Of A Feather

by clab

Summary:

The world’s worst daughter goes to meet the world’s worst father and the residents of hope county unwillingly get caught up in the crosshairs.

Chapter 1: Optimism

Notes:

[twirls lock of hair around my finger] omg heeyy...

here we are !!! she's posted baby !!!!

i couldn't be here without the creative help of @8bitpizzacoupons i owe her everything for this fic, Billie belongs to her and helped form this whole fic by going "wouldn't it be so funny if josephdaughter had annoying best friends with her". she was so right for that.

The only thing Brit had of her birth family was their name.

It was stamped on every document. Written on the tag of every piece of clothing she was allowed to keep. Seed.

Her whole life she hated it. B. Seed. Brittany Seed, people she’d never met before saying her name as if they were the best of friends. Like they hadn’t just read it off a piece of paper.

“It’s Brit,” She’d say, shoulders hunched because whatever they had to tell her was bad, because it always was.

And they’d always chuckle. Keep it light hearted, make the child feel at ease. She’d read it once, from a stack of papers left out in the open, big words on top: How to deal with children with — slid away from her with a “now Miss Seed”, said like she was an idiot, her glare met with “there’s nothing wrong with you, Brittany”, and Brit dealt with it, because what else could she do?

Adulthood was a different story. Her name was her own. “Brit,” She’d introduce herself with a smile; people smiling back and going ‘nice to meet you, Brit’. Seed ceased to exist outside of the documents shoved in her glove compartment and the memories of those who knew her far too well.

It was different, of course, when it came to Billie and Bianca.

“Brittany,” Billie would whine in her high pitched way, leaning against Brit until Brit had to support her lest they both topple over. Billie always said it with love.

“I’m your sister,” She’d scoffed, long ago, “I’m allowed to call you Brittany.” She hadn’t been, but she always said it differently than everyone else, and Brit found she didn’t mind when Billie said it.

“Brittany!” Bianca would snap, always showing up when Brit was doing just what Bianca said not to do. Bianca only said it to get Brit’s attention, making her whip around like a deer in headlights, trying her best not to look guilty and always failing.

“Does it bother you?” She’d asked once, long ago. “That I call you that?”

“No,” Brit responded in such an easy way that surprised her at the time, “It’s okay when you say it. You’re my sister.”

 

 

There hasn’t been another car for twenty miles.

Some teen heartthrob crackles through the left speaker, drowning out the hum of the road with the melancholy musings of a forgone love. They’d been driving too long. A series of late mornings (afternoons, really, but they had just woken up so it was mornings) putting them behind schedule enough that they kept driving.

‘It’s only a few hours left,’ Brit said just a few hours prior, swirling a monster with renewed energy. Now she sits stiff, rubbing her eyes to keep herself awake.

Her shoulders were sore, right foot numb on the gas pedal, exhaustion nestled itself so deep in her bones it felt like an infestation.

With a slow roll of her head Brit glances besides her at the passenger seat where Billie sits. Lays, more like, with her skinny ankles propped up on the dashboard, bubblegum blue toes wiggling in open air. Her back is pressed against the seat, chin against her chest with the seat’s back holding her head up, poking at a cracked iPhone, little tap taps from her nails on the screen. A pillow is pushed off to the side between her and the door. A gathering of blankets on the floor, an empty monster tossed atop.. Her seatbelt remains at its perch, unlatched hardly ten minutes into the drive.

‘There’s no cars around, Brittany,’ Billie snapped, glossy pink lips pulled back into a sneer that tugged at her features unflatteringly, making her look like a warped circus mirror version of herself. ‘I don’t need a fucking seatbelt.’ Brit had accepted that with a roll of her eyes. Waited a whole fifteen minutes before slamming on the brakes and sending Billie face first into the dashboard.

They lost half an hour pulled over to the side of the road screaming, circling the car just out of reach of one another. Only when their throats got scratchy and hoarse did they agree to end it, solidified by a mutual flipping each other off as they ripped open their respective doors.

Brit’s neck hurt just looking at her.

It also just hurt in general. She rolls her shoulder, feels a crack — a moment of relief before a new cramp makes itself known in her lower back. She’d have to twist to feel any type of relief.

The backseat is taken up by the luggage that couldn’t fit in the trunk, Bianca taking advantage of the extra room and sprawling out along the seat. A bedazzled pink duffle bag with the words Princess is currently being used as her pillow, braids pulled up into a bun as she reads a book swiped from the previous gas station; Dark Places, the title reads.

She’d been thrown to the floor, earlier, Brit remembers the squawk she’d made. She’d stayed in the car, got comfortable, and asked them ‘Out of your system now?’ when they’d gotten back in, answered with the two of them slamming their doors.

The drive has taken its toll on all of them. Three days, crowded together —

‘Pull over, I gotta piss.’

‘I. Asked. If you had to pee when we left.’

‘I didn’t have to go then! Pull over!’

— was enough to put them all a little on edge. Still, looking through the rearview mirror at Bianca lounged back, lazily turning a page of her book, Brit can’t help but feel resentful. Both girls stretching out their legs, doing something that didn’t involve staring at the boring fucking stretch of road. A field to the right. A field to the left. ‘A cow!’ exclaimed with a gasp. It got old by day two. But as quickly as the resentment came, it went, and Brit was just tired. She flexes her fingers over the wheel, the leather warm under her fingers. They’re slick with sweat, knuckles stiff.

Brit wasn’t upset at them, not really. Having them here was so much better than doing it alone. Three days with just the static of the closest radio station and her own thoughts was a recipe for disaster. Brit could picture it now: her, dead in a ditch, a week with buzzards picking at her eyes before someone spotted the rusted backside of her car sticking out of a ditch.

Despite the soreness of her throat, Brit was thankful they were there.

“There’s no signal out here!” Billie screeches, slicing through the comfortable lull they had fallen into.

“Don’t know why you’d think it’d change, hasn’t been a signal in ages.” Brit says around a yawn.

“You do like to remind us every half hour,” Bianca murmurs behind her book.

“Fuck you.” Brit rolls her eyes as Billie pushes herself up just enough to start fiddling with the radio. “What the hell are we even listening to? Is — is this NCIS?”

“You mean NYSNC?”

“Fucking —” Brit can see Billie glaring at her out of the corner of her eye, her attention back on the road, the picture perfect of nonchalance save for the smile she’s failing at holding back, “— whatever. Who's playing this shit?” In the rearview mirror Brit sees Bianca slink down, hiding further behind her book, body language screaming don’t get me involved. Brit jerks her thumb back towards her. Billie whips around to glare at Bianca. “Yeah, no. Give me it.” She doesn’t wait for a response, twisting in her seat to pluck the neon pink iPod from the cupholder. “Can’t stand you bitches. What is this, 2004? Grow up.” From her position Brit can’t see Bianca’s face, but the sharp spike of pain in her lower back might have something to do with the daggers Bianca may be glaring at the back of her seat.

The songs cycle, never lasting more than a few seconds before Billie tsks through her teeth and clicks next. The inevitable byproduct of one iPod and three girls means they can never agree, so Brit holds her tongue — until finally Billie smiles, turning the volume up as Single Ladies blares out of the left speaker and directly through Brit’s patience. She smashes her palm on the radio, and the car goes silent.

Brit ignores the scathing look Billie sends her. The second her hand settles back on the steering wheel Billie is turning the radio back on. Brit turns it back off with more force than necessary.

“No,” Brit glares at Billie out of the corner of her eye, “I’m not fucking listening to this.”

“It’s a good song! You’d know that if you had some taste.”

Brit’s hands tighten around the steering wheel, white-knuckled, then immediately she relaxes them. She exhales slowly. “What,” Brit bites out, “the fuck ever. I’m not listening to this top 40’s shit. Change it.”

“Fuck you.”

The car stops hard as Brit slams on the brakes, sending Bianca to the floor with a squawk. Billie braces herself, bare feet against the glove box. In the same breath that Brit reaches for the iPod, Billie moves it up and away, shoulder pressing up against the passenger window. The cord of the cassette adapter holds taut.

“Give me,” Brit growls, “the fucking thing!”

“Fuck off! You don’t get to call the shots all the time!”

“I’m driving, you lazy piece of shit, give me the fucking iPod!”

“The two of you are so fucking annoying.” Bianca’s arm shoots out, snatching the iPod out of Billie’s hand. “It’s my iPod and we’re listening to what I say.”

“That’s not fai —”

“ — st not this sh —”

“ENOUGH!” Both Brit and Billie’s mouths snap shut simultaneously, sharing a glare. In a spark of childishness Brit flips her off, and in turn Billie sticks out of her tongue. Bianca exhales loudly. “I should’ve made a fucking playlist.” Silently Brit agrees. Three days on the road and she couldn’t even spend time to make a fucking playlist.

Whatever. It was whatever. Soon they’d stretch out on their fancy hotel beds and take hot showers and sleep like the dead and be out of this fucking car. Just a few more hours.

She could do a few more hours.

The beginning notes of Breathless by The Corrs begins to play through the speakers, causing Billie to squeal and turn up the volume the loudest it could go. It pounds against Brit’s temples, but she lets the tension melt off her as they all scream “Leave me breathless!”. Just a few more hours.

 

 

Hope county was a gorgeous place if you liked nothing to fucking do.

‘They don’t even have a mall,’ Billie whined.

‘They don’t even have a mall,’ Brit did not whine.

“Y’know,” Bianca was leaning over the center console, a map spread out over Billie’s thighs, “I read that they have this bear, called Cheeseburger?” She points out a spot on the map. “The F.A.N.G. center, it’s like their whole thing.” Brit dares a look out of the corner of her eye. It was close enough to the hotel...

“What the fuck kind of name is Cheeseburger?” Billie asks.

“He eats cheeseburgers,” Bianca shrugs. “It’s something.”

Billie rolls her eyes, giving her a vague Uh-huh in response. They pass a sign for a testical festival that has Billie pointing. “What’s — OH, is that for —”

“You eat bull balls.”

“Ugh!” Billie slams the heel of her foot on the dashboard. “Some vacation!”

“Hey!” Brit turns her head fully to glare at Billie, the other girl perking up enough to send one back. “This isn’t some fucking vacation, alright? This is serious bizz. Exact opposite of a fuckin’ vacation, okay? This isn’t some getaway, Bill.”

Behind her, Bianca mumbles, “Basically is.”

“Shut the fuck up, You know what I mean.” Brit turns her attention back to the road. In the rearview mirror Bianca raises her hands in mock surrender.

 

 

Brit grew up seeing places like this in magazines, piles set out on coffee tables in police stations, doctor’s offices, the only thing within arms reach. Sit down, don’t move. Toys were a distraction only for the good kids. No, we don’t break things, Brittany! Big hotels tucked within the mountains, surrounded by a lake, sprawling and large in a way Brit could never conceptualize. It’s like being back in those uncomfortable chairs, tipping right off the edge into the pages of that magazine, She could imagine it now. Come to The Grand View Hotel! In big yellow letters, taking up two pages.

