Nothing But Bones

12: Teen Drama

During their trudge towards the house now that they are finally on the grounds proper, Tiff's phone buzzes again. It's another classic "Bryce Baker is texting her" moment.

She groans, reaching for her back pocket again. "I need another second. Hold on."

Elton eyes Tiff, but shrugs and pulls out his phone and grins when he sees he has some semblance of a signal. Now he can check up on that podcast Tiff says she is a part of to at least verify that bit of information.

Noting Elton being distracted by some sort of frantic typing (perhaps he's in the same boat, which would be funny), Tiff pulls her phone out and looks at the messages from Bryce. She doesn't feel bad about it in the slightest. Maybe she should. Maybe she will later.

"Listen... I'm planning on telling him everything. I am. I know he'd at least... hear me out."

"Fuck, I've fucked everything up with him. I haven't talked to him in two days. I panicked when he told me how he felt. I never.. I didn't think I was.. you know, gay. I don't know what I am. God damnit."

"All I know is that ever since we started talking, I've felt like maybe, just maybe I could live beyond Mark and the guilt I feel. I know that will NEVER go away, but.. Uuuuuugh."

She frowns at the screen, not quite sure what to say. Tiff Sheridan isn't really a relationships guy. She's more into them insofar as she can tease her friends about things like crushes and kissing. More often than not, it's something that evades her past allusions to tying people up and Jessie Fisher's weird obsession with Legally Blonde.

A pragmatic approach might be best, then. "Do you like him?"

No text comes back for a minute or so, but then Tiff's phone vibrates with Bryce's answer. "Yes, god yes."

"Then tell him you like him." She rolls her eyes and goes to put her phone away, wanting to concentrate more on the house than on someone else's maybe-relationship maybe-issues. She just stops looking at her phone instead.

Why is it that she reacts this way to romance when she cares so deeply about friendship? That's a mystery for later, maybe. Maybe the answer is just "Tiff Sheridan is horribly aromantic and keeps forgetting it."

The answer comes back almost right away.

"You're right. He opened up to me and I need to level with him. Please don't get him killed, Tiff. Whatever it is you two are doing."

"That's me. Tiff Sheridan. I get everyone killed all the time." She rolls her eyes and double-texts. "The only person who ever dies is me. And one person one other time, but mostly me. And Lewis, but nobody remembers him. Elton's going to be fine. I have to pretend to concentrate and do my job now. Be an adult and tell him how you feel."

His response, entirely unrelated, comes a second later. "I've been thinking about going by Ben."

"Tell him, then! Not ME!"

She silences her phone for real this time and puts it in her bag. No more distractions. Not on her end.

In the meantime, Elton pulls up the podcast on Spotify. It's not ideal, but it's willing to load when he steps closer to the house and holds his phone closer to his face. There it is, with its black-and-white illustrated cover, seventy-seven episodes, and one announcement. All the first-glance information is right there. Sweet Nothings has been running for three years; it's a project by Suzette Sweet wherein she travels to different places around North America and dives deep into their local history, folklore, and politics. Lake Wonder's missing, dead, and drowned girls; the Loveland Frogmen; haunted houses and road ghosts and werewolves. It's all there.

The announcement is about a minute and thirty seconds long. He considers it for a moment— considers whether it's worth it, considers whether it's going to load at all. It's worth a try. It's worth hoping that he has enough reception.

A staticky rock version of the Sweet Nothings transition plays at the beginning and slowly peters into two voices intertwining. One's clearly Tiff's, peppy in her weird mood-swing kind of way.

"Hey, everybody! Tiff Sheridan here. I'm, uh— Big news!"

The other person in the small recording, a man identified in the description as Alfredo Webb, groans. "I told you to script the announcement."

"I did not script the announcement!" To the audience, she says, "Hello, everybody! Suzette and her fiance are finally getting married, and they're taking some time off from work and the podcast to, you know, be a couple and adjust to all the changes in their lives. Like bleaching your hair white."

"Nobody needs to know Suzette's hair is white."

"They're going to know. Anyway, in the meantime, so you're not starved for content or obsessively relistening like a weirdo—"

"Oh, like you?"

She laughs. "Shut up! I'm announcing! In the meantime, Alfredo and I are reworking Suzette's unaired Chip Winger episode and his unfinished Chip Winger series from last year into a little Sweet Nothings miniseries. Suzette should be back in mid-September. Until then, I will be talking about Bigfoot."

"You're always talking about Bigfoot."

"He has a lot to do with Chip Winger!"

The announcement stops there.

The version of Tiff that exists in the present and not in an announcement posted sometime last week looks at him with a level of confusion and slight-offense. "What are you— Are you fucking— Couldn't you just believe me?"

Elton looks away from his phone's screen as the announcement ends and shoots an eyebrow up at Tiff Sheridan. "I told you I had to know who I am dealing with right now. Can't blame me for fact checking an easily accessible thing. Plus, you lied to me. A small lie, sure, but still. Tiff Sheridan."

"It's not a lie. My surname is hyphenated." She pauses and panic-explains, rapid-fire and defensive, "The rest of my family are all Cains, and my parents kinda suck ass, so my aunt adopted me after I lived with her for years, when I got out of the hospital back in March and I— I hyphenated it to Sheridan-Cain. I can show you my ID if you really need it. There's more to it, but that's the basics and the less-extraterrestrial non-bummer version. Can we be normal now? Can we do that, Elton? Can we be normal and not ask Tiffany May Sheridan-Cain why she used a different surname while she's in a different country when people know Tiff Sheridan as a local kook and a podcast conspiracy theorist with a weird obsession with dead bodies and a really severe case of mommy issues that she may or may not be projecting onto Bigfoot? Can we be normal?"

Elton studies Tiff for a long moment after that particular panic-induced ramble about her name and how normal they should be right now. The silence hangs in the air after 'Can we be normal?' and the Canadian teen breaks it by laughing, putting his free hand over his face.

"Oh my God. Now I know what I sound like. Sure, Tiff. We can be normal. So fucking normal. Now let's go break into this haunted mansion and catch us a fucking ghost. Keep that weird gun handy. Maybe we can kill a ghost with it, because that's what normal teens do."

Elton goes to shove his phone back in his pocket when he gets a Discord notification from Bryce. His gaze shifts back to Tiff, but he decides not to say or do anything. Bryce and whatever he has to say can wait. Right now? Ghost time.

"You can't kill a ghost with a ray gun, you ass." She pushes past him toward the front door.