Final Girls: A Novel

Unlike the prologue and the interludes that utilize an omniscient narrator, the numbered chapters are told using Quincy’s first-person voice.

Ten years after the events at Pine Cottage, Quincy is a baking blogger living with her boyfriend, public defender Jeff Richards, in New York City. Quincy is making Halloween cupcakes for her website when Jeff calls to say that his flight out of Chicago is delayed. Shortly after, the police officer who saved Quincy at Pine Cottage, Franklin Cooper (Coop), asks if they can meet up. Coop periodically visits to check on Quincy.

Quincy takes a Xanax and meets Coop at their usual café. They briefly chat about Quincy’s readership and Jeff’s current case. Quincy tries to ask Coop about his life, but he is reticent to answer. An au pair enters the café, prompting Quincy to reflect on how she could have lived the au pair’s life. Her thoughts turn to memories of meeting Coop. Many of her other Pine Cottage memories have been repressed.

Coop reveals that Lisa Milner, an old acquaintance of Quincy’s, has died. Quincy is shocked, remembering that Lisa wanted to teach her how to be a Final Girl.

Lisa Milner had survived Stephen Leibman’s assault on her sorority house. Though Lisa nearly died, she wrestled Leibman’s knife away and fatally stabbed him. A young Quincy had seen the news about Lisa’s experience. To distract her, her father had given her her first baking lesson.

Coop explains that Lisa died by suicide, though an investigation is ongoing. Lisa had attempted to call 911 before her death, indicating that she might have tried to stop her death. Coop warns that the press will likely try to seek a statement from Quincy, as well as from Samantha Boyd, the only other surviving Final Girl. The press is responsible for their public image as Final Girls, coopting the language of slasher films to describe the three survivors.

Leaving the café, Quincy steals the au pair’s cellphone. Coop escorts Quincy back to the apartment she’d bought with her settlement money. Quincy invites Coop upstairs, but he declines. Quincy examines the cellphone she’d stolen, looking through the au pair’s texts. She hides the phone in her secret drawer of stolen objects.

Quincy revisits Lisa’s memoir, remembering how Lisa reached out to her in the aftermath of Pine Cottage. Quincy wanted to keep a low profile, which was impossible with all the press attention she’d gotten. Quincy’s father was dying of cancer around this time, leaving Quincy primarily in the company of her uptight mother, Sheila. To seek support, Quincy called Lisa and took her advice about being a Final Girl. She started giving interviews, culminating in an invitation to do the first joint interview with Lisa and Samantha on Oprah. On the morning of the interview, Quincy sabotaged her mother’s kitchen, forcing the producers to cancel the segment altogether. Quincy does not remember why she did this. She called Lisa one last time to explain that she wanted to be normal, not a Final Girl. Lisa stressed that normal wasn’t possible for them anymore.

Quincy reflects on the irony of Lisa using a knife to die. The news has yet to report Lisa’s death, though former patients who worked with her as a child psychiatrist post memorial messages on her Facebook wall. Quincy looks through Lisa’s smiling photos, considering the differences between them before imagining what it would have been like to be part of Lisa’s life.

The secondary narrative flashes back to the moment Quincy arrived at Pine Cottage with her friends—Craig, Janelle, Betz, Amy, and Rodney. They are there to celebrate Janelle’s birthday. Janelle asks everyone to give up their cellphones before entering the cabin to keep their experiences private. They go in to pick rooms. Amy and Rodney share one room. Quincy picks another room with twin beds for herself and Janelle. Janelle asks to have the room to herself, however, forcing Quincy to share a bed with Craig. Craig and Quincy discuss having sex. Quincy assures herself that she is ready to lose her virginity.

Quincy shares the news of Lisa’s death with Jeff. Jeff consoles her and listens to her vent about the abnormality of the situation. Quincy remembers falling for Jeff’s normalcy. He seemed to know nothing about Pine Cottage until Quincy told him about it a month into their relationship.

Jeff shares that his Chicago trip was not as fruitful as he’d hoped. They order in dinner, have sex, and watch the 1940s American noir film, The Lady from Shanghai, on television. During the movie, Jeff probes into Quincy’s feelings about Lisa’s death. Quincy refocuses the conversation to talk about Jeff’s case, which has been putting a lot of pressure on him. He thinks that winning it could lead to employment at a major law firm, allowing him to provide for Quincy instead of relying on her settlement money. This offends Quincy, so she leaves to check her email. She sees that Lisa had sent Quincy an email asking to talk an hour before her death.

Quincy wakes up to apology flowers from Jeff, who has already left for court. Recalling her nightmares of Lisa, Quincy wonders what Lisa wanted to talk about. She asks Coop if they can talk but plays down the urgency of her request.

Quincy listens to a voicemail from her mother, asking her to respond to reporters. She then reads articles and blog posts about Lisa’s death. All this does is anger her.

