Girl, you are so full of shit, Christina thought to herself when, despite her previous convictions, she spent the better part of the following week focusing less on class and more on what had occurred Friday night. She surmised the following conclusions, which she documented thoroughly on another piece of paper while pretending to take notes on Frankenstein during Mrs. Tate's lecture:

1. The caller is a student at Woodsboro High, and most likely someone in my grade. (No evidence on the latter, but a strong feeling.)

2. The caller is a male, somehow affecting his voice. He even alluded to this.

3. The caller is someone who has their own car, as they must have, in a relatively small window of time, driven through downtown Woodsboro to see that my father was still at work, drive past my house at some point to see my mother leaving for the store, and stick around or circle back to see me coming home from school later. This is how they would have known I was home alone.

Christina looked down at her list with a crinkled brow. Her pathetic little notes did not help in the slightest, really—the entire male senior population at Woodsboro High with access to a vehicle was still too large of a pool in which to make an allegation with any degree of certainty. Everyone knew about her relationship with John. And—as she had been told so many times before—Woodsboro was a small town. It was not entirely unfeasible that some bored fuck-rag with way too much time on his hands decided to pull a little prank, even going through a few extra steps to make sure it was executed successfully. Maybe it was someone jealous of John, she thought, her suspicious drifting, once again, to Steven Orth.

Either way, she was determined not to let him know that he had scared her. She was going to walk through the halls with her head held high. Fuck that guy, whoever he was!

After study hall, Christina wanted to stop by her locker to store some extra pads for the rest of the week. Her locker was on the other end of the school in relation to the library, so she told Judy she would meet her in the parking lot. She wanted to use the bathroom first, and had to wait in line for the usual post-class rush to pass before she could get a stall. By the time she was actually approaching her locker, the halls of the school were mostly bare—she hoped Judy wasn't getting frustrated waiting for her all this time. She stored the pads as well as a few books that she wouldn't need for homework that night and prepared to tread the halls once more to the exit closest to the parking lot.

The door to a darkened classroom was left ajar, and when Christina passed it, she heard someone speak in a low, intense voice: "Christina."

"Jesus—!"

She turned with a start to see Billy Loomis leaning against the frame of the door, having nudged it open further with his foot. He smirked at her reaction, seemingly amused at having startled her. Still, he held up his hands in a semblance of apology.

"Not Jesus. Just me."

"What are you doing?"

"I tried to catch you after study hall but you bolted off so fast. I figured you were going to your locker for something."

"Yeah, well, aren't you perceptive?" she deadpanned. "I've got to go. Judy's waiting for me."

"Is something wrong?"

He took a step toward her, his face emerging from the shadows of the dark classroom. Christina had been trying not to look at directly at him, but the moment he reached out and grazed his hand against her own, all bets were off. His deep brown eyes were swimming with concern that made her knees weak.

"What makes you think something's wrong?" she asked softly, already melting beneath his gaze.

Billy disregarded her inquiry, glancing around to see they were indeed alone. "Come in here with me. I want to talk to you for a minute."

"I don't think we're supposed to be alone in a classroom."

"We'll hear the janitors coming a mile away. Don't be a chicken." He leaned forward. "I thought we were friends."

Christina hesitated for only a moment, then when she too visually confirmed that there was no one around to witness her inevitable lapse in discretion, once again caused by Billy Loomis, she ducked into the classroom. Billy shut the door softly behind her, pressing his weight into it to ensure it was fully closed. When he appeared satisfied that their conversation would remain private, he turned to her, searching her expression.

"Hey."

"Hi," Christina breathed.

"I thought you looked kind of stressed out in study hall," he finally answered her question.

"I did?"

She thought she had banished that fear, that lingering anxiety over the mysterious, threatening caller, replacing it instead with an investigative approach. Absentmindedly, she reached into her pocket and felt the folded paper containing her notes germane to Billy's observation. Maybe she really was full of shit. Maybe just beneath her exterior she was still as frightened as she had been in her dream.

"Yeah, you did," Billy said, worry coloring his handsome features. He reached out and squeezed her arm. "Do you wanna tell me anything?"

"Uh, well…something did happen. Friday night"—she paused, licking her lips anxiously—"I got this really…really creepy phone call. It was some guy. I hung up the first couple of times but he kept calling back. He threatened me. He wanted to talk about scary movies and…and somehow he knew I was home alone," she said, holding her hand to her forehead.

"What? Did you tell your parents?" Billy asked, invested.

"No," said Christina. "I went back and forth on whether I should, but I decided that if there's a ninety-nine percent chance it was just some asshole pulling a prank, I didn't want to worry them for no reason…look, I even took notes."