They’d parked along the path leading to the parking lot, right near the sign. Forced to, with the left side of the parking lot blocked off by sheet metal, the right all pickup trucks belonging to, what Brit assumes, is the gruff looking men that seem to be busy at work setting up some kind of enclosure. Maybe they could convince the receptionist to give them a back room. Being woken up at the break of dawn by hammering and loud ass men was at the very fucking bottom of Brit’s wishlist. She wanted to stretch out on a plush bed, soft as a cloud, the room’s TV big and flat playing something on the movie channels, because big, fancy places like this had to have the movie channels.

And if she was fucking woken up because of this fucking set up —

The smoke curdles in her lungs, catching Brit off guard enough she coughs, large and rolling. She spits phlegm on the tarmac.

It was fine. They’d get the back room.

A shout brings Brit’s attention to her sisters, halfway up the tarmac. The car wasn’t even in park before they were throwing up their doors and practically sprinting their way towards the hotel, excited exclaims of finally, a fucking bed, shutting the doors an afterthought in their rush. Brit took the extra time closing their doors to enjoy her last cigarette and a moment’s peace.

Big fancy places like this probably had a little in-shop, too. Couldn’t have the big wallet’s go parading amongst the locals for their condoms and smokes, could they?

That good mood didn’t seem to have lasted long, Billie already waving her hands wildly as she says something to Bianca, her mouth stretched open and wide in an exaggerated sneer, eyes squinted and eyebrow raised, a poor impression of Bugs Bunny; her bitchy face, they’d always called it, the creativity of 13 year olds. The face she made whenever she spat venom.

Sometimes Brit wondered if Billie had learned how to mimic expressions from Saturday morning cartoons with the way they were so exaggerated. The probability of it being true was the only reason Brit didn’t make fun of her for it.

A shrieked Ugh! cuts through the air. The gruffed-faced men look up, heads turning and conversations dying as they watch Billie whip around and storm the rest of the way to the hotel, legs bare and her stride long.

Brit watches Bianca watch Billie go, the other girl’s hands leisurely in her jacket’s pockets, posture relaxed. Her shoulders raise as she takes a deep breath. Brit counts with her, one, two, three, four, watches her shoulders drop on the exhale. Her sneaker drags along the ground as she steps forward, moving like she’s being forced by something unseen, following after Billie.

The men watch her go.

Brit watches them watch her go.

She stomps out her cigarette and jogs to catch up.

“What the hell was that about?” Brit asks, taking the stairs in two long steps.

Bianca shrugs, back pressed against the door to keep it open enough for Brit to slip through. “I said she needed a shower.”

Brit makes a face. She wasn’t wrong. They all needed a fucking shower.

It’s not like your B.O. is peaches and cream, Brit grumbles to herself, if a grumble could be a thought. She thinks of saying it out loud, bitch you smell, but that would only make Bianca snap back well, you smell like fucking shit too —

God. What did she smell like? They’d have to play rock paper scissors to get first dibs.

Ugh. Whatever. Brit slips by Bianca in one swift movement, silent. The door clicks shut behind them.

The Grand View Hotel spreads wide on the inside, an open space two stories tall, balconies allowing a view to the windows above, at the mountains beyond. It’s startling, almost. The wide space, the view, but it’s the emptiness that catches Brit off guard. Furniture sits pressed against walls, boxes and totes in mismatched piles, but the large entrance sits basically empty. The service bell echoes off the walls. It’s all Brit can hear.

Billie rings the bell again, and again, and again, calling out a Helloooo! and Brit has to close her eyes.

“Hellooo!!” Billie calls again, stopping her insistent ringing to lean over the counter, trying to catch a peek through the door panel that leads to what looks like a laundry room. “Can I get some service here?”

Movement in Brit’s peripheral has her looking up, at those balconies that show off the beautiful mountains, the gorgeous skyline, at the faces that peer down at them, open and curious, movements slowed but nobody stops what they’re doing. Whatever it is they’re doing. Moving the furniture?

Dread seeps into her stomach through the knot in her back, dripping like rot.

But she was ever the optimist.

“Hey!”

Bianca’s voice snaps her to attention. On the other side of the room a man looks up from the crate he’s carrying before very quickly looking back down, making a beeline towards the back door. The one he emerged out of swings shut behind him.

Bianca meets him at the exit.

His steps falter to a stop, looking from Bianca to Brit and Billie, approaching him from the other side. “Ma’am? Uh, ma’ams?”

“We’re here to check in,” Bianca replies first, quick and to the point, smile customer-service practiced, “but there doesn’t seem to be anybody ‘round.”

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Uh —”

“And everyone seems to be doing a real good job of ignoring us.”

“Well —”

“And I don’t really appreciate being ignored.” Billie crowds in close to his side, brushing against him in a way that has him jerking back. He loses his grip on the crate, scrambling to catch hold of it again before it falls. Billie doesn’t bat an eye, taking another step towards him. “So you should probably find us someone to check us the fuck in.” She flashes him a pretty smile, all teeth.

The man stares at her. His eyes flick up to meet Brit’s.

“Please.” Brit pleads in the most earnest way she can muster, nothing more than a bored rasp.

“I don’t work here,” He finally says, arms shaking as he struggles to hold onto the crate. Brit stares at it pointedly. “I can’t help with something like that, I’m sorry, that’s not — I don’t have that kinda authority.”

“So what do I have to do to get you to get someone with that kind of authority?” Billie spits out through her teeth.

The man’s gaze moves to Bianca.

“We’re not trying t’be any trouble.”

He takes a deep breath, stuttering through the exhale. “I —” He glances up behind Brit. She turns to try and follow his gaze, catches two heads ducking out of sight. The man takes another long inhale. “If you would kindly,” The way he says it is strained, the muscles in his neck twitching, “move out of the way so I can put this down, I can uh… ask around.”

Bianca steps aside, hands resting in her pockets. “‘preciate it.”

They watch him struggle to open the back door, nearly dropping the crate twice in the process. Billie watches him, arms crossed, mouth pressed into a thin line and brows raised high, tapping her foot in such a way that the rubber underbelly of her sandal rings out throughout the room. All she needs is to be popping some gum and the picture for impatience would be complete.

The noise of the flip flop fills the room, an uncomfortable sound that makes Brit grimace as she makes her way back to the counter, choosing to walk away rather than yell at Billie to knock it off. Bed was just a check-in away, and the tapping was better than the shrieking that would follow if Brit did say something.

Any brochures have been removed, leaving the racks empty. Two gumball machines sit in front of the reception counter, glass dusty, gumballs probably older than she was. Momentarily she considers pointing it out to Billie but the other girl wouldn’t get it; her face would fall carefully neutral before dropping into a sneer, brows turned up in the middle, what the fuck are you talking about, Brit? Instead Brit just chuckles to herself, rests her palms on the counter, her head drooping so her chin rests on her chest as she uses the position to stretch her arms. She twists her neck left, right, rolls it all the way back until she feels that satisfying crack. She stares at the ceiling.

A bed and a shower. That’s all she wanted. Hell, even just a bed. There was a perfectly fine lake out back she could make do with, if only she got to lie down for a night.

A man, another one, larger and burlier but with the same overgrown beard look that seemed to be all the rage in Montana emerges from the door that lead to the probable laundry room, ripping it open so fast that Brit jerks. Her neck protests the motion, a spark of pain causing her to wince.

“What?” He snaps.

Could always count on small town hospilities. Brit rolls her neck again, shrugging her shoulder, but the damage is done.“We’re here t’check in.”

“We’re closed.”

“Wasn’t a sign.” She drags a finger across a piece of cardboard taped to the register. Ring for service. “We got a reservation.” She taps her middle finger against the bell, the ring echoing, filling the empty room, rattling inside Brit’s skull. She blinks away the feeling, raising her eyes to meet the man’s. “Look it up. Under ‘Glass’.”

The man doesn’t move. “No record’a you.”

Brit stares, shifting so her arms rest loosely over each other against the counter, her weight on her elbows. She tries to gauge how much energy she has to extend. 6’2” roundabouts, laced up combat boots adding an inch, in a sweat soaked red shirt. Behind all the beard the man looks exhausted, eyes small and sunken. He stares back at her, expression unchanged.

She thinks of the men outside. Upstairs. All in similar dress, big bushy beards and unwashed hair. All staring.

She raps her fingers against the counter. Sucks in through her teeth. “You didn’t even check.”

“Cuz there’s no reservations.”

Her nails bite into her palm. Brit takes a deep breath to calm the bubbling under her skin. Inhale, think before you speak. Easy. ‘I made the fucking reservation!’ No, no, tune it back. One, Two Three, Four, ‘I made the fucking reservation!’. One more time —

She inhales.

Billie cuts her off, “You didn’t make the fucking reservation?”

Brit slams her fist down on the counter, whipping around to glare at Billie, neck screaming, teeth bared. “I made the fucking reservation!” Just as quick she whips back to glare at the man, neck screaming, whose still just fucking staring at them and not helping. “Look, can you just —”

“No.” He interjects, voice loud and firm, that this is final voice adults that thought they were more adult than she was liked to take, as if they had any kind of authority over her. “We ain’t open. You’re on private property ‘n I’m gonna need to ask you ladies t’leave the premises.”

“Listen! We made one —”

“And I told you,” He raises his voice loud enough where it fills the space, bouncing off the walls, but it isn’t booming; he doesn’t yell, “that there ain’t a record of you. Now get.”

Brit gaps. “You can’t be f —”

Behind her Billie screeches, “That’s such bull —”

“Now!”

He doesn’t make a move to remove them. Brits knocks her knuckles against the counter, wanting so so badly to throw the cash register at his fucking head. Behind her Billie stands tense. Brit can feel her, could feel her the second she moved herself into Brit’s bubble. Two steps to the side when the man raised his voice. Her shoulder crowds close to Brit’s back, so close there’s a ghost of a touch between them, arm hair brushing. From the way the man’s eyes flick towards her, she’s leveling the man with the same intense glare Brit is.

There’s a tense silence where all they do is look at each other.

Brit breaks first, bowing her head to breathe, big inhales through her nose, dragging a hand down her face. She tries to ignore the shaking. “Can I at least get some fuckin’ smokes for the road?”

Getting back in the car is the worst thing Brit has ever experienced, made even worse by Billie complaining the whole fucking way about how they didn’t make a reservation she very much did. Her back lets her know how angry it is when she’s buckling in, the twist making her vision swim. Crossing her arms on her steering wheel, Brit lays her forehead against them, shuts her eyes, ignores the protest in her neck, and waits for the throbbing in her temples to subside.

Billie presses her thumb into the finger-shaped red marks on her forearm. “That’s gonna bruise.”

Ow. Brit doesn’t even have the mental capability to respond; she groans. It sounds like a hum.

Bianca wrestles with the map in the back seat. “There’s another hotel south of here. They got hot springs or something. Wanna try there?”

When Brit doesn’t respond Billie nudges her shoulder. “You good?”

