Three Conversations in the Calm Before the Storm

or alternatively: The Universe Could Use LinkedIn

"It was horrible, Sam. I've never been that afraid in my life. I keep seeing guys in hoodies and swallowing my lungs a little bit."

Sam hugged his shoulders a little tighter, resting her cheek on the left one. They were sitting at the end of the bleachers farthest from the school, on the second row from the top. A few other small groups sat on the bleachers eating lunch, but none were close enough to overhear. "I'm so sorry that happened," Sam said lowly. Tucker glanced at her and was a bit surprised at what he saw. She didn't look sympathetic or scared so much as angry.

Well, actually, this was Sam, so he didn't know what he'd expected.

Sam squeezed one more time and then let go to start arranging her lunch tray. (Three iceberg lettuce leaves, chips, and a muffin—the cafeteria really could afford to improve its vegetarian options.) "I hate to say this, but...is there any possibility he could come back? For you, I mean." Her furtive glance at him looked nervous this time, as if she were afraid she'd overstepped, but it was a valid question.

"I found out this morning that the police sent a car to sit outside my house late last night. My dad talked to them, and they don't think it's likely, but they're going to keep the car out there for a week or so just in case, and then my dad has a cousin who's a cop who's going to come stay with us for a while. With a gun and stuff. So that's...nice, I guess. 24/7 police detail. Tons of fun."

Sam sighed in relief like one of her mom's heavy designer purses had been dropped on her chest. She picked at a lettuce leaf. "Good. I'd like to keep you around for a little while at least." She paused. "So, I guess...what now?"

"Uh...what do you mean?"

Sam took a big bite of muffin and then tried to talk around it. "I meungh, luff, wha—?" She gestured expansively with the hand holding the muffin, and Tucker snorted into his boiled chicken while she huffed in frustration at her inability to articulate exactly what she was trying to say. "Whuh do you do nowfgh, whuth thuh cashe?" She swallowed. "With the case. Are you going to have to testify again or something?" she tacked on almost as an afterthought.

"I mean, maybe? They have our number. And my parents want me to visit Tristan tomorrow. But other than that, I guess just wait for the police to solve it and stuff."

Sam frowned. "I can't believe they haven't caught this asshole yet. I mean, Chicago PD is on this. Chicago. If they couldn't solve it after three people died in their own city, I don't know if Amity PD really stands a chance."

"I dunno, Chicago PD is more overworked than Florida—" Tucker paused, letting his mind catch up with him. "Wait, three people in Chicago?"

"Yeah. Well, sort of. I looked into the case after...you know, Kwan's mom"–she looked away guiltily, the way people do when something incomprehensible happens to someone else–"and there's a third case that they're on the fence about attributing to this guy. Software engineer in the 'burbs named Nicholas something. His case didn't have the same 'characteristics' as the others, whatever that means—lot of journalists are pretty sure he had different wounds than the other two in Chicago—but the chief of police announced that they did find evidence of a connection in his house."

"Huh." Tucker took another thoughtful bite of his chicken and bacon-sprinkled mashed potatoes and chewed slowly. They lapsed into silence. The bleachers creaked under them as a cool autumn wind rustled the painted white lines in the grass of the football field and whistled between the twin prongs of the field goal. For a second, the prongs reminded Tucker of horns, which reminded him of the other thing he'd wanted to tell Sam about, the thing he'd been dying to tell the only person he could ever since his close call. "There was one more thing, though, about the library."

Sam looked up with concern and lettuce between her teeth. "What is it?"

"Look, I know how you feel about this stuff, but...you remember how when we were kids I would get those, like, feelings?"

"Dude, eight puberty jokes literally just flashed before my eyes."

"Yeah, okay, me too, but that's not the point. I mean, like, the weird feelings. The creepy ones."

Sam raised one eyebrow. "You're not making this any better, just a lot more vaguely worrying."

Tucker snorted, then caught himself. "Ok, but you know what I mean, dude."

Sam's slight smile drooped, and she crossed her arms, looking uncomfortable. "Yeah, I know what you mean. And you know what I think, so do we have to have this conversation?"

"But dude, I got it again that day. Stronger than it's ever been. That's how I knew to follow Tristan into the bathroom."

Sam snorted and then tried to hide it behind a cough. Tucker stared at her. "What?"

"It's nothing, go on."

"Wait, I want to hear what you were thinking."

"No, seriously, it's super insensitive and I feel guilty! Don't make me say it, Tuck!"

