"I mean, I'm not stoked to see them again, even if it's objectively going to be fine." Tiff frowns into the phone, speaking gently because she's still in the convenience store. "Denny, I didn't want to be here in the first place."
"Yeah, but you're already there," Denny reminds her, as she has been during the whole conversation.
"I know. I'm just..."
"Scared?"
"Yeah." She pauses, holding a can of corn she has no intention of buying, eyes cast toward the corner of the room. Mold spiders along the polystyrene. She wants a sample, but she isn't going to get one. "But... That doesn't matter, I guess. I should think of everything I've ever done, right? I should think of what I am. It's going to be fine. I can handle anything, right?"
"That's one way to put it."
"Shut up, Denny."
"Love you, too." She pauses. Tinny voices from outside a window come through on the other end— whooping, loud conversation, rubber wheels on asphalt. Denny must be at work already, waiting in her car while she finishes this conversation. (Something in Tiff's chest twists: guilt. Goddammit.) "Family is complicated. Like I said before you left— call me if it gets to be too much. Or tell your aunt. Or something. Don't just suffer in silence until you explode."
"Yeah, whatever." It's a good and rational idea, Tiff knows. She just doesn't want the mortification of having to implement it. "I don't know why I agreed to this."
"Because Drew asked you to come with him?"
"I guess."
"And because you care about him."
"Yeah, I fucking guess so." She returns the can to the shelf. "I'll let you go, Denny. Good luck at work."
"Bye, Tiff. Stay safe."
"I'm absolutely not going to do that."
The call disconnects. Tiff can imagine Denny rolling her eyes, ducking her head to get out of the car, acting like this is the kind of conversation you have before work on a normal day. Yeah, right. It's completely normal to take a call from a teenager who latched onto you for no good reason after you helped her kill a wizard under the high school, and it's perfectly normal for that call to be one where she's trying so hard to be normal and not freak out about maybe having to see her parents after two and a half years of not being home.
It isn't weird that one of Tiff's best friends is a twenty-three year old janitor who works at the high school she used to go to. When you're constantly running around to save the world and put restless spirits back to bed, you make friends with a variety of people, werewolf janitors and middle-aged chosen ones included.
Whether she could count someone like Mr. Mathew or Arnold Everhart as a friend is, at best, up for debate. She hasn't heard from Mr. Mathew in months (unless texts from Percy count), and she thinks Arnold might hate her for reasons everyone is aware of, nobody is saying, and the distance of life post-graduation isn't numbing.
Is it indicative of a larger problem, she wonders, that she can't think of herself as anything more than a nuisance? Is it her nervousness about the situation at hand bleeding into other aspects of her life and perception of the self?
No. It's simply the truth that everyone wants her gone forever. That's fine. She's looking at corn in a convenience store. That heals all her personal neuroticisms every single time.
Tiff tucks her phone into her back pocket and moves the bottles of two-for-four soda to her hands instead of the crook of her arm. Condensation gathers on the smooth plastic. It's rare that she finds something peach-flavored at a gas station and rarer still that she remembers to buy it for her aunt. Esther is out at the car now, pumping gas and keeping an eye on Kepler. Tiff assures herself that her aunt is probably as big a mess as she is right now, that it's okay to feel like this— even though it isn't. It's going to be fine. She shouldn't be terrified. She wipes the sweat from the plastic bottle.
Head somewhere else entirely, she goes up to the counter and sets everything down, then forgets to get out her wallet. It's so much more pleasant to zone out on a display of artisanal lip balm.
"That'll be eight-twelve," the cashier says. It's all that snaps her out of it.
Tiff nods, reaches into her back pocket for her wallet. The attendant doesn't say anything. Tiff figures that she shouldn't, either. There's a time and a place for dumping all her concerns about her position as a guardian of Lake Wonder, her perhaps-ontological tendency toward bad decisions, and how she really doesn't want to see her parents after two years of trying to work through what they did to her on her own. Paying for some drinks and a bag of sunflower seeds at a convenience store on the way out of Orlando is neither.
She can't get it out of her head. It has been at least a month since she helped save everything in the universe from a dimension-hopping evil wizard and a maybe-resurrected nightmare king— since she learned the perks of demigodhood included semi-immortality and a sudden ability to do magic, but not a cure to the way she is. It has been even longer since she got this weird promotion from local busybody to supposedly-responsible minor deity in the first place.
