In The Backseat

[MethodicalSlacker]

"So did you make out with her, or what?"

Violet, sitting in the backseat of her sister's car, stuck out her tongue and made a "bleugh" noise. She had been picked up just minutes earlier from Desiree's home, feeling somewhat inadequate and vaguely unwanted, and this car ride wasn't really helping things, even if the teasing seemed somewhat well intentioned. Strung Out Deeper Than The Night by Les Rallizes Dénudés intermittently emitted a pang of noise from the car speakers, and the streetlamps made Violet feel like she was still being haunted by more than several ghosts. She hadn't been able to speak to the chinchilla, and that really, really pained her to be reminded of; she had promised something to someone she felt somewhat strongly towards and then deflated like a blow-up punching bag clown balloon thing. A pair of pink fuzzy dice dangled ironically from the rear view mirror; their insincere jingle-jangle made Violet feel slightly queasy. Dana glanced up, chuckled, and took them down in one half-graceful motion, tossing them with the rest of the junk on her passenger seat, which Violet was more than eligible to take, if she ever chose to do so, but refused.

And that stung a little.

[Violet Schmidt continued from Project M.]

"Are we going right home?" Violet asked.

"No," replied Dana, "I hafta make a few stops first."

"Oh. To where?"

"Liquor store first. Then, I—"

Violet cringed a little. Dana had turned twenty one just a few months ago, and had basically immediately decided to make the most of her newfound ability to purchase alcohol. Not that she hadn't already been doing it.

"Dane," warned Violet, "You know mom doesn't want that stuff in the house."

"Yup. Precisely why I'm keeping it in the car. So she don't flip."

"Fine. Where next?"

"After that, probably the convenience store to get some batteries for my flashlight. And then lastly it's probably gonna be, um, Terry's house."

"...Dane."

"What?"

"Stop this. It's not good."

"Oh, what's so suddenly wrong with selling things to people that want to buy them, Ms. Don't-Tread-On-Me-Flag-On-My-Um-Wall-In-Ninth-Grade?"

"We don't talk about that! Nope!"

"Ms. I-Pretended-To-Be-Really-Into-Thomas-Sowell-For-A-Week-To-Impress-Some-Online-Basement-Losers."

"I'm gonna tuck and roll right outta here if you don't—"

Dana laughed, and cranked the stereo just in time for a wave of guitar feedback to wash away any errant thoughts in Violet's mind. She stared at her shoes, swimming in empty coke and beer cans, and then at the newspaper covering the left half of the back seat, and then at the gunk taped to the ceiling of the car, the magazine cut outs and reminders pasted up there with interrupting strips of washi tape. The back of Dana's seat had a pocket, and inside that pocket was a plush hedgehog with a Hitler mustache drawn under its nose and 'X's over its eyes. Hedgie Hitler was a hit at parties with the ANTIFA crowd, she was often told. Violet really didn't understand what it meant to be a college person.

She also really didn't understand her sister. Not anymore, if she ever had. She'd grown up all prim and proper, earning high marks in her classes, carrying around an actual honest to God pencil case and using it for actual honest to God pencils, and almost came out at the top of her class at George Hunter High School. Then she went to Tulane for some weird reason and came back totally changed. She'd never been a very artsy person before, but now she could hardly be spotted wearing anything that wasn't stained with paint. Her hair, which had once hung long around her shoulders, was just about always kept up in a messy bun. And the music! Marina and the Diamonds went out the window and was replaced by, well, weird obscure Japanese stuff. As Strung Out Deeper Than The Night faded out into The Night Collectors, Violet pretended to dry heave, and Dana rolled her eyes, thumbing her phone screen to change the music. The cacophony gave way to Fishmans' Night Cruising, and all was right in the world.

"Anyways," Dana said, "you two actually do anything over there or did you just stare into each other's eyes for four hours?"

"We, um, played some video games, kinda."

"Yeah? Kinda?"

"And then we got out a Ouija board and—"

"Aw that's some spooky fucking shit right there Vie—"

"—summoned a ghost or two, or three, and I think it was trying to warn me—"

"—shitting my pants over here, at this scary monster mash garbage—"

"—not to go on the senior trip."

Dana groaned, and pressed down harder on the gas. Violet yelped a little, felt her heart catch in her chest, and grabbed on the edges of her seat. Realistically, she knew she wasn't actually going that fast, but with what happened earlier still fresh on her mind, she was a little on edge. A memory replayed itself, and Violet folded her arms over one another and started to rub her shoulders. She did this whenever she got nervous, or scared. It helped her feel good again, and she didn't exactly know why.

"You can't pull out of the trip," Dana said, after some moments of uncomfortable silence, "we already put down a deposit."

"I know," Violet said, "but the— I mean, I get a bad feeling, kinda, about what might happen on the way there."

"Nothing is going to happen," Dana reassured, "you're just anxious about sharing a room with a bunch of people, and that's projecting itself into your fake 'Ouija' nonsense."