She produced the paper from her pocket with a small, humorless, laugh. Billy, however, seemed to take it quite seriously. He took it from her hand and unfolded it, examining her documented thoughts with a raised brow.

"So," he said, looking back up at her, "you don't have a good idea of who it was, then?"

"No. At first I thought it might be Steven Orth. He—the phone creep, I mean—said that he was a 'friend of a friend'"—Christina demonstrated with air quotes—"and I know Steve and John have a kind of frenemy thing between them. I think Steve's jealous because John's the better football player."

"That's a good theory."

"I thought it could be Randy too," Christina continued guiltily. The accusation tasted sour coming from her mouth. Randy had been nothing but nice to her. "Because—hey, who else would be asking about scary movies, right? But I don't think it was Randy."

"You can never know who people are behind closed doors. I wouldn't put it past him," Billy disagreed.

"Isn't he your friend?"

He scoffed.

"I tolerate him for Sidney's sake. He's been following her around like a little lapdog since freshman year. Even when her and I started dating she couldn't shake him."

"Maybe she didn't want to. Randy's a good kid."

"Then why'd you accuse him of calling you?"

"I took that back."

"Sure," Billy said, unconvinced. "Who else could it be?"

"Well…then I thought…" Christina stared at the wall behind him, nervous, as the confession rose burning like vomit in her throat. Only a foot or two separated them. "I thought it was you."

"Me?" Billy took a step away from her, affronted. "What makes you think I would do something like that?"

"I'm sorry, okay?" Christina begged, already regretting being so honest with him. "I just thought—'god, it's gotta be someone I know! Someone I've spoken to before.' The way they were talking to me was so strange…and their voice…it was like I knew them but I didn't know them! Does that make any sense?"

"Not really. Obviously, this isn't doing you any good," he said, holding up the paper with her stupid theories. He crumpled it in his hand and threw it into the bin by the door for good measure.

"I'm sorry, Billy." Christina approached him slowly, the guilt propelling her toward him. She couldn't even bring herself to be upset about him destroying her notes without her permission. "I know we haven't spoken in a while, not since…what happened last time." She was briefly overcome with the memory of their sordid kiss in her room, the night she betrayed John. "Please, don't be mad at me. I need all my friends right now, because the truth is what happened scared the shit out of me. I could barely sleep all weekend, and when I did I had awful dreams. And…and I'm afraid he might call again! He made it seem like he would!"

She was sniffling now, the reemerging fear manifesting itself on her face, in her voice, and behind her tear-stinging eyes. Billy reached out and engulfed her in a crushing, merciful hug; she embraced him at once, profoundly relieved to be touching him, smelling him, alone with him—even if she was engaging in the very act she had promised herself would never happen again.

"He won't," Billy assured her, and the firmness with which he said it made her whimper. "You let him know his bullshit doesn't faze you. He'll have no reason to call again. He'll move on to someone else."

"But it did faze me, Billy," she said tearfully. "It fucking fazed me a lot. You should have seen me—I was walking around the house with a knife like a crazy person! What if he calls me again?"

Billy pulled away just enough to look at her. He grasped her by the shoulders and stared straight into her eyes, their faces so close that she could make out every detail of his even in the darkness of the classroom.

"If he does, I'll find out who he is, and I'll kick his dipshit ass myself."

"You mean that?"

Billy nodded, and then he was kissing her. His lips rested so naturally against the bow of her own; he attempted to deepen the kiss with a familiar touch of his tongue, and the sensation was so wonderful, but also so terribly jarring, that Christina broke away from him at once. She shook her head and made her way quickly toward the door.

"No, Billy. I told you—we can't do that anymore!"

"Seriously? Why not? Give me one good reason. You clearly want me as much as I want you. If you didn't you wouldn't have come into this room with me. You wouldn't have let me come into your room that night, either."

"But…Sidney…"

"Forget about Sidney," he harshly dismissed. "Stop acting like you care about her, anyway."

"I care about being a decent human being."

He rolled his eyes.

"I'll tell you something about Sid. She's not the same girl I started dating two years ago. She's changed. She's stiff and boring—depressing to be around. She'll barely let me touch her."

"She lost her mother, Billy!"

"And that's supposed to be my problem as long as we're together?" Billy retorted, his voice rising to match hers. "The truth is, I want out! I've been waiting for the right time to break up with her. It's the one-year anniversary of her mom's death coming up and I know everyone would give me shit if I did it before then"—he glared at her—"but after next month, I'm done…" For a moment his gaze had wandered, as if he had been focusing distantly on some larger vision or purpose that Christina was not privy to, but when he met her eyes again, it was with a newfound intention. "And you know what else is going to happen after next month?"

