The Tiff Singularity (A Collection of Lake Wonder Fiction)

Tiff Goes To The Library

Faith doesn't come easily to Tiff Sheridan but, after she helped kill an evil nightmare god that was manipulating a fourteen-year-old into putting kids in comas, she figures that she has to believe in something. There's something out there, after all. There has to be. She just has to find it. The issue is, how? How do you find the truth when you have spent the past few years shying away from the existence of any god or central unifying force?

She supposes her belief in the supernatural is a form of faith. That's not what she's looking for, though. What is holy? What is sacred? Somehow, she knows nothing.

She looks in the only way she knows how. She decides to hit the books.

Tiff knows the library in Lake Wonder very well, and she arguably knows the Nonfiction Religion And Folklore section even better. Tomes of local knowledge and professionally-published theses about the mythology of Greece or the Bible or old Puritan superstitions stretch out down haunted aisles, and titles greet her like old friends. She has been here a few times since the need to find information on dress and the elves that used to live in the area, or to do her normal research on the supernatural. It has never been with this intent.

The Oneiron Incident was weird. She won't deny that. Sometimes, kids start randomly dropping into comas, so you go visit them in the hospital and it turns out that they are being manipulated by an old elven king who was banished because he committed war crimes and is currently trying to re-enter and conquer Earth, and sometimes you go into a series of dreams to defeat him. Sometimes, you do that with friends by your side. Sometimes, those friends are a perpetually tired guy who is a Sailor Scout sometimes, an angry girl with a shitty van and a shittier past, a genuinely cool guy with a guitar, and your coach's kid who has surprisingly muscular hands (and a knife). Sometimes, you kick that old elven king until his ribs shatter and he turns into an old man. Now that she thinks about it, it's kind of weird, but it feels perfectly natural, especially when she lives completely in Lake Wonder now, with no hope of returning to Florida.

The existence of all these things points to some great cohesive force. But what is it? Things were easier when she just stuck to Bigfoot and aliens, and didn't have to worry about afterlives or dreamscapes. But now she does, and she doesn't know where to start.

Something to believe in, something to believe in. She needs something to believe in. So what will it be? Tiff grabs a stack of books she thinks she might like and takes them to an old dusty armchair to read them, but nothing clicks. It's nice to learn more, sure, but it's not what she wants right now. What she wants is the comfort of belief. Tiff sighs and reshelves the ones she doesn't want to take home with her.

She used to feel that comfort of belief when she was younger. She used to read the scriptures voraciously, taking in every bit of information she could, memorizing everything. There was a map in the back of hers that outlined the travels of the apostle Paul. She used to trace it with the tip of her index finger, imagining the ships and jail cells and martyrdoms, and how God must have loved Paul very much to give him such big tasks. Did God love her, she wondered?

Well, she didn't believe in a capital-g God. It wasn't like she lost her faith. It was more like she fooled herself into thinking she had any to begin with. Or maybe she did have it and it just faded into nothing, just like she will in the end. When her apparent unholiness became apparent and her parents' dislike for her became too much to handle, they kicked her out and sent her to goddamn Washington, and everyone knows that Washington is a godless state. But Tiff still wants that sacred thing. She wants the symbolism. She wants to be devoted to something.

Tiff wonders if she's too far gone for faith. Maybe she's too far gone for repentance or forgiveness or a clear conscience. Maybe the sacred things of this world were never meant for her. Maybe she is too far gone for any love at all, let alone that of an omniscient being.

When she was twelve, she worked herself into a frenzy during a scripture-reciting competition and got so excited that she bit through a piece of plywood. The only time she has felt nearly close to that was when she and her friends were in that dream world, kicking Oneiron to death while Ant Brower stabbed him with a knife Tiff didn't know they had and Eliza Harper shot Oneiron with a gun she wouldn't shut up about and Eddy or Darius decapitated him. Her friends (at least, she thinks they're her friends) killed a god, and she went into an almost-religious fervor. Or something like that. She might be remembering it wrong.

Maybe it's not the religion that's sacred, then. It's the act. It's the way you go about feeling it. She chews on the issue while she drives home from the library with a bag full of books and a motorcycle under her, then from her aunt's house to the woods to camp again. The summer air is hot and sticky, and she feels it blow past her until it's cool. She sets up her tent by the beam of a flashlight she has clenched between her teeth.

When it's all over and her lantern is set by her sleeping bag, she looks at the stars. And, by God, they're beautiful. For a moment, she is consumed by them, and devotes herself in turn.