Of Monumental Things

or alternatively: Our Heroes Do Some Research

Tucker woke up that morning and almost stepped on Sam, who resembled a black mop wrapped in a blanket on his floor.

Sitting up on the bed, he dangled one foot off and poked his toes into her head. When she didn't respond, he planted his foot where her shoulder appeared to be and shook her back and forth.

"Mfff. Ughhhhhhhh." Sam rolled over and gave him a dirty (if bleary) look. "You're dead meat, Foley."

"Good thing you're vegan."

"I don't like the implications of that sentence."

"Oh. Ohh. Nope, me neither."

While Tucker retrieved his glasses from the bedside table, Sam wrestled one arm out of her blanket cocoon and threw it dramatically over her eyes. "What time is it?" she croaked.

Tucker checked his (silenced) alarm clock. "Uh...Nine-forty. Forty-three, actually."

"Considering I summoned a demon yesterday, you could've at least let me sleep past ten." Sam jolted a little, pulling her arm away from her face as the full import of her sentence hit her. "Wait, that actually happened, right? I wasn't hallucinating?"

"I think so?"

"Then Danny—oh my god, Tucker, we've literally spent hours alone with him!"

Cold mouse feet scurried up and down Tucker's back. "That's...terrifying."

"And is he going to be at school tomorrow? How are we supposed to deal with that? He's literally not human, what the fuck even—" Sam sat up and pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders.

Tucker took a deep breath and physically shook the idea off. He stood up and moved to the window, and the visible blue-white strip of light widened with a screeching sound as he raised the curtains, like their own personal bargain-bin sunrise. Outside, the telephone wires swayed lightly in the breeze, no crows adorning the wooden pole today. Without them, it stood out stark against the sky, a monument to some long-forgotten king.

"So that hunter guy," Sam said from behind him, "he was one of the murder victims, right? Victor Sulker?"

Ugh. It had begun.

"Schulker, with a 'kh' noise. I think it's German," Tucker corrected warily. "Why?"

"So we're investigating the case."

He spun to face her. "No, I'm investigating, extremely reluctantly, because I'm being haunted by the ghosts of the victims and it's very unpleasant. I'm hoping one of them will just tell me something useful and I can tell the police and be done with it. You don't have to do anything."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Please, Tucker, of course I'm investigating. For one thing, I was already super interested in this case, and for another thing I got really bored when you were all jumpy and absent."

That was...exactly what he'd been hoping she'd say, if Tucker was honest with himself. Suddenly, this whole thing had gone from Extremely Ridiculously Horrifyingly Scary to just Extremely Ridiculously Very Scary, and though he felt a little guilt for involving her in his nightmare, it was very easily swamped, dragged under, and drowned mercilessly by his relief.

"Thank god. Uhh, so what do we do next?"

"No clue." She paused. "We could, uh, try to summon—"

"We're not summoning that guy again."

"Then we could...wait, how much do you actually know about this case?"

Tucker cringed. "I've actually kind of been deliberately avoiding it. So, almost nothing."

Sam groaned and flopped backward onto his floor, pulling the blanket up over her face. A few seconds passed in silence.

"Alright," she said, voice muffled. "I guess we're doing some research."

~(*0*)~

Sam leaned over Tucker's shoulder, playing with his Rubix cube, as he tapped away at his laptop. He clicked the first result that contained the keywords "chicago amity murders unsolved news." "Okay, so this article is from the Chicago Sun-Times. Uhh, talking to the families, something about mishandling evidence…" He flicked the touchpad to scroll down the page, then quickly stopped and backtracked. "Oh! Here's a timeline. Okay, first victim was Frankie Young, a—shit. Eleven-year-old from the Chicago suburbs." They paused for a second. "That's horrible," said Tucker.

"Yep."

"...Anyway, he was found on March 15th. The next one was John "Johnny" Mallory–oh, apparently a famous stunt motorcyclist? Found April 30th. And they immediately started investigating the connection because of a pattern...of…" —he scrolled down to see the rest of the text box— "...burns, that the bodies had in common. And it wasn't a detail they'd released to the public."

