Velma was unusually quiet this morning, and Daphne had noticed but hadn't said anything. Velma only engaged in conversation with Daphne halfheartedly. She was deep in thought, canceling out equally-weighted pros and cons before realizing there was another factor she hadn't even considered. Her dilemma was simple enough on the surface: Do I start camming again?
The pros were obvious. Money. The end.
There were others, surely, but money was first and foremost, and it hung over this question and cast quite a long shadow.
The cons were more situational. Firstly, where? If the bathroom was bigger, she'd be fine with that, but it didn't have nearly enough space for all of her equipment (Velma was a dedicated creator, so her content had to be well-produced). The bedroom was an option until Daphne came to stay. It also just made her uncomfortable to imagine paddling the pink canoe in her parents' house.
Secondly, would she still have an audience? The library incident was immediately memed to hell and back, so there was a possibility that her return would be laughed off.
It's not like I did anything wrong. Like, morally, ethically wrong. But I guess that doesn't really matter.
"Velma?"
"Huh?" She jumped.
Daphne jumped as well. "Ooh… I was just gonna say you seem distant."
"Oh. Yeah, I'm just th—"
"Do you know about astral projecting?"
"…"
"Do you?"
"…Yeah."
"It's like that, I think. I mean, I wouldn't know, I haven't ever seen someone do it, or if I did see someone doing it I didn't know that they were at the time."
"Do you think I'm astral projecting, Daphne?"
"No, I'm just saying that's kinda what it looked like. You were in the zone."
"Uh huh."
Daphne squinted her eyes at Velma. "So…what were you thinking about?"
"Nothing," replied Velma.
Daphne's eyes narrowed further. "Nothing?" She leaned closer to Velma. "You're just sitting there and thinking nothing over and over in your head? Like the word 'nothing'? Or literally nothing? Is that even possible, to have zero thoughts inside your head?"
"Really, Daphne, it's nothing."
Daphne leaned back and took on an accusatory look. "You're really not gonna tell me, are you? Is it something serious?"
"No, it's nothing like that."
Daphne nodded slowly. "Okay…" Velma could see just how much it ate at Daphne not to be in the loop. Not to say Daphne was particularly nosy, just that she wanted to know what was on her friends' minds. Especially Velma's. "Well…" said Daphne, "if you ever wanna talk about it…"
Velma nodded.
Would it be so bad if Daphne knew I was thinking about camming again? I mean, we sorta talked about it on the first night she stayed here.
Not only that, but Velma enjoyed having someone to talk to about things. She hadn't noticed how much she enjoyed it until Daphne came knocking.
Hesitantly, Velma opened her mouth, but before anything but breath could leave her lips, Daphne was sitting criss-cross applesauce with an ear-to-ear grin that said Spill.
The girls' conversation after this didn't amount to much. Daphne was supportive but understood Velma's reservations. She even tried thinking of somewhere Velma might be able to go, but couldn't actually think of any place. Their dialogue was left open and unfinished as they went about their day. Obviously Velma was still thinking about it, but so was Daphne, to an extent that would no doubt surprise (and possibly concern) Velma.
At around noon, Velma went upstairs to get dressed for work at the curio shop; upon opening the door, she discovered Daphne sitting on the bed reading from her laptop, with Potey sitting close by. While Velma got ready, Daphne was mostly silent, until at one point, with seemingly no prompt, Daphne said in a clear, straightforward tone (almost to herself), "This is the worst shit I've read in my entire life."
Velma cocked her head over. "What is?"
"Shakespeare."
"Shakespeare's the worst thing you've ever read?"
"This Shakespeare, yes."
"Well, what is it?"
Daphne contorted her face and spoke in a mocking, high-pitched, British-accented voice: "Titus Andronicus."
"Hold on," said Velma. "Why are you even reading Shakespeare in your free time?"
"Oh, it's not for fun, sis, or else I definitely wouldn't be. It's for school."
What? thought Velma. Then, out loud: "School? I thought—"
"Yeah, I thought so too," said Daphne with a long sigh. "But I decided that I'm not gonna let a break-up be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Besides, I like school."