This made Violet quiet for a moment. One of the interpretations of the Ouija board she had read had claimed that the unconscious mind was what guided the planchette, mostly, and through that lens, Violet's particular anxieties made more sense. She assumed the worst possible scenario—kidnapping by terrorists, something basically only she thought about, at this point—and took the more-than-considered-okay knowledge she had on the subject and applied it to what was probably a normal senior trip. Violet wasn't important, in any sense of the word. Why something interesting would happen to her, and not any of the other billions of people on the planet, was a matter of hubris and a desire for importance. Interesting people with storybook lives don't sit down and play Super Smash Brothers for three hours before almost wetting themselves in front of a fake Hasbro board game.

She smiled, feeling slightly defeated. A fake Hasbro board game. Indeed; the Ouija board wasn't any kind of legitimate implement of divination, but a marketing technique in flimsy wooden form. There was no occult basis to take the results as fact, or truth, or anything approaching either of those closely related but separate things. In all likelihood, there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Dana was right. She was getting nervous over nothing.

"Want me to get you some candy?" Dana asked. Violet looked up, and saw that they had parked in front of a liquor store without her even noticing.

"Uh," Violet mumbled.

"Crispy M&M's? Got it."

Dana got out of the car and swung the door shut behind her. The music kept playing, as she left her keys in the wheel. Violet scooted up to the front seat, stepping on—aw jeez, a McDonald's hamburger?—to get over to Dana's phone. She had saved her thumb print on there a couple months back, and, sure enough, it was still in the phone when she tried to unlock it. Fishmans were great and all, but what Violet was really in the mood for was some—

"Hey," said Dana, opening the door again, "they didn't have Crispy, so I got Pretzel." Violet jumped back to her seat, watching Dana wrinkle her nose as she got into the car. "Arcade Fire?" Dana asked, tossing Violet her blue bag of M&Ms.

"Yeah."

"Laaame."

"A little, yeah."

"At least you got one of the ones where the girl sings. I mean, nobody really listens to them for the guy, so at least you're not that weird."

"I like Win though."

"Win? His name's Win? Fuck, my money was on Todd."

"Meh."

Violet opened the M&Ms and shoveled a few in her mouth. Dana had her own candy to snack on, a Reese's bar, but if she asked for some of Violet's she'd just leave a couple pieces on the back of the arm rest, which Dana didn't use out of habit anyways. It took some convincing earlier to get her to even wear a seat-belt. She wasn't the worst driver, but the occasional over-corrections made Violet's heart get all herky-jerky. It wasn't just getting nabbed from a bus that had Violet scared of the road.

"Can we get some dinner food, um, before the convenience store?" Violet asked, "I didn't eat anything real over there."

"So you just wizarded up some ambrosia, got it," replied Dana.

"I mean it was just a bunch of chips and stuff, gosh."

"Fine, we can get something cheap if you really want to. McDonald's?"

Violet looked at the half eaten burger on the floor and shivered.

"Yeah, but if we go there I'll only, um, get fries."

"What? Why?"

"No reason."

"Is it the fucking burger on the ground? I'll throw that out, just say so, jeez."

"I'd have a lot more to say if I started there," mumbled Violet.

"What?"

"N-nothing!"

"You doing a Mom thing? The bit where she says something she knows you can hear, and pretends she didn't say anything?"

"Maybe," said Violet with a grin.

They pulled into the parking lot of a small strip mall. The McDonald's was located across the street, standing free and untethered in the dead of the night.

"Reach around to the dash when you get out, and then shut the door," said Dana, "I left some bills, and I'm taking my keys, so you'll probably have to wait until I'm done."

"Okay," replied Violet. Dana got up and opened the door. Violet sat in the car and watched as she walked into the convenience store, then took the dollar bills. Just about eight bucks worth. She got out, closed both doors, then tested the handle. Locked. Good. Violet didn't really know this part of the outskirts of town, and she was not one to underestimate the monsters that lived in the dark.

Violet went to cross the street; she made the walk light cycle just as she reached the crosswalk. Walking quickly—she wanted to beat her sister to the car so she could pretend to get all huffy about her being late—she entered the restaurant, crumbled bills in hand. There were quite a few people in line and a good deal seated in various spots and making many different amounts of noise. She saw an exhausted young couple with a little kid, a group of Juniors that looked like they were dressed for Prom, and a guy with a hard hat eating a Fillet O' Fish, among others. The line, too, was filled with many random people, and was almost to the door. It was really late, and Violet wanted to get home, but her tummy was rumbling something fierce and she wasn't about to give up this opportunity to grab some cheap, trashy grub.

It was sorta gross, but there was this "secret menu" thing that Violet wanted to try. She'd order a McDouble and a McChicken, and then, when she sat down in the car, she'd take the McChicken and put it in between the burger patties in the McDouble, and it was supposed to be called the "McGangbang" but she didn't have the courage or dumbness to actually try ordering that from the cash register, so she'd assemble it herself. Apparently it was super good, and really cheap. She wasn't a foodie, nah, but she liked experimenting with weird stuff like that. It reminded her, in a really cheesy way, of spells.

Suddenly, it was almost her turn to order, with just two people in front of her. As she moved up towards the counter, a short middle aged woman hurriedly turned the corner from the back half of the McDonald's, crossed in front of her path and walked directly towards her.

