Fool's Gold

Chapter 5

Carmilla has been in the backseat of a police cruiser for eight minutes now, which she allows herself to be proud of.

She’s not comfortable in the back of a police car. She’s not comfortable around the police, the same way she isn’t comfortable around teachers or politicians or, as she’d come to distrust as a rule, anyone with authority.  

Or small closets, which isn’t exactly relevant, but the tightening in her chest and the death grip she has on the leather seats aren't unfamiliar to her. This isn’t the kind of thing Carmilla has to worry about.

(Until she starts making friends with the sheriff’s daughter. Great job, Karnstein.)

And the bars separating her from the front seat? Not exactly helping, and very relevant to her fear of small closets.

But Laura’s Dad is in civilian clothing and he's making a joke about baseball or the weather or something that Laura seems to find hilarious, and the way she throws her head back to laugh is making things easier. Carmilla occupies her mind by trying to decide whether Laura has this man completely wrapped around her finger or if he actually does enjoy listening to annoying doses of Top 40.

She can sympathize if it’s the first one.

They stop at a drive thru to pick up tacos, which Carmilla finds herself completely unprepared for. The menu is elaborate and she never knew tacos had this much variety. She orders three of them and something called a crunch wrap that Laura’s father highly recommends.

Laura puts them all in a box and takes the opportunity to move into the backseat.

(“So we can share,” she explains.)

Her father cracks a couple of jokes about Laura tossing her old man to the curb for her new friend and Laura laughs it off.

“What did you say you girls were going to watch? Nothing too mature, I hope?” He raises an eyebrow at Laura in the rear view mirror.

“Dad, we’re just watching the Breakfast Club.”

This seems to satisfy him. “That’s a good movie.”

“Right? I can’t believe she hasn’t seen it. I mean, it’s like, a total classic.”

“She’s very excited about this.” Carmilla tells him.

He laughs. “You haven’t seen excited.”

“I think I’m a little afraid to.”

“Watch this.” He turns to look at them briefly as he drives. “Carmilla, do you know who Louis Tomlinson is?”

Laura huffs. “Dad, I have other interests.”

“Who’s Louis Tomlinson?” Carmilla takes a bite of her crunch wrap and wow, he was not wrong to recommend this. She almost completely misses the rant that Laura launches herself into in efforts to explain exactly who Louis Tomlinson is. Apparently he’s in a boy band, but he’s completely irrelevant compared to this crunch wrap.

She wishes she had ordered two.

“And I mean he’s totally inspirational too, everyone told him he would never do anything with his life but now he writes most of the lyrics for the band and he does all this extra charity work, you know?”

Carmilla nods like she’s not thinking about how she’s going to get her hands on another crunch wrap in the next 24 hours and Laura continues to ramble about boy bands like she doesn’t have three tacos growing cold in the cardboard box between them.

Her father shakes his head and looks at Carmilla in the mirror. She smiles at him, partly because his daughter is the textbook definition of adorable, but mostly because this is the man that introduced her to the crunch wrap.