Sam suddenly slammed the Rubix cube down on the desk, missing his hand by an inch. "Wait, John Mallory was a famous motorcyclist? Is he J13? My friend Geoff–the guy with the weird tan, remember–was super into that guy, and I think his real name is John, or James something?"

"I'll look it up." He opened a new tab and searched "john mallory motorcycle." The top results were all obituary or tribute pages. "Woah. Yeah, it was him. J13, pretty big name. He was a stuntman in Fast and Furious 8, made it to the X Games for motocross at one point. Not huge yet, but people came to his shows with a couple other stunters."

"Yeah, Geoff said he's not a super consistent rider, but he's done some crazy stuff. Some of his videos—like, dude." She leaned down and stole his trackpad, clicking on a video. In it, a motorcyclist in a black helmet with "13" painted on the front zoomed down an almost vertical ramp only slightly wider than his wheels shaped like a ski jump, hit the curve upward at the end, did a few flips and contortions in the air, and after a full loop landed facing backwards on the same tiny ramp.

"Woah." Tucker wasn't a huge sports guy, but damn. "How did this guy not die until now?"

Sam snorted out one of those "I shouldn't be laughing at this" laughs. "I mean, you're not wrong."

The chair squeaked quietly as Tucker closed out the tab and switched back to the previous article. "Okay, the next person discovered was—oh. Kwan's mom." The cheer evaporated from the room, leaving behind a residue of uncomfortable gloom. "June 21st."

Sam stared at the desk, tracing a knot in the wood with a finger, while Tucker closed some other old tabs he had open. "Did you know her?" she asked suddenly.

Tucker looked up at her in surprise. That was a weird tone from Sam. "Uh, not really," he offered. "You?"

"No. I mean, my parents once asked her to take me home after school in, like, elementary school? She made really good popcorn. Although now that I think about it, it probably just came from a bag..." She trailed off.

Outside, a crow screamed. Someone shouted something and slammed their door.

Tucker cleared his throat. "Anyway, after her is where it apparently gets weird." He leaned in to read the small print. "The next victim was Nikolai Technus, this software developer, also from Amity. He was found on...July 4th. Oh, the Fourth of July. And he had a similar burn pattern to the others, but a completely different cause of death. All the others—oh, that's not given, I wonder why this is—but anyway he was blunt force trauma-d. To the head, and also a lot of bruising and internal bleeding. Yowch." Tucker cringed in sympathy.

"The whole burn thing: Does it say what's up with that? Like, pre- or postmortem?" Sam was now rapping the Rubix cube impatiently on the desk, and Tucker was tempted to snatch it, but he wasn't quite willing to risk life and limb. Sam fought dirty.

He skimmed the article above the timeline. "Uhh...yeah, they do say. Postmortem."

"Huh."

Tucker returned to the timeline. "So there's two more victims to date: Amber McClain and Victor Schulker."

"No note on your cousin?" Sam ventured after a brief hesitation.

He skimmed again. "Apparently not. So if the police think it's connected, I guess they're not telling the media."

"Huh. I guess that's good," Sam allowed. "The local media's not handling this great. They've done everything but give this guy a cutesy name."

"There's no name yet?"

"Yeah. Naming them is usually a bad idea. Inspires copycats, for one. Just like releasing modus operandi information, like the stuff about the burns. I actually did read somewhere what the pattern was: small first-degree burns on the sides of the wrists and ankles."

Gross. Also, why would she know that? "Do you just research this stuff for fun?" Tucker asked, a little weirded out.

Sam sniffed. "Not fun, per se. Mainly because when someone inevitably makes a true-crime podcast about this case and starts interviewing locals, I'm gonna be ready."

"Okay, that's slightly less scary." He flicked the trackpad to let the whole article zoom past, then stopped it and half-turned to face her. "What bothers me about this whole thing is don't serial killers usually target a specific type of person? Like a profile? These people have absolutely zilch in common."