The steering wheel is warm under her skin. She digs her fingernail into the worn material, pressing until her joint starts to ache. “Yeah.” Brit raises her head, arching it enough to get a small crack. The relief is welcomed, Brit flashing Billie a tired smile, a puff of air as she exhales, warm against her skin. Another hotel. Maybe they’d be coughing up the last of their cash but at least they’d have a bed. “Where is this place, Bee?”

Her foot throbs as she steps on the gas.

She’s optimistic.

The dread drips.

This one is kinder about it. Sorry, we’re closed for the time being.

Brit kicks the door on her way out. The cry she lets out is both of frustration and pain.

 

 

The door above them dings as they enter.

The sound rattles around Brit’s head like a loose pebble. She sends a glare towards Billie that goes unseen or, more probable, unacknowledged, with the blonde pushing past her and grabbing up two bags of sour watermelons. Bianca rounds the shelf, chunky bar secure in her jacket pocket.

There’s a surprising selection of candy for a place like this, complete with questionable expiration dates. Brit debates over snowballs or a two pack of twinkies or the bag of onion rings. Settles on the twinkies and a party sized bag of cheese doodles. Familiar blue has her glancing down where a dusty case of rice krispie treats sit tucked away at the bottom.

The three of them, crowded into the trailer’s kitchen, floor sticky under bare toes, a window propped open to let out the smoke. The clock on the stove reading 4:23am in big red letters. Giggling over too-strong drinks, too much orange juice to try and cut the burn. Brit’s boyfriend in the next room, trying to sleep.

They had attempted to make their own.

‘God, I want one’a those,’ coughing on an exhale, ‘those fuckin’ rice krispie treats?’

‘Fuck, I could go for one too.’

‘Think we can wake up your boy, make him take us?’

‘Mmmno, he’s got work in a couple’a hours. We could like… try ‘n make it ourselves. Can’t be too hard, right?’

It burnt around the edges, too goopy in the middle. They ate it out of the non-stick pan Brit’s boyfriend’s mom got him for Christmas with two metal forks between the three of them.

Brit ended up just breaking up with him rather than deal with the mess.

She puts three in the basket.

Two monsters from the cooler and they deposit their haul on the counter. “And a pack of Marlboro Reds please.”

“And a pack of Newports, please!” Billie chirps next to her, her sweat-slicked skin brushing up against Brit’s arm. Brit twitches away. Billie presses against her side fully, leaning around her to ask Bianca, “You getting anything?”

Whatever. Brit pulls out her last $20.

The door dings.

The bill is shoved Bianca’s way as she’s saying, “No, I quit, remember?”, plucking it out of Brit’s hand without question just as Brit turns, cigarettes snatched from the counter, and makes her way towards the door.

All around her everything is so loud, like someone behind the scenes hit max volume for every fucking thing in the store, but only for her. It’s hard to hear herself reminding her to breathe. The florencents buzz like flies swarming. Little beeps ring out throughout the store from the cashier ringing up their items. It pounds against her skull. Billie prattles over it all, always so loud, about — about the fucking hotels —

Brit bumps shoulders with another scruffy faced man. The only reason she knows they weren’t followed is because he’s wearing flannel rather than the plain scratchy looking sweaters.

The door dings as she exits.

It beats against her head so loud she has to pause against the support post to breathe. Being out in the open helps. With no walls to contain it, the sound spreads wide over the area. It’s still too much. Not quiet the way she’d like it to be; huddled in the corner with the door closed, lights off, coats brushing the top of her head, hands over her ears. There’s a truck parked next to her car rumbling in the way big trucks do. It makes the ground feel unsteady, like she’s walking on sand. She rips the plastic holding her cigarettes hostage open with her teeth, discards it on the ground. The world tips sideways as she reaches in the open window for her lighter.

The rumbling is soothing, until it’s nauseating. She braces against her car’s door and considers just crawling into the trunk. Pull the hood closed, put some headphones in. Goodbye world, see you tomorrow.

It’s tempting.

Her hand shakes as she sucks down smoke.

Brit leans against the car, arms crossed over the roof, chin resting atop them. She stares at nothing. At the smoke, the way it drifts up to the sky. At the cherry, burning hot as she inhales.

Her fingers twitch.

Her car is warmed by the sun, hot to the touch. Not enough to hurt. Brit sweeps her fingers over the hood for the hottest point. In the middle, where she has to stretch her arm to reach. Her fingers instinctively flinch away from the burning and she lets out a hiss.

Behind her the door dings.

Brit presses her wrist into the metal, dropping her head so it rests on her arm, leaving the world blissfully dimmed for a moment.

There’s voices approaching her. Bianca’s voice swirls around her brain like a comforting blanket that eases all of her senses, but whatever she’s saying is lost, the pounding of Brit’s heart almost as loud as the pounding in her head. There’s another voice, a low rumble, that makes Brit blink away a wave of dizziness. She tries to focus on what that voice is saying, why it’s near her, near Bianca, but the rumbling of the truck makes the ground feel unsteady. Brit swallows a gathering of saliva, shifts, plants her feet firm on the asphalt, and she lifts her head.

Brit swallows, and lifts her head.

Brit exhales, and lifts her head.

Billie’s voice cuts through the fog like a bullet, loud and abrasive, never one to be ignored. “You look like shit.”

Brit inhales Montana’s air. It doesn’t sit heavy in her throat despite the sweat along her neck. It doesn’t make her wheeze and cough with fumes or smoke or garbage. Brit breathes and lifts her head.

The man she had shoved past in her haste outside is making his way towards that big, rumbling truck, a pack of beer under one arm, a plastic bag in the other. Billie trails after him carrying two more cases of beer, but her head is turned towards Brit, lips puckered. In concern or in judgment, Brit’s not sure. She spits onto the asphalt either way. Billie’s face pulls back in disgust.

Brit tilts her head towards the man.

“This is Nick!” Billie grins.

Brit looks at Bianca.

“That’s Nick,” The other girl replies, already rounding the car to put their haul in the backseat.

And who the fuck is Nick? Brit very nearly snarls, watching as the man takes the two cases from Billie. Between the trucker hat, the sunglasses, and the scruffy beard, Brit can’t make out anything about him.

The man — Nick — smiles at Billie, hands on his hips. The flannel he’s wearing is tattered and faded, the sleeves torn off to show off his biceps. “Thanks so much for your help, darlin’!”

“Oh, anytime!” Billie giggles, tilting her head to the side so she’s looking up at Nick despite being nearly as tall as the man.

Enough of that.

Brit clears her throat, ignores the glare Billie sends her way. “That a popular look ‘round here or somethin’?”

His whole head turns so he’s looking right at her. She can see his eyebrows just above the frame to his sunglasses, shot up in surprise. He brings a hand up to rub across his beard. Brit raises an eyebrow at him and he laughs. It sounds almost nice. “Oh, this? Heh, yeah, guess so.” His hand drops to his side. “My wife’s been naggin’ me to shave it, can you believe that? All this hard work?” He makes a noise as if he were annoyed, but he’s grinning so wide his cheeks are red.

And Brit wants to ask him who the fuck he is when he speaks up again, ripping her away from the very carefully structured sentenced she had built in her head; And who the fuck are you, Nick? Scratch the fuck. And who are you, Nick?

“I’m sorry,” He says first, wiping his hands on his jeans as he steps around Billie to hold out his hand towards Brit. “Real rude’a me. Names Nick Rye!”

Brit glances down at his hand. Up, towards Billie, who’s staring at Brit’s hand, where her wrist is still pressed into the hood of the car. Brit curls her arm back towards her, down to Nick’s hand, the skin of her wrist pink. His skin is calloused and rough, but his handshake is gentle. Her other hand brings her neglected cigarette to her lips.

“Brit.”

“Pleasure t’meet you, Brit!” He steps back when she drops his hand. “I’m — heh, sorry if I’m overstepping but I heard somethin’ about hotels bein’ closed? You girls runnin’ into some trouble finding a place t’stay?”

When Brit looks at Billie the glare is gone, replaced by a wide-eyed look and a face full of guilt.

Brit works her jaw. Smiles, a quick thing, and huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, we were” — she makes a swirling motion with her hand — “runnin’ into some trouble, but we found a place, so no worries.”

Nick nods. “You gonna be in town long?”

“Nah,” Bianca’s voice drifts from the car, making Brit jump. Bianca’s head pops out of the backseat window behind Brit. “We’re headed to Washington.”

“Yeah,” Brit steps back to peer at Bianca, arms folded across her chest, “Forks. We got, uh —”

“My Uncle Charlie’s out there.” Bianca smiles. “Waiting.”

“Aw! Well, reason I ask is, next week my wife ‘n I are havin’ a barbeque. Gonna be a band, food. Buncha locals gettin’ together. If you’re around you’re more than welcome t’stop by.”

Bianca tilts her head so she’s looking up at Brit. “Sounds like a good time.”

“Too bad we’ll be outta here by then,” Brit says, all smiles.

Bianca rolls her eyes and disappears back inside the car.

“If we’re around we’ll definitely make it, Nicky.” Billie says, leaning up against the hood of Brit’s car, arms positioned to show off the swell of her breasts.

“Hell yeah!” Nick turns to grin at her. “The more the merrier!”

Brit nods, eyes locked on Billie, who doesn’t even spare her a glance.“Guess we’ll see.”

“Hope t’see ya!”

She stomps her cigarette out and gets in the car, unable to fight back a groan. Nick allows Billie to get in first, with her throwing him a cute little ‘Thank you Nicky!’ as she swings the passenger door shut. He tips his hat as Brit starts the car.

A knock at the window makes Brit whip to stare at the passenger window, neck screaming, body aching, can people please stop startling her —

She stares at Nick, bent down look at them through the glass.

Billie rolls the window down.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Brit asks, voice clipped.

He laughs again, and this time it’s awkward, his head bowing as he looks down. “I-I’m sorry, I don’t mean to — I just — yer friend was kinda right?” A statement, tilted up at the end to sound like a question.

“Right about what?”

“You lookin’ like shit.”

In the backseat Bianca snorts. Besides her, Billie laughs.

Brit grits her teeth. “S’my sister.”

“Oh! Sorry, sister. Well, she was right, you look kinda shitty, pardon my French. You looked ‘bout three seconds from pukin’ your guts all over the parkin’ lot when I saw ya.” Nick holds out a small pill bottle — Tylenol, it reads. “S’my wife’s. She’s pregnant, I got a ton’a these things ‘round, and you look like you need it.”

Brit stares at the bottle in his hand. She doesn’t take it.

Billie does, with a gleaming smile, all teeth. “Thank you so much! How thoughtful of you!”

Nick smiles again, nods, and steps back towards his truck. “You ladies drive safe, y’hear? All kindsa people out there these days.”

“Will do!”

The wavy feeling fades as Nick and his big, rumbling truck drive out of the lot. Brit swallows down another wave of nausea.

Billie shakes the bottle in front of her. They rattle together. It’s a small bottle, travel size, and there’s only a few in it from the sound of it. “You should take these.”