As a matter of historical importance, it was extremely hard for Tucker and Sam to maintain a serious conversation. "Okay, but now I have to know."

"Aughhh, fine! Just, your weird, creepy feeling prompted you to follow your cousin into the bathroom?"

Tucker stared at her for a second, then burst into that kind of wheezing, scandalized laughter you get when you really shouldn't be laughing at something but you can't stop. He punched her. Between wheezes he whisper-yelled, "Sam, what the hell? I don't want that in my brain; why would you even think that?!"

"My sense of humor is 100% your fault and you know it. I was so pure before you corrupted me."

"Please, that degree of nasty can't be learned."

Sam let him stop chuckling before re-broaching the subject. "Ok, but that aside, I thought you stopped having these in, like, eighth grade."

Tucker shifted uncomfortably. "Nah, I just kind of stopped talking about them. I knew how you felt about, like...stuff."

She cringed. "You know I believe you about the feelings, Tuck! I think it's totally possible the human subconscious can pick up on danger signs the conscious mind can't. It's the other part that I can't get behind."

"Ok, well, the Tristan thing was just a regular vanilla feeling. If vanilla tasted like nightmares. But do you remember when Lancer introduced that new kid?"

"Yeah, Danny something. You looked like you were tweaking," Sam said warily. She munched on a chip and offered him one. He waved her off, which made her somewhat worried face gear-shift into exceedingly concerned.

"Yeah, well, he also gave me a vibe. But not, like, a danger vibe, just a wrong vibe. A lunch lady vibe."

"Tucker…."

"Yeah, I know."

"I just...you were a little kid. And the afterlife and the paranormal, they're not real, Tucker. They can't be. Dead is dead."

"But if it's not—" Tucker cut himself off. "Okay, fine, but you believe the subconscious thing, and Dennis Whatever gave me a seriously weird feeling."

They both paused. "Wait," Sam said slowly, "...didn't Lancer say he was from Chicago?"

"...Yep." He popped the 'p.' His eyes were wide.

Sam sat up straight, eyes flicking once around the field. "But it couldn't be him, right? I mean, he's our age!"

"The guy in the bathroom definitely seemed taller." Tucker shuddered. "I think? It was dark, though, and it happened really fast. But you're right, though, there's no way…."

"Yeah, of course, yeah!" Sam laughed nervously. The bell sounded in the distance, and she started picking up her trash and putting it on the tray in hurried, jerky movements. "That would be ridiculous."

"Totally. Completely ridiculous."

They avoided each other's eyes the whole way across the field.

~(*0*)~

Sam couldn't forget about the conversation for the rest of the school day. Three p.m. found her waiting outside the school and replaying it again and again in her mind, the way she used to replay various Black Veil Brides songs during her gothier phase (she had toned down the goth about halfway through sophomore year). Usually at this time she would be going somewhere with Tucker or a more peripheral friend, but today her dad had said he would pick her up from school, what with the two actual murders and one attempted murder that had occurred in the last month or so in normally tranquil Amity Park. And Jeremy Manson picking his daughter up from school? Sam had accepted the offer mainly to either witness the highly improbable or call his bluff.

It was looking like the latter as Sam's digital watch blinked its cheerful neon way toward 3:30. She was good and steamed both figuratively and literally (once the wind had died down it'd quickly become a hot September afternoon, and the front of the school provided little cover for Sam's sensitive vampire-esque skin tone) when a (not the, a) family Mercedes carefully signaled and pulled up a tidy seven inches from the curb where Sam was standing. Jeremy Manson opened the passenger window and leaned across from the driver's seat toward Sam. He looked utterly unruffled. "Samantha, sorry I'm late. Last-minute problems at work. Do you want to drive?"

Did Sam want to drive? She was still learning, so she needed the practice, and it would give her an excuse to avoid the conversation. But if she agreed, she would be supporting through passivity the way he'd redirected the conversation to completely pass over the fact that he'd left his daughter standing alone in front of the school for 27 minutes with a serial killer on the loose. Sam fixed him with cold eyes. "I'll pass this time, if you don't mind."

Something in Jeremy Manson's face seemed to fall, or maybe crack a little and flake away, but he was still smiling when he answered "Suit yourself" and unlocked the passenger door. Sam scanned quickly to make sure no one saw her climbing into the sleek blue Mercedes. As she sat down, she caught her dad running one fumbling hand through his platinum blonde hair, mussing it up just a bit at the back so that it stood up the wrong way against the (stylish and completely vegan-unfriendly) leather-and-chrome headrest. So maybe not so utterly unruffled.

