Chapter Text
"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for friendship, and it is far the best ending for one."--The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
The sound of leaves being crushed underfoot filled the open air. Dave wasn’t quite sure how she did it, but despite bouncing perkily from foot to foot a few feet ahead of the group Jade didn’t seem to be making any sound at all. It was a little unfair, really. Dave, his sister Rose, and their classmate Egbert—John—walked carefully but still seemed to manage to step on every single snappable twig or crunchable leaf as they tried to keep pace with their excitable classmate.
“…How is she keeping so quiet, dude?” Dave finally asked John, turning his head slightly for easy conversation.
John simply smiled and shrugged. “I’ve stopped asking myself that a while ago. I think it’s because she grew up on this tropical island pretty much all by herself, and she would go out exploring the forest a lot.” His smile turned wry as he regarded Jade with fond exasperation. “You wouldn’t think it looking at her, but she’s actually a really great hunter.”
John was right—Dave didn’t expect that. Jade had always seemed to be the kind of bright, happy chick that would probably cry over a hurt animal let alone actually go out and hunt one down. If anything, she more fit the image of a Granola Girl with her perky attitude, long skirts and her general quirkiness. And growing up alone on a tropical island? Exactly how did that kind of thing even happen, not to mention how did she somehow move into their town? Jade wasn’t the only surprising one. Outside of the school environment John somehow seemed a lot less childish and made a lot more jokes than usual. Dave hadn’t even noticed a hint of a prank during their hike. He found himself re-examining what he really knew of his two classmates.
Rose, to his side, hummed to herself and gave John a considering look. If it was anyone but Dave they probably would have missed the note of excitement in her eyes and voice. “So it seems that Jade is our best bet at tracking our mysterious creature, then.”
Dave stifled an amused snort that threatened to escape. His sister was so convinced that the so-called ‘mysterious creature’ supposedly spotted in the woods a week ago was one of her eldritch monsters. Dave was mostly tagging along out of curiosity and boredom. All part of being a good twin brother.
After all, what else was there to do in this stupidly small town?
School started off the way it always did. Dave and Rose walked together into the building and greeted their friends and acquaintances as they passed through the halls to their lockers, conveniently located right next to one another. After gathering their books for class the twins separated for their own individual groups of friends, but not without the usual routine of Rose idly trying to straighten Dave’s clothes and hair while Dave brushed her off with a grin and a wave. Dave headed off to his friends among the skater and rap music scene. Rose joined her friends in the drama and English department.
The day started off as any other day did. Boring. Dave laughed and let out a smile or two with his friends and couldn’t help thinking how utterly pointless and boring everything was. Every day was the same as the last and about the only thing that changed were the season’s current fashions. Such was life in a small town, where the closest thing they had to a city was the shitty suburb of another city that had decided it wanted more of a small town vibe and thus broke off all relations with that other city. Divorce proceedings were unnecessarily brutal, involving restraining orders and therapy for everyone involved with neither side really getting what they wanted out of it. And like always happens with a messy divorce, it’s the children who suffer for it. Dave had thought things would be…different, when he entered high school. His older brother and sister Dirk and Roxy were in their senior year and much too cool to hang out with freshmen, though they’d stop to exchange pleasantries every now and then in the hallways.
If he was really bored Dave would seek out Rose and her friends to hang out with, though even that got boring. Everyone talked about the same things over and over, it seemed. They would go to school, come back home, and go back to school the next day. Very rarely his older siblings were invited to a party, though more likely than not any parties would be hosted at their rather large house. Any time his friends wanted to meet up after school or on the weekend they would insist on coming over to his house. For once, Dave would like to freaking leave his house to go out and do something with other people. Instead, he was stuck with the same monotonous routine in the same locations with the same people over and over, like a broken record. Nothing ever changed or happened.
Dave suppressed a snort and grimace. It looked like he was falling into the pattern of being a stereotypical teenager with nothing fucking better to do but whine and complain about how boring and shitty their life was. The Irony Gods were surely weeping. Their own Chosen Son, brought into this world by the chance union between a Lord of Irony and a Lady of Motherfucking Class, was falling into the pit of Normalcy, doomed forever to be banished to the furthest reaches of paradox space where all of the un-cool losers dwelt.
Truly, this was a travesty for the fucking ages.
“Hey, look,” Roy smirked, elbowing Dave in the side to get his attention. Their group of friends was huddled at one end of the large entrance hall to the school, waiting for the doors to their classes to open. Roy nodded towards the doors at the school entrance where a familiar face was just coming in, already headed towards another group of kids with a smile on his face. Dave recognized him instantly—with a school their size it wasn’t difficult, particularly since they were in the same grade. “Egderp’s at it again.”
Dave rolled his eyes behind his shades. “Of course he is. We’re already, what, a month and a half in at this point? You’d think he’d fucking learn by now.” Snickers and headshakes went around the group, all focused on watching John Egbert creep over to his newest group of victims with an ever-widening grin on his face.
“What do you think it’ll be today?” Josh asked idly, though he, too, was watching avidly. “Hand buzzer? Whoopee cushion?”
“Nah, I’m thinking Egbert’s gonna go clever this time,” Diego mused, resting his chin in his hand. “I’m betting fake vomit.”
The group looked on as Egbert snuck up on the poor group of kids standing by the music room door and startled them into conversation. Dave didn’t know how he did it. Everyone in school knew by now that John Egbert was an unrelenting prankster who apparently didn’t think a day was well spent without pulling at least one prank. How he managed to get anyone to talk with him for long was a mystery, especially since Egbert usually only talked with people to lull them in before pranking them. There was just something about his easy-going nature that made him endearing enough to let your guard down around.
Dave saw what Egbert had planned about a second before it happened. Egbert gestured around wildly, telling some story or another. His hand drifted towards his messenger bag, unnoticed to the kids he was talking with. Dave saw their uneasy expressions slowly start to turn into less wary ones, even offering a few smiles and laughs at whatever story Egbert was telling them. Egbert perked up, saying something excitedly to one of the band kids Dave was pretty sure was in concert choir with Rose. He offered up a high five that the other kid returned easily.
Rookie mistake. Dave shook his head sadly as the other kid pulled his hand away in disgust and shook out his hand to get rid of the shaving cream that had been smeared there thanks to a laughing Egbert, who took the time to run off to the other side of the entrance hall. The concert choir kid scowled and howled out some generic phrase or another—‘I’ll get you for this!’
Just as that seemed to be the end of the Egbert Entertainment Hour the entrance doors to the school opened once more to let in another group of tired kids. Among them was Jade Harley, an odd girl who’d transferred in at the beginning of the school year. Despite her friendly and outgoing nature, there was just something…off about her that kept the other kids from being too close to her. He wasn’t sure if it was her long, wild hair that she never seemed to bother taming, or her long skirts that she wore literally every day, or the colorful strings all over her fingers, or the fact that sometimes it seemed like she didn’t know basic things, like what a pencil sharpener was. She always seemed to live only in her own personal universe without bothering to try and join in with the rest of society. The only person she was really friends with, from what Dave had causally observed, was Egbert who was just as crazy as she was.
Dave was pretty sure they were dating.
