Beach Day

23: Drew Eats A Salad

They leave quicker than they arrived. Billy Joel on the radio, the windows down, freedom in the air like an airborne pathogen— they drive.

Drew taps his fingers on the wheel. "So, we don't actually have to go drop off the car. We have time. We could do something else. Something... un-Peepaw."

"Peepaw isn't that big a deal."

"Are you sure about that?"

"I'm totally sure," she lies. There's a lot there that she doesn't even want to get into on a mental level. "So, what should we do? It's your vacation."

"It's also your vacation." He points it out over the weird dog-whooping sounds of that song from Oliver & Company. "Don't forget that."

"I'm pretty sure I don't count, Drew. It's a story about you."

"First of all, this is real life. So it's not a story. And maybe I want to do something different. Something that wasn't on the itinerary."

"Wow! Big moves for the Drew-man!"

He rolls his eyes. "What suggestions do you have? You used to live here— what is there to do?"

"Honestly?" She sits up a little and toys with the lock on the door in a way she knows she shouldn't. "Not much. I usually just... went to church, hung out with Matt and Adrianna, went camping with Girl Scouts or Andy..."

"Damn." He winces. "What have you been doing since we got here?"

"Exactly what I said I would do. While you're bonding with our family, I'm catching up and I'm uh..." She winces and admits, "Hunting an undead young woman and avoiding a shadow that might mean me harm. "

He sighs. If his hands weren't on the wheel, he might pinch the bridge of his nose. "Why the hell does everyone want to kill you?"

Tiff shrugs. "Misogyny, probably."

With a deep, chest-heaving sigh, Drew shakes his head. "Are you talking about a literal shadow, Tiff?"

"No, I don't think so? It's something much less scientifically-explained." She pauses at his not-saying-anything. "If it makes you feel better, I keep hitting dead ends. Because of the shadow. The one chasing me."

"Why would that make me feel better?"

"Because you don't believe in this stuff."

"Because I don't have proof."

"I can't just show you—"

"Come on, Tiff!" he laughs. "Show me a Bigfoot!"

"I'm not going to breach their trust just to prove I'm not insane! I told you that!"

Laughing again, he reaches out to turn down the volume. "I'm sure there's stuff we can't explain out there, but we could if we tried. There's no such thing as monsters. It's all just science."

"You and Kay would get on spectacularly."

"Eh. No we wouldn't. I knew her in high school, in passing— classic Lake Wonder and Pine Valley rivalry. She kinda hated me. She threw a softball at my head once."

"It's been at least four years since then, though, hasn't it? We're all connected anyway. And I'm engaged to her girlfriend's boy version now, so... Make the most of it?" She grins like she hasn't totally doomed herself. "Anyway, I've always said— magic is real, but it's just... interacting with the world, drawing from a power source for simple cause and effect, and so on. It isn't all that explainable with science yet, but that's just because it's a field that hasn't been studied much. There's really just the work of early- and proto-scientists and Dr. Deseret, and— and it's a field where there's so much to learn, and so much to study, but it's all... hidden. It's so hard to rely on the discoveries of others when it's bunk, hidden, purposely erased, or just plain hard to find. Pioneering a field is such a pain, especially when you're not actually pioneering it."