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[motwblog]

She’d made it down the stairs and was nearly out the front door when she was spotted.

Ryan stood in the doorway of the kitchen, light spilling out into the dim foyer, holding a plate and a slice of toast. He didn’t look surprised, or stern, or angry. He just looked defeated.

“Uh, hey–”

“Just don’t,” he said. “I don’t want to hear it tonight.”

The sound of their father’s snoring carried from the pitch dark hallway upstairs. Tiff glanced at the front door, then at the staircase, then Ryan. For a moment she thought about bolting – he probably wouldn’t even try to stop her – but she didn’t want to risk the potential commotion.

She turned back to him.

“It’s important,” she said. “Like, really important.”

“Is it?” he said, still holding his toast. “Because I think it’s important that you stay alive.”

She sighed in annoyance. “Look, it’ll be super quick,” she said. “I’ll be back before morning.”

Ryan stepped into the hall, setting his plate on a console table. “Seriously?”

“Oh my God. Okay, fine,” she said, turning fully toward him. “Say your little speech or whatever.”

“My little speech or whatever?”

“Yeah, your lecture,” she said. “I’m listening.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Ryan said. “Like, at all?”

She shrugged defensively. “Can you just tell me what you want?”

“What I want–” he began, but an abrupt halt in the snores from upstairs forced him to pause until they resumed. “What I want,” he continued in a sharp whisper, “is for my sister to not be running around at the goddamn witching hour, doing shady shit with strangers. What I want is to live in a normal house, where I can come downstairs without being worried that you’re going to be, I don’t know, sneaking out, or dead–” he jabbed a finger into his palm, counting his points, “or turning people into vampires, or running around with a pack of fucking lizard people–”

“Okay, none of that happened-”

“It basically happened!”

They stared at each other in furious silence while upstairs the snores stuttered again. When they continued, Tiff gestured toward the front door. “Can we at least talk outside?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, yanking open the door. “Wait, let me get my toast.”

The front yard was piled high with snow, the porch glittering with ice. It was brighter outside than indoors, street lamps reflecting the snowdrifts in harsh contrast against the black sky. Ryan hunched his shoulders in lieu of a coat, eating his midnight snack quickly so he could fold his arms again for warmth.

“Are you still pissed that Lukas turned you into a werewolf?” Tiff said. “Because I’m literally working on how to undo that.”

Ryan shook his head, giving an incredulous laugh. 

“That’s the thing, Tiffy, you think everyone’s mad at you. I’m not even mad, I’m–” He looked around, as if the word was hidden on the porch somewhere. “I don’t know, worried? Freaked out? Sad, I guess?”

Tiff tensed. “Why would you be sad?” 

He gestured at nothing. “Because I don’t know you anymore?” he said. “You don’t tell me what you’re doing – we almost fucking died in Fargo, you only call me when you need help, and you opened up to me exactly one time before you went back to clamming up. So that’s cool.”

Something crept up Tiff’s throat as the cold bit through her worn denim jacket. “I don’t know what you want,” she said slowly.

“You could… apologize?” Ryan said. “You could, like, acknowledge how much you’re freaking out Mom and Dad? Or me? Or Kevin? You could come back inside and tell me what the fuck is going on tonight, instead of sneaking around? Literally almost anything would make me feel better.”

Tiff clamped down on her jaw, halting the emotion in her throat. “I know what I’m doing, okay?” she said. “I’m dealing with it. And I need you, and everyone else, to fucking trust me instead of treating me like– I don’t know, like a criminal. Like a bad person.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Nobody’s saying that.”

Tiff pressed an absent fist into the snow piled up on the railing, creating a row of soft indentations.

“I’m not a bad person,” she said.

Ryan said nothing. When she looked up he was looking elsewhere, his brow furrowed with an expression she couldn’t read.

“What?”

“We’ve done this before,” he said in realization.

She paused her snow-indentations, fingers already numb. “What do you mean?”

He looked up. “When you’ve tried to leave. We’ve had this conversation before. You did something to me.”

Tiff didn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t think so…”

“Your mind control shit, Tiff – is that how you’ve been sneaking out? When I drove you to Chi Chi’s–– when you told me to stay in my room…”

“Ryan–”

“Don’t bullshit me, Tiff– are you serious? Did you do that shit to me?”

“I haven’t!” she said, voice pitched high. “Not since we’re talking now– I told you what was going on, you’re in the loop–”

He slammed a fist against a porch beam. The vibration dislodged a layer of snow on the roof, which slid into the yard with a soft thwump.

“Ryan...”

He shook his head. “We’re done.”

