I Was a Teenage Slasher

I Was a Teenage Slasher, published in 2024, is a horror novel by American author Stephen Graham Jones. Jones is a prolific writer in the genre, having produced more than 40 published titles since 2000. Four of his novels are similarly about slasher films and their genre conventions: The Last Final Girl (2012) and the Indian Lake trilogy (2021-2024).

Seventeen-year-old Tolly Driver is an unpopular kid in the small town of Lamesa, Texas. He and his best friend Amber Big Plume Dennison go to a party hoping to climb a few rungs on the local social ladder, but after this party abruptly ends in a brutal massacre, Tolly finds himself transforming into a preternaturally gifted killer himself. Amber recognizes that Tolly is becoming a slasher, and the knowledge of slasher movies’ popular tropes may be the key to saving Tolly’s life, as well as the lives of his potential victims. Jones uses this story to explore ideas of fate, social acceptance, and the perils of revenge.

This study guide refers to the First Edition of the novel, published by Titan Books in 2024.

Content Warning: The source material for this study guide depicts extreme violence and gore. The novel also references self-harm, death by suicide, and child abuse.

Plot Summary

The novel is framed as the memoir of Tolly Driver, who became a slasher in his hometown of Lamesa, Texas, in 1989. Tolly recounts the events of his massacre, which lasted four days, 17 years after the fact.

In 1989, Tolly is 17 years old and grieving the untimely loss of his father, an oil rig pumper who died in a horrific road accident. Tolly and his best friend Amber Big Plume Dennison go to the house party of high school alumnus Deek Masterson, where Tolly hopes to interact with his crush, Stace Goodkin. Tolly’s grief pushes him to feel insecure at the party. While drunk, he cannonballs into the swimming pool, drenching Mel Boanerges, a baton twirler in the marching band. Mel and the marching band subsequently bind Tolly to a lounge chair and force him to drink a spiked beverage. The beverage has been spiked with peanuts, however, and because Tolly has a severe peanut allergy, he begins to experience a life-threatening epilepsy. He is narrowly saved by Stace and Amber, who administer his EpiPen.

While Tolly is recovering, the remaining partygoers are shocked by the arrival of Justin Joss, an unpopular boy who died in a horrifying initiation ritual organized by Deek and his friends. Armed with a drill bit in place of his dismembered hand, Justin kills most of Deek’s clique. Deek himself escapes while Stace uses her quick wits to bind Justin to the swimming pool diving board. Justin severely injures Stace in the process. When Justin suddenly disappears, Tolly and Amber decide to leave before the police can arrive so they can escape suspicion. During their escape, Tolly accidentally wipes a splatter of Justin’s blood into an open wound in his forehead.

The next day, Tolly and Amber encounter the county sheriff, Burke, and explain that they had left the party immediately after Tolly’s seizure ended. The sheriff brings them along to the pumpjacks where Justin died. Deek’s dead body is found among one of the machines, along with Justin’s. Stace is present as well, having barely survived the night’s final events.

Throughout the day, Tolly experiences several occurrences that suggest his body is changing in a strange way. He can’t pick up knives or other sharp implements without eliciting a “Schting!” noise from the object. He is also hit head-on by a truck and survives completely unscathed. Tolly suddenly loses his ability to perceive color, which enables him to see in the dark. He goes out into the night and brutally kills two members of the marching band, Lesley Cantor and Shannon Larkweather, with one of his mother’s belts.

The next day, Tolly tries to tell Amber what happened, but Amber doesn’t believe him. She instead thinks he is experiencing the symptoms of a concussion, a theory she gradually sheds after the sheriff confirms that Lesley and Shannon have gone missing. She runs a series of tests meant to determine if he is becoming a slasher, a monstrous movie figure with a preternatural gift for killing. They both discover to their horror that Tolly has perfect aim and can run faster than most people whenever he limps.

Amber theorizes that reality is reorganizing itself to mirror the genre conventions of slasher movies. Because Amber is well-versed in the slasher genre, she tries to anticipate whom Tolly will kill next and how they can stop his slasher persona from doing more damage to the town. This includes identifying Mel as Tolly’s final girl, the last victim who ultimately overcomes the slasher. Amber warns Tolly’s potential victims to get away from Lamesa. She also restrains Tolly in a stripper basket with chicken wire, making it impossible to seek his victims out.

Naturally, Tolly’s slasher abilities allow him to escape the basket and search for Wes Stripling and Jenna Gonzales, his next two victims. He finds them skinny-dipping in the stock tanks outside Lamesa, along with whom he initially thinks is Mel. After killing all three of them, Tolly’s slasher persona recedes and he realizes that he hadn’t killed Mel, but the other baton twirler, Janice Dickerson. Tolly encounters an old colleague of his father’s, who encourages him to pursue dreams bigger than himself. He also encounters a welder that Amber had been flirting with the previous day. The welder extends kindness to Tolly (though this encounter is later revealed to have been fictionalized, depicting instead the emotional impact that the welder’s presence had on Tolly).

Amber picks Tolly up, and they decide that the best course of action is to turn Tolly over to the sheriff. On their way, Tolly’s slasher persona reemerges, and he jumps out of Amber’s truck to save her. Amber nearly gets into an accident on the highway, but Tolly uses his slasher abilities to save her from dying. He then proceeds into town to kill Mel, who exposes his role in the killings with public graffiti. After a brief scuffle during which Mel shoots Tolly in the shoulder, Tolly kills her, seemingly ending his reign of terror.

He retreats to the town grain elevator, where he considers dying by suicide. Amber finds him and suggests that Mel’s death was inconsistent with slasher genre conventions. They soon both realize that Mel wasn’t Tolly’s final girl. It’s Amber. Tolly’s slasher persona emerges one more time. He gives chase to Amber as she ascends the grain elevator, passing the bodies of each of Tolly’s victims in line with the genre trope. They reach the high platform where Tolly initially gains the upper hand over Amber. Amber uses a jar of peanut butter she has hidden in her sweatshirt to trigger an allergic reaction from Tolly. Tolly falls off the platform.

Amber saves Tolly’s life by wiping off the peanut butter and allowing his slasher healing ability to treat his fall injuries. Tolly retreats to Colorado, where he spends the next 17 years hiding as a salvage yard worker. When Amber’s truck shows up among the retired cars, he starts writing his memoir as an apology to her, knowing she will one day come to locate her vehicle. Tolly places all but the last pages of his memoir in the truck’s glove compartment. When Amber arrives with her son, he uses a jar of peanut butter to die by suicide. The last pages of the memoir are left in the printer for Amber to discover.