The keychains on her backpack jingled as she played with them, not looking at her dad. The black backpack on her lap turned the car into a mountainous environment, and the atmosphere between them helped complete the illusion: it felt prickly with phantom pine needles. Mr. Manson signaled a left turn, completed it in silence, and then side-eyed Sam once he was on a straightaway. "So, Samantha. How was school?"

Sam shrugged. "Fine. Average."

"And your friend Tucker? Is he okay?"

She snuck a glance at him over the Mountain of Zippers and Sorrow, but his eyes were firmly on the road. It was impressive that he'd heard about what happened to Tucker and remembered it, even if it was weird how he still referred to him as "your friend Tucker" despite having had him over for dinner many, many times over the course of quite literally years. They only knew one Tucker! No one knew more than one Tucker. "Yeah, he's, he's good. Seemed okay at school today."

"He came to school? Good for him."

"Yeah, I thought so, too."

"Mhm."

The conversation wheezed out one last breath and keeled over on the side of the road. Mr. Manson checked for it in his rear view mirror, then apparently decided to leave it for dead. Sam went back to jingling her keychains.

It was another good five minutes of trekking through the suburban jungle before they spoke again. "So, Samantha, I was thinking." He paused, and Sam waited for him to go on before another slightly frazzled glance at her in the rear view mirror revealed he expected prompting. She mustered a "what?" at the same time he gave up on her and started in with "Remember whe—sorry."

"No, go on. What were you thinking?"

Jeremy Manson breathed in and watched the windshield more determinedly. "Remember when you were little and you took ice skating lessons?"

She snorted, but not mean-spiritedly. That was a good memory. "Yeah, what about it?"

"How would you want to go ice skating weekend after next? We can get dinner in the mall and then you can show your dad some moves."

Now Sam was the one who found herself frazzled. She looked out the window and ran one hand through her hair, pulling a few strands out of the usual half-up black ponytail. "Uhh, you have time?"

"I should be able to get out early that Sunday. Maybe seven or so?"

Okay, woah. Jeremy Manson had free time? His time was money; it was most certainly never free.

Another important thing to consider: It would be awkward as hell. They barely spent time together as it was, and this car ride was a shining example of how it usually went.

She needed a buffer. "Can I bring Tucker?"

Mr. Manson stared straight ahead, tapping a steady rhythm with his thumbs on the (vegan-unfriendly!) steering wheel. "Well, I thought it would be fun if it were just us. Like when you were little." He checked both side mirrors without catching her eyes.

And that was when she grasped the full deviousness of his plan. The absolute asshole! It wasn't just that he was pretending nothing had ever gone wrong between them and he could just pick up where he left off, the way her parents always did after arguments—the way she hated. No, this was more than that. He was going to take away her ammunition. He was going to free up two hours for her, and then whenever they got into their next screaming fight where they tried to control every aspect of her life and she pointed out that they were barely even in her life otherwise, they would point out this one day. Where they went ice skating. As if that had fixed everything and they had ice skated right back up to the moral high ground. Well, tough break, Jeremy: You can't even skate, much less skate uphill.

Sam white-knuckled her sharpest-edged keychain and plastered on a patented Manson smile. "Sorry, I just remembered! I'm busy all that weekend, huge project and stuff, you know how it is." She stared him full in the eyes. "How about the next one?"

He looked away. "I'm not sure. I can try, but you know how things come up." His eyes pleaded with her in the dusty side mirror.

Sam drew in breath to say something snarky and accusatory that would inevitably lead to a fight–and something caught her eye out the window.

They were driving past Masters Park and its associated library. The squat building's roof had an overhang that, with the sun overhead, drenched the walls in heavy shadow. A "closed" sign was visible in the darkened glass door, and left-behind police tape fluttered and writhed in the breeze as the library slowly slid out of view behind the car. Funny how a bit of context could give an unassuming building such an aura of menace.

Tucker had almost died on Saturday. He could have died, just like that, if the attacker'd had, say, another knife or a few more seconds. That was a legitimate possibility. And the killer was still at large.

Sam thought of Grandma Ida.