His voice held a severity she’d never heard before. It occurred to her that he was speaking to her not as his little sister, but as an adult.

“What do you…”

“I don’t mean like a regular fight, Tiff,” he said. “I mean done. Talk to me again when something changes. I can’t do this with you anymore.”

She stared at him, the words not quite hitting. 

“So you’re just gonna…”

“Na-ah, you’re not gonna make me feel bad about this,” he said, holding up a hand. “I made it abundantly clear that I was on your team. I’m fucking done with this shit. I’m out.”

He turned, opening the door.

“Are you fucking serious, Ryan?”

He paused in the doorway, as if to say something – but didn’t look back before closing it.

Tiff kicked the same wooden beam with a heavy boot, sending another clump of snow falling from the roof. When that wasn’t enough, she kicked the railing on her way down into the yard; a lawn flamingo; a potted plant; the rose bushes. When she made it a few paces from the house, she screamed, a burst of shadow flames erupting from her hands, sending snow flying in every direction in a cloud of glittering white. 

I continue to be surprised by your temper, came a familiar voice.

“Shut the fuck up,” Tiff said. 

The Queen only laughed.

A light came on from her parent’s room upstairs. Tiff cursed, hurrying to her car, brushing snow off the windshield with the sleeve of her jacket. She dug into her pocket for her keys, yanking the frozen door open and pulling it shut sharply behind her. The car rumbled to life, radiator blasting with cold air.

He is bluffing, you know, the Queen said. He will forgive you a few times more.

Tiff rolled down a window and stuck her head out while the defroster struggled. She backed out of the driveway, noticing more lights flickering on from the inside of her parents’ house. She waited a few moments until she could see through a wide enough patch of her windshield, then pulled out of the cul-de-sac.

“A few more times, and then what?”

That is up to you.

She drove, turning out of the suburbs and onto a stretch of open road. There was nobody out at this hour.

Tiff drummed nervously on her steering wheel. “Am I a bad person?”

Such a narrow lens through which to view the word, don’t you think?

“Everyone’s mad at me.”

Certainly not everyone.

Tiff took in a breath of cold air, then let it out. She hadn’t noticed her hands were shaking until now. 

“I don’t want to be like this,” she said.

Like what, child?

There was no need to speak aloud with the Queen, and she didn’t know how to articulate her thoughts, anyway, so she fell quiet. 

Her mind flashed to the future– of Kevin stepping aside for her while she strode into the charred parking lot of the Burnsville-Center-turned-thunderdome, regarding her with equal parts fear and respect. 

She thought about Tremnor’s voice from the week prior. No, Tiff– I am pissed at you. 

She felt sick. She pulled a cigarette from the center console and lit it; one more thing for her parents to be pissed about.

She didn’t know why she always had to push things this far – to get herself onto ledges she couldn’t climb down from. There were so many times she could’ve turned around.

The Queen said nothing. 

The silence was deafening. 

There was no point in crying when it was below zero.

[motwblog]

A railroad stretched along the hill behind Tiff’s house. If there was still a train, it never ran. Grass grew tall between the tar-darkened planks, and in the summer, the trees on either side created a tunnel of bright green leaves.

Following the tracks about a mile south led to the suburb where Erica Wahl lived – making it something of an expressway between the friends. They would meet up and follow the railroad further to a 7-Eleven – where they would buy Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and cigarettes using Erica’s sister’s expired ID. The cashier was a kid from their high school, who they recognized but had never spoken to outside of these clandestine transactions. If he noticed the expiration date, or the sharply-differing slope of Erica’s nose, he never said anything.

Occasionally, Tiff and Erica’s friends would join them on the tracks – but usually, it was just the two of them. During the endless drag of summer, their walks were almost nightly. At a point where the tracks stretched high across a river, they would sit on the edge and let their legs dangle off, where Erica would take out the cigarettes and hand one to Tiff, who would light it with the small purple lighter she kept at the bottom of her backpack.

It was June, then. Smoking was still new enough that the nicotine made them buzzy and lightheaded. Dusk was setting in, and the crickets were starting up.

Erica took a drag.

“My parents are getting a divorce,” she said cooly, letting the smoke out with her breath.

“For real this time?”

“Yeah,” Erica said. “I mean, I think. They were fighting really loud.”

“Shit.”

Erica tapped the cigarette, which did not yet need to be tapped. “Yeah,” she said. “My dad is, like, definitely having an affair.”

“You serious?”

Erica nodded. “I mean, maybe,” she said. “Probably.”

Tiff tried to blow a smoke ring and failed. “Are you, like, depressed about it?”

“Yeah,” Erica said. “Probably. Maybe.”

They were quiet for a minute – then Erica continued.