“Harley!” the choir kid called out. Jade’s head whipped around to where she heard her name called. She shuffled from one foot to the other, clearly wanting to head further into the school but also curious what the choir kid had to say. “I need to talk to you about Egbert!”
Dave could see her shoulders slump from across the entrance hall. His friends snickered around him, gathering up their belongings and getting ready to head to class.
“Looks like Harley’s getting chewed out about her boyfriend again,” Josh observed, barely sparing a glance in his classmate’s direction before heading off. Dave stayed back for a step or so, watching as the choir kid showed off his pranked hand and Jade tried to calm him down, before he joined his friends.
It wasn’t really any of his business.
Things finally took a turn for the interesting around lunch time.
As usual, Dave met up with Rose at their lockers in the hall before heading to the cafeteria together. Dave, as the dutiful brother that he was, listened as Rose talked about her friends and classmates and proceeded to try to break them down psychologically. He was pretty sure their school had an elective for upperclassmen in psychology. He was also pretty sure that his sister was trying to convince their guidance councilor that she needed to be in said elective next year despite not being ‘old’ enough for it.
According to Rose, Tim from science and Linda from English were obviously locked in some kind of intense psychological warfare with one another, partly in response to how Tim’s home life situation somehow brushed up against Linda’s crippling inner depression, causing the two to think that the other was somehow mocking them for their own problems. Dave wasn’t quite sure he believed that; Tim’s ‘home life situation’ was that he was the middle child of five siblings while Linda was a raging bitch who liked to pick on people whenever her best friend wasn’t around to rein her in.
Dave nodded along to Rose’s speech, barely paying attention enough to get the briefest of summaries. He suppressed a lip quirk at the thought that his sister was just as bored and looking for some kind of distraction as he was. After retrieving their lunch trays the twins started the Where To Sit game. Really, it was more of a Whose Friends Do We Sit With This Time game, but that didn’t roll off the tongue as easy.
He supposed that they could, potentially, sit with their own group of friends and not with each other for once. But, nah. That didn’t seem as much fun.
They stood to the side and looked around at their options. Honestly, none of them looked very appealing. He noticed Roxy across the room spot them and beam their way. Dirk looked up briefly, offered a solid Bro-Nod, and went back to conversation with his and Roxy’s friends. Dave wilted slightly. If worst came to worst, they could always sit with their older siblings. But seriously, how lame did you have to be that you didn’t have any other choice but sitting with your older siblings?
So not cool.
Rose didn’t seem to get the memo, though. This was a shame, considering she lived with the Striders and all of their unfathomable Irony and Coolness factor. The Lalondes had Class on their side, too, so she also didn’t have an excuse there. At the very least, she didn’t seem pleased with their options. How she decided that the social equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot was the best option available, Dave didn’t know and didn’t particularly care to find out. His sister’s thought patterns were a mystery, even to him.
“…we should probably find a seat soon,” she murmured. Without waiting for a response she set off down the cafeteria with Dave at her side.
“This is so lame,” he muttered to her. Rose ignored him. Dave sighed and looked to the side. He wasn’t expecting the snatch of conversation he caught as they passed by a certain table. Rose paused when he did, looking over to see what caught her brother’s attention.
“—really! The paper didn’t have any pictures, but I checked out the area and found footprints. They were huge!” Jade exclaimed to a curious Egbert. “They’re supposed to be all over the woods, though I could only find the one set. Whatever thing made them, it’s probably some kind of monster, don’t you think, John?”
Egbert squinted down at a newspaper Jade had laid out in front of him, peering down at the news caption. “I don’t know, Jade. It doesn’t sound like a normal animal. And the article doesn’t even have any pictures, either. Doesn’t that seem a little suspicious? It’s probably a hoax.”
“Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear,” Rose interrupted smoothly, sliding in to a seat next to Egbert. He and Jade looked up in surprise. Dave was both unsurprised by his sister’s actions and mildly impressed she’d managed to sit down so quickly without him noticing. Silently, he sat down next to Jade and prepared to be whatever silent backup Rose would need. “Did you say something about a monster? In town?” Her eyes glimmered with undisguised interest.
Egbert rolled his eyes while Jade beamed. “I think so, at least!” She moved the newspaper closer to Rose to look over and gestured wildly while she talked. Dave was vaguely surprised to see that their town apparently had a supernatural tabloid. “It says here there was a mysterious figure seen wandering around in the woods outside town, though no one could really get a good look at the thing.” She shrugged, still smiling happily. “I checked it out before school today, and there were definitely really strange footprints!”
Rose hummed under her breath as she quickly scanned the article, intrigued. “I don’t suppose you have any pictures of the footprints with you?”
Jade gasped, shocked. “No, I should have taken some, though! Maybe then a certain somebody would believe me!” She leveled Egbert with a mock glare that he rolled his eyes at. Dave, unusually, decided to keep quiet and eat his lunch. This show was priceless.
“Unfortunate,” Rose decided, handing the magazine back to the excitable girl. “Would you be amenable to take me to see the footprints in person after school? Or whenever is most convenient for you? The sooner the better, of course.”
“That would be great!” Jade beamed. “I’d love to!”
“Wait, wait,” Egbert interrupted, looking back and forth between Rose and Jade. “Why do you want to see some dumb footprints, anyway?” he asked Rose. “And why are you agreeing so easily?” he then asked Jade.
“Gonna have to agree with Egbert on this one,” Dave interjected for the first time since sitting down at the table. “What the fuck, sis? Maybe give a guy some warning before deciding to go running off into the murder woods.”
“It’s not like I asked you to come along with me,” Rose replied, eying Dave coyly. He gave her an unimpressed look in return. There was no way he was letting her wander off alone (or as alone as she could be with a random classmate tagging along) while he returned to their house by himself. Besides, if Rose was getting to go on some random ass adventure then he sure as hell wasn’t getting left behind.
“To answer your question,” Rose directed to John, “depending on the footprints we may be dealing with something…unusual.” She gave a smile that would have unsettled lesser mortals. Frankly, Dave was a little impressed that Egbert and Jade weren’t affected by it; maybe they didn’t know any better. “Unusual happens to be relevant to my interests.”
Egbert sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not really sure what you’re expecting to find, but okay. I’ll come along, too.”
“Just try to leave me behind, Rose,” Dave said challengingly, holding his twin’s gaze through his sunglasses.
“You’re coming too, Dave?” Jade asked. “Great! This’ll be like an adventure!” She giggled to herself, as if laughing over some private joke.
“Precisely,” Rose commented. Egbert looked around the table and shrugged, turning back to his lunch.
“So. Are we doing this today, or what?”
They agreed to meet in the park after school, near where a trailhead began that Jade claimed to have taken to get to the footprints.
Despite himself, Dave couldn’t focus in school for the rest of the day. The final bell couldn’t come soon enough. It wasn’t much, but he was finally going to do something different to get out of the rut that his personal life had fallen into.
Supremely uncool. His family could never know.
His excitement may have even shown through once or twice. Not that anyone could prove anything, of course. If Dave happened to have power walked his way to his siblings’ car in the parking lot when school finally let out, it obviously didn’t mean anything. Sometimes a dude just really wanted some exercise.
“Okay, what’s up with you Dave?” Roxy asked from the driver’s seat a few minutes into the drive home. Dave jolted in his seat, having been staring out the window aimlessly. His older sister’s eyes flickered between his in the rearview mirror and the road. Even Dirk had his head tilted towards the backseat, curious.