Brit reaches out to bat them out of Billie’s hand. Billie hugs the bottle close to her chest. Brit lets her hand hang in the air a moment before dropping it so it rested on her gear shift. “M’not taking pills some rando gave me, are you fucking insane?”

“You did at your ex’s concert.”

“Okay, one, that wasn’t a random person, that was the drummer —”

“And what was that drummer’s name?”

“ — and secondly, I knew that was molly.”

“It’s literally just fucking tylenol, and he’s right, you look like shit!”

“I look like shit because you’re getting on my fucking nerves!”

Brit matches Billie’s glare, but it doesn’t take longer than a few seconds for her to sigh and hold out her hand, Billie giving a triumphant smile as she places the bottle in Brit’s palm.

“This doesn’t mean I’m taking them,” She snaps, throwing the bottle into the center console.

“So long as you don’t fuckin’ throw them out the window.” Billie leans back in the seat, feet up on the dash, soaking in her win. “Could you imagine if he like, forgot something and drove back here and saw that poor little bottle he so generously gave you tossed to the ground like trash? Outta the kindness of his heart he gave us that! You’re literally so rude, Brittany.”

“And you’re a homewrecker,” Brit spits. “Dude’s married, having a kid, and you’re still hitting on him?”

Billie shrugs, smiles sideways. “You know what country boys do to me.”

“You’ve never met a country boy before now.” Bianca murmurs from the backseat, lounging back with her book on her lap.

“Yes the fuck I have!” Billie snaps. “I’m from Georgia!”

“You’re from Atlanta, bitch.”

“Both of you,” Brit exhales as she backs up, arm slung over her seat, looking out the back window the make sure she doesn’t hit anyone, but mostly to glare at Bianca, “shut the fuck up. For five fucking minutes.” A pause. “Please.”

Billie raps her knuckles on the top of the center console. “I think you should take the pills.”

“Why don’t you take all of them at fucking once.”

Brit can see Billie rolling her eyes, all big and dramatic, her head rolling along with it. A habit she’s never been able to break from, even after all the trouble it's gotten her in. Silently Billie turns to grab the bag from the floor of the backseat, Brit glancing both ways before pulling out onto the road. Billie emerges with the packet of Newports, tapping them against her thigh before carefully peeling the plastic open. ‘Never with my teeth, Brittany, I’m a lady’ she’d said once, nose up high.

She holds out her hand for the lighter. Brit digs it out of her bra and hands it over without a word.

 

 

They find a spot off the side of the road after half an hour of searching. A dirt path that leads down to a dock on a river, a little sign that says authorized vehicle and personnel only in chicken scratch greeting them as they pull in. The road is long, steep, with enough trees to keep them hidden from the road. Private enough, for the three of them.

“And it’s free!” Billie beams, flip flops discarded, bubblegum blue toes dipped into the water.

And it was free.

The sun was just about gone now, nestled down below the horizon, just the faint traces of orange the treeline, a stones throw from dark. Out here, the dark was dark; no city lights to keep the sky hazy bright, like a kid hiding under a blanket with a flashlight way past bedtime. They raced against the retreating yellows and oranges and pinks to build a fire before it’s too dark to see, bickering the whole time over what they saw in movies, on tv.

‘I know what the fuck I’m doing, I was in the scouts!’

‘No, you were sleeping with a girl who was in the scouts.’

‘Same fucking difference.’

Brit’s marshmallow chars, black and crispy on the outside, ooey and gooey as she smashes it between two graham crackers, hot enough that it melts the chocolate. Across the fire Bianca makes a joke about the ugliest fucking s’more I’ve ever seen when Brit’s mouth is full, chocolate and char and melted marshmallow on her face, as if this was the first ugly s’more Bianca has had to bare witness to. Brit flips her off, marshmallow on her finger.

Billie is laid out beside her on a towel, ripped from a bag with a sneer at the sight of Bianca and Brit settled on the dirt, her hair splaying out on the ground but still precariously within the confines of the towel. ‘They’re different out here, Brittany,’ she said, eyes trailing over the stars in the sky. Brit flopped down next to her, dirt in her hair, to try and see exactly how they were because Billie never sat back and looked at the stars, but it all looked the same.

Brit thought of asking, ‘How are they different?’. On the tip of her tongue, ‘Could you find the big dipper?’, only a half-joke because maybe Billie could, but the ache in her back twinged and she sat back up without a word. She tried to pop it with a twist but it was bone deep. Here to stay.

She’s reminded of summer’s past. Nights set out in front of a fire, blankets thrown across laps and arms thrown over shoulders. Loud music and solo cups, the knockoffs you got at Walmart, when there was a lot of them, tucked so far in the woods that the cops wouldn’t be called. Leading to hungover mornings, trying to stay quiet in a Denny’s as snapchat stories were consulted for the night’s events.

Of nights crowded on that lumpy, smelly couch that had permanent residence outside of Brit’s ex’s trailer. Just the three of them, occasionally a boyfriend, but never frequent enough they solidified in Brit’s memory, filling the night with conversations they’d had a thousand times and would have a thousand times more. The scenery always changed, Brit hadn’t been with that ex long, but it had been the coziest.

‘My own place!’ Brit grinned, freshly 18 and no key to show for it.

The fire crackles. The crickets chirp. All they were missing was a bottle of vodka passed between them, giggling as they each tried and failed to not make a face.

“You nervous?” Bianca asks.

Brit shakes her head, tongue trailing after a bit of chocolate at the corner of her mouth. She can feel it on her chin. “Nah. What’s there to be nervous about?” Her tone is light, airy, and the smile she flashes is all charm, just enough teeth poking out from her upper lip. She had always been told her smile was her best feature. ‘You could get whatever you wanted from someone just by flashing them a little smile,’ her case worker had said once while reading over disciplinary reports.

She remembers her heart hammering in her chest at the statement, her breath hitching, and when the woman finally looked up at her, Brit smiled and called her a cunt, because she wasn’t fucking stupid.

She doesn’t miss the look Bianca passes to Billie. From her position, she can’t see if Billie gives one back. Brit bites into her s’mores because she can’t hide her smile, and the marshmallow keeps her mouth glued shut.

 

 

Billie and Bianca fight over the backseat.

Three days looking forward to a nice, soft bed in a fancy hotel, ‘A place with complimentary breakfast, Brit!’, made another night in the car dreadful. They could sleep on the ground, stretched out on towels and blankets in a pile. ‘Montana has a low crime rate,’ casually spoken as they sat in limbo, waiting for the first one to move to call it a night over the dying fire. It was Brit, accompanied by a large sigh, hands on her knees as she pushed herself up, her body screaming and her bones popping, that got the other two moving. When Billie started whining about wanting the backseat to herself, body exhausted from a long day of driving, cooped up in the passenger seat, she was explaining, Brit climbed back into the driver’s seat.

“The least you could do is give me the backseat, with the way you two blew it with the hotels!” Billie yelled. “My back hurts, I wanna lay down!”

They compromised, agreeing to share the backseat after Bianca got in and refused to move up front and Billie tired herself out from yelling. Brit watches them now. Billie half atop Bianca in the small space, their legs intertwined. Billie hadn’t put her hair in a bun before passing out so it lays out across the two of them like a blanket. It looks uncomfortable, dry shampoo scratchy sticking to sweat-dried skin. Brit fingers through her own hair. She’d been counting on that hotel shower.

Don’t think about it.

Her back hurts, reminding her that she was not, in fact, in a comfy and cozy hotel bed. Or even stretched out under the stars. The idea was exciting. Wake up to the sunrise and the gentle stream of the river, serenaded by birds, owls giving their goodbyes as the sun cast its morning gaze on her. Like in the movies. She’d sit up and stretch with a smile on her face, hair perfect. That’s the best sleep I’ve had in years!

Even the idea of just laying across the backseat was —

Whatever. It didn’t matter.

The summer heat simmered to a night chill, making Brit shiver as she steps out of the car. The crickets greet her. She twists, tries to get that crack but all she gets is a pull in her side that has her groaning.

The lighter warms her fingers, smoke and the crisp Montana air filling her lungs and for a moment she feels normal again, and then she’s exhaling and everything settles back into place.

A split second decision. No planning, nothing. All the cash they could grab and whatever they could carry. Nowhere to go. ‘Heard my dad’s out in Montana.’

‘Montana? What the hell is out there?’

‘Jack and shit. He’s a pastor.’

They’d laughed, because it was funny. Her dad. A pastor.

‘You up for a drive?’

If they’d said no that would’ve been it. Brit’s back wouldn’t be hurting, they wouldn’t be stuck in the middle of nowhere with $30 between them and no cell service. They’d still be back in Boston. They’d still be…

Whatever. It didn’t matter. They were here, with the beautiful views and the creepy people and all the pine trees you could want.

Brit works her jaw, finishes her cigarette, flicks it into the river. The door’s armrest digs into her side and that knot in her back throbs. She pulls her knees to her chest, blanket pulled tight around her, head resting on the window so as not to pull at the pain in her neck. She thinks of the pillow Billie had grabbed for herself as she stretched out along the backseat with Bianca.

It was fine.

The crickets and her sister’ breathing eases her to sleep.

 

 

The twinkie sticks to her teeth, making the monster foam in her mouth.

In the blur of yesterday, between the desperate dash between hotels, the stop at the gas station, the circling until they found a place they could sleep for the night, they’d passed signs for a place called Prosperity. It had been Bianca who’d pointed it out, yelling at Brit to slow down so she could squint at the sign, leaning across the center console and all up in Brit’s space. Prosperity, General Store, Historic Town, with an arrow pointing down a dirt road.

‘Who the fuck wants to see a historic,’ Billie made air quotes around the last word with one eyebrow raised, ‘town? Didn’t you get enough of that shit in Boston? Shit is booo-ring.’

By the time they’d woken up the sun was high in the sky, blazing warm, the full weight of the summer’s heat making everything wavy in a different way from yesterday. The ground even, but the horizons hard to make out under the sun’s gaze. It felt like molasses the way it sunk into their bones, mixing in with that bone-deep fatigue. Three days on the road, another in the car. None of them moved, setting out to do what they did best: fuck all.

Billie and Bianca take over the backseat. Stretched out on opposite ends of the car, legs thrown over one another, skin tacky with sweat but neither of them seeming to care, Bianca with her nose back in her book and Billie dozing. Brit watches them in moments of clarity, sluggishness keeping her in a haze. Her head quiet, but every time she opened her eyes she felt the world tilt, just a little.

It reminded her of the feeling after a night out, drinks as alcoholic as they were sugary, waking up with a body sore with bad decisions. Those mornings where she, Bianca, and Billie would slink into a diner. ‘Pancakes. Toast, please, white — the bacon, thank you,’ Bianca would order with a polite smile because she was the best of them.

A single plate split between the three. Brit nibbling on toast between sips of orange juice, declaring she was never going to drink again. Billie eating more than she had that entire week and saying ‘me too!’. Bianca clicking her tongue against her teeth in her most non-judgemental manner.