“Matt asked me out,” she said.

Smoke hit the back of Tiff’s throat and she doubled over, coughing.

“Ohmygod– are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Tiff said, clearing her throat, waving her away. “Jesus. What did you say?”

“I said it’d be weird,” Erica said. “I don’t know. I guess he’s kind of cute. What do you think?”

“It’d be weird as hell!”

“No but I mean, do you think he’s cute?”

Tiff shook her head. “I don’t know, I can’t even think about it. He’s Matt.”

Erica leaned back on her hands. “I’m not gonna say yes,” she decided. “It’d be weird.”

“Yeah,” Tiff said. “No shit.”

The crickets filled the silence until Erica interrupted it again.

“Who do you think is cute?” she asked.

Tiff winced. Erica kept bringing it back to this lately, no matter how hard she tried to steer the conversation. She knew she was supposed to care. She couldn’t figure out why she didn’t.

They used to talk about everything.

“I don’t know,” Tiff shrugged.

“No, but like, who?” Erica pressed. “What about Dirk?”

“Ew. No.”

“Wait, really? What’s wrong with Dirk?”

“Nothing,” Tiff said. She always seemed to give the wrong answer. “He’s fine, he’s just – it’s Dirk.”

“Okay, so what about–“

“Can we talk about something else?”

Erica looked at Tiff in surprise – then turned away, as if there was something more interesting to look at in the trees.

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever.”

“Cool,” Tiff said.

The river rushed below them. Tiff watched a grasshopper crawl up onto the tracks. It paused, fluttered its wings, then leapt away.

When it became apparent Erica wasn’t going to say anything, Tiff gave it another try.

“Josh’s party is next month.”

“Mhm.”

“I’m thinking… I can definitely get Ryan to get us booze if I start doing his chores now.”

Erica uncrossed her legs, turning back toward Tiff. “Do you think he could get us tequila?”

“Probably.”

“What about, like, if we got orange juice, and then made tequila sunrises?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“Because I can never drink vodka again. Remember at Rachel’s?”

When Erica laughed, Tiff laughed too.

And when the chill of dusk set in, they didn’t feel it.

-

By August of that summer, Tiff’s phone had gone quiet, and the tracks lay vacant. She spent most of her time in her room, fan whirring at top-speed, posters fluttering on her walls.

With her parents out for the evening, and Ryan holed up reading something insufferable, she was almost beginning to look forward to Kevin’s frequent visits to her doorway, where he would announce his boredom and collapse dramatically to her floor.

When it became clear nobody was going to message her on AIM despite the carefully-chosen lyrics of her away message (“when everything's meant to be broken / i just want you to know who i am”), she finally conceded.

“We’ll walk to 7-Eleven,” she said. “But you can’t tell mom and dad we left the house.”

They made their way up the hill and onto the railroad tracks. Kevin spent the first half-mile rattling off his favorite Pokémon while Tiff regret the decision – until they came to a bend, when he asked abruptly:

“How come you stopped hanging out with Erica and all of them?”

Tiff stopped walking. Kevin carried forward, oblivious.

“I don’t know,” she said as casually as she could, resuming her pace. “She’s like, kind of lame now.”

Kevin skipped up onto the steel beam of the tracks, balancing with his arms out. “I thought you guys were like, best friends,” he said, not looking back.

“Yeah, well, now we’re not.”

“Did you get in a fight?”

“Yeah.”

“What about?”

“If you keep asking questions, I’m gonna tell mom and dad you went on the internet instead of doing your homework.”

Kevin jumped off the beam and back onto the tracks again. He let his feet drag, kicking up the gravel between the planks.

“Fine,” he said.

“Good.”

He was quiet – for a moment.

“You know, you used to be fun to hang out with,” Kevin said. “Everyone sucks once they go to high school.”

Ahead, the trees on the side of the tracks began to thin. Through the clearing, Tiff could see the beginnings of the roofs that marked Erica’s suburb. In a few moments, she would see the fence of her yard.

She wondered if everyone was over there now. Erica and Jess, stretched out on the trampoline, eating otter pops and tossing chunks of flavored ice to the Wahl’s aging terrier. Dirk and Matt, lounging in the sunbleached patio chairs and talking shit about their classmates. About their teachers.

About her.

When they finally reached the 7-Eleven, it felt smaller somehow. Tiff didn’t recognize the cashier. The soda she grabbed from the fridge was under-carbonated and overly sweet. She handed it to Kevin on the walk back. To fill the silence, he hummed the theme song to a show she didn’t recognize. He’d been humming it for weeks now. He’d keep humming it till summer ended.

The tracks stretched on forever.