Rose merely gave him an exasperated look.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dave said as perhaps the worst way he could have answered. He was the suspicious one, it was him. He couldn’t see his brother’s eyes from behind his shades but Dave still somehow knew he was being given a flat look.
“Uh huh,” Roxy replied, utterly unconvinced. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, kiddo, but you’ve been tapping your foot back there since before I even started the car. Thought there was a woodpecker back there, like god damn.” Dave stilled his foot immediately but otherwise didn’t let on his embarrassment at having been caught. Striders were cool, okay, and they certainly didn’t let their emotions be shown to the world at large for free. Nah, son, you had to pay to see that shit—Striders were an impenetrable fortress of Cool and Irony, and only those who truly sought out the secrets to their shit could view the true Strider within.
And then they would have to make their way past the other layers of Cool and Irony. It wasn’t an easy journey, and there were very few who were able to actually get that far. Even then, the lucky fuckers still had to pay an admissions fee to cover the costs of being a Truly Supreme Being of Cool and Irony.
“Dave, you’re rambling under your breath again,” came Dirk’s stoic voice. Fuck.
Roxy was silent for a moment. “So…I’m guessing something happened in school today?”
Rose gave another put upon sigh, sitting straight and perfect in her seat. Her hands were even folded in her lap, what the fuck. “We have plans to meet with a couple of classmates in the park after school. I believe Dave is expressing his desire, in his own way, to proceed ahead with our meeting.”
“Aw, Davey’s excited to play with his friends!” Roxy cooed, turning onto the street that led to their long-ass driveway that led to their house. “That’s cute as shit.”
“They’re not friends,” Dave was quick to defend himself. “And I’m not excited to meet them. We’re going to the park and I thought it’d be a good chance to use my new camera.” That sounded plausible, and a whole lot fucking better than ‘I’m so bored with my life, this is just something to pass the time with.’ But, yeah, now that he thought about it bringing the camera along wouldn’t be a bad idea. It would at the very least help with documenting whatever-the-hell-it-was they’d be looking for.
Plus, Dave could get some really cool photos out of it.
Rose turned to him with a raised eyebrow. Dave steadfastly looked away, refusing to give in to her weird, creepy psycho-babble-voodoo. He could still feel the weight of her stare, however.
“How long are you planning to be out with your ‘not-friends’?” Dirk asked. “Don’t forget it’s your night to set the table and do dishes. I’m sure as shit not going to cover for you with Bro.”
Dave hid a wince while Rose answered for them. Bro could be scary-strict whenever he decided to ‘parent ironically.’ “I wouldn’t imagine that we’d be out any later than six, but we’ll be sure to have our phones on us if something comes up.”
“Do you need a drive to the park?” Roxy asked, pulling into their driveway. “I mean, I’m right here with keys and a car and everything.”
Which, fuck that. There was no way Dave was going to risk his Cool Kid Rep over having his sister drive him places to meet up with random classmates. Carpooling to and from school was one thing; getting driven around like he’s going to a fucking play date is a whole other ball-arena. Or whatever the sports metaphor was.
“Yeah, no, thanks but no thanks,” Dave rushed to say, throwing his car door open before the vehicle had fully stopped. “It’s not that far to the park, we can walk it in fifteen minutes easy.”
“I think he’s embarrassed by me,” Roxy not-quite-whispered to Dirk just loud enough for Dave to hear. “That’s totes adorbs.” Dirk snorted and gathered his things from the car. Dave didn’t bother waiting for Rose before he absconded into the house. She’d meet him at the door, no problem.
Dave took the stairs up to the second floor three at a time, shedding his jacket as he went. He stifled a scream when he turned the corner to see Lil’ Cal waiting for him on an end table in the hallway. Giving the puppet a wide berth and a quick fist-bump in pacification, he stepped quickly into his room and threw his backpack on the floor carelessly. Dave took a moment to locate his camera equipment and decided on which one he wanted to bring along. He was tempted to take the old piece of junk one he’d found online that only took pictures in black and white film, figuring the irony of taking old black-and-white photos like some film noir crime scene would be pretty fucking hysterical, actually. Dave didn’t know what they’d be doing, though, exactly, and didn’t want to risk breaking the thing. It had been hard as balls to find an actual camera that would take actual black and white photos without the use of filters—you just couldn’t get that kind of vaguely crappy quality with filters. And there was no way he was willing to risk his art for what was more than likely just a hike in the woods.
Reluctantly Dave put the old black and white camera back in its spot and grabbed one of his cheaper film ones with a strap to hang around his neck and a digital camera that wouldn’t break just by falling if something happened. Dave was in an experimental phase with his photography, so he liked to have Options with his photographs. He ran through a mental checklist of what he might need, decided to just wing it, grabbed his camera bag and headed back into the hallway.
Worryingly, Lil’ Cal was no longer sitting on the end table. Dave hoped, wherever he was, that that stupid puppet was harassing Rose for once.
Cautiously, yet outwardly exuding nothing but calm, Dave headed back down the stairs to wait for Rose by the front door. He could hear the voices of his other siblings further in the house, most likely in the kitchen getting something to eat before starting on their school work. He leant against the wall next to the door and checked the clock on his phone. It was close to three-thirty now and would take him and Rose about fifteen minutes to walk to the park. To and back would be about half an hour altogether, leaving about two hours for them to fuck around in the woods before they’d have to be back. Plenty of time for who-the-fuck-knows. Hell, Dave wasn’t even sure there was anything actually out there. More likely than not it was just some fucked up footprint that made people think there was actually some kind of monster, and this whole trip was just some huge time-waster.
But, after years of being subjected to his mother and sisters’ interests, particularly Rose’s, he couldn’t quite discount the possibility that there was something more. It was just fucking stupid and quite frankly irresponsible to leave these kinds of things up to chance. Dave could see it now. The stupid-ass main characters ignore the obvious signs that are right in front of them, then next thing you knew there was some shitty monster out there picking people off one by one, with the main characters finally having that much-needed epiphany that, oh, wait, just maybe this may be a fucking issue? Too bad no one will listen or believe them, because why would they? You didn’t even believe this was a thing in the first place!
By the time enough people wise up to what’s really going down almost everyone’s dead and it’s just up to the main characters to save the day.
And all of that could have been avoided if they’d just fucking done something about it when they first had the chance. Dave hated that kind of sloppy storytelling and had sworn to himself he’d never be the main character of a monster horror movie. You’re just dumbed down to the point where, quite frankly, it’s a fucking miracle you’re even able to function in life with how stupid your decisions are. Yeah, that wasn’t Dave. He had more sense than that, at the very fucking least.
“And where are you off to, little man?”
Dave, startled out of his inner musings, stiffened at the sudden appearance of his technical dad ‘Bro.’ From what he’d been able to pick up over the years his dad apparently didn’t want to face the fact that he was growing older and was possibly ‘domesticated,’ with ‘responsibilities’ and a ‘mortgage’ (not that they even had a mortgage, thanks to Mom’s well-paying job and Bro’s secretive and shady yet also apparently lucrative puppet porn website). So, instead, he insisted that his kids call him Bro as a way to pretend that he wasn’t old enough to be a father to four kids.