The morning bled into afternoon, silent save for the birds chirping, the occasional car passing by on the road above. They didn’t move until Billie started to wiggle, muttering about ‘go outside, what the hell do I look like’.

Brit squints up at the sun, light reflecting bright off the water, as she cracks open one of the monsters. It sits heavy in her stomach.

They pull into Prosperity a little past 2pm. A dead end town down a forgotten dirt path that served as the road, nothing but trees and the smell of pine for a mile. ‘So deep in the woods,’ Billie giggled with a raised eyebrow and mischievous smile, ‘great place to hide from Johnny Law.’

Besides her, Bianca sucks in through her teeth, a sharp, wet sound out of the corner of her mouth. “Place is a dump. There’s not even a store.” Maybe there had been, at some point, stuffed full of souvenirs and pamphlets about the tiny little mining town, detailing facts about its history for little kids on field trips Brit had never been allowed on for one reason or another. The only story being told here was through burned out husks that once served as town center.

The buildings still stand, though, and the roofs are relatively intact. Could serve as a shelter, a place to stretch out without creeping eyes. It was enticing. There was even a water source nearby, a bit of a drive down the dirt path, not close enough to comfortably bathe, but accessible. A town like this would have nobody coming to visit on the reg, dusty and desolate as it was.

Billie’s voice carries over the town. “There’s a meth lab in here!”

A place where nobody went to visit made for a very good hiding spot indeed.

The building reading Town Hall does, in fact, have what looks to be a meth lab in it, adorned with old pizza boxes and Billie tiptoeing around it all with hovering hands.

There’s a cot in what would’ve been a different room if the place had walls rather than just support beams that Bianca’s looking under. “Don’t touch,” She snaps at Billie.

“That’s not a meth lab,” Brit says as she walks in, crossing the floor in quick strides towards the frame of what served as the back door to peek out. The edge of the forest greets her, nothing but pine and dirt.

“Then what the hell is it?”

Brit shrugs, turning around to face the other two. “Dunno. But I don’t think it’s a meth lab.”

“Like you have so much experience being around meth labs.” Brit makes eye contact with Billie, the blonde leaning on the table just to the right of the not-meth lab. She rolls her eyes. “Okay, so, not a meth lab. So what is it?”

“I’d rather not stick around and find out.” Bianca crosses the distance in three long steps, smacking Billie’s arms off the table with a ‘I told you no touching!’, with Billie squawking ‘I wasn’t!’

It wasn’t a bad idea, really. Squatters were wildcards, and three young women in an unfamiliar state, in a forgotten town? Brit looks at the not-meth lab, at the scribbles on the walls. Formulas. I’m sorry in big letters in the room with the cot. Nothing is dusty with the telltale sign of abandonment.

Whoever had been here had been here recently, making who fucking knows what, and clearly wasn’t any type of mentally sound —

Bianca and Billie argue. Brit looks. She thinks. She doesn’t hear the footsteps in the dirt until they’re right behind her, a scrape that puts her on alert instantly, her heart in her throat, body going tense, ready for — whipping around to see —

A man, without a scruffy beard, thank fucking god, she was so sick of big scruffy beards, wringing his hands in his shirt as he stares at her like he doesn’t know what to make of her. “Uh — wh- what… what’re you, um, sh-should I —”

 

Aaron Kirby, he’d explained after a moment of shrieking that had him flinching, shoulders drawn up, head tucked down, expression pinched. Brit stands in the entrance, blocking his path to the not-meth lab and her sisters. He makes no move to shove her aside. Instead he shifts in place, continuing to twist his fingers into his shirt. “Uh… e-excuse me?”

Brit stares at his hands, white knuckled in the baggy tee that hung off his skinny frame. At his shuffling feet, how he almost bounces in the dirt. Up at his face, brows curled in, sweat on his brow. At the distance between them.

She steps aside.

“Y-you can call me Tweak.” He flashes her a smile that’s too many teeth, a wrinkle between his brows. He explains ‘I d-don’t live here. Uh. All the t-time. Just —’ He rambles about formulas, equations. ‘I’m making something to t-take, uh, well…’ Brit wasn’t really listening, leaning against the table Billie had been earlier, watching him flutter about the space with frantic energy, trying to see if they disturbed anything.

“You sellin’?” She cuts in, leaning over the table, palms flat, expectant, looking at him through her eyelashes.

And Aaron — Tweak — stops, hands hovering in midair as he looks at her with wide, wide eyes, like he can’t believe she asked him that. But the place reeks. There’s a bong next to the chair in the corner, right out in the open. She wasn’t fucking stupid.

A beat passes, two, Billie behind him picking up a flask and bringing it to her nose before thinking better of it and setting it back down. Brit watches the way Tweak twitches, the way his mouth curls upwards into what he thinks passes as a genuine smile but is more of a grimace. “What’re you, uh, lo-looking to buy?”

‘We don’t have much money’, Billie cooes, stepping up to his side, hand on his arm, sunglasses hooked into the collar of her shirt, pulling it down just enough to see —

Brit holds up the double pack of twinkies. “I’ll split it.”

“D-Deal.”

 

It really wasn’t a meth lab, Tweak was explaining next to her, already licking the crumbs from his fingers. He was a scientist —

‘No, a chemist.’

‘Wasn’t Heisenberg a chemist?’

‘H-he was a physicist, a-actually!’

‘No, he made meth, that was the whole fuckin’ point of the show.’

— and was working on something top secret.

“I-I’m sorryyy,” He was saying, the y dragging out, “It’s just, with wh-what’s going on y-you can’t trust just anyone, y’know?”

Brit nods, arms folded over her knees, chin resting atop them, the day’s heat beating down on her back, sweat wet behind her knees. She swirls her can of monster with a slow roll of her wrist, the contents splashing against the inside.

“So what’s there to do around here?” Bianca asks, leaning into Brit’s space to hand her a joint. “This s’the only thing on our agenda.”

“Th-there’s the F.A.N.G center!” Tweak grins wide, gummy, all teeth. He has an overbite. A missing tooth toward the back. Brit tongues the rotten tooth in her mouth. “A-and, uh—” He pauses for a moment, wiping his hands on his jeans, caked with mud and dirt and who knows what else. Looks like they haven’t been washed in a while. His fingernails are black at the edges. “Well, a lot’s closed down due to, y-y’know.”

Brit nods, thinking back to the men at the Grand View, slipping the joint between her lips.

“That why you got a meth lab set up?”

“I-it’s not a—”

Brit coughs on her exhale, closing her eyes a moment, letting the feeling settle over her. She takes a sip of her drink, another hit— doesn’t cough this time— and passes it to Tweak. He’s too caught up in arguing with Billie, ‘I-I’m working on something really im-important,’ so Brit kicks him, a nudge of the knee that takes him by surprise. He stops whatever he’s saying to look at her, eyes wide — brown — as he sways, his hand bracing on the ground to stop himself from tipping into the dirt. There’s a beat as he just stares at her. A bead of sweat drips down her neck. She wiggles her fingers, the joint, and those browns flick down to it, then back up to meet her eyes and — a quick smile, actually genuine this time, it reaches his eyes — he closes the space between them, takes it carefully from her, a quick brush of the fingers.

Brit settles back, curling her fingers into her stockings, nail picking at one of the holes.

“So why are you guys, uh, h-here?”

She can feel Bianca and Billie’s eyes settle on her. “We’re checking out this pastor we heard abouts.”

“You guys’re, uh, r-religious?”

“Nah, just, y’know.” Brit shrugs. Her nail catches on the hole, ripping it just a little bigger. “Curious.”

“I-is it —” He’s glancing between the three of them now, a chipped tooth pulling at his bottom lip, “Pastor J-J-Jerome?”

Shit, she thinks, sending a quick glance towards Billie and Bianca. Bianca meets her eyes with a small roll of her shoulders, an I don’t know.

Was it Jerome? Had she gotten the name wrong? Was his name —

Their silence only seems to have put Tweak more on the outs, his shoulders going tense. His eyebrows curl in again., a little crease between them. “It’s not… Joseph Seed?”

Brit’s breath catches in her throat, just a little hitch, at the sound of his name. Joseph. Her pulse pounds against her skull, drowning out everything. Joseph Seed, she says to herself, an echo in her head playing on rewind. Joseph Seed. That was him, that was her — that was —

“Yes.” Brit clears her throat, “Yeah. Him.”

Tweak looks away from them, the joint forgotten. She can see Billie eyeing it.

Eventually he inhales. It shakes. “You guys — uh, g-gals should beee- be careful of him, man.”

Brit glances at Bianca, the other girl sending her a bewildered look. “We aren’t think’a joining a church, dude. Just curious. Bored.”

She watches him, how he still isn’t looking at her — at them. His fingers twist in his shirt, knuckles white. He’s quiet, still besides his breathing, heavy, like he’s trying to keep it steady. There’s scabs on his neck. From shaving, maybe. Brit thinks back to what she had asked him. ‘You sellin’?’, his nervous reaction.

Brit stares at the scabs.

On her other side Billie scoffs, reaching across the semi-circle they had formed. Brit watches her arm stretch out, approach Tweak — she watches Tweak, watches for a twitch, for anything, as Billie plucks the joint out of his hand.

He doesn’t react.

Brit picks at a scab on her knee.

“You know where we can find him?”

Tweak shifts, sneakers scraping in the dirt, head still turned away from them. “N-no.” That seems to be the end of it, his voice firm and final, but after a second he exhales and continues, “but there’s this, uh, center. You caaa- you can’t mmmm. Miss it. They got a-all kinds’a signs out front. S’like a-a-a gift shop? ‘Bout twenty minutes ‘way, near Lorna’s. Th-they would know.”

Brit nods, two bobs of her head. She can see his jaw is clenched. She wants to ask, what’s got you so bothered? Nearly asks him Why’s Joseph Seed make you nervous? Opens her mouth, Why’s my — but the joint is shoved in her face and she takes it instead, swallowing down in her questions along with the smoke. She coughs once, holds it out to Tweak. He’s still not looking at her, at any of them, staring off at the bridge out of town, into the woods. He’s biting down on his lower lip.

Bianca and Billie split the roach.

 

With an eighth in her pocket Bianca secures her spot in the back of the car.

“Hey, uh,” Brit looks over her shoulder at Tweak standing at arm's length. He’s tense and uncomfortable, the tips of his ears red, but that crease between his brows is gone and he’s picking at a hangnail rather than curling his fingers into his shirt. He’s looking at her, but he’s not looking at her. “I didn’t get your, um. Could I —”

“Brit,” She interrupts.

He smiles, wide enough that she can see the empty space where his tooth would’ve been, top left.

“Brit, right.” Tweak nods. “Brit, Brit, Brit.” He repeats her name like a mantra. It sounds good in his voice. With a swallow and an exhale, he holds out a hand. “W-well, Brit. If, uh, if you need an-anythhh. Thing. I’ll be here.”

