A Rock and Family Vacation

[27]

Halfway down Broad Street, Lacy turned her attention to the multitude of shops featuring fashionable wears spread across the sidewalks on circle racks. All the parking in this section of town was either confined to desperately rare strips of parallel parking along intersecting one-way roads or small paid parking plazas.

Brooke aimed a skeptical eye at Lacy. Her darkest notion involved one of the creepy old men surreptitiously slipping something into her drink that put her in an altered state. No matter what Blair may have stated on the subject, that possibility couldn’t be discounted, especially if mustache man primed them ahead of time. However, Lacy didn’t seem out of sorts aside from being excited about clothing that she treated yesterday like a terrifying bear trap. It wasn’t that she wanted a repeat of all that but, even among teenagers, it felt very fishy to have such a one-eighty. She pondered if perhaps it was hormonal, and then quietly grimaced at the dire necessities ahead. Fixating on the one looming, apocalyptic, mind-ending event of this brunch had blinded her to the inevitability that there would be a time after it when they would have to deal with more things.

For the moment, she could at least deal with clothes as a family. Blair had gone off on her own and Clare learned as much as she had about the contemporary state of young girls’ fashion. Time for a second lesson and another stretching of their discretionary funds. At least finding a nearby parallel spot allowed them to save about five dollars on local parking, even though it came at the expense of hunting for about half that in quarters for the meter.

Hats went on and Lacy grabbed for the slim pink one. As soon as she secured it to her head, Blair noticed something randomly weird. Lacy’s fingers clung to the brim and pushed the hat upwards and nearly off her head. In the next motion, she desperately gripped it and brought it back down. At the end of this bizarre little spectacle, Lacy stomped a foot and stuck her hands straight down in fists at her side. She smiled around, but Blair still detected a sense of discomfort.

“You…alright?” Blair folded her arms and rubbed her elbows. Pleasantly, Lacy emphasized, “Sure you already asked that. But I am doing great and I’m so glad to be out of that stupid place. Can’t wait to actually have some fun!” The inflection of those words concerned Blair. There wasn’t anything she could immediately point to as like a smoking gun but the special emphasis on ‘fun’ and other words of emotion reminded Blair of a scene from a show where one character was totally faking their enthusiasm and actually felt on the verge of panic. Edging over to her sister’s side, Blair wrapped her arms around Lacy in what appeared to be a comforting hug. In reality, she just needed to get really close.

Whispering faintly against her ear, Blair asked, “If something is actually wrong, squeeze me as hard as possible.” Once she said that Blair let go of her sister and backed away. She let her have time to process that and not demand an immediate response. Blair did her best not to immediately look back for a reaction. Lacy seemed to halt at one point but then picked up her pace to rejoin her sister without a sign on her face of anything amiss.

The nearest big store had several stories, especially a loft with soft carpeting and extensive rows of brightly colored clothing. Before entering the store, Blair noticed that the sheriff’s department was nearly catty-corner down the intersecting road. She lingered and passed this along to mom, who nodded and made a note on her phone.

Once inside, it was like Lacy was unleashed. She scampered and hustled between the rows and laid her hands across every kind of possible outfit. She especially lingered on skinny jeans and shorts. She indulged in an absolute wall of simple cartoon graphics from a sweater with a quaint little bird wearing a top hat to a blue blouse absolutely covered in anchors. Red tropical shirts with white-toned flowers caught her attention next and it wasn’t long before she had a stack in her hands to try on in the back.

Blair skimmed the offerings in her size and considered picking out swimwear that wasn’t at risk of spontaneous chest bursting. She snickered at that particular image but frowned when her sister came out in the sort of getup that she never expected her to try on in private, let alone show off where other people could see her. It wasn’t anything scandalous or bombastic.

It was a shimmering gray top with little flashes of pink but in a clingy, shape-tracing style with a ruffled purple skirt reaching to her knee. Very little about Lacy was covered up by the clothes and that made her look strikingly mature. Maybe not as grown-up as Blair, like she’d teased yesterday, but this was on par with loudly screaming her changes. At the same time Lacy flashed a smile, Blair picked up on the minor detail that she was gripping the wall beside her with enough intent to leave a hole in the plaster if she was stronger.

Her deductive senses were strongly leaning towards some sort of possession or mind spell causing Lacy to behave this way while her actual will was sidelined and could only be expressed in small gestures. Seemed like a good theory, even though it was a drastic practical jump from changes to them which had thus far only been physical alterations. The suspicious detail, of course, was the dark rings on the old men. But combining those elements would require immense supposition.

If those mysterious rings somehow put out a force that counteracted the rock and led to the dulling of its luster, then why were there only these strange effects in Lacy? How come she and Clare were unchanged? Did it have something to do with her leaving the room at a certain point? Furthermore, if this was to be the culprit, then why did they make her girlier rather than mannish, as it was implied those old pervs…desired?

She had almost limitless points of speculation, but nothing concrete to cling to. It felt worse than any of the puzzles she could conjure up or any of the riddles and games she’d faced, no matter how inscrutable. She resisted the defeatist notion that there wasn’t a solution and that she was just spinning herself in circles.