Guy was a freaking ninja warrior who made practically his whole life and profession about puppets in some regard. Dave would almost accuse him of having a midlife crises, if he wasn’t afraid he’d wake up some morning completely surrounded by creepy-ass puppets.
Dave resumed leaning against the wall, still completely casual-like. He didn’t take his eyes off of Cal, draped across Bro’s shoulders. Good thing his shades hid that particular weakness. “Oh, you know. Just waiting for Rose. We’re meeting up with some classmates in the park in a few minutes. Should be back by six, though.” Goddamn, it was so hard to remain nonchalant when Cal’s beady eyes stared straight into Dave’s soul. He wasn’t sure how Bro or Dirk could stand those freaky puppets, especially not with how…enthusiastic they got about them.
Mom, Roxy and Rose were obsessed with wizards, the gayer the better. Bro and Dirk were all about puppets and horses, apparently. Dave was quite happy neither of these obsessions had been genetically passed down to him.
Bro stared down Dave for a moment and shifted on his feet. “Pick your jacket off the floor first. Or Cal will do it for you.” Dave felt himself go pale and absconded right back the fuck up the stairs to wherever he’d left the damn thing. He’d learned by now that it was better not to let Cal have the chance with any of Dave’s stuff if he wanted his things in the same condition he’d left them.
Bro’d never actually break any of his things, but he did tend to either confiscate them or…make ‘additions’ his kids would rather not have other people seeing.
Dave threw his jacket in a closet upstairs and raced back to the front entrance hall where Bro was just leaving.
“When’s Mom coming in tonight?” Dave asked before Bro left completely. Bro paused in the doorway to the living room, glancing back at Dave for a brief moment.
“She’s working late,” is all he said before he completely absconded.
“Typical,” Rose said from behind him. Dave turned around to see her in a completely different outfit, this one slightly more practical for gallivanting around in the woods for a few hours than her previous one. If you could call a black and purple dress ‘practical’ for hiking. “Well, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Mother is always either at work or traipsing around the house in some parody of a 50s housewife.”
Dave frowned but didn’t say anything. His twin tended to get like this about their mother. “I both can and can’t believe you changed into a completely different yet totally the same outfit just to meet Jade and Egbert in the park. Is this another one of your attempts to upstage people? Because I kind of think the efforts wasted on those two.” He led the way out of the house and down the driveway, starting the walk towards the park.
Rose’s eyes glittered in amusement. “Perhaps I want to look my best for whichever Horrorterror—or other monster of indeterminate origin—we happen to find. If we do indeed find anything.”
He snorted. “Yeah, it’d be a real shame if you didn’t dress up for your date with monster-destiny. They’d probably turn you right away, no can do, ma’am, we have a dress code here in these murder woods. You have to be this glam and fashionable to approach our undulating tentacles.”
“Yes, that would indeed be a serious breach of conduct,” Rose agreed with a serious tone of voice. Dave could still see the small hint of a smile on her face. “Quite possibly the worst first impression I could make, I should say. Well, no matter; I’m quite certain that our monster, whatever it may be, will be gracious enough to overlook such banal matters.”
Dave rolled his eyes and nudged his sister’s shoulder with his own. “You know. ‘Cause monsters are known for their discerning tastes.”
“Precisely.”
After another ten minutes of mild banter they reached the park and started looking for their two classmates. Rose led them down the path that would take them closer to the tree line where the forest met the back end of the park.
“Pretty sure Egbert and Jade said to meet in the very back,” Dave said in passing. He fingered at the shoulder strap on his camera bag idly.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Rose said suddenly. Dave glanced at her, wary. That was never a phrase he wanted to hear from her. “Is there a particular reason you use John’s last name and Jade’s first?”
Dave shrugged, placing his hands in his pockets. His camera bag rested against his shoulder and bounced lightly against his side as he walked. “I dunno. I never really talk to Egbert—uh, John, so I guess I just use his last name instead. You know how many ‘Johns’ there are in our school? Not that many, since there’s like, five hundred people tops, but enough to confuse people if I just say ‘John.’ Like, which John? The one with the red hair? The one in senior year on the football team? The one who swears that his real name is Timothy Gloxnar from the planet Andromeda 9? The one who plays pranks? Shit gets confusing fast. Plus, this way I can say Egdork and be hilarious.” Rose slid an unimpressed look his way. “As for Jade, I don’t know, she just seems more approachable I guess?”
“And I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that your ‘friends’ only refer to him by his last name so you do as well?” She raised an eyebrow at him, looking like she was close to winning whatever argument they were apparently having. “Perhaps your usage of last names for your male classmate, whom society has told us is your most likely choice for a new friend as you are both male and gender norms are a ‘thing,’ is a way for you to try and maintain distance away from a new relationship, one you apparently don’t feel ready to commit yourself to just yet?
“Why you gotta use air quotes like that?” Dave slouched slightly, choosing to ignore the last part of her rant/diagnosis. “If you don’t think they’re my friends, then just say it.”
“I don’t think they’re your friends,” Rose replied quickly. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you only spend time with them at school or parties at our house, Dave. You don’t even talk with them outside of school.”
Dave scowled at his sister. “And just how is that view from your glass house, Rose? ‘Cause I don’t seem to recall any play dates with your friends, either.”
“So this will be a new experience for the both of us,” Rose murmured. “Well, for the duration of our time together may I suggest you use only first names? We have no idea how long it will take to actually track down our mysterious creature and I imagine the process will be much more pleasant if we at least have the appearance of cordiality?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Dave replied. “It’s not like it’s a big deal either way.”
Rose looked like she was going to reply, no doubt with another ‘helpful suggestion,’ when a sudden sound from up ahead cut her off. It wasn’t quite like anything Dave had ever heard before, which only made him interested in finding whatever made the glorious sound. And it was still going.
“What on earth…?” Rose pursed her lips and sped up down the walking trail in the park, Dave following shortly behind her. They turned a bend in the path to a clearing encircled by trees. The field itself was a little on the small side with a public outdoor grill and picnic table set to one side of the clearing leaving space open on the other end for whatever outdoor event or sports ball tournament or whatever people did when they came to parks.
Sitting calmly on top of the concrete picnic table was Jade, happily playing a flute rather badly and very enthusiastically. Dave smiled a little, remembering hearing that the perky girl was apparently a terror in music class. At least she appeared to be practicing, and seemed happy to do so.
Egbert—fuck, John—was lying down on the grass nearby with a slight frown on his face, though he kept time with the swaying of his foot.
Rose cleared her throat on their approach, halting Jade’s amazing practice session. “My apologies. I didn’t realize we were running late.”
Jade beamed while Egbert sat up. “No problem! It’s not like we really had a concrete time to meet, anyway.” She shrugged, putting away her flute piece by piece into its carrying case before stuffing that into a surprisingly bulky backpack sitting at her feet. “I decided to get some practice in while I waited. I’m a lot better on the bass, but I think I’m getting better at the flute, too!”
Egb—dammit Rose—John stood up, brushing off stray grass from his pants. “Now that we’re all here, should we get going? I need to be able to get back home by dinnertime or my dad’ll be upset.”
“Same with us,” Rose demurred, though her excitement shown through in the way she edged closer to the tree line. “Shall we?”