"Excuse me," she rasped, "bathroom emergency."

Violet's eyes widened. She tried to move out of the way, but found herself unable to budge. When the middle aged woman passed her, she suddenly, inexplicably, briefly put her hand on Violet's arm, pushing it out of the way with a little shove, swimming through the crowd and disappearing into the restroom.

---

"All out of double A's?!"

"Sorry, ma'am, but I don't know what to tell you. Some weird guy came in earlier and bought them all."

"You guys don't have any in the back room that you could sell me?"

"I mean, I could check, but—"

"Oh forget it. My sister's at the car. I'll come back tomorrow, maybe."

Dana turned from the counter in a huff. Seriously?! No batteries? Absolutely zero batteries, in the whole store? Weird guy, her ass. Dana knew that from the look of the cashier, the fucking jerk probably had them stuffed up his ass or something. Some strange looking folk this side of the world, that was for sure. Probably inbred like seven times or something like that, some backwater Appalachian genetic slurrified mess of a person. Ugly fuck. Convenience, my ass. This whole place was a racket. Probably a front for hard drugs. She hoped Violet got her some french fries or something. She hadn't asked, but otherwise she'd have to take a bite of whatever she did get, as some kind of finder's fee, or something, and that wasn't very chill, but rules were rules, even unwritten.

A chime above the door sounded mockingly when she exited the building. Dana looked down at her shoes and pretended to kick some dust into the air in a huff before she glanced over towards her car. There she was; the lanky, tall Slender-Man silhouette that she called family. It really wasn't fair how she got all the good, cool tall genes, locked away in some great grandpa or something. Dana was 5'9", which wasn't bad for a girl, but it was really strange to go through as an older fucking sibling. It was hard to see Violet from here—her glasses, which she usually only wore for driving, were inside the car—but from the look of things Violet was kinda mad at her for taking so long in the store, so she waved at her with sorry-I-fucked-up acknowledgement.

"My bad for taking so long," Dana said, stepping closer to the car, "Cashier was being a dick about batter—"

And there she saw her, Violet, leaning against the rear door with her hands folded across her chest, rubbing at her elbows and shoulders like they were scratch tickets, staring off hard and long into the flickering lights of the highway street-lamps, her awkward height leaving her nowhere to hide, her mouth contorted into a pained grimace, shivering something fierce, knees pointed inwards at each other, her foot tapping up and down impatiently, shaking a gentle, cruel tremor that enveloped her whole body. If she had bought food, it was nowhere to be seen. As Dana got closer, she saw slight red streaks down the length of Violet's cheeks and a wetness at the corner of her eyes. Violet exhaled sharply and brought her hands down from her shoulders, folding them over and over at her waist. A plane passed overhead, and the breeze rustled the leaves of the highway trees. Dana stopped and looked into her sister's eyes. She wasn't looking back. Transfixed, it took her a few silent moments to realize what she wanted, and in the panic of realization she took her car keys out and pressed the unlock button. Without turning entirely around, Violet opened the door and slipped inside, slamming it behind her.

Dana let out a deep sigh, and slowly got into the driver's seat. She put her keys in the ignition, and turned the car back on. Dana looked back at Violet, and saw that she had her head in her hands. She had pushed herself far back into the corner, and she taking short, shallow, gasping breaths.

There was nothing Dana wanted more than to be able to reach out and touch her. To stroke her hair and tell her that everything was okay. That her sister was here. She wanted to give her a big hug and calm her down that way, the easy way, the way that she was used to being consoled by her family, her friends, and even people she didn't even know all too well, given the circumstance. She wanted to do this, and knew it was impossible. Impossible because of what she did, and what she'd always have to live with having done. Dana could never touch her sister, because she touched her sister.

Dana put a hand over her mouth, even though she hadn't actually said anything.

Her skin felt heavy at every corner, like a saggy water balloon ready to burst. The shame that came with thinking of that pun came not from the knowledge that it was entirely a fucked up thing to think about, but the prediction that, if she had heard it at a different time, in a different place, she might just have laughed at it. Dana turned back around and put her hands on the steering wheel.

"Home?" she asked.

Violet nodded, and mumbled something.

"Sorry?"

Violet lifted her eyes upward, her gaze pointed through the back of the passenger seat.

"Start the song over."

Dana obliged, swiping open her phone and rewinding to the beginning. This one was alright, she thought. A little melodramatic, but, like, okay. It didn't really matter what she though, though, even though it was her car. If she couldn't reach her sister physically, she could at least help out emotionally. Even if it was really Violet doing all the work, for herself. She'd never know it, but she'd come a long way from when she was a little kid. A quick peek in the central rear view mirror and she saw that Violet was now leaned up against the window, staring out into the dark, and that she had stopped shaking, for the most part.

But she couldn't keep looking backward forever. Dana pulled out of the parking lot and peeled onto the road, thinking of the fastest way to get home, eyes set on the way forward.

All along the way there, Violet thought of how much she needed to get away from this place. When she finally got home, she thought only of how much she wanted never to leave.