None of that has prepared her for what's happening. All the studying-monsters-and-folklore, all the fighting-nightmares-and-wizards, all the building-machines-in-the-backyard: none of it has helped her learn to stop hesitating when it comes to the hard things. Fort Reverence is waiting, her own personal Tower of London. Haunted— she's haunted. After two years, the ghost of who she used to be is still looking over her shoulder (and the ghost of some story she tells herself is watching like a shadow on the gas station's brick wall).
Two long years. It feels like she left just yesterday. Maybe the wound is fresher than she thought.
Tiff assures herself that nobody knows she's having this moment in a convenience store, trying to shove her debit card back into her crumbling wallet. Whatever the case, this is the only side of the family Drew has, and Aunt Esther wasn't about to let him go alone. Tiff was dreading this trip from the first. She thought, after everything with Oneiron, Chip Winger, and the Time Gnome, that she could handle this. Maybe she can't. She wants to be able to kill this particular demon, but she isn't sure she could do that without a ray gun and a bomb in her pocket.
It's fine. With her purchases precariously in her hands, she steps out into the humid air. It gathers on her skin like it's welcoming her home.
The inside of the car is packed tight with duffel bags and thoroughly-rifled-through snack containers. There's more than enough room for all four of them in there, but after two days of driving nonstop in shifts (and of Tiff hoping she never has to drive through Kansas again), it's a claustrophobic hellscape and last night's motel stay was a welcome escape.
She would take another two days in the car if it meant that she didn't have to see her parents again. She would turn into a frog a thousand times over. She would drive through Kansas at night, blasting music, as convinced she's going to die in a tornado as she currently is that she'll die of familial complications.
She'll get through it. It rests at the top of her throat. For once, things are going right for Tiff Sheridan. They're going to keep looking up. She just has to remember that. It's good to be back. She reminds herself: it's good.
It's easy to be optimistic right now if she tries, despite what waits at the end of the path. The sun shines in the December humidity. It's surprisingly cold for Florida. She thought she was going to be able to escape the Washington winter, but it's almost like it followed her.
At the very least, Kepler is here, she's surrounded by people she cares about, and her shiny new purpose fills her bones with some sort of power she still can't name or entirely understand. It doesn't even matter that she might have to see her parents in about an hour. She barely even cares.
That's a lie and she knows it. It doesn't mean she isn't going to repeat it until the world ends. Everything is going great.
Who cares if the world is always ending and something could go wrong when she isn't in Lake Wonder? Eddy never really leaves, Darius is still in the state, and someone could always call on Drake if they really needed to. After months of godhood, of saving the world, of convincing herself she isn't irreconcilably evil, of trying her hardest to solve every mystery under the sun— after months of becoming someone bigger than she should have been— Tiff is taking a bit of a break. Fort Reverence isn't the kind of town for a good-old-fashioned mystery, unless she wants to dedicate herself to looking for the lost chapel and what remains of the colonial-era Reverence that existed before the fort's construction. Today isn't a day for mysteries, anyway. Today is a day for driving to a small town near the smaller town of Christmas so that Drew can meet his family, and then they're going to the lake.
That's it. That's the plan. Visiting family and getting brain amoebas. Drinks precarious in one hand, Tiff wrenches open the door to the car.
Her aunt is still studiously pumping gas when she gets there, staring intently at the handle like it holds every secret in the universe. She barely notices when Tiff comes up and barely greets her. It's just a muttered, distracted, "Hey, kiddo."
"Hey," Tiff replies, mind elsewhere.
"I don't want to do this." She breaks the stare on the pump and looks up to the sky beyond.
"What choice do we have?"
"We always have a choice, Tiff."
"Well, we should make the right one, then. Go with Drew, stand by him and all." Tiff chuckles uncomfortably. "I know this is a tense situation, but we're getting way too close to being serious."
"You spent several months being serious after you got put on house arrest. I think you can stand a few seconds." It comes out like a laugh. The meter continues to tick up past a reasonable price for gas.
"Hey! In my defense, I was in a bit of a funk—"
"That's one word for it."
"Listen! Listen— sometimes, you save the world and then immediately doom all your friends to the scrutiny of the government and accidentally kill an undead centaur so violently that you're afraid you're going to be executed at a cosmic court where they actually give you a promotion, and then you have to save the world again and enter the nightmare realm! That'll do a number on anyone!"