“Yup!” Jade said cheerfully, slinging her bag across her shoulders like it weighed nothing. “Follow me!”
Before he knew it, Jade had already taken off ahead of everybody, though she’d thankfully stayed within viewing distance. Dave turned to Eg-John with a frown on his face, feeling suddenly underprepared with nothing but his camera. Better than Rose and her fancy dress, at least.
“Hey, dude, were we supposed to bring supplies or some shit?” He vaguely gestured ahead to Jade, who was carefully examining the forest for something before taking off again. “Like…she knows we’re only going to be out here for a few hours at most, right? I sure as shit didn’t plan on a fucking camping trip.”
John grimaced slightly, though his expression held a hint of exasperated fondness as well. “Yeah, Jade tends to…go overboard a lot when it comes to doing anything outside. She was pretty much raised outside before she moved here, so she always makes sure to bring along, like, everything. I’ve told her a few times it wasn’t really necessary, but…” He shrugged his shoulders in a what can you do? gesture that Dave understood perfectly. Dirk tended to be obsessive with his projects and interests, too, so Dave could sympathize with someone close to you going overboard for relatively simple reasons. Hopefully Jade at least remembered to eat and sleep on a regular schedule.
After that, conversation between the twins and John dwindled as the three spent their focus on trying to follow after Jade, who tended to bound through the forest in a perky manner that Dave wasn’t entirely sure was necessary. John took it upon himself to tell surprisingly funny jokes on their hike which kept up the twins’ spirits enough to keep going through the woods. Clearly, this section was reserved for more experienced hikers, which made sense to a certain extent. If there really was a monster or some kind of mysterious creature out here it’d more than likely stay as far away from humans as it could.
Looking at the trees and foliage around them, Dave could definitely believe that humans didn’t travel out this far very regularly. There was a thin trail that disappeared in places that Jade kept them to, though he still had no idea how she could move around so easily—or silently. At least Dave managed to get some cool photos out of the trip.
About three-quarters of an hour later had Jade coming to a sudden halt, much to Dave’s relief. He didn’t even realize the woods were so deep or big (ha; shut up, Rose), and he was only 30% sure that they’d started to go around in circles. What little trail they’d had in the beginning had long since disappeared by now.
“Okay, we’re really close now,” Jade informed them, turning around to give the area a full sweep with her eyes.
Rose grimaced, wiping away a light sheen of sweat from her forehead. Dave at the very least had the grace not to say anything about her dress, especially not since Jade was wearing an ankle-length skirt herself. Annoyingly enough, she didn’t seem even a little bit winded from their hike. “And you said you were able to find the footprints this morning before school? I have to wonder about how early you wake up.” John leant against a tree and fanned his face with his hand. Dave was actually relatively okay, thanks to his daily exercise with Bro and Dirk.
Jade snorted inelegantly, covering up a goofy grin as she pulled out a compass from her bag and distributed water bottles among their group. Rose and John took theirs gratefully. “I mean, I do usually get up around dawn, but my house isn’t too far from where we are now, so it didn’t take me too long to come out here and make it to school on time.” She paused and looked up with a teasing smile. “Plus, I’m usually a lot quicker on my own.”
“Sorry to slow you down, then,” John grumbled from the side. Jade shot him a worried look.
“That’s not what I meant, John,” she explained in a forcibly patient voice. “Just…I’m used to wandering around on my own? So, it’s easier for me to find my own way than wait for other people who aren’t used to the forest to catch up.”
John waved off her explanation with a smile of his own. “I’m not actually mad, Jade, just teasing!”
Jade pouted. “Oh, you…”
Rose cleared her throat once more, interrupting whatever conversation they were about to have. Dave was pretty thankful, actually; there was nothing more awkward than being caught in the middle of a lover’s quarrel. It was almost as awkward as when Dirk and Roxy managed to get into a fight—there was nothing worse than being forced to pick sides.
“You said we were close?”
Jade perked up once more and examined her compass. “Yeah! I remember, I walked past that bush and I thought, ‘Wow, that bush sure looks like the Isobutane structural formula, you don’t see that every day,’ and I started heading…north!” She closed up her compass and readjusted her bag. “It should be about fifty feet that way,” she directed, holding out her hand and pointing in the direction they needed to head towards.
She also apparently didn’t notice the blank looks everyone was giving her.
“…I don’t know, it looks more like a menorah to me,” John said finally. Jade tilted her head and re-examined the bush.
“I mean, I can see that too, I guess,” she said, shrugging. “I guess I just had chemistry on my mind.”
“Is that the kind of thing we’re supposed to be learning in class?” Dave asked weakly. “Because if so, I’m doing a lot worse than I thought.”
“…I didn’t think our school offered chemistry for freshmen,” Rose observed carefully.
Jade grinned, looking suddenly bashful. “Um. I don’t think they do? I’m just really into nuclear physics, and chemistry seemed like a good first step towards that, you know?”
“Holy shit, you’re a nerd,” Dave murmured in awe. Jade’s blush darkened. “That’s kind of amazing, really.”
“Yes, well,” Rose said, interrupting the conversation. “Shall we continue with our trek?”
“Yes! Of course!” Jade turned suddenly and absconded in the direction they needed to go, eager to get away from the embarrassing conversation. John shook his head with a strangely proud look on his face before following after her.
Rose took another drink from her bottle, took a steadying breath and continued after their classmates with Dave taking the rear. He had his digital camera out and at the ready by now, ready to take whichever picture either caught his fancy or may have been important for their monster hunt. He had his film camera hanging around his neck as well, though at a different height from his digital one so they wouldn't clack into one another. Dave fingered the film camera for in case he found something he wanted a picture of, though he had to be careful about the number of pictures he took. His film one didn't take as many as his digital one.
When they finally reached the area Jade had found the footprints in Dave immediately began taking pictures of everything, including some of the others in mid-movement. His digital camera was advanced enough that he didn’t have to worry about any blur effects caused by movement, though that would have been a cool effect regardless, leading to some pretty interesting shots. He briefly contemplated using his film camera but decided he didn't want to waste the film. He stayed on the periphery of the area and let his sister and Jade do their examining thing. John came to join him at his side while the girls looked around for the footprints.
“Wow, those are pretty bad,” John said, looking over Dave’s shoulder as he flipped through the pictures he’d already taken on. Some of them weren’t that great, though Dave had a feeling they had different definitions of ‘bad.’
“No way,” Dave said, immediately doubling down on his art. “Take this one here. This is clearly a work of art. Look at Jade’s expression here—you just can’t get that kind of quality on purpose.”
The look John gave him told Dave the dark-haired boy didn’t believe his bullshit. “Uh-huh. What about that blurry one there? It’s not even in focus.”
“Maybe that’s not what I wanted in focus. Maybe,” Dave took another look at the picture for reference, “maybe I meant to have that branch be in focus. Face it, dude, we as a society don’t take nearly enough branch-shots. Trees, sure. What else would Bob Ross paint if not a bunch of shitty trees? Shrubs, maybe, for, like, home/garden magazines. But branches? Nah, that shit’s just fucking underrepresented in landscape art. Where’s the respect for nature? The bravery to push boundaries in film, to—”
“Dave’s bullshitting you, John,” Rose said like the traitor she is. She didn’t even have the grace to look back at them, instead focused on the forest floor. “He takes pictures badly on purpose. It’s his Thing.”
