The days pass in the simultaneous monotony of being home and the novelty of technically being on vacation. Sometime in all of it, Aunt Esther makes a few concerted efforts to get Tiff out of the woods and into some normal activities— driving around Orlando, hunting for camera parts at yard sales, going to all sorts of places to see all sorts of things and do all sorts of activities. Esther knows what Tiff and Drew want and like: interesting landmarks, science museums, and the opportunity to make fun of weird, old stuff. They're the same, in that way.
Tiff checks her phone between one yard sale and the next. Wednesday winter yard sales are good for one thing, and it's having interesting items with zero use. For the sake of being polite, Tiff bought an eight‐ball‐shaped keychain for ten cents at the last one; Aunt Esther bought a "new" Star Wars novel, plus some "secret items" Tiff assumes are supposed to be Christmas presents. That's a mystery she won't try to solve.
Plus, it's a nice reminder of what her aunt likes. Her weird obsession with Jar‐Jar Binks has given Tiff more than enough perfectly‐shaped ammunition to shoot at the proverbial Christmas tree, including an old, broken figurine she found early Monday morning.
This house is the last one of the day, she knows. They have to get lunch and head back to the motel, and then she has to go to youth group (like an idiot). She'll walk there just to try to shake the nerves. Otherwise, she doesn't know what to do. She doesn't know what she's going to say. This isn't like the ill‐fated DARE assembly stunt. She doesn't have an essay prepared and a moment anticipated. Even with the impending improvisation, maybe it isn't worth it to worry about what happens next.
She texts the text, reads it, rereads it. Matt has been in touch with her, both in person and over the phone, through Drew when her phone glitches out and she can't turn it on. The gist of it is always the same: there are no leads and he doesn't know where to go next. She starts to type out a reply until her phone shocks her and shuts off.
With a sigh, she tucks the phone into her back pocket. At this rate, she's going to have to get a new one, since she hasn't been able to fix it. Maybe she'll just get a cheap flip phone, like Aiden. Something with a shitty camera.
It's fine; she got by without a phone for years. The past few days are nothing. It's okay to sit by the gross, polluted pool at Penitent Ivan's and discuss how they need to keep what they're learning from Peepaw, who won't take kindly to this. The hypocrisy of keeping something from him is not lost in the static.
It's been an okay few days. Granted, she has been able to stay away from her parents and engage with her Meemaw more than anyone else. That's how you keep the peace, right? you fade away entirely. Mentally, you go to Kansas, even when you don't want to.
Drew claps a hand on her bare shoulder. The sunburn has faded enough that it doesn't hurt anymore. It just makes her more aware of the fact that her skin is going to start peeling soon.
"So," he says, walking alongside her up the flat walkway to the laid‐out blankets on grass that is dry for once. "What's the plan for today? Are you going to do some more weird shit?"
"Why, you want to come with me?"
"Maybe."
"Don't let my lifestyle grow on you, dude. You're allowed to not want to do it. I wouldn't blame you." She shrugs with his hand still on her shoulder. "It's not like I blame Tony and Olive for dipping after the whole Halloween Men debacle."
He pauses, puts his other hand on her shoulder, and tries to look her in the eye. (She looks away.) "I don't know what the fuck we saw in the woods‐‐"
"Bone creature."
"—but we're going to get rid of it before Christmas, and then I'm going to get drunk and forget about it. Ya dig?"
"Alcoholism doesn't seem like a good idea. I'm pretty sure we're genetically predisposed to that." Thanks, Peepaw.
"Not me. I'm built different."
"I've never even been drunk, it's terrifying—"
"Yeah, well, you're eighteen."
"And I'm a shitty little punk from Florida!"
"Those two things are mutually exclusive and we both know it."
She grins, waves him off, moves her way out from under his hands. "No two parts of the self can truly be separated."
"Don't try to get philosophical with me at a yard sale."
"Don't be an idiot, then. It's that simple." Grinning, she shrugs and sets her sights on what they came here to do, exemplified by the table of random cables in front of her. "I couldn't go out and do anything if I wanted to, unless we were super quick. I agreed to go to youth group tonight."
Drew shakes his head. "You've got to stop agreeing to church shit."
"I agreed to it while we were fishing. It was one big agreement." With a noncommittal shrug, she moves to a plastic table covered with all sorts of electronics and knick‐knacks. It's a good way to pass the time while Aunt Esther is a block away, grabbing lunch. She picks up a mostly‐empty quarter collection book and flips through it. "Maybe this is a good thing‐ a way to get those girls to rebel a little, really change things for the better out here. It could be a good thing!"
