A Rock and Family Vacation

[29]

Brooke immediately warmed to the next store they visited, which was down the block but still within sight of the sheriff’s office. It was tightly packed but boldly advertised as an outlet, discount warehouse. None of it was as fancy as the other store, but Brooke could already see a better version of the windbreaker she had been looking at for half the price. Because aisles were so cluttered and disorganized with unopened boxes and stray supply carts, she had plenty of reason to make sure Clare held her hand the whole way.

It was a little embarrassing to her boyish feelings but, considering everything recently, she was glad to simply be by her mother’s side. That helped her to forget about creepy old guys, confusing changes, scary memories, uniformed strangers, and the tall man in the suit. She couldn’t forget about everything though. The girl seemed important, especially if she somehow came from or was the rock that changed them.

She knew Blair would urge her to say something if she wasn’t acting like a fashion-obsessed weirdo. Blair and Lacy were already off on their own, digging through everything but with less enthusiasm here. Every so often, Lacy glanced over to check on Clare. She appreciated it, even though she was deeply concerned about everything else her brothers were doing.

Many of the items in the store had mending work, light stains, sewing errors, or other problems to justify their prices. Clare didn’t try on that many things, mostly items they hadn’t managed to get at the beachfront place. Brooke insisted on a nice jacket, despite the fact Clare’s regular jackets were sure to still fit loosely. For Blair and Lacy, everything was game.

Even though Brooke had no idea what was going on with her daughters, she appreciated the fact that just getting Lacy to look at girly clothes was no longer a tooth-extraction level ordeal. No one went overboard because, even with the discounts, this was going to be an expensive endeavor. But Brooke had every intention to make sure her dad reimburse her since they had done every last thing he wanted and taken time out of their vacation for it.

After several spins through the changing room with Brooke carefully watching, Clare continued to linger by mom. She pressed her fingers against a pleasant pair of jeans as she pieced together everything she needed to say. “…Mom? Can I talk to you about something?” Strange tension overwhelmed Clare’s head for a moment. It felt like the super high-pitched noise made by the mouse-repellent thing in the basement. The vibration was so sharp that she started to feel it on her tongue like a needle poke. Looking a few aisles over in the cramped space, Clare noticed that Lacy was still looking at her intently. She braced herself by holding onto the rack.

Urgently, Brooke looked Clare over and asked her what was wrong. A twisted poison oak gnarl of terrible thoughts spun around her head as she imagined everything from a sudden bout of illness to some side effect of what had happened to her children to carbon monoxide poisoning which was going to strike all of them. A quick, normal touch to Clare’s forehead assuaged the first possibility while the last was diminished by looking around. She noticed Lacy staring at them and questioned her about what was going on. Soon, Lacy wore an unconvincing smile and claimed that she was just checking on them and expressed, “This is a beautiful moment”.

The intensity of the drilling only wavered a little. Clare couldn’t take it. It was like the shower but numbing all possibility for thought as it struck her. During a lull, she grabbed mom‘s hand and dragged her over towards the changing rooms.

Brooke was utterly confused and considered fighting back against Clare’s pull, but her daughter’s urgency and intensity led her to follow Clare’s hustle. Lacy’s voice shot out but as a muffled note of concern. Only once they were inside the nearest changing room and Clare had dragged the drape closed, did the absolute deluge of discomfort begin to ease.

With a few quick breaths, Clare looked her mother in the eye and declared, “I need to tell you something. I saw a weird girl upstairs who vanished. At the other place. She said her name was Krystal. And she said she’s the rock or in the rock like a genie in a lamp. I don’t know, but she knew my name and she said she was sorry.”

Frantically, Clare did her best to get that out. Brooke had no idea what to think as she barely processed most of the words as she mentally did her best to parse them. “Krystal? With a K like Lacy‘s imaginary perfect girl?” That oddly struck her as the most important thing to clarify. Lacy didn’t like to talk about this kind of stuff, but Brooke managed to dig enough out by lightly interrogating her other children. Clare was always good for surreptitious info. Casually, she had hinted to her middle child, on more than one occasion, that imaginary and perfection had no place in reality, especially when it came to thinking about people. Lacy just wanted to wave her off like a buzzing mosquito.

Mere moments later, Lacy’s hand shot through the curtain as she flailed to push it aside. Brooke felt taken aback by the intrusion and declared, “Excuse me…wait outside for us.” Lacy paused in the doorway with a visible gulp and her arms frozen as though she imagined that if she just stood still enough then someone might mistake her for a statue.

“Is everything alright?” The tone of voice Lacy used reminded Brooke of the tones her middle boy wielded when he knew he had done something wrong but was trying to butter her up. But the uncomfortable part was a complicated look in her eye which went beyond concern or guilt. It felt frantic, as though reaching out to save someone from falling off a cliff while also holding intense disappointment and accusation that they had slipped. The look was enough to give her a sharp, icy chill.

Clearing her throat, Brooke urged Lacy to wait outside and assured her that everything was fine. But she didn’t go. She stayed on their side of the curtain. And she got closer, so close that she could practically touch noses with her mother. Brooke flinched from her daughter and demanded, with as much energy as she could put behind her words, “Stop it! Go check on your father, right now, or you’ll be…”

“It IS you. It is. I had to know. I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. I just need more time. There’s not enough time to make everything right. Not with everything in my way. This may not seem like helping. But I can’t do more. Boop…”

A voice seemingly spoke through her daughter. The tone was mature but also flat and bare of most affectation, hardly above a text-to-speech program. Lacy’s eyes had a muted color to them, not quite gray but heavily subdued. They darted and searched through most of her strange words but settled in place at the end. For an instant, it almost appeared that Lacy was double exposed like a strange, living picture, something else existing over top of her. When her finger touched her mother’s nose, everything went dark.