Dave rolled his eyes, not that anyone could tell from behind his shades. “It’s called Irony. You know, the thing I live my life by, sis? You’d think you’d have noticed by now.”
“You’d think,” Rose muttered distractedly, obviously not paying attention to the conversation as she pulled back a branch from a low shrub like it held to answers to life’s greatest mysteries. Rude.
John looked thoughtful, pursing his lips slightly as he continued to look at the pictures Dave had already taken. “So you take them bad on purpose?” He nodded his head. “Makes sense. I don’t think you could get them that bad on accident.”
“THANK-you,” Dave exclaimed. “At least somebody gets it.” He shot a pointed look to the back of Rose’s head. She said nothing and continued her examination of the area.
“Oh, I didn’t say I got it,” John said cheerfully with a grin on his face. “I just said it made sense now that I know you’re doing this on purpose.”
Jade interrupted with an exclamation before Dave could do more than sputter. “Oh! I think I found them!”
Rose was immediately at her side. Her eyes widened comically. Dave didn’t need much more incentive to take a look with his camera at the ready. John followed along, also intrigued.
The group stared at the set of footprints for about a minute without saying anything. The silence was broken by Dave’s cameras working overtime to capture the image from almost every angle he could think of. He took both his usual quality of ironic pictures, including a selfie or two with both cameras, as well as quite a few of ‘actual’ quality that he felt Rose would appreciate more. At the moment, he didn’t care if this whole thing turned out to be an elaborate hoax; these were some quality pictures he was taking, and he was going to have fun this weekend developing them with different filters. He was already brainstorming ways to Photoshop Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff dressed up like discount detectives fumbling over the prints.
With a comically huge magnifying glass, of course. Dirk would appreciate that.
“…what am I looking at, exactly?” John asked, tilting his head to the side. “I know there’s something weird about them, I just…what am I looking at?”
Jade had been right at lunch; they were huge, easily twice the size of a normal adult human’s footprint. That wasn’t the only thing strange about them, though. The prints looked to be an odd conglomeration of human and animal with a human heel and arch with an animal—maybe a dog?—front paw print with eight toe/claws. Jade had a proud look on her face directed specifically at John in a teasing I-told-you-so kind of way. The only time Dave had seen a more self-satisfied smile was on Roxy after she proved to Dirk that a buttload was an actual unit of measurement. John, for lack of a better word, looked confuddled. It looked like his worldview had shifted and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with that information yet. Rose, on the other hand, looked about as ecstatic as Rose could look with eyes wide and mouth tilted upward in a jubilant smile.
Dave was about only two-thirds sure that their ‘mysterious creature’ was still just a hoax. He was still prepared for the possibility of there being an actual monster, but he didn’t expect that feeling to slowly start to take over the logical parts of his mind. If this really was a hoax, it was a well-made one. He took a few more pictures and looked at the rest of the group.
“So, what now?”
Rose snapped her head back up to stare at her twin incredulously. “I’m sorry—what now? Dave, don’t you see?” She gestured somewhat frantically at the footprints. “We have actual proof of the zoologically dubious! Proof, of Horrorterrors, of eldritch beings beyond our comprehension, of cryptids-!”
“Oh! My cousin loves cryptids,” Jade interjected thoughtfully. “Particularly if they’re blue…”
“Yeah, but he’s weird,” John said distantly, still staring at the prints. “And I think he’s mostly just interested in trying to get credit for finding them, not in the weird monsters themselves.”
“At any rate, it is rather impossible to determine any sort of coloration, blue or otherwise, based solely on these prints,” Rose mused thoughtfully. By this point Dave knew she was fully ignoring anything and everything that wasn’t going to help her find whatever…thing…made the prints. “Maybe if we had a fur or skin sample… Dave, make yourself useful and look around for any other sign of our Mysterious Creature.” Great. Dave could hear the capitalization in her words—now the creature had a name. She’d probably want to keep it now.
Dave turned to John and nudged him in the shoulder. “Hey. Want to help me look around for ‘clues?’ Otherwise, I’m pretty sure Rose’ll find some other bullshit job for you to do.”
John was silent for a moment. He shook his head and turned to Dave, though his gaze strayed back towards the footprints every now and then. “Yeah,” he replied, turning his gaze back towards Dave. “Yeah, let’s…find a monster, I guess?”
Jade, in the background, was gesturing around the area wildly as she spoke animatedly with Rose. “I really think our Mysterious Creature” -great, the name was catching on- “might be able to fly! I looked around for a bit before I left for school, and these are the only prints around, at least that I could see on the ground for about twenty or so feet.”
“—and if we measure the length of space between the two prints we have here, we can approximate the height and stride of the Creature,” Rose agreed eagerly. “If we look at the depth of the prints as well, it should also be possible to determine an approximation of its weight as well.” At least the two girls seemed to be having fun with their “Mysterious Creature.” Which he was only going to call ironically. No way was he going to let his sister have this one.
Dave and John looked at each other and shrugged, heading off to scope out the area for anything ‘strange.’ John quickly regained his cheer and started humming under his breath while the two boys examined the bushes for broken twigs or whatever the fuck it was Rose wanted them to look for. The tune was strangely familiar though Dave couldn’t quite place it at the moment.
“You know,” John spoke up suddenly to Dave. “I’m a little disappointed about our monster.”
Dave rose an eyebrow in disbelief to the background sounds of the girls continuing their exploration, spitting out theories one after the other. Part of him was a little grateful that there was at least one person not willing to call it a Mysterious Creature. “Really. Not exciting enough for you?”
John shrugged, looking at some scratch marks on a tree. They looked like something had brushed against the tree, but other than that there was nothing remarkable about them—no fur, no blood smears, no hint of scales or skin left behind. Dave took a picture of it anyway, even though they didn’t look any different from any other marks on any of the other trees around them. “I guess. Mostly, I think I’d be excited if it were a ghost instead of just some dumb monster.”
“Ghost?” A little weird, but then again. They were currently in the middle of the woods looking around for ‘proof’ of Bigfoot or something. Dave wasn’t going to judge. “Why ghosts?”
John’s face lit up with the biggest, most genuine grin that Dave had ever seen. He was struck for a moment before his classmate opened his mouth. “Because then we’d be just like the Ghostbusters!” Okay, he was going to judge a little.
Dave, having been raised on irony since he left his mother’s womb and entered the greatest irony of all called life, was disturbed to note that there was not an ounce of insincerity in either John’s expression or voice. He stared at John who didn’t so much as twitch. If this was one of Dirk or Bro’s shitty animes, he’d almost expect there to be sparkles around the kid’s eyes.
“Holy shit, you’re serious. You actually like that…series?” Dave had a few other choice words to describe the trash pile that was the Ghostbusters series but he at least had some tact. It was kind of stupid to insult the guy’s movie preferences, particularly since they were pretty much alone in the woods together. It was frankly impressive in its own way that John apparently genuinely liked those movies without even a hint of irony. A small part of Dave wondered what it would be like to like something without irony being involved in some small way.
