What did you wear to a horror movie screening? I stared at the contents of my closet, utterly lost. Thanks to my mother, I knew precisely what to wear for almost every social occasion. I knew the difference between cocktail, black tie, and white tie attire, and I had outfits for every category. But my debutante classes had not prepared me for this.

I tried a sundress, but then took it off. I looked young, like I was going to a church picnic. I looked like the kind of girl you usually saw drenched in blood on the movie posters, not like a person who’d be in the audience. A little black dress and high heels. But what if everyone else was casual? This was a screening, not a premiere. I bet it would be a bunch of film majors and reporters. I tried a pair of skinny jeans, sparkly sandals, and a silky, draped top. Date clothes, as long as the date wasn’t at the country club.

I rolled my eyes and fluffed my blonde hair in the mirror. Speaking of the country club, I was going to have to go out with Jeffrey Connell. Mom would nag me until I did. Plenty of fish in the sea, Hannah. You’re never going to look better than you do now, Hannah. He’s a very promising young man, Hannah.

The promising ones were the worst. All they managed to do was remind me how very promising I wasn’t.

I checked out my reflection in the mirror one more time. Maybe I was making too big a deal of this. Probably everyone else there went to an advanced screening or two each week. And it wasn’t like they’d know who I was. No one knew who The Final Girl was. I didn’t have a picture up on the site, and I’d RSVP’d to the event as Hannah Swift. As far as they knew, I might be reviewing the thing for a Canton College paper, though I hadn’t been a journalism major for fifteen months.

But I was still my mother’s daughter, and I’d never leave the house without my hair and my clothes and my makeup just so. Everything right and perfect.

What bullshit.

I’d worried the lipstick off my bottom lip twice by the time I grabbed my keys and my purse and forced myself to walk out the front door. I had a couple of hours in the car to fret about this. I should save all my anxiety for that.

Across the lawn, I saw the handyman standing near his truck in the Gardners’ driveway.

“Hey, you,” he said as I approached my silver BMW convertible. “Where are you going?”

I blinked in surprise. All those days on the deck, and we’d never actually exchanged words. “What?” I said stupidly.

He tapped his wrist like he was wearing a watch. “We have an appointment at three o’clock.”

An appointment? Warmth flooded through my body as he shot me that killer grin. That whole shirt off, bikini strut, mutual admiration routine we’d been playing at for a week was an appointment now? “I’m going to the movies,” I said, and clicked the unlock button on my keys.

“Alone?”

Was he asking if I had a date? “Yep,” I said lightly. “My girlfriends don’t like the kind of films I do.” Why had I said girlfriends? It wasn’t like I was subtly trying to indicate my single status to him. I didn’t want to date the neighbors’ handyman!

“Oh yeah?” he asked. He really ought to get a license for that smile of his. This guy was wasted as a handyman. He should be a model. Or a gigolo. Hell, maybe he was a gigolo, like that old cliché about the pool boys servicing bored housewives. Maybe fixing the roof wasn’t all he was doing at the Gardners’ house. After all, if my dad could sleep with other people, then why couldn’t everyone on the block do it, too? “What kind of movies do you like?”

I climbed into the driver’s seat, inserted the key in the ignition and winked at him. “Bloody ones.”

---

Render was pretty good. Scary, trippy, and not too obsessed with torturing women for kicks. I hate those kind of movies. The entire cast was made up of three people, but two of them were women, and I definitely jumped out of my seat a few times. The effects could probably have used a little work, but I revised my opinion entirely when I saw on the info sheet that the entire production had cost fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars? I could become a movie producer at those rates. And for that price, the effects were phenomenal.

After the screening, we were invited to a “chat” with the screenwriter-director, who looked about twenty-four. A more robust production would probably have called it a “reception” and served wine and canapes, but soda and chips were all that Render and its fifty thousand bucks could afford.

I stood in the corner with a Diet Coke and watched the other attendees. Some wore business suits—I wondered if they were producers or distribution guys looking to buy the rights. The film critic from the Washington Post was there—I recognized his face. Most of the other people were younger, like me, and I was pleased to note they were all in jeans.

I wandered over to a knot of these guys to find them in the middle of a debate about the history of body horror and the influence of Cronenberg on the production. I listened in silence, nodding at a few of the points being made, so I was totally taken off guard when one of the guys, wearing a plain black T-shirt and a pair of baggy black jeans, turned to me and said, “What did you think?”

“I think there’s an argument to be made for that,” I said. “Certainly something like Scanners, with the weaponry angle. But I think the scenes at the rendering plant owe more to Altered States—”

“That wasn’t Cronenberg,” snapped another guy. “That was Chayefsky.”

This was why I only took three classes in the Canton Film Studies department—blowhards like this. I never said Altered States was Cronenberg. I just said the scenes in the rendering plant reminded me of Altered States.

“Yeah, I love that film,” said the black T-shirt guy. “If we’d had more money for CGI, it would have been an even more blatant homage.”

