Party Girls (contest edit)

The party was going nowhere fast. It was the first party of the year, the first party of high school. The party was tame with the parents on stand by, perhaps if they weren’t it would have been livelier.1

Tessa and Madison had talked all summer how high school was going to be interesting and fun and exciting. They had spent the entire summer worshiping the stories from the glamorous books and idolizing the risqué tales of their favorite fictional people. Between slathering themselves in baby oil to obtain their tans and spritzing their dark hair with Sun-In they had highlighted and read aloud their favorite inscriptions from the books.2

They had promised themselves that they would move up in the social hierarchy of school by any means possible, it only made sense that they would jump when Amanda Honey candidly mentioned the first three day weekend party of the year. They had broken open their reserve bank in order to buy dresses from the sales rack at Bloomingdales. 3

Of course they were unpleasantly surprised when they noted that no other girl in the house was wearing a dress or fancy top; it was all jeans and stretching the last use of the summer tank tops. It had made them noticeable, but they didn’t receive the attention that they had wanted, only snide snickers behind their back. They had couched the entire party and left ten minutes after the first person did. They have made a bad first impression but they didn’t want to make it worse by being the only remaining freshman to still hold a curfew.4

Which was actually true, but with the excuse that the bus schedule was against them they had convinced their parents to extend their curfew to 1 am. It was a big moment in their short high school life’s, lying to their parents and getting away with it. 5

“Maddie, let’s cut through the woods. We’re gonna miss the bus if we don’t.”6

“Tessie,” she stressed the childish nickname, they had been over this before. Being part of the upper crust of the social scene meant they had to fit in not only in looks but by name as well. Names were important, “it’s Madison and you know those woods creep me out. Besides, they’re filled with bugs,” Tessa smirked as her friend pulled out her ever-present bottle of hand sanitizer. For as long as Tessa could remember, Madison was terrified of contracting a fatal disease from some germ passing by. 7

Madison was scared of a lot of things. Needles, dogs, bugs, the dark, small spaces, heights, choking on food, thunder storms, earthquakes and the monsters under her bed and in her closet. The list went on really, but Tessa had more important things than to remember her friends every growing list of fears.8

“Planter’s Woods is not haunted,” Tessa began walking towards the small strip of woods that blocked the bus stop from the two girls.9

“Young girls were burned at the stake here during the witch trials, how could it not be haunted?” Madison retorted. It was a common myth among Planter Middle and the fear it had produced was obviously following some of the incoming freshman to Haverton High. 10

Planter was an old family that had left decades ago after they had supposedly put their own young daughter on trial and burned her in the woods behind her house. The land was sold to the city and the middle school was built on it when the town began expanding.11

The records of those who were burned were lost long ago. There was no grave marker for Lea Planter and the public was led to believe by the town gossips that the young and beautiful Lea was buried in the families small tree covered land. 12

Despite the wisdom that was supposed to come with their freshman ID card Madison fully believed that the ghost of Lea Planter haunted the land and in spite of the fact that the trek through the woods would cut their travel time in half Madison was still hesitant of going through them.13

“Come on Madison, it’s five minutes straight through, if we walk around it we’ll miss the last bus,” she turned towards her friend and pushed her dark hair behind her ears and held firmly to her shoulders, “If we’re grounded till college we will never become popular, if we go through these woods the worst that will happen is we see a few spiders or a raccoon—“14

“Or the ghost of Lea Planter,” Madison mumbled, crossing her arms in front of her chest stubbornly. While both Madison and Tessa wanted to be popular, Tessa had always been the leader and the one to take the initiative. Tessa had always been able to convince Madison of her plans, no matter how fanatical or inane. 15

“Fine, Maddie, walk around the woods, I’m going through them and I’m not going to wait for you when the bus comes. If you have to call your dad for a ride home I don’t want to hear it Tuesday at school when you need to borrow my cell phone because yours got taken away.” 16

Tessa began walking into the woods, carefully placing her feet. If she was going to go through these woods alone she couldn’t sprain her ankle, not only would it hurt but it would kill her to have the tables turn on her and have her be the one calling Mr. Tanner for a ride home.17

Madison and Tessa had lived next door to each other their entire lives and when Tessa’s father had left Mr. Tanner had naturally taken his place, it had helped both Tessa and her brother Trent before he left for college but also Ms. Bryar since she worked two jobs, one a part-time day job and another night shift.18

Madison stood at the edge of the woods, pouting, she looked towards the sidewalk and then back to Tessa, “Wait up!” she yelled after her before tripping over a root and face planting in a pile of leaves.19

