests caved in—like something had sat on them and gotten bored. And underneath that, smaller: I stepped to the edge

I’m still hungry too.