Sam's grandma had lived with them for nearly all of Sam's childhood. When Sam had come down with the flu in the middle of the night and been sick on the bathroom floor, it had been Grandma Ida she'd woken up to deal with the mess. When she'd brought home her report cards, it had been Grandma Ida who'd read over the comments with her on the big squashy beige couch, and Grandma Ida had played heavy metal on the radio as she drove Sam to soccer practice in fifth grade, then Frank Sinatra when she picked her up later. Sam's most vivid childhood memory was of falling into those white pleather seats and staring up through the sunroof at the moths playing in the golden streetlights as Grandma Ida's husky voice sang the wrong lyrics to "Fly Me to the Moon."

Grandma Ida had passed away when Sam was in seventh grade. She'd been very old.

That had been the start of Sam's occult phase. She'd always casually thought it was cool, she'd watched Ghost Whisperer and Supernatural and a lot of k-dramas of a similar nature, but she'd never thought much about whether she believed in ghosts. That year she researched for hours a day. Her grades slacked off. She started wearing all black and didn't stop. She tried everything she could and more, and her parents got tired of cleaning up candle wax and various odd-smelling herbs from her room and sweeping salt out the window. When they found the scars across her palms from dripping blood on the floorboards under the rug, they put a stop to it, or at least to her more obviously ritualistic eBay purchases.

But by then, they barely needed to do anything. It'd been a full year and she'd gotten zip, zilch, nada from the spirit world. Either the afterlife didn't exist or the Beyond just didn't have time to waste on a spoiled little rich girl. The former was easier to stomach, if only slightly—so that was what she chose to believe.

But that was three years ago; Sam wasn't even thinking about that now. She just thought of Grandma Ida, and how wrecked she would have been if the last words they exchanged hadn't been "I love you."

She slowly let go of her keychain, feeling the suction as the metal unstuck from the grooves of her sweaty palms. She looked out through her own window. "I guess I could shuffle some things around for that Sunday. Seven, right?" (She'd had no plans for Sunday or, in fact, any other day that week.)

Mr. Manson's eyebrows climbed about an inch up his forehead. "Really? I mean, that's great! I'll ask my secretary to put it on my schedule right away." He hit the phone button on his steering wheel and carefully articulated, "Call Margaret," leaning up toward where the car phone's microphone was presumably located in a way that made him look like a particularly ridiculous blonde meerkat. Sam tuned him out.

Curse her sudden pangs of conscience and forethought; what had she gotten herself into?

~(*0*)~

Tucker sat on his plain green bedspread that evening and stared at his phone for a good ten minutes. It was 8 p.m. and all the lights in his room were on, as they had been the night before, and the night before that. His ceiling fan cast revolving swaths of shadow over the electronic knicknacks cluttering up his desk, his dresser, and the free space on his seldom-used bookshelf. As soon as he'd finished his homework, his mom had ducked her head around the doorframe–once again demonstrating her awe- and fear-inspiring Mom Senses–and asked him if he was up to talking to Tristan in the hospital. The staff still didn't want him receiving in-person visitors (something about an infection), but they were letting him receive calls from friends and family as long as they didn't interrupt his sleep schedule.

Come on, Tucker. Mom made meatloaf. It's just this...and then meatloaf. You can do anything with that kind of motivation. He unlocked his phone and dialed the number written on his mom's fancy Nagual's on 7th managerial stationary. He wasn't sure if the ringing in his ears was actually the phone or another one of his hunches. That freaking imaginary mosquito had been just a bit louder ever since fifth period. (You know, the period where Danny Whateverleft to go to the bathroom and didn't come back to Calc BC for another twenty minutes. Totally a coincidence. Yep.)

The click on the other end of the (not literal) line was more of a clatter. Tristan's voice sounded like oatmeal, but like...without any oats. (Thin. It sounded thin.) "Hello?"

"Hey, it's Tuck. Enjoying the hospital cuisine? I've heard it's very avant-garde."

Tristan laughed, a soft, cracked sound. "You sound like the 'bone apple-teeth' meme."

"Don't I always?"

"Pretty much." Tristan paused, and Tucker could faintly hear hospital bustle in the background: phones ringing, people talking in short, clipped tones. When Tristan came back, he sounded more serious. Urgent. "Tuck, there's something I need to know. Do you ever get...feelings?"

Right now Tucker was mostly feeling like he very much wanted to end this conversation, but he forced a laugh. "Please, I'm a real man. My only feelings are hunger and testosterone."

Tristan didn't laugh. "Seriously, Tuck. I mean, like, premonitions. Bad feelings before something happens. My mom says it runs in the family, and you were there when…." He cut off, and his breathing went a little thick and heavy.