An inestimable amount of time passed in Brooke’s quiet void. What part of her that was aware surmised that she had been engaged in an extended dream sequence. Unfortunately, that implied all the successes and oddities of the morning had to be wiped clean and everyone had to get up and prepare themselves for brunch at the country club. She didn’t envy replaying that for real. Made sense though, there was no way that everything would’ve gone quite so comfortably and without even needing to meet up with dad. But she woke to twisted stiffness instead of the expectation of the master bedroom.

Stretching out, she felt bewildered as all the kinks and pain dashed away as easily as brushing off some stray dust. That was bizarre but not bad. It has been so long since her back was actually nice to her and didn’t vindictively punish her for the least little motion.

“….Mom?” Through her waking haze, she picked up Clare’s voice with an ominous note of questioning concern. Brooke responded, “I’m heeeerree sweetie. Oh. What?”

Her first concern was that her voice would take on deeper, more masculine qualities as an inverse to everything that had happened to her boys. Not the most terrible thing that could happen and the invocation of that treacherous rock set her mind in that vicinity. But, if she had been the victim of a strange spark from that thing because of Lacy, then it had established rules: a delay, oncoming sleepiness, and concluded with waking up with changes. Getting struck down this way was more like a bolt of lightning. And her voice had a youthful, childlike quality.

That wasn’t the only difference, as her clothing crudely draped across her body. Everything she wore felt like it was either dragging her down or about to fall off. Clare repeated quietly, “Mom…”

Brooke shivered quietly and positioned herself so she could look in the mirror on the side of the changing room. Her eyes widened and she gasped softly at her reflection. Her hair had been fairly unkempt since ending the orderly tension of the country club and needing to look nice for people she didn’t like. Now, that accentuated the childish frame of her appearance.

Her cheeks had a cherubic, tender feel accentuated by baby fat. Covered in what used to be her normal clothes, she looked like a street urchin wearing whatever she could find. On the plus side, her vision had a sharper quality far more distinct than a new contacts prescription. Drawing in a halting breath, she glanced over at Clare, who had her hands covering her mouth in nervous shock. By height alone, it was a small relief that she was at least older than Clare. The strangeness existed in the fact that she definitely appeared about as old as junior high but without the…precocious qualities. She was totally flat!

Not a bad thing but it also made no sense. Over by the drape, Lacy was slowly getting to her feet with the normal brightness to her eyes and a presence of muddled confusion. “What did you do?” Brooke tried to frame her question with as much adult energy as possible but failed.

“What? What happened to the restroom?” Lacy muttered groggily and added, “Who are you?” She sniffled and cleared her throat a few times before carefully getting to her feet. Struggling to keep her clothes together, Brooke fumbled with her possible answers before simply stating, “It’s mom. You touched me on the nose, and something happened.”

Lacy inspected the new girl before her with a befuddled yawn. Casually, Lacy relayed that the last thing she could remember was getting touched on the nose by some weird girl in the bathroom. Eyes flashing with recognition after a few relayed details of her hair and outfit, Clare offered a quick account of the girl she’d also seen. As Lacy puzzled her way through all this, she mentioned having a really weird dream that she was basically doing nothing but looking through girly clothes. There was a hat, a changing room, and Blair giggling for some reason.

To Lacy’s rising horror, Clare confirmed all of this actually happened. Preferring to distract herself from this reality, Lacy turned towards the girl who claimed to be her mom. She was skeptical, especially knowing that the two of them, unfortunately, shared certain qualities as girls Lacy‘s age. It was the tidbit boy Lacy plugged his ears against and only half heard several months ago, figuring it would be pointless for him to know because he had no plans to be a girl. So, why was this girl the way she was when she looked the same age as Lacy and was supposed to be her mom?

Brooke had no answer to that. It was the biggest mystery on her mind. But she did have some measure of proof to offer as to her identity. She glanced over at Clare and asked her to cover her ears for Lacy’s privacy. Even before she offered proof, Lacy tensed up at the mere implication.

“Dinky Dog Doodoo Dance Dreams.”

All the color drained from Lacy while, paradoxically, her cheeks lit up bright red.

“Mom, please never speak that again.” Clare widened her eyes and looked tempted to uncover her ears but continued to cover them until Brooke told her it was fine. She apologized to her middle daughter.

It was one of those things. Not even Blair knew or had deduced the details. The context was that, when he was rather young, Lacy had a series of weird dreams he liked to tell her where he was actually a girl instead of a boy. In the dream, she was listening to a goofy song with a silly character doing their doodoo dance because they had to use the toilet but had to wait. The song didn’t exist though. Brooke looked everywhere. So, she helped Lacy construct one based on what she remembered. They kept it to themselves, and Lacy made her absolutely swear forever and ever not to tell it to anyone. It was a peculiar happenstance then and even more peculiar to consider now.

A multitude of questions, fears, and confusions wafted through the air between them with no clear sense of which to resolve first. But the choice was made when she heard Eliot‘s voice approaching with nervous concern and what sounded like Blair beside him. Doing her best to compose herself, Brooke took a breath, squeezed, looped, and adjusted her clothes so that it didn’t feel like she was about to be disrobed, and pushed aside the drape to step out. 

[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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