Sam frowned and set the Rubix cube with an air of finality on the desk. She backtracked to his bed and dropped heavily onto the foot of it, narrowly avoiding hitting her head on the wall as she bounced. "Yeah, you're right. Completely different ages, men and women, different ethnicities, I think different religions." She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. "I read that Technus had a rap sheet, and I think Schulker was under investigation for something at some point, but Mrs. Ainara certainly didn't have a record."

"They're not even all American—Schulker was from Canada," Tucker noted. Then he paused, considering that more. "Mrs. Ainara came from Japan in her teens, right? And Schulker was a Canadian citizen traveling in the U.S.?"

"I think the news said he came from Germany as a kid, too." Sam propped herself up a little higher. "Look up the others!"

It only took about thirty seconds to kill that train of thought. "Nope. Technus was Polish but born in the U.S., and Mallory was a white-as-bread all-American several-generations citizen. And my cousin's whole family has been here, obviously; I keep forgetting him."

Sam frowned. "So they have absolutely nothing in common."

"Yyyyep."

There was silence in the room for a minute. Sam flopped backward onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, kicking her legs morosely. Tucker peeled himself out of the swivel chair and padded over to turn on the fan, mainly just for something to do. Outside, ragged strips of cloud drifted overhead, their shadows skating over the treetops and the paneled roofs of the one-story houses that surrounded the apartment. Tucker had always liked being able to look out his bedroom window and see people's roofs. It was almost afternoon, and though there was probably a September chill outside, it looked from here like a hot, sunny day.

"The burns thing is weird," Sam piped up after a minute, still staring at the ceiling. He plopped back into his computer chair and spun around to face her. "It's very ritual-y."

"I mean...yeah, but isn't that sort of a serial killer thing? Weird rituals that they do when they kill?"

"Sort of. Not all of them, but a lot, I guess. But that's not what I mean, I mean occult-y. I'm trying to imagine how you would get those kinds of small burns, and I'm thinking candles."

"Well, a serial killer who's into the occult wouldn't surprise me."

"Me neither." She hooked her legs against the side of the bed and used her abs to slowly swing herself up to sitting. "Wait, what was the date when they found Mrs. Ainara's...you know...body again?"

Tucker huffed a nervous laugh at the awkward horribleness of that. It felt…weird to be talking like this about someone they both knew, if only in passing—the mother of one of their classmates. They weren't exactly friends with Kwan, but they'd seen the effect it had had on him. It was disturbing, in a subtle, twist-in-your-gut kind of way, to think that there were probably thousands of people reading about the ending of her life to whom she was just a name, just like the other people on this list were to them. Those people were capable of discussing her casually, clinically, making jokes, using the word "yowch."

It drove home the scope of this thing. Six people was really a small number—but it wasn't really a number.

"Uh. They found her on June 21st."

"...That's the summer solstice."

They looked at each other, wide-eyed. Sam bounced to her feet and quickly crossed the room, grabbing the back of his swivel chair with both hands and leaning forward onto it, so he had to push backward against the floor with his feet to avoid being rolled forward. "Gimme the other dates."

Obligingly, he pulled up the timeline again.

"Don't know about the first one, but April 30th I'm almost positive is a thing. Then there's the summer solstice, which has huge significance to a lot of traditions...dunno about the Fourth of July...August 1st is definitely a holiday, it's one of the Irish ones! I remember because the name was, like, 'nose' something. It involved noses."

Tucker typed it in another tab. "Lughnasadh?"

"Yeah!"

"What does that have to do with noses?"

"It's the '-nasadh,' I guess. Like 'nasal.'"

With mounting urgency, Tucker searched the other dates. Some took more keyword-fishing than others. "Okay, we've got the Ides of March, Walpurgisnacht which is also Beltane Eve, the summer solstice which is Litha and a bunch of other things, July 4th which is still kind of a mystery but this sketchy website says is 13 days after Litha and therefore some sort of Satanist half-birthday kind of thing?—And then Lughnasadh and one more that doesn't seem to have any significance," Tucker recapped.