Quincy goes for a run, encountering a reporter named Jonah Thompson outside her building. Quincy threatens to call the police on him. She thinks about Lisa’s death all throughout her run. When she returns, she finds a woman in punk attire waiting outside her building. Quincy assumes she is another reporter at first, but then the woman introduces herself as Samantha Boyd.

Samantha Boyd became the second Final Girl after surviving the attack of Calvin Whitmer, the Sack Man, at the Nightlight Inn, where she was working. Quincy read about her story in Time magazine, which didn’t include Samantha’s picture at her request. Sam has maintained a low profile ever since then.

When Quincy learns that Sam has come to meet her, she invites her upstairs. They talk about their strained relationships with their mothers. Sam asks Quincy about her work, which leads Quincy to talk about how she finds baking therapeutic.

They shift the topic to Lisa’s death. Quincy intuits that Sam came because she was unnerved. Sam challenges Quincy to bake something so she can see the real Quincy.

Quincy teaches Sam to bake orange pumpkin loaf. Sam reveals that she never had the opportunity to speak to Lisa. She accidentally touches Quincy’s secret drawer, causing Quincy to tense up. Quincy pretends she keeps her recipes inside.

Quincy shows Sam how to take photos for her website. Sam admits that she wanted to check in on Quincy after hearing that Lisa died. Annoyed by Sam’s questions, Quincy expresses that she is sad. Sam, on the other hand, is angry, regretful that she never checked in on Lisa. Quincy admits to feeling the same. Sam offers to be part of Quincy’s support system, but Quincy acts like she doesn’t need her to be. She nevertheless invites Sam to stay for dinner.

Dissatisfied with her table spread, Quincy is endeared when Sam throws the tableware around. Sam asks Quincy to take a photo of her. Quincy hesitates before indulging her request, remembering Janelle in Sam’s place.

Jeff arrives to a homemade dinner prepared by Quincy and Sam. Jeff is immediately suspicious of their guest. Quincy tries to appeal to him by citing Sam’s need for a friend. This doesn’t stop Jeff from antagonizing Sam over dinner. He asks her probing questions about her purpose in New York. She retaliates by criticizing the concept of a public defender, provoking him to say that he would defend the killers that plagued her and Quincy.

Despite Quincy’s attempts to manage their tension, she gets upset with Jeff when he taunts Sam’s loneliness as a survivor. Jeff argues that he doesn’t want Quincy to feel stuck in the past. Quincy retorts that she can never move on from the death of her friends. Quincy admits that she feels lonely too, especially after getting Lisa’s email. She shares its contents with Jeff, as well as her regrets over not answering it in time. Jeff promises to be nicer to Sam, but when they return to the dining room, Sam is gone.

Sam calls Quincy from a police station. Jeff and Quincy hurry down to the precinct, where they learn that Sam has been arrested under her new legal name, Tina Stone. Sam is charged with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest, though Sam claims that she had simply stopped a man from attacking a woman. She had gone to a bar after leaving Quincy’s apartment and when she punched the man, the man called the police on her, forcing her to flee into Central Park.

Jeff convinces the officer to let Sam go by telling them who she is. Leaving the precinct, Sam announces she will leave since all she needed to know was how Quincy was doing. Quincy insists on hosting Sam.

Quincy bargains with Jeff to let Sam stay at least two nights in their apartment. When Jeff reminds her that he just helped Sam get out of jail, Quincy chides him for using Sam’s Final Girl status to elicit the officer’s pity. She points out that whatever he thinks of Sam also reflects on Quincy as a Final Girl.

Sam and Quincy share a bottle of bourbon whiskey in the guest room. Quincy tries to reassure Sam about Jeff and promises to do what she can to help her. They talk about Sam’s legal name and her smoking habits. Sam references Calvin Whitmer and learns that Quincy refuses to say the real name of the Pine Cottage killer, only referring to him with masculine pronouns. Sam asks Quincy questions about returning to Pine Cottage, challenging her to say the killer’s name. A drunk Quincy tries to get away from the conversation, but Sam won’t let her go. Eventually, Quincy yells that the killer’s name doesn’t deserve to be remembered.

Sam apologizes for pressuring her. Quincy regrets her offer to let Sam stay over. Jeff seems to have overheard their conversation when she returns to their room. Quincy wonders why Sam wants her to remember Pine Cottage.

Hiking through the woods, Janelle scares her friends with stories of Indigenous American ghosts seeking revenge against the white men who killed them. Betz recalls the killing of two campers the previous year. Quincy worries that someone is following them.

At the hilltop, Janelle encourages an unresolved Quincy to have sex with Craig. They take a group photo, after which Quincy notices a building in the forest. Betz identifies it as a psychiatric hospital.

When they return to the cabin, they find a man looking in through the deck windows. The man explains in strained speech that his car had broken down and he has been looking for help. Janelle invites the man to stay with them. He introduces himself as Joe Hannen.