The Tiff Singularity (A Collection of Lake Wonder Fiction)

Unanswered Texts

Leaning over the seats in her car to check a message, Denny is slightly out of breath and more than a little panicked. She doesn't know why Lucky thought it was a good idea to tell her not to tell Betty and Drake what's going on, especially when they both know that Betty is just as relentless as her cousin when it comes to finding the truth. Already, between Denny leaving the bus stop where so many kids from the middle school football team and, coincidentally, Betty, were sitting, the kid has texted her.

Denny's tempted not to look. After all, she's kind of an expert at ignoring texts. Messages of all kinds, really, but the texts tend to stand out more. She has piles of unread ones, from college alerts about the beginning and end of the semester to things she never unsubscribed from to... well, Emira. She doesn't want to think about the unanswered texts from Emira, but she does.

While she answers Betty in a panicked haze, trying not to let on about the fact that she and Lucky definitely have a game plan about how to go about interrogating a child and hsit, or investigating, or whatever the hell it is Lucky wants to do (Denny isn't quite sure, especially because it feels like she missed some crucial information when she was out last night), she has to try not to be suspicious. And, while she's trying not to be incredibly suspicious toward Betty (and thus cause her to investigate further), she can't help but notice the hundreds of unread texts from Emira.

Guilt pangs in her chest and the pit of her stomach. Damn. Hundreds of unread messages from a girl who has been desperately trying to get into contact with her since the end of March. It's, what, November now? Denny's bad at calendars. She thinks it's November. She could be incredibly incorrect.

Everything about the situation makes her feel guilty. At least Ema has seemingly given up on trying to get into contact with her since then, because the last text is still marked by bold black words that Denny doesn't want to try to read. If she could ignore them entirely, she would.

She sends a final text to Betty without thinking much about it-- something long and rambly, she's sure, but something nonetheless-- and shoves her phone between the seat cushions in the back so that she can't get to it. She's not even sure if the screen is off. Denny just sticks it in there, turns around, and gets to driving.

On the way to the apartment building where Lucky (and, coincidentally, this Victor kid the two of them are going to look into) lives, Denny drums the steering wheel and tries not to think. Normally, that's so easy. There are days where she doesn't think at all, and it's great. She just does shit and has no thoughts.

But today is not one of those days. She thinks about it a lot, about the way that things ended. And she could excuse her silence. She has a thousand times. At first, she didn't think anything of it. Now that it has been months, though, she feels that guilty little animal gnawing at her innards every time it comes up. It would be weird to answer her now, right? After so long? After everything that has happened?

Listen, she tells herself, when she has to stop at a light, it's fine. You don't have to answer her. It's completely understandable. Sometimes, something absolutely atrocious happens and you drop out of college and move back home and completely ghost everyone you know.

Is that the right word? Ghosting? She's never sure when words like that are applicable. She looks over at the pile of magazines and comics by the toolbox in her passenger seat. There used to be a picture of the four of them in there. There was also a picture of just her and Jenny, before everything... happened. A picture of all four of them, all smiling outside of a Burger King, Joey and Emira and Jenny and her, all happy and all okay and all alive. Joey had his arm around Jenny and Ema was leaning into Denny and the lights were so bright-- Denny doesn't want to think about any of it.

Her dad took the photo. She has also been ignoring his texts, but she's been doing that on purpose. There's no way in hell she wants to talk to him, not after what he did, of what he suspected her of doing. This is his toolbox. She took it on her way out of Tennessee, just to spite him.

She doesn't want to think about what happened back in March. So she doesn't. When she's parked out by the building Lucky lives in, she reaches into the toolbox, pulls out the photo, and puts it into the glove compartment, where she keeps all her secrets. And when she grabs her phone from between the back seats, she only reads Betty's messages. Nothing else. Just Betty's. She reads them on the way into the building, to meet Lucky and... what was it they were doing? Interrogating a child? Taking in magazines? Existing in spaces Lucky despises and Denny doesn't know how to comprehend? Either way, Betty wants to know what's going on or something.

And Denny doesn't respond.