I knew Ditzy's family owned a mansion, but even walking past it three times in the last six weeks doesn't prepare me for just how absolutely gigantic it is. Ditzy drags back the wrought-iron front gate to let us onto a driveway that cruises over enough lawn to choke a lawnmower. It ends in a loop in front of the house, all criss-cross decorative brick and once-kempt marigold edging. If I ever had to live here, I think I'd go insane.
Ditzy swaggers right up to the front door like she owns the place, which she kind of does. Not sure if inheritance laws apply in the apocalypse. Or if her whole family is Sleeping.
Either way, there's no trace of grief on her face. It hits me odd, and it always has. Calico J and I both have family in another part of the country—the same state, ironically—further inland than here along the coast. As far as we know, they're all Sleeping. We both take it hard. And Patrick doesn't come from a great situation, from what we can tell, but he still at least winces whenever the topic comes up. Ditzy shows no reaction at all.
The front door of the mansion has an electronic keypad, but also a boot print in the middle of the door. I know both Ditzy and Calico J have been here before, locating supplies and grabbing a Morse code book from Ditzy's brother's room. Ditzy punches in the passcode—it's battery-powered—then, true to form, lifts one boot and kicks the door with about as much ceremony as an anime break-and-enter. It flies open. I side-eye the doorframe as we follow her inside. Even with the passcode, she's done in the strike plate: there's splintered wood where it used to be, still in the shape of the metal bracing that probably lives on the floor somewhere down the hall now. The drywall where the door handle made contact is busted, too.
This feels illegal. I guess it's not exactly breaking and entering if we have someone who knows the passcode, but it makes me wonder how Ditzy will answer for the property damage if her family ever wakes up again.
An expansive hallway opens up before us. Lush carpet floors it, and chic designer lights dangle overhead. They're dark—this area rarely gets electricity—but our way is sunlit thanks to the wall-length windows in the sitting room to our right. I peek inside. The couches and chairs there must cost my tuition apiece, and an aggressively large painting of something swoopy and abstract commands the space above an electric fireplace. The mantlepiece below is lined with trophies. Thick curtains brood on either side of the windows, and by brood I mean they've been dragged aside and thrown over a lampshade on one side and a marble-looking statue on the other. I'd bet money that's Ditzy's doing. It also means those curtains were drawn in across the aforementioned wall-length windows when she first arrived, blackout-thick and shutting out all this sunlight. I'll never understand the lives and habits of rich people.
Though I guess Ditzy turned out okay. If "okay" encapsulates slightly insane and probably with enough parental issues to outweigh me and Calico J's functional families put together.
I withdraw my head from the sitting room just in time to see Ditzy tip her bat sideways and sweep an expensive-looking vase off a side table as she strides up the hallway. Patrick leaps out the way as it smashes. It's pottery, not glass, thank god. Nobody says a word as we pick our way around the shards. Ditzy knocks a painting askew, then hooks the edge of what looks like a family photo and flips it around on itself. I think she meant to wrench it off the wall entirely, but the wire it hangs on is too long. Calico J wisely moves back so there's a safe distance between the two of them. Patrick has retreated to the back of the line.
The hallway opens up around a wooden staircase I'd expect to find in a Victorian mansion, not a classy rich house in Chesnet's uptown east side. Ditzy spins on her heel to face us. Her bat falls heavy on the wooden railing, almost certainly denting it.
"Take whatever you want," she says. "Bedrooms and guest rooms are upstairs, as is my mother's personal library, her and my dad's offices, and the music room with the grand piano. I'll need a minute to get into the garage, so make yourselves at home. Or don't." She spins away. "This place isn't exactly a home, if you get what I mean. Full of shiny things, though. Break whatever you want, if you don't take it."
"Would your family be..." Calico J winces. "Okay with this?"
"Nope," says Ditzy cheerily, and saunters off, leaving the rest of us looking at each other at the base of the stairs.
"Just between us," says Calico J, "I'd rather not risk getting arrested if the world actually gets back on its feet after this."
"Does she plan to take responsibility?" I say. "Because that's my main question. It is still the apocalypse, and if there's anything in here that would really help us, I'm willing to take a risk."
"I just don't want to deal with the police."
"Totally fair." I gaze up the stairs, then around the largely barren walls dotted with occasional designer paintings or photographs of very photogenic white people. Those that Ditzy hasn't already knocked off the walls, that is. "I say we leave things where they are, then. Are you cool if I check the food, though? If anything happens, I can claim that one."
Calico J hesitates for a moment, then nods. Food is usually an exception. I glance at Patrick, but he's crossed his arms tightly like he doesn't plan to touch anything, let alone take it.
"I'd rather get in and out as fast as possible," he says, almost in a whisper. "Rich people are the worst about their houses."
I realize I'm probably the most comfortable of the three of us, and given that I'm not all that comfortable, that's probably a sign the two of them are right. As usual. "Let's find Ditzy and see if she needs any help with the car, then. Once we've got that, we can get out of here."
Silence indicates they're not comfortable stealing a car, either, but at least in this case, Ditzy is directly responsible. We find the garage access door near the back of the house. It stands open, but at least not busted open like the front door was. I stick my head in. The garage is dark, but as my eyes adjust, I spot the lit controls of a car in the darkness. A shadow passes in front of them. Then something revs to life, and the head and rear lights of a car spring on.
Sleek, shiny metal lines of a vehicle no taller than my shoulder appear in the darkness. The light of glaring headlights bounces off the garage door and filters back through tinted windows. Ditzy sits in the front seat of a flashy sports car worth more than my whole degree. Its engine's growl shakes the floor as she revs it. She kills it a moment later, then flicks a switch that makes the lights of the car phase through a technicolor display as she pops a butterfly door and steps out like the heroine of a cyberpunk film.
