cityarcade | [meme] test drive

Rose Marshall is back again. It looks like spring is wearing into summer, and summer can be a tough season for hitching. People worry less about passing her by when the weather is mild. And while they're less likely to need whatever outerwear they might have to hand — and a little more ready to lend it — they're also more likely to think she's nuts for claiming to want it in the first place. So she dresses herself in something that could be a little too light for even this weather: cutoff denim shorts and the memory of Gary's white undershirt, timeless enough that people don't tend to question it. Just a regular teenager who made a dumb wardrobe choice, right?

And then she starts walking, eyes out for someone who looks like they might be a soft touch.

Not exactly a familiar face, but familiar nonetheless. Norah feels vaguely drawn to the girl in a way that's starting to become recognizable. She's met more ghosts now than she could once have imagined.

So many of them children, which is painful to consider and difficult to engage, but so it goes, apparently. She approaches, catching the girl's eyes — or perhaps they've caught hers. "Hello?" she says. It is best to start simple.

Rose has been running through the onion-skin layers of the twilight long enough to have seen a lot, and to know she hasn't seen everything. That she can't immediately categorize the ghost approaching her (not a road ghost, not a homestead, not a haunt) doesn't have to be alarming. Said ghost appears lucid and peaceful — at least for the moment — and that's a hell of a lot more than can be said for some.

"Hey." Rose offers a cautious nod, keeping her posture loose and nonthreatening. "Are you one of the locals?"

Norah lets out a soft huff of a laugh at that. "In a manner of speaking," she says. "I suppose you could say I've become part of the locality, through no choice of mine." She gives the girl a considering look. She seems to be sizing her up, or keeping an eye out for something. It's difficult to tell if this is good caution on the part of a child meeting a stranger, or something else.

"My name is Norah," she says after a moment, then hesitates. Does this girl know she's dead? She's a little bit translucent right now, so she may as well cross that line first: "I am a ghost."

Through no choice of mine, the other ghost says, and Rose thinks: shit. She's been trapped before — drawn into an abandoned truck stop like a moth to a flame and locked in a Seal of Solomon — but she's yet to find any telltale arcane marks here. And while the twilight has plenty of ghost towns that would happily ensnare more residents for themselves, this is the daylight. A daylight town shouldn't be able to hold any ghost with enough sense to recognize that they're being held in the first place.

But Norah here seems sensible. And it sounds like she's been stuck here for a while.

"I'm Rose." Despite her own impatience for details, she does manage a wry smile over the unnecessary clarification. "And... yeah, I figured." Nothing wrong with being a little translucent if you're not the kind of ghost that regularly passes itself off as the living, but it's not exactly subtle. "Can't say I know what kind of ghost you are," she adds, figuring she might as well lay a few cards on the table. It doesn't seem likely that another ghost is the mastermind behind whatever the hell is going on here, and one of the first rules the twilight teaches you is that lies are for the living, not the dead. "I'm a hitcher, so I know you're not a road ghost, but that doesn't narrow it down much."

Rose's matter-of-fact acknowledgment earns a wry, somewhat relieved smirk which all too quickly shifts into an expression of dull bewilderment as Norah finds herself bombarded with details and questions she could not have anticipated. How she detests finding herself on the back foot in such matters, for how often it seems to happen.

"What kind...?" she blurts rather stupidly. "I was not aware there were different kinds, but then, I suppose I haven't met very many others. I am the ghost of myself. I have a haunting place but I am now free to leave it if I wish. Does that help?" She tries to temper her tone between mildly arch indignation and genuine curiosity, one eyebrow raised.

Her eyebrows creep up a little at Norah's snippy response. At first, the ignorance surprises her more than the defensiveness, but 'haunting place' does provide a little clarity. If any kind of ghost can fairly claim ignorance to what's going on in the rest of the twilight, it's a house-haunter. They don't get out much. And they skew close enough to homesteaders for more mobile ghosts (especially the ones that want to stay mobile) to keep a respectable distance.

They don't get out period, actually, which makes Norah's newfound freedom both interesting and potentially alarming. "You can leave?" Rose asks, sounding about as dumbfounded as Norah did a moment ago. It doesn't sound like said haunting-place was destroyed (a word which only means anything in the daylight, anyway), and it takes Rose a dragging second to imagine another reason why a house-haunter might find herself suddenly at liberty to wander. Her expression darkens. "Shit. Were you exorcised?"

It is interesting — and indeed, telling — that Rose seems to take Norah's freedom of movement as a bad thing. As something that should disturb Norah herself, perhaps. The question, though, can only make her chuckle dryly.