Velma was surprised to hear this—pleasantly surprised. It didn't matter whether Daphne returned to school, but to hear her say that she was doing it because she wanted to…it was nice to hear.
After a beat, Velma asked, "So what's so bad about it?"
"Oh, God, I don't even know where to start."
"Okay, then what's the worst part?"
Daphne's eyes went up as she tried to determine what bothered her the most. "Rape and murder."
"Rape?"
"Yeah, exactly. I didn't know Shakespeare did rape either. And that's not even the—well, actually, no, maybe it is the worst part, but the other stuff's so bad too… Anyway, after these two guys assault the poor girl, the cut out her tongue and chop off her hands so she can't tell anyone."
"Jesus."
"Right? But hold on, 'cause Willy's not even close to done." As if listening to Daphne's whole spiel, Potey repositioned himself to face her. "The girl manages to use her stumps to grab a stick and write the two guys' names in the dirt. So her dad—that's Titus—he finds the guys, kills them, then invites their mom and bunch of other people over for a dinner. He asks one of them, 'Hey, what would you do if your daughter was raped?' And the guy's like, 'Oh, well, you'd have to kill her, of course, it's the only logical answer.' So Titus just kills the girl there. Ya know, all nonchalant. Once all the guests start eating, he's like, 'Oh, by the way, ma'am, the pie you're eating is actually made out of your two sons.' And he's not kidding. Then he kills the mom, and everyone starts killing everyone. The end. What the fuck."
"What the fuck" indeed. Willy must've really been in the trenches with this one.
Velma finished getting dressed and moved over to the bed to sit next to Daphne. "So you finished it already?"
"Yeah, but now I have an essay on it, so I have to quote it."
Velma nodded. "How far have you gotten?"
"Not far, but it's not due 'til next week anyway." Daphne laid back on her bed. Her face was the image of frustration. "I just don't understand how they all rape and murder and then talk in 'thou art'-ass English."
Of all the things Daphne had said since the beginning of her stay at the Dinkley household, this had to be one of the more profound ones.
Velma's shift ended at 5:30. When she checked her phone, she saw that Daphne had been blowing it the fuck up for quite some time now. The last message said, "2 things, and one of them's really important."
Oh, Christ.
As Velma drove home, she wondered what "important" could possibly mean. Maybe Potey choked on a chunk of kibble.
She got home and headed upstairs. Daphne was walking to and fro, hands shaking. She didn't have an outlet for whatever it was she needed to tell Velma, and this nervous energy manifested as jitteriness; plainly, she looked like she having withdrawals.
"VELMA!" shouted Daphne the moment she laid eyes on her.
"Yes, yes, I'm here," said Velma, attempting to calm Daphne down—to no avail.
"Okay, okay—look, come sit." Daphne patted the bed. She grabbed her laptop and presented it to Velma. "Remember how I'm writing an essay on this stupid bullshit?"
"Yeah."
"Well, instead of sending us a Word document, the professor scanned every page of the play and sent it to us as a PDF, which, by the way, how inefficient is that? Like what the hell? How much time must that have taken?"
"Daphne."
"Right, right." She shook her head and returned to the topic at hand. "On the last page of the play, I saw this." She motioned to a small portion of the screen.
All Velma could make out were some black-and-white scratches. "What about it?"
"I thought it looked weird, so I zoomed in on it." Daphne did so. The scratches grew and suddenly took on more shape. It was some kind of script. "Writing!" said Daphne. "And it's definitely not the Latin alphabet."
She was right. Velma couldn't make heads or tails of it.
"So I used my phone and went to the Google Translate app that lets you take a picture of something and then translates it for you."
"And?"
Daphne pushed her phone towards Velma. The identified language: Hebrew.
"Hebrew?"
"I was confused too," said Daphne. "It gets even weirder."
Velma looked at the translated text and read it aloud: "I've got it now! Suck my ass." Velma took a moment to process this. "What?"