"It could also go horribly wrong," Drew points out.
"You think I'm not aware of that?" She looks at him over her shoulder. "It's going to be fine. I'm not even worried about it."
It's a lie. If she says it enough times, it might become true.
She turns her attention back to the table, examining each item one by one. Yard sales are usually a great place for rusty tools, CDs, and outdated digital cameras that she can get for cheap. If they're expensive, then fuck the seller right to Hell.
There is an old point‐and‐shoot on the table, buried under another pile of wires that belong to god knows what. She doesn't exactly need an HDMI cable, now or ever. The day she buys one is the day she keels over and dies.
She already did that three times before— almost dying. That's if she doesn't count all the times she choked on grapes. Maybe it was anaphylaxis; maybe it was getting strangled by the humanoid shape of an extradimensional shadow being; maybe it was the car that existed in her head. Maybe it was just starving in the woods. Whatever form it took, dying wasn't the plan. It was just kind of destiny.
Destiny's kind of bullshit, though. She knows she doesn't actually have one. She just needs something to blame.
She examines a small basket of electronics that were probably cutting‐edge in 2004: clear orange plastic, nightlights, things taken from a child's room and boxed up for years. She casts a glance at the people running this thing; there's a man standing there, exchanging cash with an older woman holding an umbrella and a little drawstring purse. Maybe these used to be his. Maybe there's something to be said here about passing on artifacts to others in a chain of people connected by objects and the significance they once held. It's poetic, in a way— but she has never been a poet. Just a painter.
She kind of wants to take all of these things (she can see the writing in the controller, which is always a delight), but settles on two items in the end.
The first is a small ziplock bag full of glow‐in‐the‐dark plastic stars. The ceiling of the shed is already covered in them, but what's a few more stars in the bright green cosmos above her bed? The odd milky‐yellow‐green is a part of what she has begun to enjoy— the neon against black of a life enjoyed, bold colors and plastic alien heads with giant eyes, painting a silhouette of Bigfoot on the town's logo on the way into town. It's a frantic vision of the universe painted in luminescence and fluorescence and alligator teeth glowing gently in the pitch black of a windowless room.
The fake version of the sky is a vision of who she has become in all the investigation and the lab work. Where is the pure cosmos? She dedicated herself to it, once. She made friends with the guy in charge of it. Like the pure excitement of a sixteen‐year‐old finally learning the way the world is, like the curiosity and passion of a child faced with an ocean of knowledge and possibility, hasn't the cosmos always been a part of her? That passionate love for what lies beyond, earned from years of secretly staring out her window through the blinds as she fell asleep, covers up around her head like it would protect her from the people beyond the door, from years of setting up a tent as a formality when she always intended to sleep under a clear, beautiful sky with the moon and Saturn and the stars all staring down at her. In a way, perhaps she is the person she has always been: excited and terrified, eyes cast up to the sky like it holds the answers.
She's pretty sure that Andy is going to love the second object she found. It's a nightlight: a blue plastic sphere encased in clear plastic, with a small hole in the top to project something out of. When she puts her eye up to the hole and peeks inside, she can't help but smile. "Drew, I found it!"
"Found what?" Behind her, looking through a pile of shoes on a tarp that they both know he has no intention of buying, Drew turns to look at her.
She holds it up like a spoil of war. "The perfect Christmas present for Andy! It's a nightlight with a diagram of the solar system in it! It'll project it up onto the ceiling, which is— Drew, this thing is super cool. Plus, it's the design of the globe itself? It's amazing!"
Drew nods, thinking it over. "It is cool, but— Would an eleven-year-old want a nightlight?"
"Andy is fully thirteen."
"That only makes my point stronger. Isn't he a bit old for that?"
"You don't know Andy the way I know Andy. He would think this is sick as hell!" She pauses as she realizes, "And, hey— I have a nightlight. It's one you used to own. You can't be too old to have a light on while you're sleeping."
"You're an exception to nearly every rule, Tiff. You and all your nightmares. And the sleep paralysis. And staying up past—"
"Okay," she laughs, "I get it. I have a hard time sleeping."
"You kick!"
She flips him off like it means anything.
"For what it's worth," he says, letting the laugh die down over the sound of all the chatter and mid-morning traffic around the two of them. "For what it's worth, I think it's a great gift. I think Andy will probably enjoy it."
"You really think?"
"I think he would love any gift from you."
She can't keep her voice from rising in pitch. "That settles it, then! Merry Christmas!"