Madison laughed and went back to help her friend up, “Come on, we have three more buses left. It’s midnight right now,” she said, smiling and looking at her bright cell phone screen. That had been another investment they had made with the cash they earned at Fred’s Ice Creamery, each girl had bought a new enV in order to help them obtain their spot in the top arena of their high school’s student population.20

The girls walked silently through the woods with their arms linked together, it was hard going since there was little light to go by. They each stopped dead in their tracks though when they came across a deep ravine.21

“Remember that song we sang in nursery school? ‘Going on a lion hunt, gonna catch a big one,’” Madison said quietly.22

“’I’m not afraid, look what’s up ahead’?”23

“Darling, we can go through the trees but Mrs. Lutch taught me well… we can’t go through the ravine, we have to go around it,” Madison squatted down and rested her head in her hands, “What are we going to do now, Tess?”24

“We go around it,” Tessa said forlornly, it would take them longer to go around the long and wide ditch. She looked to her left and then smiled, she could see the light from the bus stop, if this ditch hadn’t of been there they would have gone clear to the other side of town, “If we walk fast we can get the 12:05 bus, that light over there is probably the bus stop anyway. Maybe we were going the wrong way the entire time, wouldn’t that suck?” 25

Madison smiled up at her friend and pushed herself up, that was Tessa, always looking on the bright side of life. They began walking once again towards the light in between the trees, Madison’s hands were shaking even though she was clutching Tessa’s tightly.26

“Tess, what is that?” Madison pointed at the large mass in front of them. Tessa smiled brightly at Madison, Tessa had always enjoyed a mystery. She had devoured the Nancy Drew books when the two were younger and while she hadn’t convinced Madison to read the books she had coerced her into playing Harriet the Spy around town. This was before they had heard about Lea Planter and they had never explored these woods.27

“It’s a house,” Tessa squealed. She grabbed Madison’s hand and pulled her towards the house. It was dark and in shambles, the paint was missing leaving the raw old wood exposed, the glass was gone from the windows, “Do you think this was the Planter House?”28

It was large and ominous, they could see boards on the porch, which had obviously once barred the entrance of the house, but they had been taken down long ago. Vines were growing up the side, swirling around the stain glass window that made up the one dormer window the house had.29

“I don’t know,” Madison said exasperatedly, “We don’t have time to figure it out. Tomorrow, when it’s bright outside.”30

“Oh pretty please, Maddie. I’ll owe you, massively. Pinkie promise. Just five minutes inside, we can see the bus stop from here. We run to the fence, jump it and catch the 12:17 bus. We’ll be fine.”31

“Fine, you’re buying me new ringtones though, indefinitely.”32

Tessa jumped up and down and hugged her friend excitedly. She had promised Madison that she had left her spying and mystery solving days behind, but Madison wasn’t buying it. 33

Tessa ran up the stairs, Madison following closely behind. The door was unlocked and the inside of the house was just as run down as the outside, it smelled terrible and a thick layer of dirt and leaves covered the floor. Pieces of the flooring had caved in and the girls could see the shelves in the basement still lined with cans of what once might have been food.34

The two girls explored the house a little further, they were tentative of where they stepped, as they were aware that with their combined weight the floor could easily cave in. “It reeks in here,” Madison complained.35

“Oh, it just smells a little damp,” Tessa chirped, “Three more minutes, come on,” Tessa opened the door and the old hinges groaned. She pushed against the rust and the two looked into the dark, dank room. Seeing nothing, they pulled open their phones and flipped them open casting a shallow light in the few inches ahead of them. They walked further into the room, gripping each other with fear that was swirling around them. They reached the rooms midway point, simultaneously the boards beneath them creaked and the lights on their phones went dim. They screamed, but the scream turned into laughter.36

They pressed on the keyboard of their phone and the screen illuminated; they began screaming again when the sight before them came into focus. The quickly let go of each other’s hands and ran to the door, ignoring the pain in their feet from their archless ballet flats.37

The quickly made it to the fence and began climbing it, the bus driver sat there with his door open and the bus bright with the dirty light from the lamps in the bus. Madison had no time to mourn the rip that occurred while climbing over the fence, the only thing on her mind was getting to the safety of the germ filled bus.38

They flashed the driver their IDs and passes and made it to the very last bench, the doors shut, the hinges creaking like those of the doors in the house. Chills ran down each of their spines and they gripped each other’s sweaty palms.39

The bus started and they caught their breath as it pulled out of the stop and made it’s way off of Planter Drive and onto Myrtle Lane. Tessa and Madison sat in the seat, holding their phones and IDs in one hand and keeping a tight grasp on to each other’s hands, each sat silently digesting their own individual thoughts.40

It wasn’t until the girls were in front of their identical houses that one of them spoke.41

“So, are we going to tell anyone about the body?”42