"I KNOW," said Daphne, practically convulsing at this point. "What is 'it'? And who does this professor have beef with? Or—"
"'Or'? What else could it be? Whoever wrote this is rubbing it in somebody's face that they've got…something."
"Or," said Daphne, more forcefully this time, "what if he's into that?" She paused for effect.
"Beg pardon?" said Velma.
"My professor might be gay, right? He could have a husband or boyfriend or something that left a note saying he wanted to get eaten out—I looked it up and it's a common thing, it's—"
"Jesus Christ, Daphne. If that's what this person meant, wouldn't they have said it in person? And 'eat my ass'? People don't just say that to each other—it's an insult."
"Oh." Daphne's level of energy took a sudden nosedive. "I… Shit. Am I homophobic for thinking that's what it was?"
"No, Daphne."
Daphne perked back up again. "So, if this person's rubbing something in… what do they have? Or is it even a thing? 'I've got it' could just mean they figured something out."
"That's true," said Velma. If she's clever enough to spot that ambiguity, how does she not…?
—No, it's not to do cleverness. Daphne's a smart person. Maybe it's…innocence?
"Also, is 'suck my ass' a literal translation," Daphne continued, "or did Google approximate a Hebrew euphemism for an English reader?"
"Well, it gives an etymology breakdown for all the words, doesn't it?"
"Really?" Daphne looked over her phone. "It does!" After a bit of scrolling and furrowing her brow, Daphne looked up. "Okay, it's not an approximation—it's the literal translation from the Hebrew."
"That's…odd."
Daphne was on a roll this evening, and it wasn't close to stopping. "So whoever wrote this is pretty fluent in English. Better yet, they're probably not as fluent in Hebrew since they use English euphemisms—if they're even fluent in Hebrew at all."
Velma was speechless.
"The other question that this brings up," said Daphne, "is—"
"Why is your professor getting a message like this?"
"Precisely." Daphne tapped her hands on her lap as if to say "And scene."
"Shit, Daphne…you might've just found us a new mystery."
"I know! A MYSTERY! It's been so long since we've had a real, actual mystery! Not finding someone's phone, a legit mystery!"
And so their discussion went on. At some point Potey entered the room and perched on the edge of the bed, insisting his inclusion in the matter (as if Daphne wouldn't have included him somehow).
Then Velma remembered something. "Daphne."
"Yeah?"
"When you texted me you said 'two things.' I'm guessing this was the important one."
"Right."
"So what's the other thing?"
Daphne's smile, which had already been present, twisted upwards like she was the Grinch. "Oh, yeah. I almost forgot about that. You said that you didn't have anywhere to 'conduct your business.'"
Velma raised an eyebrow.
"Well," Daphne said, "I've located a possible private venue."
She has to be joking. This is a prank. There is no possible way she doesn't know what she's doing. She cannot be serious!
But she was serious.
There they stood, with the Mystery Machine's engine running behind them, the headlights illuminating the sight before them: Pa's barn. Pa's fucking barn.
"It's private," said Daphne, "and it's free to use—what more could you need?"
"It's also old and full of hay and animal shit," said Velma.
"But it's secluded, quiet—it's perfect! And Pa won't come bother you. His son, either."
"What the hell did you say to Pa to get him to agree to this?"
Daphne chuckled mischievously. "I told him you had private matters to handle over video call, and that you needed a quiet place to go."
"Does this place even get internet?"
"I checked. It does."
Of fucking course it does. Because of all the things Pa might prioritize, internet is near the top of the list. Who the fuck is this man?
"I don't know, Daphne, I just…I don't know. I don't know if I can…do 'it' in a barn."
"'It'? When did you turn into such a prude?"
"I don't know, Daphne—sorry I don't usually discuss fucking myself on camera with my friends!"
"Okay, fair enough. Didn't mean to offend."
"I mean…" said Velma, still stuck on the most glaring issue. "…It's a barn."
Daphne chuckled again, louder this time. "I know. It's no library. But it'll do, won't it?"
Velma scowled at Daphne. Hard. Not because she was angry at what she'd said; quite the opposite. It was because Daphne wasn't wrong there.