Ah, shit. Now Tucker felt weird and guilty. Mostly weird. I mean, this might sound super shallow and insensitive, but the guy was a senior. They didn't hang out much outside of family reunions, but Tristan had always seemed unassailable and cool. Like, he got invited to parties and stuff. And he, like—okay, that was pretty much Tucker's only metric for cool since he had no sense of fashion and wasn't super up on the senior class social hierarchy, but—oh yeah, and he had a hot girlfriend that one time! So anyway, it was weird to hear Tristan sounding...vulnerable.

Ugh. Now he had to tell the truth. "Yeah, dude, I know what you mean. You have it too?"

Tristan laughed. "Yeah. Guess it's not quite so reliable when the bad thing's happening to you, but that's the universe for you."

Tucker flopped backward onto his bed and stared up at his ceiling fan. His mom had turned it on and opened the windows to clear the smell of moldering laundry and sneakers corrupted by gym class from his room, but the air still seemed stagnant and heavy, gelatinous somehow. Looking up at the blades made Tucker feel like he was in a blender. Round and round…. "So does Aunt Lacey have it too? What does she say about it?"

"She says you've always got to follow it or terrible things will happen. Can't say I've stuck to that advice. It's freaky. Plus, not enough hours in the day, you know?" He chuckled bitterly. "But who knows, maybe that's how I ended up here."

There was a pause. Tucker, as a rule, hated pauses, so he broke it first. "Sooo...was there a point to this or are we just generally talking about our feelings?"

Tristan must have dozed off a little, because he snapped back to the conversation with an "Oh! Right. There was something weird during the—in, in the library. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it felt wrong. Like dead things. Or, like, like pollution! Unnatural and, okay, I'll say it, evil. And you know we only get these senses if there's something we've gotta do, or something we've gotta stop." That was news to Tucker, but he kept it to himself. "I've spent a lot of time avoiding it, but sometimes you just can't. And this seems big, like, cannot sidestep big. And I can't do it from here, man. So it has to be you."

Tucker choked on his own spit. He bolted back up into a sitting position while the room seemed to spin in the opposite direction of the fan, so now the fan blades were standing still. "What?! Dude, no, I can't fight a serial killer, are you crazy?! I'm high schooler! I don't even work out!"

"I know it sounds insane, but I get the feeling this isn't the sort of thing that can be solved by one of them. It has to be one of us."

"The hell?! By 'them' do you mean the highly qualified cops who are, like, trained for and experienced in this kind of stuff? Because, like, I make plenty of ACAB jokes but I'm not trying to be some sort of vigilante, man! Just, no! You know what, why am I even trying to justify this; this isn't the sort of thing that you have to justify. It's just not going to happen!"

Tristan sounded like he was fading a little bit when he replied, "Well, good luck trying to get out of it, I guess. But for something this weird, I'm not sure the cosmos will be willing to cut you a break. Speaking from experience."

"But your theory is the universe is letting you out of it because you got stabbed." Tucker started laughing a little hysterically. "Great. Never thought I'd ever be jealous of someone for that."

Tristan was possibly feeling the pain meds; his voice had gone a little wobbly. "Not cool, dude. I'm wounded. Anyway, that's all I've got for you. Thanks for calling, and I guess say hi to Aunt Angela for me."

"Oh, just like that? That's it, you just tell me I've got to single-handedly stop a serial killer because the universe apparently doesn't have a LinkedIn account, and then you want to say hi to my mom."

"Pretty much." Yeah, he was definitely sounding a little loopy. "I delivered the message; not my problem anymore."

"I'm so happy for you."

Okay, yeah, he'd just been stabbed, but was Tristan usually this much of an asshole? No wonder they never hung out. Tucker suddenly felt like this was a very natural place to end the conversation. He dropped his phone away from his ear and was about to hit the big red button when he heard faint squawking from the speaker. He sighed. Against his better judgement, he lifted the phone again. "What was that?"

Tristan's voice was back to being serious, if thready. "I said, for what it's worth, I really am sorry."

"...Thanks, I guess." Tucker hung up the phone, then hung his head and stared at it for a while.

~(*0*)~

It was only four hours later when he was finally getting to sleep and mulling over the conversation in one corner of his mind when he suddenly sat upright, throwing off the covers with the violence of his reaction, and asked the dark, empty room, "Wait, 'wounded.' Was that a fucking pun?!"