He sauntered casually toward her and leaned against the door, effectively blocking her only escape.

"You're going to break up with Johnny," he continued nonchalantly, not waiting for a response. "And we'll wait a little while, sure, so it won't look suspicious, and then we can go steady. I'm tired of pretending like you're not mine when I've so clearly left my mark on you."

He reached out to touch her face again, but Christina slapped it away, and she did it with such force that it caused her palm to sting. She hoped it hurt him just as much.

"Fuck you, Loomis," she said, with at least an iota more of determination than she had said the same words in her dream. "You think that because you stole a kiss when I was all emotional that you own me? You're just a rat-faced looking mama's boy, you fucking greasy-haired fuck!"

She made a move to assert herself, to push his arm away to grab the handle of the door in the hopes of finishing her insult with a dramatic flourish, when Billy grabbed her by the forearm, holding her in place.

"Listen here, sweetheart. I'd never let Sidney speak to me like that," he said, his tone surprisingly even despite the severity of his eyes, "and I'll be damned if I stand here and let you do it now."

"Billy…" she said, struggling against his grip. "That hurts!"

"Oh, come on." He released her with a contemptuous smirk. "I barely touched you."

Christina held up her forearm to examine it. Even in the dark, the faintest outline of his fingers were indeed visible against her olive skin. She rubbed it gingerly.

"Is that what you do to Sidney?" she dared softly. "Do you put your hands on her to keep her in her place?"

"Now you're just being stupid. What's wrong? Is Johnny leaving you sexually frustrated?"

"You wish."

"Maybe a little bit," he conceded, shrugging. "Here"—he took her arm again, gently this time, and brought it up to his face, where he brushed the offending mark with his lips—"is that better?"

"Fuck you," Christina said, and she was tempted to insult him further in Spanish, so that she might say things that he would not readily understand. She snatched her arm away from him and finally yanked open the door. "Don't ever touch me again, Billy. Don't talk to me—don't call me, either. I'm done with you."

He frowned.

"You still think it was me?"

"I don't know what to think anymore. But I do know that whatever this is"—she motioned between the two of them—"it's wrong. I'm sorry." She inwardly scolded herself the moment the words left her mouth for what felt like the hundredth time: Why are you apologizing?

"Christina," said Billy, and his voice was soft and desperate in a way that sent a shiver down her spine. She froze as he reached behind her and closed the door, cloaking them in shadows once again. "Listen, I'm not playing around anymore. I swear I'm not the one who called you. You've got to believe me. I'd never do something like that to you. Don't you know that?"

Once more, she found herself succumbing to the unexpected warmth in his gaze, the pleading for her trust. Every ounce of anger she had felt toward him was gone, if had ever really been there to begin with, and she felt ashamed for speaking to him the way she had. He couldn't have been the one.

"I…I do know," she sighed. "I'm sorry. My head has been in shambles since that night. I don't know who I can trust anymore."

Billy wetted his lips, leaning in.

"You can trust me. You know, you're the only person I've told the truth about why my mom left—because I trust you."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I don't know why, but with you…" His eyes flickered with an imperceptible thought. "How about you let me come over tonight? Late. After your parents have gone to bed. I'll bring a movie and we can talk about this…and about us."

He raised his hand and tucked a dark tendril behind her ear, and in that brief, tender touch was the undoing that had been building up from the moment he had found her in the empty hall. Christina looked back at him for a while not speaking, her heart pounding all the madder in her chest, when she realized what would have been obvious to anyone else aware of her predicament—that she would always carry a torch for Billy Loomis—this insensitive, Cry-Baby looking son of a bitch who she was cursing not even a few minutes earlier. She could scream and cry and push him away, but in the end, she would find herself craving him all the same. In a way, she guessed she loved him. A strange, inexplicable, foolish, and doomed sort of love that she would spend many years later trying to rationalize. But in her current state, all she could feel was the intensity of those delicious chocolate-brown eyes against her, and the way it made her want to push him onto the nearest desk and do things to him she had literally only dreamed of before.

The answer was clear to her now. She couldn't have him. It would be too messy for them both…but perhaps, if she allowed herself a taste, she could move on. Douse the torch in the forbidden water, savor the sweet-smelling smoke, and allow it to disperse into nothingness.

"Okay," she finally said. "Come over around ten-thirty. Quietly. I'll leave my window open. But if we're caught—"

"You act as if this is going to be the first time I've snuck through your window."

She blushed.

"Tonight, okay? I really need to go now."

Billy opened his mouth to speak, but Christina would allow herself no more time to be seduced right there in the classroom. She opened the door and broke into a speed walk away from him, nearly running until she rounded the corner to the nearest exit, her only thought now being: Damn, Judy must be so pissed!