"Certainly not," she says, "though I did chance to meet a self-described exorcist. That was surprising." She gives Rose a look, as if to tell her not to get any ideas. "He was only interested in sharing his company, and bringing me music to listen to. It got quite dull and lonely before I found myself able to move freely. Which I accomplished by pure accident. I had not been able to leave, and then I simply left. It was a bit overwhelming, but has made things much pleasanter for me in the long run. I take it that is not something you expected to hear?" She raises an eyebrow, halfway challenging the girl to make more wild guesses as to the details of her existence.

"I guess bringing you music does sound nicer than trapping you in a Seal of Solomon and flaying you to the edge of nonexistence before putting you back together so they can do it all over again," Rose snaps back. Yeah, it's an asshole thing to say, but it would take a house-haunter to be so goddamn sheltered as to cozy up to a fucking exorcist, of all people. Norah has no idea what the living are capable of when they have the time and motivation.

"And no, it's not something I expected to hear. The twilight has rules. Or it did the last time I checked." She scowls, really not liking how little those rules seem to be coming into play here.

Norah opens and shuts her mouth quickly, her eyes widening at the sudden escalation. She had been annoyed, and rather trying to provoke some sort of reaction, if she's really honest with herself. It was childish, and she probably deserves the vitriol to some degree. But she hadn't anticipated it to come with quite so much severity. It takes her a moment to recover, simply staring at the girl. She stays silent a little longer than is strictly comfortable, in fact, wanting as much to let things cool as she does to get her words exactly right.

"I do know how matters stand where you come from," she says carefully, "but I believe it is a safe assumption to say we do not hail from the same sets of rules. I did not believe there was any such thing as an exorcist where I come from, apart from charlatans plying their trade to the gullible. The man I met is not from my world, and it certainly doesn't sound as if he's from yours, either. I also did not believe in ghosts, until I became one. I was the only one I knew for a long time. No one ever told me there were rules. And now, each new ghost I have met seems to have an entirely unique experience to go along with it."

She fixes Rose with a steady look. "I am sorry to be the one to tell you, but you have been waylaid. This is not the world you know. There are new rules, and you shall have to learn them as I did."

The girl is entirely underdressed for the weather, and Larita feels comfortable guessing that she's new. The alternative is that she's stupid, and for all that Lari can't deny that it's a possibility no matter who the person is or how old, she isn't especially prone to thinking ill of someone out the gate. In her opinion, everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt at least once. Even teenage girls in cutoff denim shorts and a-line shirts.

Lari brakes, slowing the car so she can pull over, and she throws the shift into 'park.' The car's top is down, the windows open, to enjoy the fresh breeze, but it's still just chilly enough that she's glad for the hat and light jacket she'd donned this morning.

And doubly glad that at least one of these, she can offer the girl.

"Where on Earth are you from that wearing that was seasonably appropriate?" she asks, draping her arm across the back of the passenger seat.

Women don't often stop for her. Some combination of stranger-danger paranoia and a fear that whatever put her on the road might be contagious, that they'll end up in the margins by association. They especially don't stop for her in a 1937 Frazer Nash BMW, and Rose forgets herself enough to actually gape for a moment. It's a spectacle so far out of time that she really ought to be looking at a phantom rider, but no — the woman behind the wheel isn't a road ghost. And while the car looks well-loved enough to leave a ghost of her own, her tires sit firmly on the daylight asphalt.

Rose blinks, then looks down at her outfit as if she's only just realized how inappropriate it is, taking the moment to gather herself. "Not here," she replies with a small, sheepish shrug. "I was on my way to..."

She trails off, her smile fading and her gaze going distant. All she'd done was reach for the road, trying to gauge where she was and where she might reasonably be going to, to spin a quick lie about her last ride and why they'd left her here, but this road has next to nothing to tell her, terminates in nothing a few miles in either direction. She stands on a little orphaned tributary cut off from the rivers of asphalt that cross North America, dwindling too quickly into thick-baked mud.

Where the hell is she?

She tries to drop into the twilight, to find the nearest ghostroad and run. She doesn't go anywhere. The woman is staring at her in clear concern.

"I, uh," Rose balls her hands into cold little fists and loosens them, veering unsteadily off-script. "I think I might be lost?"

"I should say so," Lari agrees after the girl's verbal stumbling. She gives her a sympathetic smile, then reaches over and opens the car door. "Hop in, won't you? Goodness, you look frigid."

She leans back into her own seat and unbuttons her jacket — a lightweight enough thing to weather the ups and downs of Darrow's uncertain spring without being too overwarm should the sun come out in full force — and offers it over by the collar.

"Put this on," she instructs. "It isn't much but it's more than you've got on now. I'm Larita. And this is Darrow. The city, not the car." She winks; the admiring gape hadn't escaped her notice, but it has done wonders to ingratiate the girl towards her. Anyone that can appreciate a car like Larita's is someone Larita is just fine knowing.

