She can't stop thinking about it. With sand between her toes and waves lapping gently at her ankles, shells in her hands, she can't stop thinking about it. Her aunt knows something.
She could ask Uncle Mike, but she knows it wouldn't go well.
Cheap continental breakfast— chalky waffles and sweating yogurt— rests anxiously in her stomach, ready to revolt as soon as she gives the signal. She would rather it wouldn't. Puking in the ocean again seems like a particular kind of Hell (and a wet one, at that). Tiff sighs and crouches down to grab another shell from near her feet.
There's too much about this that she doesn't know. Curse her curiosity! This isn't necessarily a mystery that needs solving. This isn't something that needs doing. She could just leave well enough alone and it would all go away.
That isn't how Tiff does things, though. She's going to chew on this until she chokes.
Someone knows something. Aunt Esther, Uncle Mike, the shadow that was following her in the Dream World— someone knows something and she doesn't know how to get that out of them. Maybe Aunt Esther was right. She should just go to the library when she gets the chance. She tucks the thought away for later.
For now, she's just picking up shells on the beach an hour or so away from Fort Reverence. They aren't even near what's bothering her. She should set it aside.
She can't. Adding another shell to her palm, Tiff thinks of the book in the bag on the floor in the backseat of her aunt's car. She could go get it. She could set herself up in the sand and the gentle wake to give it a read.
And maybe she will. She can't right now, though; the call comes from across the sand— Matt's voice, yelling, "Tiff! Your rat escaped the car and he's trying to eat my volleyball! Fuck— he got the beach ball, goddammit!"
Well, shit. She shoves the shells into her pockets and turns to see what's going on.
They agreed on the way here, at Aunt Esther's request, that Kepler stay in the car for the time being. Obviously, he didn't listen.
Tiff doesn't see what the big deal is. They aren't in Fort Reverence. The only people Kepler could possibly bother are tourists, who don't really count. They can get a good story to tell their family on Christmas at dinner, at the very least.
Oh, god, does she count as a tourist now? Since she doesn't live here anymore? Do all the boiled peanuts and weathered childhood hurricanes mean nothing now that she lives across the country? Does she truly belong anywhere? Too new for Lake Wonder, too far removed for Florida— where the hell is she supposed to go?
Kepler bounds across the sand to her, clearly not enjoying the way it sprays. Though he's trying to give chase, Matt doesn't seem to be fast enough. His bare foot catches on a low point in the sand and he falls flat on his chest and face. Kepler keeps on running toward Tiff with a deflated beach ball in his mouth.
"Goddammit, Kepler," she sighs, ignoring the hushed questions and shock of people around her on what the hell is that. (The answer is obvious, she thinks.)
Off on the drier part of the sand, Aunt Esther pinches her nose and sighs. Feeling almost the same way, Tiff scoops up her beloved rat and marches him up the beach, holding him like a toddler.
Her aunt has been sitting further up the beach the entire time, in a chair sunken in the sand next to where Uncle Mike roots through the cooler for a soda and Aunt Samantha lays on a towel reading some Grisham novel. The Star Wars novelization open on Aunt Esther's lap remains semi-unread as Tiff approaches.
"Kepler," her aunt sighs, "I thought you were going to stay in the car. We put on Ed Sheeran and everything."
He bares his teeth.
"No, we agreed. Well— we're not listening to him on the way back to Lake Wonder, that's for sure."
He pouts and buries his head in Tiff's shoulder.
"Who're you talking to, Es?" Uncle Mike asks before pulling his head out of blue and white plastic. With a sweating Dr. Pepper in his hand, his eyes go wide. "The hell is that?"
"Tiff has recently taken in a pet rat," Aunt Esther sighs, like it's something that she doesn't want to admit.
"Why's he so big?" Uncle Mike asks, before moving in to gingerly pet Kepler on the head. "Hey, little guy. Nice to meet you."
"It's either radioactive waste—" Tiff starts.
Aunt Esther cuts her off. "It's just a breeding thing. Tiff won't stop joking about radioactive waste under the house."
"It's because a local businessman dumped toxic sludge in the woods. A friend of mine had to clean it up." There's no need to admit that 'Kepler ate toxic waste' was a semi-viable theory she had before Chip Winger (technically the Time Gnome at that point) revealed the darling rat was an alien seconds before he tried to kill her.
Aunt Esther narrows her eyes. "Who do you know that was cleaning up toxic waste in the woods?"
"Drake and Denny— and the remnants of the waste are why my friends and I went missing and all those animals went crazy, remember?" It's an explanation Tiff has rehearsed time and time again. "Lacy, that park ranger who revealed the truth of what Mr. Tru had done, was the same one who asked them to help out, since Denny and Lucky both know their way around chemicals, and—"
"No, yeah, I remember."
Aunt Samantha props herself up on one arm to join in the conversation. "What the heck is going on in that sleepy little mountain town of yours, Es?"