John had the most offended expression Dave had ever seen, which was impressive since that was one of the main expressions that the Striders and Lalondes shared, particularly in their more melodramatic moments. “Of course! I mean, obviously the second movie’s the best,” was he serious? “though even that’s not as good as Con Air.” John looked contemplative as he pulled aside some ferns to show—gasp!—undisturbed soil. “Well, to be fair, nothing is, so I guess that’s not really fair to other movies, you know?”
Dave chuckled and shook his head in disbelief. His camera hung free from his neck since it was highly unlikely they’d actually find more ‘evidence.’ “And everyone says I have horrible taste,” he mused. John turned indignant so Dave raised his hands in fake surrender. “You’ve seen my photos; you know how I feel about the whole ‘mainstream’ view of art or whatever. I say you do you. If you like those movies, own it.”
John snickered. “Yeah, your pictures kind of suck,” he agreed. He elbowed Dave in the side, accidentally knocking into the film camera and swinging it from side to side. The shutter went off a few times which didn’t really bother Dave. Wild, out of focus photos had their own artistic merit. Dave took an ironic bow in thanks for John’s acknowledgement towards Dave’s art.
“Aww, they’re bonding!” Jade’s voice came from the side. She and Rose stood to the side watching them in amusement. “You’re always telling me to try and make more friends, John. I’m glad to see you’re taking your own advice!”
John and Dave looked at each other awkwardly for a moment, though it probably only felt awkward to Dave. He could see Rose smirking from where she stood. John shrugged and smiled brightly.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right!” Rose’s smirk only grew larger. Dave’s eyes narrowed behind his shades. Two could play at this game.
“It looks like you two are getting pretty friendly, too,” he said nonchalantly. The way Rose’s expression froze up was beautiful, especially after Jade pulled her into a full-body hug. Dave smirked her way in revenge. If there was one thing that Rose was even more awkward than Dave at, though she tried to pretend otherwise, it was receiving any kind of physical affection in any way shape or form.
Jade grinned widely. “This is great! Our Mysterious Creature may have been a bust, but we’re all friends now! I think that’s a good trade.”
John blinked curiously as Dave frowned. “Wait, what do you mean it was a bust?”
Jade released Rose from her grasp to shrug. To Dave’s amusement his sister still had a shell-shocked look on her face though she was trying valiantly to pretend that there was nothing amiss. “Well, you two didn’t find any other proof, or evidence, or anything right?” They nodded in agreement. “We didn’t either. There’s only the two footprints that even show that anything was even there…if it ever was.” She frowned down at the ground, looking upset that there didn’t seem to be any Mysterious Creature out there waiting to be discovered.
Rose was similarly disappointed. “In the face of an absence of corroborating evidence, it is most probable that our Mysterious Creature, indeed, is a hoax.” She paused for a moment. “This is such bullshit.”
“Such bullshit,” Jade agreed easily, though she at least seemed accepting of the idea. She looked around the group for a moment and gasped dramatically. “Wait. What time is it? Didn’t you all need to be back soon?”
Dave stiffened for a moment and whipped his phone out of his pocket to check the time. John leaned over to check for himself and groaned. “Dad’s going to kill me if I don’t get back soon.”
“Same for us,” Dave acknowledged, locking eyes with Rose. In the face of her disappointment, though, she didn’t seem to be as concerned as Dave was. Not that he visibly showed it, though. Striders had an image to maintain, after all. “We should head back.” He did not look forward to trying to explain to Bro about why they were late if they took any longer. If worst came to worst, he’d have Rose call and explain. Bro tended to be less strict with the girls. Though, what constituted as ‘less’ strict probably wasn’t that much different from normal, anyway.
Jade started packing away her compass and extra water bottles as Dave carefully put his camera back in its carrying bag. John and Rose, being the helpful ones, stood to the side and watched. Jade hefted her bag back onto her shoulders and pointed in a random direction that Dave assumed was back the way they came. “Let’s go!”
The walk back to the park seemed to pass quicker going back than it did coming the other way, somehow. Despite not finding their Mysterious Creature, their spirits were lifted in some way. Rose and Jade passed the time talking about possible environments for other cryptids and the best ways to go about finding them while John tried to enthusiastically sell Dave on some of his other, more questionable movies.
“Yeah, Armageddon’s pretty bad, and Bruce Willis tries his best, but Liv Tyler is really who saves the movie for me,” John said animatedly. It was amusing how much he apparently loved disaster movies—both about ‘actual’ disasters and movies that were disasters in and of themselves. Dave did love layers of irony, and was pleasantly surprised that John’s tastes ran the same way…in a sense. “She’s pretty much my favorite actress of all time. Who can hate her?”
“Yeah, she’s pretty hot,” Dave replied easily. “But I don’t know if looks are enough to save that dumpster fire.” John shrugged again, not really having a good response to that. Dave cast around for some other topic, not really wanting to deal with awkward silences. Those didn’t seem to have a place right now. Plus, it was interesting to learn more about his fr—classmate. “So, is your dad super strict or something? You said something about him killing you if you’re not back soon.”
John grimaced but gave a short laugh that came out as a single huff of breath. “Well, sort of. Meal time is just taken really, really seriously at my house.” He gave another laugh with a grin. “For my birthday every year I get about six or seven cakes. I hate cake. So much.”
Dave nodded in commiseration. He couldn’t quite relate to the cake thing—he and Rose only ever had a single cake to share, just like Dirk and Roxy—but he definitely understood parents going overboard when it came to their interests. “That is just way too much cake,” he agreed. “So why go overboard for something you don’t like?”
John gave a considering hum. “I think because my family can’t decide on which cake they want to make? If that makes any sense.” John sent Dave another grin. “I’m pretty sure they just decided, eh, screw it, we’re going to make ALL of the cake.”
Dave tried to think if there was any weird food tradition that his family had for him and Rose. “For our birthday, I usually get a whole gallon of apple juice all to myself that no one else is allowed to drink from.” Dave allowed a small grin to settle on his face. “It’s kind of the best.”
John looked ahead thoughtfully. He turned his head slightly and gave Dave a partially worried look. There was a strange gleam in his eye that Dave couldn’t identify. “Hey… have you ever seen the movie Little Monsters?”
“Only ironically,” Dave replied. “Dirk—my brother—and I had a weekend once where we binged on all those really weird eighties movies and critiqued them.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m pretty sure I could make a better one.” Well, for a different definition of ‘better,’ at any rate.
John still had his worried expression. “Maybe, but do you remember what Howie Mandel did with the apple juice?” Dave’s movement halted. He stumbled over a tree root that poked out of the ground. He wasn’t saying what Dave thought he was saying, was he? “…how do you know you’ve been drinking actual apple juice and not someone’s piss?”
Dave gaped at him. “What—no, no, they wouldn’t—” He couldn’t finish that sentence, because the possibility was there. At the very least, it would have—no, only could have, don’t go there—been done ironically. He was about to protest some more when he saw John’s expression crack a bit at the sides into a mischievous smile. “Oh, you asshole.” He called up ahead to Rose, who had continued on with Jade, not noticing the crisis Dave was experiencing. “Rose, John’s trying to ruin apple juice for me!”
Rose turned back with a bemused, questioning quirk to her eyebrow. Jade grinned in exasperation, rolling her eyes at John who smiled back unrepentantly. “Yeah, he’ll do that,” she said. “John, stop scarring our new friends for life. I can’t believe I have to be the one to tell you that.” She shook her head.