This isn't quite how these scenes are supposed to go. Rose isn't above accepting the living's pity, and she can't deny it now; if the twilight won't have her, then this is what she needs to do. Hell, she's already doing it: sliding into the passenger seat and taking the coat with soft but sincere thanks, feeling mortality settle into her limbs as she pushes her arms through the sleeves. The upholstery is warm beneath her — the car, like its driver, inclined towards sympathy — and it begins to thaw a little of the twilight chill out of her bones.

But she doesn't do lost, is the thing. It sits a little too close to 'pathetic' for her liking. She's supposed to know where she's headed, or seem like she does... but there's no scent of lilies and ashes on the wind, no sense of direction from the ghostroads. And while 'Darrow' sounds like it could be anywhere, she can't say she's heard of it.

"I'm Rose," she says, managing a smile, trying to claw her way back into an approximation of confidence. "Does the car have a name, too? She's pretty enough to deserve one." Loved enough, is what she really means, and she briefly rests her fingertips on the polished wooden window frame.

"You know, I haven't thought much about it before now," she admits. Her eyes soften a little. "You like cars, do you? It's not often I meet a like-minded girl." She grins and checks her mirrors before getting them back on the road.

"I do," Rose says, an easy admission. "I used to fix them up after school, or over the summer — when I had the time." Which wasn't always. She'd grown up poor, and tinkering with cars was more of an indulgence than anything anyone in Buckley was prepared to pay her for. She'd had to turn to more appropriately feminine chores if she wanted to earn money.

"Hm," Larita agrees, her tone fond. "That's the way of if, isn't it? Finding the time." She has a lot less time to tinker for fun than she used to, but she wouldn't trade a bit of it. The racetrack, Greta, the girls, it's not something Larita saw for herself when she found her feet leaving Surrey and landing in Darrow, but it's all so lovely and domestic.

"Where are you headed, anyway? Or where were you headed before you found yourself in Darrow?"

"Detroit," Rose answers, the lie easy. She's at least gathered that she isn't there now, which should make it plausible enough. "I've got family there."

"Not that I'm asking for such a long haul in this grand dame," she adds, giving the upholstery another fond, light touch. "You can take me as far as is easy for you, and I can make my way from there." There's still no scent of lilies and ashes on the wind, and this ride doesn't feel like anything but a kindness. She'll take whatever distance she can get without complaint, but she also knows she can only expect so much from someone with a car like this. It's the kind of vehicle that gets brought out for shows, polished up for admiration on a Saturday afternoon, not a dedicated long-hauler.

And a little distance is all she intends to ask for, really. But then her stomach lets out an audible rumble.

Lari's eyebrows tick up a fraction. It could be the truth. Larita isn't prone to assuming everyone has ulterior motives — especially not underdressed girls hitching on the roadside. But coincidences aren't coincidences in Darrow.

"Unfortunately, 'easy for me' is nowhere near Detroit right now," she starts, and then smiles when she hears Rose's stomach. "And even if it were, I'm certainly not sending you anywhere without some food," she adds with a laugh. "I was on my way to the racetrack. The clubhouses have a nice menu you can pick from, and then I'll tell you the whole kit and caboodle."

"Oh, I couldn't," Rose starts to demur, color rising to her cheeks. "I mean, I'm sure I can't afford clubhouse prices." She can't afford anything, in fact. And even if she pulled a crisp fifty out of the pockets of Larita's coat, spending it would only get her a plate of food that tasted like ashes. It needs to be offered freely.

And 'freely offered' is an easier ask when the prices are low to begin with. That's why she usually tries her luck at truck stops or greasy spoon diners. She's never actually been to a proper racetrack before — a track isn't a road, and it's a guarantee that no one there is going to pick her up — but she knows it's not a cheap hobby, and the clubhouse burgers probably cost four times what they'd go for at a dive.

"Oh, stop," Lari says, playfully scolding. "My treat. Really, you'll be doing me a favor if you say yes. I'm testing out some new plates for the menu, shake things up — you know how it is." She gets them down the stretch of road leading from city proper to the countryside. She only speeds up a little.

"Thank you. That's really kind." Rose allows herself a smile. And if a different driver had picked her up, this might be where she coyly suggested that surely they can work out some kind of payment, but she likes to think she's good at reading people, and Larita doesn't seem like the type to press an advantage. Maybe she won't get that far down the road, but she's getting a coat, kindness, and a meal, and that's really all a girl can ask for.

She leans back against the upholstery as they move out of town and farther into the countryside, the rolling landscape as reassuringly familiar as any other stretch of the east coast. Her curiosity piques at Larita's comment, and she looks over at her. "You're making it sound like you own the place."

"Am I?" Larita ways with playful coyness. "Hm." Then she laughs, like Rose is an old friend who's always been in on the joke. "Oh, I can't tease you too badly, since you're new and all. I do own the racetrack, in fact. A friend left it to me when she left the city."

[meme] test drive

Sparrow Hill Road

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