I stared at him. “Wait, you’re Sam Rowland?”

He laughed. “No, I’m Sam Raimi. Yeah, that’s me.”

“But you’re so young!” I couldn’t help but blurt out. Oh, God. I wanted to die.

“Yeah, well that’s why I couldn’t get anyone to help finance this. I called in every favor I’ve been owed my whole life, and all my credit cards are leveraged to the max.”

“That’s awesome,” I said. “It was a great film. I hope it gets a really good distribution deal.”

“Thanks,” he replied. “We’re doing the festival thing now and building up support. How did you hear about it?”

“Canton film studies email list,” I lied with a shrug. “Seemed cool.”

“Oh, you’re a film studies major!” he asked.

No. Of all the majors I’d tried, film hadn’t been one of them.

“Cool! Are you going to write it up for the school paper or something like that?”

Something like that. I smiled at him. “It’ll have to wait a month or two if I do. Classes won’t start until September.” There, that wasn’t a lie.

“Of course.” He nodded in understanding. “Well, if you do, and you have any questions, you can email me.” He handed me his card. “I wrote the screenplay as an undergrad, you know.”

“As an undergrad,” I echoed, looking at his card. How come everyone else knew what they wanted to do already? Tess and Dylan were off genetically engineering algae or something, this Sam guy had written a movie and gotten it made…

“And maybe we’ll have a distribution deal in place by then,” he went on. “And the movie will actually play in Canton. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Soon after, the conversation devolved into the pros and cons of various film festivals and how those Saw guys had built their empire, and I slipped away. On one hand, it would be cool if Render got a theatrical release. But even if Sam just got a DVD and Hulu deal, he’d do well. He’d created a good foundation for his next film. He’d be approached by producers and studios to work on their films. He’d have a career.

And I’d still be figuring out what to major in.

---

Dad’s car was in the garage when I got home from DC, but it was gone by the time I got up the next morning. Naturally. This was the new normal when it came to us. Avoidance whenever possible, stony silence when it wasn’t.

Back in December, it seemed easy. Dad was a liar. He’d lied to me and Mom my entire life. He’d kept some woman and her daughter—his daughter—in an apartment across town and didn’t tell anyone they existed. I had a sister and I never knew…well, at least, not until my boyfriend, Dylan, had started working with her on a science project at Canton and dumped me to be with her.

Tess McMann. My sister. My glamorous, brilliant, scientist sister, who was so attractive and enchanting and whatever else Dylan didn’t care about the six months we’d spent together. Who was so smart and hardworking that Canton had actually offered her an academic scholarship in order to entice her to transfer in to our school.

The scholarship hadn’t been enough, though. She needed money for books and supplies and a lot of other expenses, and Dad wasn’t giving her a penny in order to punish her for daring to actually come to his alma mater.

That didn’t seem right to me. Why was he paying my expensive Canton costs so I could change my major every week and a half, while he cut off the daughter who actually could do something with the money? Clearly, the wrong girl had been born legitimate. So I told him that he needed to give her money for school, or I’d expose his secret.

He gave her money, and me the cold shoulder.

I didn’t care. I was furious at him, too. Then I went off to Europe, and some of my anger at him faded. Yes, he’d made some pretty terrible choices. But he was still my father. It didn’t make much of a difference though, since as soon as I got home he’d made it clear he still wanted nothing to do with me. I was no longer his perfect, golden girl. I’d betrayed him—though I still wasn’t sure if the betrayal had been the threat I made or just the fact that I now knew his dirty little secret.

In deference to my mother’s advice, I did my laps in the morning, even though I knew that would deprive the handyman of the sight of me in the pool. Afterward, I hung about the house, watching stupid reality television, reading one of my mom’s architectural magazines, and wondering how, only a short month ago, I’d been the envy of all my friends, running around Europe’s most fashionable hot spots.

And maybe that’s why I was avoiding them all now. It wasn’t that Europe hadn’t been fun and amazing and enlightening and all that other stuff. My knowledge of Italian Renaissance art had grown by leaps and bounds, though I hadn’t been an art history major since freshman year. I could tell you all kinds of cool facts about Scottish history. I’d picked tulips in the Netherlands and gone swimming in the Mediterranean and skied in St Moritz. I’d gambled in Monaco for about twenty seconds, then decided I was probably spending enough of my trust fund on my European adventure without pissing it away at the roulette table. I’d taken a cooking class in Tuscany and a baking class in Paris and my French was basically fluent now, so all of that was a bonus.

But it wasn’t like I thought it would be. I’d had no Eat, Pray, Love kind of epiphany about what I should be doing with my life. I didn’t find my soul mate like that chick who bought a villa in Tuscany had, or even have some wild, insane fling in Ibiza. I flirted with a few guys and kissed a few more, but despite my promises to friends and my boast to my half sister that I was going to sleep my way through the hotter half of Europe, it hadn’t really happened.

I’d come home to Canton, still the same girl I’d been when I left it. I still didn’t know what to do with my life. Or my family. Or my heart.