"Which one is it again?"

"Schulker, September 13."

Sam squinted threateningly over his shoulder at the computer for a minute, while he, too, wracked his brains for any possible way it fit into the pattern.

Suddenly, he straightened so fast he felt something pop in his lower spine. "Friday. September 13 was a Friday."

"Holy—" Sam let go of his chair and stepped back so fast that he didn't have time to stop pushing against her weight with his feet and went rolling backward, almost tipping over when the wheels hit the edge of the carpet. He quickly got out of the seat after that. "Holy shit, Tuck, they all fit," Sam said. "Do the police know about this?!"

"I don't know, maybe? I don't think they've mentioned it." He paced around the room, suddenly filled with nervous energy. When that wasn't enough, he climbed up and started jumping on the bed, running his fingers through his hair, accidentally tugging on his dreads and knocking his glasses down over his nose. "Holy crap, this is actually really big!"

"What do we even do with this?!"

"Should we tell the police, like, just to make sure? Or I guess I could tell my Pseudo-Uncle Brock?" "Uncle" Brock, Maurice Foley's cop cousin, had left as quietly as he'd come. That was pretty quietly, given that his time staying in the Foley house had been characterized by his going out early in the morning to the gym and coming back late at night after long shifts, when the rest of the house had already gone to sleep. Brock was also a pretty quiet, unobtrusive guy; if not for the occasional manly nod on the way out the door, the size 14 loafers in the hall, and the way cereal boxes lasted around half as long as they used to, Tucker would have barely noticed his presence or lack thereof.

"What if they don't believe we just figured it out and it's suspicious? My parents would freak out if I got police attention again." Sam paused, then slowly grinned. "Actually, that's not a bad idea."

Tucker let himself drop into sitting position on the bed. "Wait, I'd really rather not be investigated either. Especially because I was the only other witness when Tristan got attacked, and his friends would probably say I was acting weird before." He worried at one fingernail with the other hand. "Crap."

"We could call in an anonymous tip?"

"Can they track those?"

They both considered. Sam stole Tucker's computer chair and started spinning. "Uhh, maybe? Probably."

Something tickled the edge of Tucker's memory. "Doesn't the local news have a hotline for this case?"

"Do they?" Sam woke up his laptop (again, how did she know his password?) and looked it up. "You're right, they've got one."

"But what if the police know about the whole date thing, and they're trying to keep it quiet?"

"It seems really unlikely that they would release the thing about the burns but keep this quiet."

"That's true…."

They paused for a second, mulling it over. It was getting a little chilly, so Tucker got up and killed the fan. As he walked back over to his desk, he stood on tiptoes and interrupted its slowing spin with his fingertips, dragging them over a few blades and then stretching up a bit more to just block a blade entirely. The fan bounced twice before it finally made a worrying grinding sound and stilled.

Sam stood. "Let's do it."

"Right now?!"

"Yep." Sam pulled out her cellphone and hit *67 to hide her caller ID, then started dialing the number on the laptop screen. "You want me to do it?"

"...Sure, I guess."

The phone rang a few times before someone on the other end picked it up. "This is the Amity Local News, bringing you the truth and nothing but the truth, plus some occasional paid promotions by local businesses, since 1995! How can we help you?"

Sam cleared her throat and lowered her voice a few tones. "I'd like to report a tip? On the serial killer case."

"Oh! Oh my god, really?" The voice on the other end positively quivered. "Thank you so much! What's the tip?"

~(*0*)~

About forty minutes after the overly perky and breathless-in-a-way-that-kinda-weirded-Sam-out tip line monitor hung up, a realization twisted Tucker's intestines into double knots. "Wait—what about Tristan?"

Sam turned to him, wide-eyed. "Oh—you're right! What was the date?"

"Uhh, September 8th?" He clicked a few times. Then clicked some more. Then some more.

Five minutes later, he quietly closed his laptop. "Nothing."