"What do you think?" she says, looking smug.
I don't. I don't think, because I can't think, because I finally understand what so many young men are going for when they drive these things around and rev their engines at girls on the sidewalks. Ditzy leans on the hood of the car as her long, blonde hair catches the lights and shines like liquid. She locks eyes with me, and her perfect lips quirk up in a smile.
I've walked straight into a movie. This is the scene where the main characters climb into that car and race the highways as the sun sets fiery over the ocean, then end up on an overlook with drinks and plans for the evening that would make a bad boy blush. Except instead of a hunky male hero with perfect abs and a possible shirt allergy, I'm just Meg. Just a girl who never did well in school, and not because I skipped class. Who hid in my room on the night of Red Thursday, and not because I was heroically sheltering others. I'll never stand even a hope of being as smart or strong or pretty or hot as Ditzy, and she's out of my league, but oh, the sight of her beside that car makes me wish I could switch places with that hunky male hero for just one night.
"Meg?" says a voice from another planet. Someone waves a hand in front of my face, and I startle. It's Calico J. He looks amused. "What do you think?"
"Yes," I say stupidly. It's a pathetic rendition of all the things I want to say, half of which I would probably regret immediately, so maybe that's not a bad thing. As for the car, my decision-making on this matter is hopelessly compromised. But if the car can carry us from here to Plyster-Anport county without losing a wheel, I don't see a reason not to enjoy watching Ditzy at the wheel of it during that six-hour ride.
"Let's take it," I finish, because everyone is still looking at me. Calico J nods and says nothing. Patrick is still staring at the car. At Ditzy and the car. I am suddenly possessed by the urge to swagger up beside her and start a conversation just so nobody else can approach us. Which is ridiculous, because anyone who's met me knows I'm hopeless at pickup lines and also not at all the kind of person to pick fights over a potential partner. The cyberpunk movie vibe is getting to me.
"Ditzy, you can turn those lights off now," says Calico J. "We don't want to drain the battery before we even get on the road."
Ditzy flops sideways with a dramatic sigh, but she reaches through the door and flicks off the technicolor. The light in the garage falls flat. The car is still gorgeous, but now reality crashes back with the force of a sledgehammer.
"Wait," I say. "How are we going to get it out? Aren't most garage doors electric?"
Silence indicates I'm the first person to notice it. Ditzy, though, strides to the front of the garage, unlocks something, then crouches to grab a handle at the bottom of the door. She heaves upward. The garage door grinds open on mechanical tracks. Ditzy doesn't manage to get it past head height, but that's enough for the flat car anyway.
"Next question," I say. "Does it have enough storage space to carry our stuff?"
I hate my own brain sometimes. Hate that its logical side can step in and tromp all over the fantastical cyberpunk-mesmerized side, and compromise taking the car for the sake of practical things like storage space. But at the same time, we do have bags to carry, and I don't see a trunk on this shiny thing. That's never the point of sports cars.
Ditzy, though, is the angel here to rescue me from my own delusions. She struts around the car and opens a nearly invisible trunk with a flick. Tucked inside is enough space to just fit our bags, now that we've discarded most of our food. There are even four seats, and four of us. If we're willing to sit with any new foragings on our laps, we'll fit.
"And a full tank?" I say.
"Enough to get us to Plyster-Anport county. Though there might be a spare tank in here somewhere." Ditzy waves gracefully around the garage, which I only now notice is lined with the trappings of wealth: sports equipment, expensive bikes, the whole wall-mounted hood of another sports car, license plates, more trophies, power equipment, a shiny motorbike just behind Ditzy, and in the back, three more cars as the garage that I thought at first was a single bay continues on, and on, and on. This car looks like the fanciest of the four, which means Ditzy deliberately selected it to show off to us—or to me—and I'm not sorry about it.
"Can we ride in it back to the house?" says Patrick. I look over to find him still staring at the car, like it's the prettiest thing he's ever witnessed. I would roll my eyes, but I have no more legs to stand on.
"Why the house?" says Calico J. "We've got all our bags here. We can leave right away."
"Can we ride it out to the road, then?"
"Well, we aren't going to walk there now that we have this, are we?" says Ditzy. She looks far too pleased with herself. "I'll drive. Who's calling shotgun?"
"Meg is," says Calico J with a sly grin, and my whole body seizes. An incoherent noise escapes me as he propels me down the steps into the garage. I can't sit shotgun next to Ditzy. I am the absolute last kind of person you see sitting in that kind of seat in that kind of car next to that kind of person, and I'm not good with actually riding in fast cars anyway. I'm not not good, but there's a reason I don't like roller coasters, and have only been dirt-biking twice. I'd rather have a camper van.
Too late. Ditzy sweeps aside with a dramatic after you flourish, pokes a button, and the door on this side of the car opens of its own accord. Patrick scrambles into the back seat. Calico J moseys after him, propelling me with a grip on my shoulders that I can't escape. Then the seat is in front of me. I would have to sacrifice all my dignity not to take it. Not that I had much to begin with.
At least the seat looks comfy. I drop into it. It's low. Really low, like the road is only inches below my feet, which I realize isn't just a feeling and is absolutely correct. I feel like we could shoot under a semi truck if Ditzy gunned the engine and we all ducked.
Then she drops into the driver's seat beside me, our elbows inches apart, and those thoughts evaporate. The whole car vibrates with power as its engine growls to life. Then Ditzy hits the gas, and Patrick and Calico J both whoop as we lunge out of the garage, back into the sun, on route to the consequences of the best or worst decision we've made since the world went down the drain.
But at least we'll look cool doing it.
Like this chapter if you'd be Meg in this situation 😜
Comment what you think is up with Ditzy...