"That's basically it." Aunt Esther shrugs.
In tandem with the end of the sentence, Uncle Mike hands her the Dr. Pepper and closes the cooler. She doesn't open it; she just puts it in the cupholder of the camp chair. The message is clear and Tiff already knows it: nobody needs to know the truth about the recent government invasion, the giant spiders in the woods, or the Caroline Bradshaw Drug Tunnel Massacre that happened in 1997. None of that needs to come up. The real story is that it's just some town near the Canadian border that was recently rocked by the death of a local wrestling celebrity and two small business owners. There is nothing weird about Lake Wonder. Tiff had better start acting like it.
The words of Darius Moore in the basement of Chip Winger's house after the shadow kidnapping come back to her: everyone is going to know now.
She can't let that happen.
If her normal method of making herself seem more insane than she actually is won't work here, the only option she really has is to keep her mouth shut. If only she could remember how.
She freezes. Instead of saying anything, she just freezes. She takes in her Uncle Mike, with an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and black swim trunks and a scar on the left side of his chest; her Aunt Samantha and her curls tied back in a bandanna, her chunky rhinestone-studded sunglasses, and her interest in true and fake crime; the plants at the edge of the sand beyond them; prose about C3PO on Aunt Esther's lap; beads of condensation on the maroon can.
Whoops. She noticed too many details. Kepler sniffs her ear; his whiskers tickle her cheek and snap her out of it. It's a slice of modern, slightly-depressing Americana. At least they're all together now.
She knows that her Aunt Esther and Uncle Mike stayed in touch, in a way. One or two calls a year, taken in hushed tones by the kitchen sink. Like an allyship. Maybe that's what's making it easier for the two of them to fall into an older routine and act like no time has passed at all. They're siblings. They may have missed portions of each others' lives, but how could they ever not know each other?
But Tiff, who has always had a hard time seeing herself as connected to people (and she knows that) has no clue how to fall into the old routines he had with her aunt and uncle. It isn't like she can talk about driving or science or how being away for two years has apparently robbed her of the ability to act like a person. So she freezes again, and that's fine. Old Tiff is back. Who gives a shit?
This isn't the same without Adrianna. She realizes it at the same time that her uncle hands her a store-brand lemon-lime soda. If Adrianna were here, things would be different. It's so much harder to fall into an old routine when someone is missing and when that absence is so obvious.
She pops the tab on the can and takes a swig. It burns on the way down.
"I'm taking Kepler down to the water," Tiff decides. "He hasn't been in the ocean before. I don't ever take him to the city."
"I can't imagine that having him on-campus would ever go well," Uncle Mike chuckles. When Tiff pulls a face, he clarifies, "Es told us you're in college now. Congrats!"
"Uh— thanks. It isn't as hard as I thought it would be." She pauses for a length of time that makes her want to die. "Okay, I'm going to throw a rat into the ocean now."
She scampers off, somehow, not falling while she slips in the sand. Wordlessly, Matt follows her.
While Tiff sets Kepler down and the rat gingerly touches the warm salt water (then she picks him up and throws him in), Matt stops next to her and puts his hands in his pockets. He digs his feet into the sand and rocks back on his heels. "How do you want to go about doing what we're doing later?"
"Well... If I'm sunburned, I'm going to want to get the salt off of me. Otherwise, I'd like to jump right in."
"Did you bring anything to protect yourself?"
"From what, from the sun? It wore off."
"From monsters, Tiff."
Watching Kepler decide the water fucks severely, she shakes her head. "I have a... a few homemade, like, ray guns and things at home, but I left them all in Lake Wonder. I didn't think I would be doing anything like this while I was here— I didn't think I would need them. I do have a pocketknife in my duffel, but it's one Drew got for me at a truck stop on the way here."
"That's not gonna cut it." Matt frowns. "How about, as soon as it's time to go, you head back with me and we get you something to defend yourself with?"
"If you're okay with it." Tiff realizes, with a sharp intake of breath, "I don't have my lab coat, either."
"The hell does a lab coat have to do with this?"
"See, here's the thing. I do a lot of weird science stuff, and my mentor recommended that I turn my PPE into even more protective equipment, given that something could happen at any time and I spend most of my time doing lab work anyway, so it fits. She, uh—" Tiff winces, knowing that she shouldn't provide the further context, but also that she's going to do it anyway. "She had a medical practice where she had to take care of something between patients, and then someone stabbed her in the leg, so she... she says that she thinks it's a good idea, so my lab coat is a part of my normal monster hunting stuff— my normal one isn't white, only my costume one is white—"
"Tiff." He raises his eyebrows. "I get it."
"I think my jacket will probably work fine."
"Alright. We can worry about armor and padding later if we need to."
"I don't think we need to."
"We might."
"We won't need it." Tiff shrugs, grins. There's the routine she wants to fall into. Something familiar. Something bickering. Something kind. It isn't the way it used to be— but maybe that's alright.