Catcall

Fiction by erin mcdermott & Kaitlin Stevens

I dunno why we did it. It was just like this rush. Just yell something out, honk, and the girls would look up all confused, their faces red or eyes wide in shock. Some of them would get mad and  give us the finger, their faces twisted up. That was the best, especially when it was Sally or Ivy. Sally had a really cute mean face, like furrowing her brow made her prettier somehow. We’d drive around all summer for that. On a good night, Sally and Ivy would get in the car and come drink behind the school with us, whatever beer we could get someone to buy for us or liquor someone could steal from their parents. Drinking made it all easier. And sometimes, when we’d drunk enough, Sally would let me feel her up, under the shirt and everything.

But there was one time that was different.

Andy was driving. That guy was an asshole. He had the best car though, a sweet Chrysler Sebring convertible, used but reliable, with an upgraded sound system. He’d play his music so loud, it was like a warning for all the girls in the neighborhood—they knew we were coming, had time to choose their reactions. I liked the game of it. The fun ones flashed us sometimes. Andy kept trying to turn the music down though, looking bored when the girls turned around before we were on them. He liked taking us into other neighborhoods where no one recognized the rumble of his engine.

He’d pushed us into going to Ainswood this time. It was this rinkydink place, more tree than town. Super shady, sunlight flashing like a strobe between the trunks. It made me dizzy. We had the top down, and it was weirdly cold for summer, goosebumps lining my skin. There was no one around—just a house every quarter mile, no sidewalk.

“I don’t like this,” I said.

They all looked at me.

“I mean, this place is dead, nobody here.”

“That just means nobody to snitch on us,” Andy said, his canines slick and glittering with malice.

“Snitch?” I scoffed. “What, are we robbing a bank?”

Andy reached back and gave me the finger, making the car swerve. “I mean we can do whatever we want to do. Don’t be a pussy.”

They all laughed, but it came in a ripple, like they didn’t wanna be called out too. Suddenly, Andy pointed out the windshield. Everyone straightened up as if Coach just called play.

“Shit, do you see that? Knew this place wasn’t dead.”

“Where?” I squinted.

“Middle of the road, dumbass.”

It was a woman. At least, it had kinda the right shape and long hair.

Andy grinned and picked up speed.

Everyone hooted, hands on my back, shaking me. But I saw her clearer by the second. The shadows clung to her. Her dress was part of the road and her hair flowed down to meet it. She had hundreds of arms trailing down her sides, the fingers moving like a centipede’s.

“Fucking shit!” I shouted.

Andy slowed and jerked his seat back, hitting my knees. “Fucking relax. I was only gonna scare her.” He laid on the horn. She turned.

The road turned with her, twisting, one with her body, and I saw her face. It was like a corpse’s, jaw hanging open, skin slack and heavy and stone-like. She had hundreds of eyes dotted over her cheeks and forehead and into her hair. Scarlet splashed between her legs and dripped down to pool in the road.

Andy went quiet. They all did.

“Back up,” I whispered. “Turn us around.”

He did, one hand on the wheel and one on the gearshift, better than he’d ever driven before. When she looked like a woman again, he swung us around and floored it, back the way we came.

It was quiet for a bit. The cold from the trees let up. The branches pulled away and the sun bathed the road again.

Andy wheezed out a laugh. “Did you see her face?” he said. “She was scared as shit.”

I looked at the rest of them, waiting for them to call his bluff, admit they were just as scared as me. But they were forcing on grins too.

“Yeah, stupid bitch! We weren’t going to hurt her.”

“She was sooo mad.”

“Should’ve got a bit closer.”

“You should’ve said something to her.”

“I was gonna! But she freaked.”

I banged on the back of Andy’s seat. “Enough man, let me out.”

They didn’t hear me.

“Let me out!” I gasped. “Let me out, I’m gonna puke!”

They cursed at me, swung to the curb, and I fell out of the car, heaving up my lunch. Fuck, the blood between her legs. I couldn’t help thinking she’d lost something. And she’d been about to fill herself with us instead.

“I gotta walk,” I said.

“Nah, you’re alright,” Andy said, one arm hanging out the car, reaching toward me. The rest were quiet.

“I’m walking,” I said.

“We’re a twenty minute drive away. The fuck are you talking about? Just get in the car, stop being a pussy.”

I started walking.

They inched up behind me. I heard the smooth rumble of the engine.

“Don’t be like that!” they shouted. “Come back, come on. We’ll give you a ride.”

I said, “I’m good.”

They honked, so loud it was like the sound went off in my chest, made me jump off the road.

“Pussy!” Andy shouted, and punched forward, the wind off the car smacking me in the face.

I walked all the way home, cutting through the woods. It wasn’t nearly as scary as staying in the car with them. As I made it out of the forest, I heard it whispering to me, but nothing ever came out. It was dark by the time I stumbled past my front door. My mom was waiting for me. She ran right up to me and threw her arms around me, hugging me tighter than she’d ever hugged me in my life.

“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” she wailed.

I’d left in such a hurry, I hadn’t even realized I forgot it in the car. “It’s fine, I’m fine.”

“I thought you died with them,” she sobbed.

“What?”

“You were with Andy and your friends,” she said, then pulled back. “Weren’t you?”

Police had found the car in Ainswood, flipped, totalled. We never used seatbelts, and they’d all gone flying. Nobody survived. Cops asked me what happened, where I left Andy, but when I told them, they said I must be in shock and I was getting my facts mixed up.

The car had flipped right where we’d seen the woman. As if we’d never turned around. But I hadn’t seen them double back for me. They’d driven on to our hometown. I’d watched them do it.

I holed up in my room. The days melted into each other like the bowls of neapolitan ice cream my mom set outside my door. I couldn’t bring myself to touch them. A week later, or two, I don’t really know, she finally had it out with me and made me go for some air. I felt like an alien walking around the neighborhood, too scared to go far, to even jaywalk across the street.

Heading down the sidewalk to the school where we used to play handball, someone honked at me. They whistled, too. I stiffened and turned around. It was Sally in the driver’s seat of an old beat-up Cadillac. She laid on the horn again, the sound ringing in my ears.

“Not so fun on the other side, is it?” she asked, and grinned.

A pit opened in my stomach. “You didn’t like it.”

She inched up to where I stood, frozen in place. A smell wafted from her car, something rotten and somehow still sweet, like strawberries left in a forgotten lunch bag all summer long. She leaned her head out the window. I noticed wrinkles on her face—like it had been decades since I’d last seen her. Her car engine rumbled low, but underneath the shaking was a shallow gasping sound, someone struggling to breathe.

“You honestly thought I did?” she said. She reached out, and I just stood there as she placed a cold hand on my cheek, the promise of a tight grip in her fingertips. “Tell the truth.”

I hadn’t known. I hadn’t. “I don’t know.”

“But now you do.”

She let me go, and without another word, sped off, leaving only a sputtering trail of oil. In the sunlight, it shone like blood.

Erin is currently studying fiction at New York University’s MFA Writers Workshop in Paris. She has a creative writing undergraduate degree from Hunter College, where she won the Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship and edited fiction for the Olivetree Review. She was shortlisted for Uncharted Magazine’s 2023 Novel Excerpt Contest.

Kaitlin is a writer from Queens, NY, living in South Brooklyn. She is a graduate of Hunter College, where she studied English Literature and creative writing. When she isn't writing fiction and personal essays, she's publishing pop culture criticism in various outlets and in her newsletter, Sugar & Spice. You can find her on Instagram at @cafeaukait and Substack at @kaitlinbstevens.