Sam leaned sideways against the wall next to him. She didn't respond for a second, then admitted, "Also, I just remembered something. Friday the 13th is more of a modern thing, so using it as a day of occult significance for a murder seems almost . . . tongue-in-cheek." She made a blech face and swiped the laptop. "Yeah, see, Wikipedia says it didn't become a thing until the 19th century, also it's Tuesday the 13th in Hispanic and Greek cultures and Friday the 17th in Italy. It's not ancient or religious like the other dates."

"Was that all a coincidence? Did we just give them a bad tip?"

Sam shrugged. "I mean, all we did was figure out a thing that might be true. They'll do their own research, not just take whatever we said at face value."

It was noon, and he and Sam were still hanging around his room. With the summoning circle covered up by the rug and all the candles cleaned up the night before so Sam could sleep there, the only reminder of the night before was a permeating and, Tucker feared, permanent eau de sandalwood.

"Sooo…," Sam drawled, sitting up against his dresser on the floor, "what's next?"

"I mean, that was kind of a lot."

"That took like an hour tops, if you ignore the time we spent messing around and showing each other memes."

(The author chose to ignore the time they spent messing around and showing each other memes.)

"It was a big thing! I'm sure the universe will be cool with it for a little while."

"You really think so?" Sam gave him the same look she always gave when he skipped his homework, even though she usually half-assed the same homework. Her GPA was only like a half-point above his. "We could…." She'd started putting her messy hair up in a ponytail and wasn't looking him in the eyes. "I heard they took down the police tape at the library. We could go check out the bathroom, see if you get any" —she wiggled her fingers— "vibes."

Tucker sputtered. "Seriously? No way!"

"Come on! With my occult know-how and your psychic-ness we stand an actual chance of saving lives here!"

Tucker started emphatically pulling off the socks he'd slept in. "You–Do I have to repeat my speech about my utter lack of badassery? 'Cause that was damaging enough to my ego the first time."

"Ugh, fine." Sam rolled her eyes at him in a way that made it very clear she did not see how stressed the idea made him and was in no way showing mercy, or demonstrating empathy. "Then you owe me lunch, at least."

"That, I can do."

And thus, the afternoon passed in a haze of reluctantly vegetarian paninis, planning their first electropunk single once they realized what a great band name "Reluctantly Vegetarian Paninis" would be, and strategizing on what to do about Danny now that they knew that he was, y'know, whatever he was. They eventually decided on confronting him about it in a very public place with a lot of witnesses. It would have to happen eventually, so they might as well choose the playing field.

At around 6:02 Sam looked at the clock and suddenly stood, abandoning her Mario Kart (Princess Peach; she claimed it was ironic) to careen over the edge of the road. "Crap. I'm supposed to go ice skating with my dad at 7."

Tucker almost crashed himself in his surprise. "Your dad? Really?"

"Yeah, it's going to be so awkward." She dropped again onto the couch and let her head loll back onto the cushions. The living room window shades had all been pulled back to let in the maximum amount of light, even if the glare off the TV had been throwing Tucker off his game. The glare was dying down now anyway, what with the lengthening autumn nights; sunset was at 5 p.m., so by now the sky had that internal blue glow that made it look convex rather than concave, or like the deep ocean illuminated from within by submarine lights and angler fish. Houses became silhouettes, and telephone lines were indistinct except where they crisscrossed the last sunlight leaching up just above the horizon.

"You want me to come?" Tucker offered.

"Nah, he wanted it to just be the two of us…."

"So when are you gonna leave?"

"Uh, I should go at like 6:15."

"Sweet." Tucker grinned pointily. "I'm turning on Teen Wolf."

"What did I ever do to you?"

~(*0*)~

At 6:15 Tucker paused the show mid slo-mo sequence. "Don't you have to get going?"

Sam stole another of the faded pink-embroidered pillows from Tucker's couch. She now had four on the left side, while he was down to one. "Finish the episode, I'll go at 6:30."

At 6:32, Tucker said, "Sam, it's 6:32…."

