The Tiff Singularity (A Collection of Lake Wonder Fiction)

This Should Have Been An Incubus Reference

It's been a shit day. Denny can't articulate that in any other set of words.

It's shit when the professor of an elective class you're only taking for a friend's sake calls you an idiot in front of the entire fucking room when you admit that you didn't understand the readings and don't know how to summarize the case of Marbury v. Madison.

It's shit when the city and university have been plagued by a series of murders and nobody knows what the hell is happening. It's shit when you exit class on a sunny day, fully expecting to get lunch with your friend Emira, only to find that the police are waiting for you just outside the building.

It's shit when you convince yourself (and the police, unfortunately) that you may have killed fifteen people and have no recollection of it, since you don't remember most nights anyway. It's shit when you're interrogated for twelve hours. It's shit when the fact that you are keeping one secret (the fact that you are a werewolf) is mistaken for you keeping another (that you are secretly and unknowingly a mass murderer); and it's shit when the police and your own father and the beast trying to break through your skin have all convinced you that you have done something horrific even though, rationally, you know you didn't. Rationally, you know you couldn't have. Despite what your father has been saying recently, you're no monster-- unless you are.

It's particularly shit when you have to get a ride home from your dad, who is the one who told the police it might have been you in the first place, because everyone you know and care about is asleep except for him.

In short, it has been a shitty day, and she just wants to ignore the paper she forgot to write, the consequences of this investigation, and everything else in the world. No, not quite-- she just wants to go to sleep and avoid thinking about the issue.

Denny sits in the passenger seat of her father's truck, not looking at him. She has her elbow on the edge of the window; it's open, letting in the stagnant spring air at the intersection. It tastes like rain, terror, and disappointment.

"I just," she says, after a long, tense moment of silence. "I just... I don't get why you'd think I would do something like that."

"Don't you?" David doesn't look at her. He keeps his eyes on the road, on the light as he pulls up and it turns from amber-yellow to a more forbidding red-- the colors defined by hazard and caution.

Denny knows a thing or two about hazards. She knows a thing or two about caution. It wasn't David that instilled those vice-grip virtues into her, not quite. In fact, up until the age of four, he had been the one encouraging her to do things she absolutely shouldn't have been doing, like climbing over the baby gate and playing on the furniture that seemed to spawn in the front lawn, like someone was dumping it there. Her mother, Matilda, had been the one who fretted over every scrape and bruise. Matilda was the one who worried about the consequences of Denny being reckless.

Something changed, though. Almost ten years ago, something changed. It was around the time she changed, maybe. When she went from something human to something not-quite-so, he drilled her on the importance of keeping certain things a secret.

But what does David McFadden know about lycanthropy that Denny doesn't? What does he know about secrets? What does he know about ruining your life by trying to hold everything inside you, about fearing that those closest to you will see you as nothing but a monster?

Nothing. Save for the experience he has in keeping his daughter's secret, David McFadden knows nothing. And they both know it.

Neither of them look at each other. To do so would be to acknowledge the reality of the other. To do so would be to recognize the worry inherent in the way David taps his fingers on the steering wheel or the way Denny swallows every few seconds, even though her mouth is as dry as the well on the McFadden property. In moments where any sort of vulnerability could occur, it's easier to pretend that they are invulnerable than to let the other see the mess beneath the eggshell-brittle exterior. This is something Denny learned at her father's knee and at his side. They didn't talk about it when her grandfather died, or when they were hunting and David shot himself in the leg, or the first time he learned the truth of what she was via a panicked phone call from Denny's mom. He bottled it up, shoved it down, and didn't talk about it. Denny isn't a fan of bottling it up (she is a shaken can of Coke on the best of days), but the "not talking about it" portion of that fragmented heritage is hard to leave behind. If you don't talk about it, it isn't real. It can't hurt you. That's the rule.