Brit glances down at his hand. There’s dirt on his palm. From the way he’d been wringing his hands in his clothes she wonders if they’re just permanently stuck like that, encased in filth. His thumb nail is bitten down, skin ripped at the cuticles, and still, she sees dirt. She looks up at him and for a brief moment they make eye contact.

She takes his hand..

“Thanks, Tweak.”

Brit doesn’t think about her back hurting as she gets in the car. Doesn’t think about how her ass instantly goes numb at the familiar position, or how sweat is already collecting along her spine. She deposits her monster in the cup holder. With a twist of her key the car revs to life, the scratchy, whiny voice of Kurt Cobain crackling through the one working speaker.

It is now my duty to completely drain you

I travel through a tube and end up in your infection

Through the open window, Tweak continues, “And uh. St-stay safe guys — gals. Girls. Uh- wo-women?”

She can’t help it. Brit smiles at him. She watches how his face flushes red and he’s staring again, the corners of his mouth turned up. He smiles back.

A thumb painted bubblegum blue crowds Brit’s vision. She leans forward so her forehead brushes against it, the thumb and accompanying fingers threading through her hair in response, pushing uneven locks out of her face. Billie leans in close to her, their cheeks practically pressed together. “Thanks for everything, Tweaky!” And then she’s leaning back and Brit’s hair is in her face. She blows a strand out of her field of vision, puts the car in reverse.

She can see Billie smiling at her out of her peripheral. “He was nice,” She says, a cheery tilt to her voice. Brit hums in acknowledgement, eyeing the man as she T turns in the little stretch of road that Prosperity consists of. Before pulling onto the bridge she stops, stares at him through the rearview mirror, still lingering outside of the building reading Town Hall. After a moment’s consideration she raises her hand and gives him a little wave.. Maybe he wouldn’t even see it. But still, she waves.

Tweak waves back, half a twinkie in his hand.

 

 

Tweak was right. It was hard to miss.

There’s a line of signs that greet them as they pull in talking about The Power of Yes. They follow the tire tracks marked in the dirt that lead them to what serves as the parking lot, Brit taking up the remaining spot underneath a Join Me sign. The trees’ shadow gives brief relief to the mid-afternoon sun. Besides them are two white trucks, parked haphazardly, a space meant for a row of cars full with just the three. The same models they’d seen at the Grand View Hotel.

The building is small, a stretch of white atop a hill with a view of the river and the bridge that leads them to orchards. Another sign is settled atop the roof, sloppily painted in black letters, telling them to Just Say Yes.

Bianca and Billie cut in front, crowding through the little doorway with hips bumping before splintering off in different directions; Billie, to the clothes, shirts with a sunglasses douchebag on the front in varying shades of monochrome, others with an odd insignia on them. The books in front of Brit are stamped with them, gold on white. She runs her fingers over one of them. It reminds her of a bible, the material soft, malleable, like the ones tucked into the drawers of motel rooms.

“Can I help you?”

The woman that appears in the doorway is more put together than the men at the Grand View had been; a plain white shirt and a jean skirt, what Brit would call ‘church girl short’ followed by a laugh, resting just above the woman’s knees. The room is small and there’s no AC to circulate the air. It’s stifling.

The woman’s eyes dart between the three of them, her smile strained at the edges; from Bianca, standing on the other side of the shelves from Brit, to Billie, holding a shirt reading Cull The Herd in deep red, to Brit, and then to Brit’s fingers, still stroking the gold imprint of the book. Brit drops her hand to her side.

“Hi,” Bianca steps up, all smiles, a hand held out in greeting. There’s no hesitation in the woman as she moves forward to take it, gaze shifting back to Bianca in an easy tilt. “We’re looking for Joseph Seed?”

The woman’s eyebrow twitches, pull upwards. That same little twitch of an eyebrow that Tweak had when he said his name. Joseph Seed. “Oh! Um!” Her eyes flick between the three of them again, seemingly to dissect them where they stand. At the moth-bitten Metallica shirt that hung off Bianca’s frame. At the way Billie’s thong stuck out from her waistband. At Brit’s… the woman doesn’t seem to know where to look with her, her eyes dragging over Brit’s body, head to waist, the shelves blocking Brit from further judgement. “Are you now?”

Brit rolls her shoulders back, stands tall, back straight, a flush crawling up her neck like she hadn’t felt in years.

She was used to being looked at. Judged. It hadn’t bothered her since puberty, long looks from fathers and concerned mothers, their words spoken out the mouths of their evil little children.

It feels different here. The woman’s gaze lingers.

Her back aches.

“Do you know where we could find him?”

Whatever.

The building is made up of two rooms. The angle Brit stands at and the woman’s body keeps her from seeing into the other room. It can’t be more than one, though; the one they stand in is barely big enough to contain the furniture within it. All the windows are open, doors propped open welcomingly, and yet it’s so stuffy. Brit’s hair clings to her neck, to her jaw. She inhales through her mouth.

There’s a green tapestry with another of those symbols on it, but the frame next to it is what catches Brit’s attention. It’s a photo of a man, blown up in size, taken at an unflattering angle; the kind of angle that makes men think makes them look bold and threatening. Above all. The receding hairline and high button up just ends up making him look like a dork, what with his hair slicked back and his chin raised to show off an attempt at a groomed beard. Yellow aviators shield his eyes.

Brit exhales what feels like all the oxygen in her body.

She tries to inhale but the air is suddenly too thick, the room too hot.

“He’ll be giving a sermon at the convent tomorrow.” The woman is saying, “The Father reaches out to the community every Saturday.”

Tomorrow.

She can’t see herself in him like they say in the movies. Oh, you have his nose! She has your eyes! He just looks like a man, any man she’d pass on the street. There’s nothing distinct about him. Nothing noteworthy.

But that’s —

“The — The Father?” She can hear Bianca question.

She’s sure.

“Yes.” And the woman is suddenly turning to look up at the photo with a smile full of admiration and a look in her eye that makes Brit’s stomach flip and all at once Brit wants to shove her. “Within his words we are able to find a path to Eden’s door, and he will lead us there.”

In all the old mafia movies Brit caught bits up, playing in the background of a house party with a gangle of men on their fifth Coors Light crowded around it, there was always a portrait, in that same painterly style that looked like a filter, hanging ominously behind the boss’ desk, or over a mantle as the fire cracked, an unhappy family watching documents burn. Brit had never seen anything like that in person. In school, any hung photo was a glossy print out at Walgreens, blown up too big, the resolution shitty, distorting faces so they looked like those in historical paintings, the ones with the fucked up babies Bianca loved to show her.

If she had any sense, she’d see the red flag for what it was.

Instead she just stares at her father, her heart hammering in her chest as she takes in all his features, the world melting around the edges.

She can’t see herself in him. Not a bit.

Maybe she’d been wrong.

Maybe this was all wrong and this was a different Joseph Seed. A Joseph Seed that has no relation to her. Maybe she’d gotten it mixed up, picked the wrong one.

Maybe she looks like her mother.

The thought practically gags her and it’s too much, it’s too much —

She can breathe outside. The air is hot but doesn’t clog her throat. She breathes until it hurts, long lungfulls that leave the world spinning as she fumbles her way to the tables gathered on the deck, collapsing into one of the chairs. From her position she can see the faint edges of the portrait through the open window, the curve of those aviators. In the other chair she can see the remaining cluster of signs on the other end of the lot.

We Love You, the last one reads.

Brit closes her eyes and wills the world to settle.

The woman’s voice drifts out like an aroma, crowding Brit’s senses until it’s all she can focus on. “— saved me, from myself, my sins. He’s” — a sigh that’s far too dreamy — “wonderful. Those that seek salvation shall walk the path, and where not best to start than at the convent?”

Salvation. Brit wanted to spit.

The saliva gathers in her mouth as her stomach lurches. Brit gags, leans forward until her head touches the table, swallows it all down and tries not to think about it.

Once she’s sure everything down stays down, she exhales, long and heavy.

There’s a no smoking sign hung by the door. She left her lighter in the car anyway.

It doesn’t take much longer for Billie and Bianca to join her. Billie helps herself to a drag, cigarette plucked from between Brit’s lips, a pull of a face, ‘Ugh, Marlboro’, as Brit cuts the wheel to back out. She debates just gunning it, speeding out onto the road with gravel flying and rubber squealing. The car eases to a stop as she looks both ways. A glance up into the rearview mirror, a reflex.

Have Faith in the Father bids them farewell.

She guns it.

“That place was fucking creepy,” Billie’s cheery voice fills the silence once the signs are out of sight.

“Church merch,” Bianca snorts, leaning against the center console. “Can you believe that?”

“I meant the whole like,” Billie makes a swirling motion with her hand, turning to squint over her shoulder at Bianca, “that woman’s whole weird-ass schtick.” Her eyes flick over to Brit. “She sounded down bad for your daddy, Brit.”

God.

“Don’t fuckin’ call him that.”

Bianca and Billie share a look, both of them curving their head to stare at one another, and then they’re giggling, loud and obnoxious, filling Brit’s head until she feels like she’s drowning in the noise. Brit eyes the river. How easy it would be to drive them into it. ‘Drown bitches!’ She’d yell. ‘Since you think you’re so goddamn funny!’

They’d find their way back to her, eventually. Dripping wet, bodies half rotted, maybe an eye missing. Brit wasn’t foolish enough to think she could ever be rid of them. Even in death they’d haunt her. Kick her over in bed to make room for themselves in the middle of the night, even if the room was barricaded, and she’d be called a blanket hog by two dead whores who shouldn’t even be able to feel warmth, let alone anything at all.

And she’d let them, too. Not the blanket, of course, ‘You’re dead! What do you need it for? Fuck off.’ But she’d let them in her bed, dead as they were, rotted as they were, because —

Well.

Her grip eases off the steering wheel, feeling her mouth twitch. And then she snorts, and after a moment, she’s giggling, too.

 

 

They get dinner at The Grill Streak.

‘We don’t have much money,’ Bianca was saying, squinting at the menu.

‘We should just get sides,’ Brit says over her shoulder. $2.95 for hashbrowns. The cost makes her stomach spin.

‘I want those fucking pancakes,’ Billie hisses.

The shade is welcomed, with Billie stretching out on one of the picnic tables, her arms splayed, carefully avoiding any questionable stains. Her head hangs off the end, blonde hair nearly brushing the cement. It’s just before sundown, the day’s heat lingering.

Brit rests her chin on her crossed arms, staring out at the baseball field.

Joseph Seed. The name repeats itself in her head like a broken record, overtaking every other thought in her head.

Joseph Seed. Joseph Seed. Joseph Seed.

Maybe her brain got cooked in the heat. She hadn’t been out in the sun this long in… she tries to think, tries to bring up some kind of memory, a time before this, a time before she knew what Joseph Seed looked like, had a face to place to the name. The drive felt like eons ago. They’d only entered town yesterday.

Joseph Seed. Joseph Seed Joseph Seed.

Tomorrow. Despite the heat a shudder runs through her. Tomorrow.