"Okay, but why do the suicides keep happening at that hotel? Like, is the curse of the hotel that they all arrive at the hotel in the midst of unrelated circumstances that cause there to be wolfsbane around or a bite or something that would kill them anyway? That's, like, exceedingly specific."

"It's for the vibe, you aren't supposed to ask these questions."

"Yeah, I guess I appreciate the vibe."

"But, uh, are you gonna go meet your dad?"

Sam chewed on one purple nail. "Ugh, I mean, my stuff is all over your house so at this point I'll be late anyway."

"So…what time are you going, then?

Tick, tick.

Sam inspected her nail for a second, frowning at the cracks in the matte. "You know what, screw it. This is more important, we're embroiled in a murder investigation! Like, that's crazy! And magic is real. I think I need a little more time to process that."

Tucker shrugged. "Alright, if you want to hang around here more that's fine by me." He paused. "You gonna…text him?"

Sam visibly waffled. "Ugh, then he'll call and be all pissy and want to know why. If I don't text, I can just say I forgot!"

"Okay, as long as you're ready to lose at Mario Kart again."

Sam scowled. "I wanna go back to Wii fencing."

"Sam, I thought we'd established I have self preservation instincts!"

Sam flicked the button to silence her cell phone with that same cracked purple fingernail. "I'll steal your cereal."

"Hey!"

~(*0*)~

The Manson mansion (for real, Sam thought, our last name is Manson, couldn't we have gotten, like, a bungalow?) was dark when Sam pulled up in front and fished her keys out of the cupholders in her car. It took a little scrabbling around among old gum wrappers and spare change before she could get them, and as she pulled them out one wrapper was dragged over the edge and drifted to the floor. She hit the lock button reluctantly, mostly killing the car's headlights, as she picked her way up the small semicircle of brick steps leading to the front door. Phone flashlights were for cowards.

The fumbling of the key in the lock sounded too loud for the silent cul-de-sac. Even the couple who always threw those loud parties her parents enjoyed complaining about so much seemed to have turned in early. Oh, wait, it was almost 11. Sam fumbled faster.

Only to have the door opened—scaring the bejeezus out of her in the process—by her father. He stared her down for a moment, wearing a hint of stubble and a monogrammed bathrobe with the same dearth of panache. "Samantha. Why didn't you come to the ice rink? I cleared my schedule for you. I was waiting for forty minutes."

Sam mentally prepared herself for some of the greatest acting of her life. "That was today?! Crap, I'm so sorry, Dad, I totally forgot!"

Jeremy Manson glowered. "That was very irresponsible of you, Sam. And why didn't you answer any of my calls?"

"I have to put my phone on silent for school, and I guess I just forgot to take it off. I'm so sorry, Dad, can we do it another time?"

He hmph-ed and stepped aside to let her in the door. It was strange to hear him padding down the dark hallway in bare feet while she clomped along in the combat boots she was regretting a little right now. Her mom always complained that they scratched off the finish on the hardwood. "I'll try to find another time, but I'm facing some issues at work that might not blow over soon. I'll let you know after I look at my schedule. But Sam, this kind of behavior is unacceptable. I expect you to keep your ringer on in the future, and if your teachers complain tell them they can speak to me. And you really should start keeping a calendar."

Sam held the relief down in her throat, out of her face. She probably wasn't going to do either of those things (Jeremy Manson wasn't the type to cold-call her at school to make sure her ringer wasn't silenced), and it looked like there wouldn't be any consequences beyond that.

They turned left out of the narrow hallway, and the light changed from moonlight blue to orange. Two lamps were on in the living room. And sitting between them on the mauve flowery couch, brooding like a supervillain with perfect posture, was Pamela Manson. Sam startled and banged her hip into the sharp side of the doorway.

"Where have you been, Samantha?" In sharp contrast to her father's rumpled exhaustion, her mother seemed wide awake, sitting at jagged angles in a pristine blue silk pajama set.

Sam reluctantly walked further in, cringing in anticipation. "Tucker's, why?"