Esther shakes her head. "You're one crazy kid, you know that?"
"Yeah, well, I saved your ass from a soul-sucking shadow possession in the basement of an evil wizard, so—"
"Dear god, Tiff, you're so loud about this. Get in the car before the ice in those drinks melts."
"Yes, ma'am," she laughs. She does what she's told.
She knows who gets what. Aunt Esther gets a bottle of peach soda and the Coke with crushed ice (not enough to water it down), the Mountain Dew with no ice is for Drew (plus a chocolate bar with almonds in it, because he "likes the crunch"), a cup of water with no lid and no straw for Kepler (because he's still rat-shaped, even if he's an alien), and whatever weird or citrusy soda she can find for herself. She likes orange well enough, but they had that weird raspberry lemonade Mountain Dew. It was an okay enough choice. Sure, it's cloudy and pink in a way that makes her think of some of the chemicals she has worked with, but it isn't quite phenolphthalein-pink, so it's probably fine to put that in her body.
She hands out the cups wordlessly. Kepler, in his unwieldy and admittedly restrictive toddler-sized car seat, accepts his cup of water and drinks from it greedily.
"We'll let you out soon, I promise," she says to him, reaching across to make sure the old jury-rigged booster is still strapped in. "We're almost there."
"I'll admit it: I'm excited to finally meet everyone." Drew slams his straw into his leg to get the paper off.
Tiff gives him a look from the backseat. "Are you sure about that?"
"Considering I've never met any of them and this is the first time I've ever even been in the state..."
She nods. It's easy to forget that Drew is the odd one out sometimes. He has lived his whole life safe in the confines of the state of Washington, split between Lake Wonder and Empire City. Of course he has never gone to church in Fort Reverence or lived in Orlando. She knows that.
When her aunt gets back into the car, she doesn't turn the radio back on. She takes a single sip of her seventy-nine-cent soda and just drives. A minute or so after they leave the gas station, while they're at an intersection, she sighs and says, "Well, we're almost there. I think we have to warn you now, Drew."
"Warn me about what? That they're in a cult?" Drew speaks around the plastic straw in his cheek. "I already know that. You and Tiff told me when you were— well, a lot of times, I guess."
Tiff pipes up from the backseat, "I mean, yeah— the cult thing. The fact that they're in a cult or a cult-like organization or whatever—"
Esther cuts her off. "I think we can call a spade a spade."
"Fine. So it's a cult. And not the cool kind that worships, like time-traveling wizard lizards or something."
"That's a really specific example."
Tiff shrugs. It isn't worth explaining.
"Nevertheless..." Esther sighs. "Yeah, the First Church of Fort Reverence is one of those really insular cult-churches, and that's important to keep in mind, even if we're not going to church while we're visiting, but— Well, Drew, you know how there are varying degrees of religiosity even within a cult? You can have a relatively normal Jehovah's Witness or Mormon, but you can also have extremists—They're more to the extreme side, is what I mean."
"You already told me that." Drew sighs, finally pulling the straw out of his mouth. He gestures with the cup in his hands. "They fall more to the extreme side."
"Well sorr-y, mister know-it-all. My memory isn't great."
"Love you too, Mom." He rolls his eyes, starts chewing on the straw again.
"It isn't all of them. Your Uncle Mike is... fine, comparatively."
Tiff nods in agreement, vigorous enough that she knows Drew sees. It's hard to ignore bobbing green from the backseat. The only reason she was ever allowed to be near her cousins years ago was because they're family and her mother disapproved of Tiff's peers in the congregation. It's an easy way to guarantee your daughter is entirely lacking in friends outside her family. She's thinking too hard about it; that old familiar malaise sets in. She looks out the window to watch the trees go by like boiled peanut stands.
"But your peepaw and your Aunt Ruth..." Esther readjusts her hands on the wheel. "I'm not saying to tread lightly around being yourself. Not right now, at least. I'm just saying— well, keep the peace, but also... They're just kind of assholes sometimes. They might not be with you, because this is their first time meeting you, but... For Tiff and I..."
"Noted. The apostate ratio."
"Exactly."
"So I'll keep the atheist-skeptic rants to a minimum." He shrugs. "I've got this. It's not going to be as bad as you think it is."