“Heh heh, sorry!” John apologized with a large grin on his face. He continued walking towards the girls, Dave following along with him. “I couldn’t resist.”
“Don’t you know a man’s apple juice is sacred?” Dave shook his head in mock sorrow. “You are a dangerous man, John Egbert.”
“Yeah, but we had fun.”
Dave remained silent for a moment, thinking. Yeah, he decided. The trip had been fun. He turned to John once more and started rapping about their Mysterious Creature hunt to Rose’s consternation, John’s mild exasperation and amusement, and Jade’s cheerful laughter.
Dinner that night was quiet, in part because Dave was content to think to himself about which pictures he took that he wanted to keep and which ones were utterly un-savable or boring. He still hadn’t had the chance to check out the few new pictures that were taken at the end yet since he and Rose made it home just in time to set the table for dinner. But that was part of the fun. Developing pictures that you didn’t know what they were was a mystery in itself, and would hopefully prove a better one than their Mysterious Creature had been. The only mystery there was in how they’d managed to get back in time before being declared officially late.
Lil’ Cal was waiting for them in the entrance hall with a comically large clock sitting in his lap. Dave couldn’t help but feel like he’d dodged a puppet bullet.
Rose was also keeping to herself through dinner. He could only guess what was on his sister’s mind, though he had an idea it was probably about whoever had set up their hoax and why. For attention, most likely. Dave was also curious, but ultimately had decided that it didn’t really matter who had done it. He’d actually had fun chasing the unknown with his sister and their classmates. It still felt a little sudden to declare that they were suddenly friends, but they were definitely more than just school acquaintances now.
“Okay, I think we’ve bullshitted enough,” Roxy declared, setting her fork down on her plate a little harder than she probably meant. Dave twitched in his seat, not quite able to fully suppress his jolt of surprise. Rose looked up sharply, also clearly startled out of her musings.
Roxy looked at the two younger twins expectantly. Her eyes shifted from Dave to Rose and back. Dirk was slouched in his seat, picking at what was left on his plate, but he, too, was paying attention to the two younger siblings. Bro, sat straight in his seat and drinking slowly from his glass, was inscrutable as fuck.
“How did your meet-up with your not-friends-but-classmates go? Spill all the deets.”
Dave and Rose exchanged looks across the table. Rose returned her gaze to her plate, daintily picking up a piece of chicken with her fork.
“Ultimately disappointing, I would say. At the very least, our main purpose was for naught,” she took a bite of chicken and chewed carefully. “Other than that, it was fine.”
Roxy stared at her for a moment, clearly waiting for a further explanation. When none came she growled in frustration. “And? Is that it? That can’t be it.”
Dave decided to speak up since Rose clearly wasn’t going to. “We found out about a weird thing in school from a supernatural tabloid. By the way, did you know our town has a supernatural tabloid? Because I sure didn’t.”
“Dave.”
“Right, focus.” He took a drink of delicious apple juice that was most definitely not anyone’s piss. He’d checked the seal and opened a brand new bottle just to be sure. Goddamnit, John. “So, we found out about it from our classmates, we all decided to check it out, and we found some really freaky footprints but ultimately decided the whole thing was a hoax.”
“What was a hoax?” Dave sat up straight in his chair and faced the doorway to the dining room. Mom entered with a sweep of her lab coat and scarf, looking tired but ultimately happy to make it to dinner even if she was fashionably late.
“Mom,” Dirk said, handing her a spare plate while Roxy passed over some of the plates of food. “I thought you were going to be working late.”
“I was,” she said, cheerfully loading her plate with food. “But then it turned out that the minor emergency they were keeping me there for was actually another department’s problem, so I left. What was this I was hearing about a hoax?”
Dave rushed to retell his story. “Rose and I met up with classmates to look for a monster in the murder woods ‘cause we found a story in the supernatural tabloids. It turned out to be a hoax.”
Mom scoffed elegantly. “If it was a story from our town’s tabloids, I’m not surprised.”
Rose tightened her grip on her fork. “It’s still better to investigate such things for yourself instead of blindly deciding something is or isn’t real.”
“True,” Mom mused. “But enough of that. How was everyone’s day?” Rose glared at her plate sullenly. Dave nudged her feet under the table. She always tended to take Mom’s words and actions more harshly than they were probably meant to be. Roxy took the opportunity to launch into a story that happened at lunch between her friends with Dirk throwing in a detail every now and then. Mom offered Bro a smile which he returned with a smirk. Rose continued eating in silence while Dave thought back to his Photoshop project for the weekend.
There was also school the next morning to think about. He didn’t want to go back to ignoring Jade and John except for the occasional conversation in class about whatever topic they were being made to talk about. Dave also wasn’t sure exactly where they stood, though. Would it be okay to just approach them and start up a random conversation? Would they want to do the same? What would they even talk about, though, without the Mysterious Creature there to provide a common topic?
Well, Dave decided later, as he was getting ready to go to bed, that would be a problem for tomorrow. He’d figure out what to talk about when he saw them, and hopefully, the four of them—Dave, Rose, John and Jade, would start to become actual friends.
It was close to midnight when Mom started turning off the house lights for the night. She’d already checked in on the kids who, excepting Dirk and his penchant for late night projects, were already asleep in bed. She’d made sure to let her eldest son know he only had another ten minutes before it was lights out completely. Whether he listened was really just a question of how stressed out he was at the moment.
She made sure to add checking on him again to her mental checklist of things to do before bed.
“You going to be up late tonight?”
Roxanne looked over her shoulder from where she was refolding a blanket to put back on the couch over to Derrick who leant against to open doorway. That silly puppet of his was draped casually over his shoulders and offered her a wave. She smiled at him.
“Not too late. I want to check on a few things first, and then I’ll be straight to bed.”
Derrick smirked, snorting lightly. If it weren’t for the fact that they’d been married for almost twenty years and together even longer she was sure she would have missed it. “Only because there aren’t any women waiting for us up there.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Are there women waiting for us?”
Roxanne offered her own smirk with a hand on her hip. “Only if you aren’t telling me something.”
“Nah. Just puppets.”
She shook her head with a fond smile. “Off with you, then. Oh,” Roxanne remembered, stopping him before he left, “can you check on Dirk for me? I told him to get to bed soon, but you know how he is.”
Derrick shrugged and started for the stairs. “I’ll tell him I’ll shut off the power to his room if he’s not in bed asleep in the next five minutes.”
“Thanks, darling,” Roxanne murmured, looking over towards her favorite statue of Zazzerpan the Learned. He was a challenge to keep the dust off of, but he was worth it. She approached the wizard statue that took up a fairly large portion of the front entrance. Roxanne gazed up into the marble eyes of Zazzerpan and sighed. This was going to be a long night, or at the very least it would feel like one. She ran her hand down the stone carving of his robes, pressing on the indentation where one of the stars on his robes was. Seamlessly and noiselessly the statue slid back on its pedestal a foot or so revealing a set of stairs that led down.
Roxanne walked down, barely hearing the statue move to seal up the entrance once more. Hopefully she’d be finished soon and could finally make it to bed for once at a reasonable hour.