"You were extremely rude to your father today. Maybe you should be spending less time with Tucker; he's apparently a bad influence."

Crap, crap crap crap! No way. "Mom, you know Tucker!" Sam squawked before tempering her tone a bit. "You like his parents! And anyway, you can't tell me who I can associate with anymore, I'm sixteen!"

"A sixteen-year-old who only has a car because we let her."

Sam's father shifted where he stood slightly behind her and to the right, covering up a yawn. "Pamela, I was annoyed earlier, but I would have been home early anyway. We can leave this discussion for the morning."

"Jeremy, we can't just let her act like this, it's disrespectful!" Pamela broke her perfect-posture supervillain pose to lean forward a bit, gesticulating wildly. Her eyes were slightly red, and without makeup she looked just a bit crumpled around the edges, like cheap polyester.

"I already spoke to her when she came in, and she understands that she needs to avoid this sort of behavior in the future. And we could give her some chores or take the car, but can we please talk about it in the morning?" Jeremy apparently realized then that nothing was likely to happen if he just stood there continuing the conversation, so he started walking slowly away with an air of "I know you probably won't, but I'm still hoping against hope that you'll follow my example."

And then her mom was muttering something under her breath, and something creaked in the attic, and the tip of Sam's tongue hurt from not railing against injustice and also biting it earlier. So she decided to make it worse.

"It's kind of hilarious, though, you getting mad at me for not showing up."

Her mother's green eyes snapped up. The lamplight sparked and scattered off stray red hairs. "Oh for god's sake, not this again."

Jeremy gave up on escaping and stopped, leaning one hip against the wall next to the entrance to the hallway. "Sam, you know we do try to make it to your events. I came to your last debate, and I wanted to come to the Audubon thing but things come up and you have to understand it puts us in a difficult–"

"No." Pamela whipped around, shaking her head and sending more orange hairs escaping from her loose updo. "No, you don't need to make excuses, Jeremy."

"I'm just saying–"

Sam found herself spreading out her stance, readying for battle even as a part of her wondered why she was even doing this, the part that just wanted to go to sleep and was so done. But the rest of her was filling up with superheated air from her lungs, nitrogen bubbles escaping her tissue and gushing into her blood. "At least Dad has an excuse! He works! What do you even do all day, Mom?!"

At that, Pamela stood, with far less than her usual grace. One finger shook in the air by her head. "How dare you."

"I don't even see you anymore! What do you do, besides sit in your room brainstorming new ways to ruin my life?!"

Sam's dad pushed off the wall at that, cheeks flushing. "Sam, apologize to your mother!" he boomed, but both ignored him.

"Other people are allowed to have problems, Samantha! The universe doesn't revolve around you!"

"Pamela, that is our daughter! That is out of line—"

"Don't call me fucking Samantha!"

"It's your fucking name, it's what I named you!"

"Sammy, we care about you so much, it's just hard sometimes but we're trying—Pamela—"

"I am a goddamn fantastic mother, and I also have my own fucking life—"

"Pamela, shut up!"

"Don't you dare fucking start on me, Jeremy!" It was almost screamed.

The room went silent.

For a moment all three stood there looking at each other, shell-shocked. The lamps flickered.

Jeremy was the first to back up.

"I think you need to go clear your head." He started walking quickly toward the hallway.

Sam was left feeling not unlike she'd just witnessed an Olympic ping pong tournament. Wasn't that a thing during the Cold War? Ping pong diplomacy?

Pamela deflated, suddenly and without warning, back into a sitting position on the edge of the couch. "Sam, go to bed," she rasped, not looking her in the eye.

Sam hovered on the edge of the living room's pool of light. The upholstery flowers curled around each other ever so slightly, wriggling like worms. The lamps flickered again. Pamela reached up with one hand and turned one off with a loud click. The nitrogen bubbles had made it up Sam's spinal column to the brainstem, and for a moment she stood paralyzed, weightless, detached.

Slowly, Sam walked to her bathroom. The light was too bright. She took her toothbrush out of the drawer.