"Good idea. Keeping the peace is... admirable." For a moment, the car is quiet except for the sound of Kepler slurping at water. For someone who so frequently provides comic relief to a tense situation, he really doesn't talk. Esther sighs and speaks again. "And, Tiff?"
"Yeah? What's up?" She doesn't look away from the foliage and the flat landscape outside the window. Nostalgia hasn't totally overtaken her yet. She can keep that under control.
Tiff watches her bite her lip in the rearview, clearly struggling for the right words. "I don't know if it's a good idea to bring Kepler inside."
She supposes her aunt is right. She knows the way her family is; bringing in a dog-sized rat alien might not be the best idea, given how they reacted to her insisting Bigfoot was real. (Even Mormons can get behind Bigfoot.) "Yeah, okay. I figured. I know how Peepaw Zacharias is. And Meemaw Hilda doesn't even like field mice."
Kepler whines gently. She pats his head in an attempt to reassure him.
"It's going to be fine." Aunt Esther's voice betrays that the reassurance is more for her than anyone else. "It's just lunch and the lake, and then we're going to the beach with Mike and Samantha tomorrow. Then Christmas. Then home. It'll be fine."
"I think you're overthinking this, Mom." Drew fiddles with the straw in his cup. It's chewed to absolute bits. "It is going to be fine."
Aunt Esther nods and turns on the radio to signal the end of the conversation, but Tiff knows the truth. Something is going to go wrong. She just has to make sure it doesn't.
For the rest of the drive, Tiff tunes out the sound of some shock jock on a pop station none of them particularly enjoy, scribbling in her journal. Words live between doodles and spots of mucus from all the unpleasantness on the road. She's trying to draft a letter to Betty, but she can't think of anything; it's best to leave her best friend's name out of it. She jumps back and forth from what's bothering her to theories on portal generation until the car screeches to a halt.
Esther's voice snaps back into place like a tape measure "We're here."
Tiff looks up from the page. The familiar, sparsely-populated semi-suburban street where her grandparents live stretches out in front of her, just the way she remembered it. So much of her life was spent here, to the point where this one constant in her life was like a second home. She could count on a few things to recur: family scripture study, family prayer, Girl Scouts on Tuesdays in the portables at Colonial High, youth group on Wednesdays and Saturdays, church on Sunday mornings, and visits to Meemaw and Peepaw's nearly every other day.
Nothing has changed. Nothing ever changes here.
With a sigh, Tiff unbuckles herself and tucks her notebook into her bag. This is it. There is no more putting it off.
Aunt Esther lines them up outside the car. Tiff holds Kepler, secure in her arms. He squirms despite the informal attention at which they stand. The debriefing and inspection is meticulous. Esther eyes the length of sleeves and shorts; makes sure that Tiff doesn't have anything written on her hands and that her hair is secured in its stubby ponytail by roughly seventeen hair clips hidden among green dye and brown roots (reminds her that she needs a haircut);and makes sure to wipe a smudge of dirt from Drew's cheek with a spit-wet thumb. It's only then that she's satisfied and steps back, two feet from the crumbling curb.
Esther doesn't listen to Drew's protests about being a grown man who can clean the dirt off his own face. "Alright. Okay. Each of you has a thing to keep in mind. Kepler, you are a giant alien rat-dog and you can not come into the house. They won't like that. Do you understand?"
With a tinge of sadness in his wide, dark eyes, Kepler nods.
"Just go out in the woods. I'll call you back when it's time to go home. Don't go under the house or in the cemetery, either. They're not going like that," Tiff whispers to him out of the corner of her mouth. He sniffs the space behind her ear viciously enough that his whiskers scrape and tickle her cheek.
"And you, Tiff," Esther says, getting back on track. "Don't talk about supernatural stuff. No Bigfoots, no werewolves— no weird theories about radioactive waste or stripper angels."
"I don't know any stripper angels, just bouncers— and I know not to bring that stuff up," Tiff huffs. "I also used to live with this, you know."
"I know, I know," her aunt assures her, "but I just have to make sure. And no political rants from either of you. Drew, don't talk about communism. Tiff, don't you dare mention feminism or how much you hate cops, unless it's to say that you hate the government— Hating the government is fair game. And nobody brings up what I do for a living. Get it? Got it?" She looks at the two of them expectantly.
Hesitantly, they both nod.
"Good!" Esther reaches up to each of her kids, gives each a quick peck on the cheek, and turns toward the house. "Let's eat lunch."