This is the story of the road that goes to my house, and what ghosts there do remain
Phic Phight Fill for @moipale
“Thermos?”
“Got it.”
“Wrist rays?”
“Got ‘em.”
“Ray guns?”
“Nah,” Sam drawls, bare feet on Jazz’s driver seat’s shoulder. Her fingers are on her phone. Her socks and shoes are somewhere below her seat. “Forgot them at home.”
Tucker takes a look at her. Despite her insistence on their absence, there’s three ray gun handles bulging out of the pockets in her black daisy dukes. The purple-green-plaid flannel’s tied around her waist, hiding half of it, but they’re not not there.
In her black tank and bare feet in the back of Jazz’s jalopy, she looks as overheated as the rest of them.
Tucker doesn’t feel any better, sweating through his tank and board shorts and all that. At least he had the sense to wear sandals, and not black pleather combat boots.
“Jazz, she’s lying,” Tucker snitches, groaning when Sam gives him a retaliatory slap to the ribs. He gropes at the spot where a bruise will no doubt be forming. “Ow.”
“Sam,” Jazz offers with the finite patience of older siblings, “Stop hitting Tucker.”
“...M’kay,” Sam mumbles, and slumps down into the hot cloth seats that only soak up more heat the longer they’re in this car. “Can we turn on the AC?”
“It’s already on full blast, Sam.”
Sam retaliates by kicking a car seat. Thankfully, slumping over allows her to reach Danny’s seat, as opposed to Jazz, who is driving, and Danny is fast asleep with what’s probably early-onset heat exhaustion. He doesn’t even notice.
Tucker needs AC, a nap, and snacks, in that order. “Can we break from the road trip for a gas station?” he begs, not whining, because he’s almost an adult now and begging is far more mature.
Jazz doesn’t even dignify him with a glare in the mirror. “No stops. If we want to make it to Tracy, tonight, we’re not stopping unless someone has an emergency pee break on the side of the road.”
Great. Just great.
“Bazooka?” Jazz continues their list, looking just as wilted as everyone else in the car. There’s no head band today; her hair is piled up as high on her head as she can get it, wire sunglasses perched there from their drive to Chelsea this morning.
“Trunk,” Sam offers listlessly.
“Map?”
Danny doesn’t answer. Because he’s asleep.
“Danny’s got it,” Tucker points out, since he was at least paying attention.
Jazz grumbles something rude and swipes the map of of her brother’s lap. “The next time the three of you upset an Ancient spirit of the Wild, I’m not helping you run.”
“Noted,” Tucker and Sam chorus. Tucker’s pretty sure she’s over exaggerating.
…Maybe.
He swipes his hat off and shoves it into a pocket, wiping sweat off of his forehead with the back of a hand. “Okay. We have…one night to get out to Tracy and find the body. The abandoned barge should actually be there this time.”
Jazz taps the brake, flicks on the turn signal, and takes a steep turn across the highway— superseding an additional three lanes of now-irritated traffic. “As opposed to…?”
Sam sighs.
“As opposed to breaking into his haunted house and getting arrested,” Tucker admits wryly, just as slumped back as the girl herself. “Sam.”
“I paid bail. We’re fine,” Sam grumbles. Her arms cross.
“We weren’t fine until Danny infected their computer to delete their records. I need to get to college, Sam! I can’t have an arrest on my record!”
“Record, schmecord.”
“Sam!”
“As long as no one’s got a record,” Jazz intervenes loudly, the only college student in their car, “We’re good! Now, are we hunting the dead guy, or the guy who killed the dead guy?”
Tucker mentally debates whether or not rolling down the car window would give them some air, or just let more hot air into their already sweltering back seat.
“Ghost who killed a dead guy, but who the dead guy probably summoned,” Sam clarifies with a sigh.
“Oh, great. One of those.”
“And sending him back probably shot him back to the barge, though, so now…” Tucker leads the problem on, “And there’s a new moon tonight. So.”
Jazz sighs. Loudly. “Of all the months…it’s got to be the dog days of summer, huh?”
Sam tucks her legs in, finally too tired to pout about their circumstances. “More like hellhounds, honestly. Did you see the ghost in the lake last week?”
“Heard about it. There was a poltergeist in the old high school last night— the one before the move to Casper in the fifties. Mom and Dad went out there at midnight before they went to tackle the bog thing in the golf course pond this morning.”
“So that’s what Dad was whining about,” Sam muses, tired and sweaty. “I’d assumed parks and recreation got mad at them for violating the water conservation order again.”
“Nah.” Jazz signals another turn, cutting around an Amazon delivery truck and zooming into a side road. “Bog monster thing. Enraged by all the golf balls hit at it.”
“Goootcha.”
Tucker throws his head back and groans. “Is this going to be all we do all summer break? Hunt ghosts? Get chased around the state by cops?”
“Yeah/Probably,” Sam and Jazz agree, both exhausted at the prospect.
Tucker gives in and rolls down the window. If he’s going to be stuck in the car with his two best friends and their adult supervision, he needs some moving air— even if it’s just as hot and twice as humid as inside the car.
They’ll be in Tracy tomorrow. All they have to do is find an abandoned barge floating in a forgotten waterway.
Easy.
…And then all they have to do is fix the problem all over again the next time someone gets it in their head to go treasure-hunting this summer.
Tucker bangs his head against Danny’s headrest, waking the guy up in the process, and wishes he had agreed to go to comp-sci camp after all.
“I hate July,” Jazz mutters. “All the crazies come out with the heat.”
Everyone agrees with a moan and a groan.
Jazz clicks on the radio, finds something that isn’t entirely static, and the road continues onwards in front of them…and will for miles and miles of hot pavement more.
*
Complementary song accompaniment/title source for this fic: July, July by the Decemberists. Thanks for reading!
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