Her stomach lurches.

A piece of toast crowds her line of sight. She follows the arm holding it to make eye contact with Bianca. “Eat,” she orders. Brit takes it obediently.

There’s a thin coating of butter on it, a barely there taste. The crunch isn’t satisfying, a little too chewy, but she eats a third before dipping her head down into her arms, the twisting in her stomach making her vision swim.

In the distance the birds sing. There’s a ghost of a wind on the back of her neck, so light it makes Brit consider if she imagined it. Billie is saying something, her voice low, that normal high pitched shrill settled into a tired rasp. Bianca replies, but the words slip through Brit’s consciousness.

The high’s worn off, leaving the past few days exhaustion on her shoulders, heavy as a boulder. Her head thumps, loud against her temples, a pain behind the eyes. She considers just stretching out right here, climb atop the picnic table and follow Billie’s lead. Her shoulders ache at the idea of crowding up against the steering wheel, fifth night in a row.

Somewhere far away an engine revs, startling the birds into silence. Brit lifts her head and takes another bite of toast.

 

She keeps her head down as the sun disappears beyond the horizon, the sky bleeding purple over orange and pinks. She registers Billie and Bianca getting up, but whatever they say sounds like static. Brit grunts in acknowledgement, listens to the crunch of leaves as they retreat.

The crickets chirp. Nearby an owl hoots, and when Brit raises her head, darkness has settled over the field like a blanket. Bianca and Billie had walked off towards the field, at one point maybe passing a wayward ball back and forth, but as the sun set they settled against the fence. Brit can barely make out their silhouettes against the darkness of the woods.

There’s still the stickiness of sweat on her body, but the air has finally cooled enough to be comfortable, like a bath that has gone lukewarm.

It takes great effort to move. Her arms are heavy, loose as rope, barely holding her weight as she pushes herself up. Her knees tremble. She has to brace herself, palms flat, takes a few seconds to find her balance and rounds the table, fingers trailing along the wood. Gravel crunches under her sneakers, and when she settles down on Billie’s other side, back screaming, the other girl loops her arm around her shoulders, drawing her in.

Brit’s head drops to Billie’s shoulder instantly. Strands of blonde hair stick to her skin, scratchy under the cheek. Her own shoulders scream in protest at the new position. She can already feel her ass growing numb on the hard ground. A finger curls into her hair, twirls the black strands with its chipped bubblegum blue nail, and Brit’s eyes slip closed.

 

“We could sleep here tonight,” Bianca offers, just a whisper of a breath.

Brit breathes in the night air. The sunrise would be beautiful here. Billie would kick them both awake at the crack of dawn, make them crawl out of the car to take a picture with her at the pitcher’s post, hand on her knee, with the sun in the background casting her in a morning glow. ‘It would catch my tan so beautifully!’ She’d exclaim with a huff, as if it were obvious. And they’d take the pictures, begrudgingly at first, bad angles that would’ve had Billie yelling, but as they kept trying to one up each other, phone snatched out of each other’s hands, it would become a game.

They’d wait with baited breath as Billie spent half an hour flicking through the photos, eyes drooping, but whoever won got to pick breakfast. And Brit would win, and she’d say, ‘For breakfast we’re going the fuck back to sleep’, and they wouldn’t wake again until —

Brit looks over her shoulder, through the thin layer of trees that serves as the only divide between the road and the field.

“I’m good t’drive,” Brit rasps.

 

The headlights make everything loud, like a siren going off in her head, a long, drawn out tin that stretches along the road, makes everything blurry. Brit squints, both hands on the steering wheel, back straight. The dark helps with the spinning, but her head feels both full and empty simultaneously, like a hollowed out rock. When she blinks it feels like a battle.

Pulling onto that little dirt path, that familiar little sign reminding them they are not authorized personnel, makes Brit think for a moment they’re tipping off the edge of the Earth with how steep it is. Her stomach is in her throat. She swallows around it, eases down the path, and suddenly nothing exists outside of them.

Bianca takes the passenger seat to fiddle with the radio, filling the car with low murmurings of whatever is on the local channels. Nothing any of them know, nothing her brain can latch on to. Brit frowns at the Newport passed to her but takes a drag anyway, the taste of menthol making her grimace. Rhinestones dig into her skin, legs draped over the duffle bag, her head cushioned on Billie’s thigh.

Brit watches Billie read. She doesn’t read as fast as Bianca, eyes focusing on every word, reaching the bottom of the page and flicking back up to reread it. Sometimes Brit can see her mouthing out a word, the way her face scrunches in as she tries to figure it out, before it smooths back out and she moves on. How she’ll flip to the next page, start at the top, flip back to look at where the previous had ended. It was a passtime Billie didn’t often do. There was always something else to do other than read. Dance, drink, fuck, sleep, smoke. When they packed up into the car that first day Brit had eyed the little book Billie placed on her lap. ‘I mean, what the fuck else am I going to do on our way to Montana?’ She’d said with a roll of her eyes.

Bianca had leaned over to glance at the cover. ‘Paper Towns.’ She’d said, ‘Fitting.’

Brit almost asked how it was fitting. Reading was never her strong suit, words mixing together, making her dizzy and confused. One teacher told her she didn’t apply herself, another said she wasn’t motivated enough. One had just called her stupid, three days before her birthday, right before Christmas break, at the end of his wits with her, he’d said.

She was in a new home, a new school, by the time break was over.

But Brit knew what context clues were. A big red pin in a map as the cover? Fitting indeed.

 

Brit wakes with the sun.

Billie doesn’t budge as Brit pushes herself up. With a stretch she grabs the phone and a lighter out of the cupholder, having to reach through Bianca’s legs to do so. It can’t be comfortable, pillow shielding Bianca’s head from the door, gear shift digging into her thigh, but Bianca sleeps soundly even through the sound of the door closing.

The birds chirp, singing the county awake. The morning air is brisk, a chill running up Brit’s legs as she walks down towards the dock. The flick of the lighter is loud in the morning’s quiet. A quick glance up to see if the birds are startled, but they pay her no mind, the trees around her filled with their song. The flame is warm. In those brief seconds she lights the cigarette she basks in it, and when it’s out, Brit focuses on the warmth the taste of tobacco brings her instead.

It’s not the same. The itch to light it again, hold it against her until all cold evaporates is strong, but the morning is calm, and the sky is dim, and her sisters sleep soundly behind her, and there’s no one but them.

The exhale of smoke feels something like victory.

Gold ripples across the black of the river. Pine trees dot the sky, the points seen through the color that bleeds through. It reminds Brit of projectors, a photo up on the board, children sticking their pencils in front of it with giggles as the shadows block math problems they don’t want to do.

The way the sky looks, deep oranges and yellows and golds, pinks that cut through it all, purple at the edges, everything else black, reminds her of those magazines, spread out on coffee tables within reach of uncomfortable chairs. A beautiful picture of the sunrise. Those same photos used as the desktop background of the household computer nestled in the living rooms of blue suburbia, with the perfectly vacuumed rugs and couches you weren’t allowed to sit on. ‘For guests,’ they’d say to her, backpack slung across her shoulders — a trash bag, in her younger years — ‘and you’re not a guest.’ A room with no personality, posters on the wall telling her to smile, a kitchen with locks on the pantry. ‘You’re part of the family.’

An idea of a far away vacation they could go on. Once they’d said to her, ‘A reminder that no matter what happens, tomorrow the sun will rise. Isn’t that beautiful?’

‘No,’ she would’ve said if she’d been old enough to know better.

The first photo is blurry. The second one is out of focus. Instagram doesn’t load, so she has to scroll through the photo album to see how Billie takes them. Brit deletes all but the sixth one. Hardly instagram worthy, a lack of Billie with her hand on her hip. Just a photo of the sky, like any other. Maybe in a few years she’ll look at it and not remember the memories attached to it, and it will be nothing more than just a photo, a phone background to default to between breakups.

Brit finishes the cigarette and flicks it into the river.

 

 

Brit wakes to shaking. “C’mon, wake up, time to get rolling.”

The sun blinds her, Brit’s eyes snapping shut the second she steps out into the daylight. The dirt is warm under her bare feet, the morning chill melted to another day of the summer sun. She stretches as she stands, shoulders rolling back until she hears a satisfying Pop! that leaves her groaning. She twists and her back cracks — not the ever persistent knot, but regardless it’s still the best feeling in the world. For a moment she relishes in it, that feeling of achy relief and the warmth of the sun.

Down by the dock Billie splashes river water up onto her legs, her arms, around her neck, long hair up in a loose bun sat atop her head. Large sunglasses shield her eyes.

In the movies, the bathrooms were always done up, towels made into shapes and complimentary items on the bathroom counter. Shampoo, conditioner, soap. The Grand View Hotel was beautiful and sprawling, big and fancy in a way none of them had ever seen before. They’d been counting on —

Whatever. See if the church has soap.

Brit dares a smell of herself.

“You packed perfume, right?”

She sprays enough to feel like the inside of a middle school girl’s bathroom. She’d never been one of those lucky few who had gym at the end of the day, always parading around school in sweat stained clothes, smelling of BO and Paris Hilton’s Heiress, her one and only. Up until she grew a brain and just started skipping gym all together.

Sweat is collecting along her spine already. When was the last time she washed her hair?

Two more spritz on the pits for good measure.

The monster opens with a fizz that Brit slurps up before it can drip down her fingers. She passes it to Bianca, who takes a single sip and swishes it around her mouth to gather the lingering bits of toothpaste.

Despite the anxiety bubbling under her skin, the morning crawls along slowly. Brit wills the shaking out of her hands as she does her eyeliner, big sweeping motions that cover her eyelids. It smears when she opens them, not quite dry. She uses her finger to blend it messily, scrubbing black into her waterline until her eyes burn. She blinks the pain away.

Billie pats blue onto her eyelids, head tilted back to see into the sun visor's mirror. A quick sideways glance at Brit has her pausing, eyes twinkling in a way that reminds Brit of being on coke. For a second she wonders if Billie got some from Tweak, a quiet moment between them, do you have anything extra, Tweak? followed by a giggle, but disregards it just a quickly. Billie would’ve offered if she had any. “You look so scary,” She says, exhaling as she does, voice distant.

Brit snorts. “Like your biggest nightmare?” She smiles into the mirror, rubbing black lipstick off her teeth.

“Like the devil herself!” Billie giggles. She lets out a small breathy gasp, reaching out to touch Brit’s arm. “Are you gonna tell him?” At Brit’s questioning look she elaborates, “That like, you’re his kid? Oh my god, could you imagine his face with you dressed like” — she makes a sweeping motion at Brit’s everything — “like this? Not even gonna clean up a little?”

Her dad, a pastor.

Brit looks at herself. At the little nubs of what remains of her eyebrows, shaved off long ago. How her lipstick makes her look paler than she really is, patchy and a little smeared because she stole it from the dollar store. All the eyeliner caked over her eye. ‘You look like a raccoon’ was an original comment she heard only nine thousand different times. Fishnet under an old Twilight shirt from middle school, shorts big and baggy enough to cover enough of her. All varying shades of black.