During a quiet lull, Clare lingered around dad and showed off so many cosmically-inspired outfits and mom kept an eye aimed nearby to see that the two of them were behaving as she looked through the windbreakers wistfully. Lacy rushed over to her side. And she squeezed Blair‘s arm and side so roughly that it felt like she wanted to tear the flesh. All the while, she beamed a smile with hints of sparkling around her eyes, as though she had tears trapped in stasis.

Yes, something was wrong, but Blair had no idea what she was supposed to do now. She confirmed a message to her sister, assuming this was still her sister and not some messed up creation trying to ape her. Passing it along to their parents ran into the biggest clichés. A poor young person has a fantastic story to tell, either about a specter in the basement, the creepy guy who lives down the road, or some strange animal they glimpsed in the forest. The parents just smile and chuckle about their kid’s crazy, overactive imagination. It was a concept their father often played around with in some of his short fiction.

Unfortunately, when Clare unfurled the full details about the dark man to them, they went to the simple and reassuring notion that he just happened to see one of the workmen around the building coming to use the nearest bathroom and his half-conscious mind invented something scary because of the shadows. However, Blair had to admit, at least to herself, that she had seen other men go into Clare’s room on more than one occasion. If she was being really honest, she would add that they entered her room as well when she was younger, but she retroactively denounced such crazy notions as being influenced by and confabulated from Clare’s experiences. It all rested on the shakiest of foundations.

The events of this vacation, if they hadn’t been so clearly evident and logically repeatable, were likely to fall into that same pit of skepticism that parents dug out as a protective space for kids from all the possible monsters in the world. She had to go it alone.

Putting on the veneer of casual pleasantry, Blair followed her sister hand-in-hand as she guided her to the changing rooms. There were quite a lot, with an entire row continuing around in a loop and only ending at the partition for the men’s changing area.

“What is it, Lacy?” Her sister dragged her along until they were as far away from everyone else as they could possibly go, then beckoned her towards a curtained room that looked exactly the same as any of the others. Making her way deep inside, Blair scanned around for outfits, suspicious papers, random rings, or anything else that might give her a hint as to what was going on. At the same time, there was a voice screaming at the back of her head. She knew that she should’ve listened to it.

Turning around when facing the wall, Blair took a deep breath and watched as a figure stepped through the opening and pushed aside the drape. She didn’t seem much taller than Lacy, dressed in a dark purple outfit with little flecks of bright color. Unnaturally striking silver hair like storm clouds reached to her shoulders and she wore a blank expression, like a doll brought to life.

“Hello, Bear. I’m sorry for this. but I’m afraid you’ll figure out too much. You’re very clever. Too clever. Please, take a break….boop.”

The moment hit Blair like a rock right to the face. She was out of it and, when she came back to it, she had no idea how she got into the changing room and why Lacy was standing over her.

“Ohmagawd. Lacy? What happened? Did I like totally trip? I’m sorry. Oh, that outfit is so adorable on you! Lemme see!“ Blair squealed with high-pitched delight as Lacy turned around and showed off the most precious outfit with a sweet little skirt. Even though this was the first time she was seeing it, Blair felt the weirdest tickle that she had seen it somewhere before, like that French word for seeing something more than once and not knowing why. She was bad with words, totally bad with words. It didn’t matter though.

Taking her phone out of her pocket and oh my gosh she still had on these totally tacky clothes from the country club, yuck. They looked like someone took vanilla soup and tried to thin it out with lots of colors but none of them worked. She needed something cuter and with all the lame vacation garb there was totally nothing to wear that screamed fun. But she took a couple of candid cute shots of her sister in this outfit for like a pretend, virtual fashion show later.

Lacy was acting kind of weird though, staring at the floor like maybe she dropped something. Blair checked around because she was a good big sister and if she could help in any way then she was going to help her little snuggly cute tween sister! But, looking, there didn’t seem to be anything around. Even peeking into the other changing rooms (even though that felt kind of weird) didn’t turn up anything. With a nervous chuckle and a big wave, Lacy told her it was nothing and she was just feeling a little down, but she appreciated her big sister looking out for her. That totally deserved a big sisterhood hug to make her feel all warm inside.

While Lacy went back to the store part of the store, Blair poked around on her phone and made sure that Lacy‘s shots had the nicest glamour filters on. The phone was a little bit weird because everything was moved around and different, but she figured that was just like one of those dumb updates they did all the time that didn’t do or fix anything. But she remembered the text from that hottie, Dylan. He was a skater boy and she had to say see you later boy. But she felt all wiggly remembering him and his friends. They thought she was in college. It was bad to lie to them, but she didn’t totally actually lie, she just let them think something that may not have been completely accurate.

Looking around like someone was going to watch her even though they totally couldn’t come in here, Blair started typing up a reply.

“Heeeeey. Sorry this is late! I didnd’t mean to :( stuff with fam came up but i would love to hang sometime. Plz text me back!” She squealed and looked at it a few times. She knew that she messed up the whole bunch of words but those were the flavor, showing that she actually made it herself without like pasting it in. It would be totally wrong to send it….but her finger slipped, and she giggled.

[I have a question at the end of the chapter again to help with suggestions for where the story should go. I'm a couple chapters ahead but I love seeding ideas from people as much as possible. Feel free to add an idea which doesn't show up in the options. Also, if you see any random typos or uncapitalized starts of sentences, please pass them along. I have to cut down on my editing due to release speed and my programs don't seem to be catching lowercase sentences. Thank you for reading!]

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