“Don’t you wear black to church?” Brit jokes, flashing an award winning smile as she fluffs her hair. “Lemme just borrow one of your dresses, Bill. Meet my dad with my ass hanging out.” She clicks her teeth with a shake of her head. “And no, I’m not planning on telling him shit. I wanna —”

Brit pauses, considering it. What did she want? She just…

She just wanted to see him. See what he was like. That’s all she needed.

“— I just wanna see him, s’all.”

“So we drove all this way for you to not meet your dad.” Bianca nods from the back seat. Brit can see the bounce of her bun in the rearview mirror. “Cool, cool.”

Brit wants to yell. Considers it, momentarily. But the morning is calm, and Brit is anxious, and she doesn’t want to yell.

One, Two, Three, Four.

“I’m serious, don’t go talking to him or anyone about that. I’ll leave your asses here. I’ll fuck off to — I don’t know, I’ll find somewhere. We’re inconspicuous. Incognito. Got it?”

Bianca snorts. “Fuckin’ undercover mission here.”

 

 

Eden’s Convent is smaller than she’d imagined it. A cute little church tucked away down a dirt path that cut through the county, a side building connected by a walkway, with a spacious garden of the flowers strung up along the trellises that cover the path between buildings. A dirt parking lot that isn’t big enough to contain all the cars and trucks parked there. They park on the grass besides the trail. Brit dares a glance at the rolling hills as she shuts the car door. How the pine blends in with the green of the grass until it all becomes one. The ledge is steep. A wrong step, in drive rather than reverse. You wouldn’t even notice what was happening until you were eating grass.

Brit eyes all the cars that line the path, the familiar white trucks that take up the parking lot. There’s far more people here than she’d been expecting. Based on the size of the church and how far removed Hope County was, they weren’t prepared for the influx of people either. Where’d all these people even come from?

Brit stares out at the rolling hills.

The dread drips.

Stepping through the doorway feels like falling off the edge of the world and into a new one; it catches Brit’s breath, everything blurs, the world tips and she’s afraid the floor will come up to meet her, before it all snaps back into place in perfect clarity and there’s so much noise. The vertigo makes her stumble, a wobble that catches her off balance and she is tipping forward.

She’s steadied by Billie’s hand on her arm, their shoulders knocking. She gives Brit a quick once over, brows dipped low, a look of concern; Are you okay?

Brit smiles. I’m fine, it conveys.

Brit watches Billie’s face, how those blue eyes stare at her, drift over her face, down, to where her hand grounds her, back up, and Brit makes sure the irritation in her smile is gone when they make eye contact. Billie’s expression doesn’t change, and she doesn’t remove her hand.

“I’m fine,” Brit says through her teeth in a perfectly calm manner. It sounds like a hiss.

Billie rolls her eyes.

Bianca leads them to a pew in the back with the swirl of her wrist, follow me, it says, pressed up against the wall. The I don’t want to be here! Don’t look at me! spot. Brit can see heads turning their way as they sit. She inhales until it hurts, exhales long and slow. She can feel her pulse in her neck, loud in her ears. She inhales again, slower, measured. It does nothing to settle the buzzing under her skin.

“So much for incognito.” Billie’s giggle is a pitch too loud. Brit considers elbowing her, a quick jab to the ribs that would leave the other girl gasping, but Billie’s fingers are still latched onto Brit’s arm.

Brit settles for just digging her nails into her knee. “Can you shut up?” She’s not sneering but she can feel her lips pull back into one. Billie’s eyes flicker behind Brit to Bianca, the pair of them sharing a look as if she isn’t sitting right between them.

Her knuckles turn white. She grips until it hurts.

What was the opposite of butterflies in your stomach? Bees, she thinks, a stomach full of bees. She can feel them, buzzing away, making her feel like she was vibrating, building a nest of nausea in her gut, dripping dread like it was honey.

She wants to leave. God, she’s going to be sick.

Instead she looks for him in the crowd, any sign of that slicked back hair and high button up and piss yellow glasses with the ugly, untamed beard, but all she sees is too much of the latter.

The church is pretty. Not like the churches that littered Boston, or the tiny chapel she’d gone to as a child in Georgia, seven months, gone before her eighth birthday. The ceiling sits high, a large window behind the stage letting sunlight pour in, the windows on the side showing off the garden, those same plants they’d passed fields of on their way in, that Brit spotted all over the county.

How many people here have talked with him? Maybe every single one of them. Long conversations about trauma and life and whatever you talked about with a pastor. She tries to recall those seven months, tell me about yourself, Brittany, but she never spoke.

She tries to picture him on the stage, in that button up and black jacket with his hair slicked back. Did he play the instruments that sat in the corner of the stage? Teach anyone how to play? Piano or guitar? Guitar, she thinks, trying to picture him there, sitting with a guitar on his lap, but the image doesn’t form, just messy paint strokes, a picture with low resolution printed on too big a paper.

She’d always wanted —

The thought is cut off with a swift don’t care. I don’t care about him or what he’s capable of. It doesn’t matter. It didn’t. She just wanted to see. That was it, and then they could leave.

Brit reaches out and grabs Bianca’s hand on her other side. Their fingers curl together. Brit breathes, calm and steady.

It’s not a big deal, Brittany, calm the fuck down.

She looks for him, afraid that in that moment of thought she missed him, but he’s still not here and that only makes that rot in her gut worse. Fuck, she should’ve eaten something before they came here. She’d been too nervous of cheeto-dusted fingers, orange caked onto her lips, of puking it all up, bright orange.

Not that she’d puke, because there was no reason to, because she wasn’t going to talk to him. She was just going to watch him and then they were going to leave. So what was her body — why was she —

Whatever. Whatever.

Brit grips Bianca’s hand like a lifeline and thinks whatever as her breath hitches.

It’d be nice if it could just be ripped off like a bandaid. She’s not anxious, she just doesn’t like waiting. Nobody likes waiting. But how would she react if she saw him there, mingling, so anti-climatic.

She could take one look at him and go, yep, that’s it, I’m good now and take her leave.

She could do that, couldn’t she?

Yeah. Yeah, she could.

Brit exhales through her mouth, her shoulders easing as she lets out all the anxiety in her body until her lungs scream. That’s all she needed to do. Look at him and leave. She could do that.

Or maybe he wouldn’t show up at all.

Maybe that woman had been wrong, he wasn’t here every Saturday, and they could bail out and do this another time, fuck off and get breakfast instead, get something other than the carbonated, caffeinated beverage in her stomach. What difference did one more day or two more days really make? Or never even.

Why would so many people be here if he wasn’t going to show up?

Because churches were multi-use, bitch, shut up. Maybe they were getting ready for fucking bingo.

At 9am?

Fuck, she should’ve brought her monster in with her, let her hands fiddle with something. She squeezes Bianca’s hand instead. Her palms feel clammy.

It’s fine.

Fuck him, she thinks, and his stupid fucking church. She could deal with this. He was just a guy. She’s met so many guys. The only thing that made him different was that he was her dad and in the grand scheme of things what did that even matter? Nothing. It meant nothing.

She wasn’t even going to talk to him.

It meant nothing.

It was fine.

She was fine.

A few heads begin to turn as the sparse conversation dies in patrons' throats. Those sitting stand hastily and then Brit can’t see anything, the stage obstructed. She hears Billie mutter ‘Should we stand?’ behind her back to Bianca. She doesn’t think she could, her legs feeling heavy, a weight keeping her pinned, the hive silent in her gut, dripping.

No running now.

And then she sees him, just like that.

It doesn’t feel like a punch. It doesn’t feel like anything. Brit follows the swiveling heads and then she sees him through the crowd of bodies, watches as he steps up onto the stage, his head bowed as he talks to a young woman beside him, her arms looped behind her, in a dress that’s white and frilly, flowers pinned to it. His eyes pass over the mass of bodies behind those yellow-tinted glasses, a beacon that calls all attention, even though he just looks like a man. And then they stop on her and Brit’s staring into his eyes, so much like her own. Deep set, heavy lidded.

Does he recognize me?

No. She watches his eyes continue on, to Billie, on her right, and then to the people in the pews in front of her. No, he didn’t.

That was —

It was good. It was good he didn’t.

Brit tries to breathe. He didn’t recognize her. She was just another nobody in the crowd.

You have his eyes.

Bianca’s hand tightens around her’s. It was comforting, she tells herself, nails digging into her knee until it hurts.

He wasn’t wearing that black jacket as he had been in the photo, and where she had imagined slacks was a pair of dusty old jeans. A white shirt wrinkled in the heat, buttoned to his throat, sleeves rolled to the elbows, revealing ink along his wrist.

His hair wasn’t slicked, she realizes, just as Billie leans close to her ear to say, loud enough for Bianca to hear, “Is that a fucking manbun?”

Loud enough for the row in front of them to overhear, heads turning to send them nasty glares. Brit can’t even bring herself to give them a sliver of her attention. Doesn’t even look at them, even as Bianca flips them off, because — that’s — he’s —

“Good morning, my children.”

Oh God.

“Oh God.”

Bianca’s thumb smoothes over Brit’s knuckles.

“It warms my heart to see all of you gathered here today.”

She can hear the Georgian in him.

“Including some new faces —”

He sweeps over the crowd in a lazy swirl of his wrist, palms turning up to gesture further.

“— soon to join our flock.”

“What the fuck is a flock?” Bianca asks. Brit squeezes her hand, continues to squeeze until the other girl rips her hand out of Brit’s hold. She glares. Brit doesn’t look away from Joseph.

“Welcome to the Project at Eden’s Gate.”

“Oh my god,” A gasped whisper to her right, “it’s a cult!”

The people in front of them turn fully to glare at them. Brit can see more turning out of her peripheral. And Joseph Seed looks at them straight on, right at Brit, and she’s not staring, she’s not, she’s just — she’s just —

“We are welcoming to all.” Joseph Seed says to her, dipping his head, eyes still trained on her.

The honey curdles.

She was going to be sick.

Holy shit, she’s going to be sick.

Fuck not being noticed. Fuck this whole place. Fuck him, fuck them, fuck them all.

The door slams against the eggshell siding in her rush out, nearly tripping over herself, foot catching on the hardwood, still sore, it hurts. She can feel the eyes of everyone inside following her, watching her. Her head spins and her stomach lurches and she expects to puke up bees, rot and decay, thick like molasses and the fucking sun, but she can taste the monster as it burns her throat. The neon pink stands out against the grass no more than orange would.

Fuck, she needs a cigarette.

Billie crouches down next to her. “You said not to make a scene.”

Bianca kicks the door shut, and then it’s just the three of them. Brit breathes. “That wasn’t very inconspicuous of you.”

Brit spits bile into the dirt. “Fuck you.”

 

 

Notes:

thanks for reading! shoutout to edgar evernever for helping me with the joseph dialogue. thanks king

come say hi at tumblr @henbased