The New Girl

[wolfs_daughter]

After finally hauling herself back to her trailer, Echo fell into a heavy sleep to fight off the headache caused by the fumes from the crater. She didn't even take her shoes off before she crashed. The sun came up, beams of light peeking through the cheap Venetian blinds, but instead of getting up with the dawn the way she usually did, the hybrid rolled over and stuffed her head beneath her pillow.

When she finally woke, the clock on the nightstand said it was four-thirty in the afternoon. The sun was gradually sinking towards the western horizon, throwing long shadows in the front yard. Echo rubbed the side of her face, grimaced at the bad taste in her mouth. But at least the headache was gone.

She rinsed her mouth out at the kitchen sink, then poked around in the fridge for something to eat. There was chili, beans and rice, and leftover roast chicken. She chose the chili, scooping some into a bowl and putting it in the microwave. When the timer went off, she carried the bowl out onto the tiny porch. There wasn't much of the day left, but she wanted to enjoy the sunlight while it lasted.

She'd had the strangest dream during all that sleep, where she'd been giving birth to the alien from the crater. Mama and Papa had been there. He'd been in Wolf form. The dreamscape had fragmented at the point when the creature walked under it's own power from the delivery room, dropping her into a deeper slumber. She was going to call home tomorrow. Just to hear familiar voices would make her less anxious about her dreams.

Comments

[nomadic_naomi]

On the bright side, Naomi finally made it into town and managed to get a bite to eat.

On the not-so-bright side, she hadn't figured out the car mystery. Not that she hadn't had access to a phone to make a call, but the fact that she wouldn't know what to tell a mechanic if she got through.

Yes, hi, um...my car broke down, smoke out of the hood and everything, but now it's gone. It just...disappeared. Yep. Poof!

Something told Naomi that phone call would get her referred to men in white coats looking to send her into a padded room with her own -- ahem -- jacket. So for now, she had to settle for having managed two meals already.

Still something of a nomad, though, Naomi didn't really have a place to go. She'd yet to find lodging for the night, but she figured she had to come across something soon, right? Searchlight was only but so big.

Still, her feet hurt. And she was tired of lugging the bookbag on her shoulders.

The teenager passed by a trailer park, idly wondering what would happen if she stopped to ask strangers for a place to sleep -- even if it was just a couch. Granted, talking to strangers wasn't that smart, and she cringed at the thought of human interaction (mostly due to her own awkwardness), but unless she magically stumbled upon a cheap motel soon...

[wolfs_daughter]

The spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl, and Echo put the last of the chili in her mouth and ate it. The fading sunlight had turned her van into a hulking shape in the new gloom. She'd finally cleaned it out and washed it the other day. It had taken two giant trash bags to get all the fast food wrappers, newspapers, and advertising flyers cleaned up.

Because she was unemployed, she had no set schedule, and that meant she had way too much free time on her hands. She still didn't have a television, so she made up for it by people-watching, sometimes around town, sometimes up in Las Vegas. Her gentle nature meant she liked people well enough, but she wasn't good with them and she knew it. She had a vague plan to work on that at some point.

There was a figure coming up the road. It was getting dark so early now that the sun was almost out of sight, even though it was barely five o'clock. Echo squinted. She was still holding the empty bowl in her hands. The lone person got closer. The hybrid picked out a backpack. 'Hitch hiker' was her first thought, but a hitch hiker would have had better luck closer to the highway. Or at least near the middle of town, where tourists stopped to gas up and use the bathroom.

"Hey." Her own voice startled her a little. "You lost?"

[nomadic_naomi]

The voice calling out startled Naomi, and she closed her eyes briefly to regain her bearings. She stopped in her tracks and looked in the direction of the voice, shielding her eyes from the setting sun.

"I guess so," she admitted, though truth be told, she'd been lost since Vegas.

Gravel crunched under Naomi's shoes as she tentatively approached the trailer, thumbs hooked in the shoulder straps of her bookbag. "I'm actually supposed to be on my way to California...but I misread a map and my car broke, so..."

[wolfs_daughter]

The voice was female, and as the figure got closer Echo realized it was a girl rather than a woman. That made her not a threat, at least not an obvious one. Her posture relaxed the barest fraction.

"Where'd you leave your car?" Maybe it broke down on the main road, leaving the driver to walk in an attempt to find a phone. Most of the residents of the park were older people, retirees living on Social Security. Being the quiet sort, Echo was a good neighbor for them. But they'd most likely be unwilling to let a stranger into their homes to use a phone.

She wasn't even sure she wanted the girl to come in, even if she was stranded.

"You must have gotten really turned around on the highway."

[nomadic_naomi]

Naomi visibly cringed, slowly letting the bookbag slip off her shoulders before gently setting the bag on the ground. Once upright again, the teenager exhaled a sigh of relief.

"Just north of town," she answered, hooking a thumb over her shoulder. "But...the car's not there anymore. Darnedest thing. I got onto the wrong road when I hit Vegas, didn't realize it until I was surrounded by desert."

Then again, even now, Naomi was surrounded by desert. Searchlight had a knack for being all desert-like, even in the middle of what passed for town. Her grandparents from Kansas often joked with Naomi about living in Utah -- "BFE," her grandfather called it.

Obviously, ol' gramps never made it to southern Nevada.

[wolfs_daughter]

Maybe an alien ate it.

The thought made Echo snort, and she looked over the girl's shoulder at the road behind her. As expected, no one else was coming along or moving around in their yards.Given how sleepy Searchlight was, it was entirely possible that no one would be moving until tomorrow morning when grocery runs were usually made. Either that or trips to the post office.

"How long have you been walking? It gets dark pretty early this time of year."

[nomadic_naomi]

"Not that long, really. Well...not recently."

Naomi paused to stretch, cringing when she heard a small pop in her shoulder. She was going to chalk that up to all the time she spent the day before in the car, because she was far too young to be creaking and popping like that.

"My car died around sunrise," she added. "I walked into town, got a bite to eat, tried to call the folks, ate again...and now I'm on the move again."

[wolfs_daughter]

That left the hybrid with a dilemma. She'd made contact, and the girl was in a bind. It was like the situation with Rhiannon, she couldn't just leave her out there. Her shyness meant she didn't really want a stranger in her living space, but she'd try to grit her teeth and deal with it.

"Do you even know where you're going?"

[nomadic_naomi]

"Well, I was on my way to San Diego. But now...I'm not sure."

Naomi idly fiddled with the cross around her neck. She didn't even realize she did it half the time; sometimes, it was for comfort. Sometimes, it was simply because she was fidgety in the moment. Silently, she wondered if any other Mormon ever encountered a mission like this.

God obviously had something in mind for the teenager. But what was it?

[wolfs_daughter]

Echo saw the cross, but her expression only shifted slightly. She'd been raised pagan, but she knew that those beliefs were outside of the mainstream and that not everyone agreed with them. It was one of the things that had made her stand out as weird when she first went to public school.

"My name's Echo."

The shadows were growing deeper. The sun was a fiery orange ball on the edge of the horizon. "There are a couple of motels in Searchlight, but you look like you need to sit down before you fall down. Want to come in for a few minutes?"

[nomadic_naomi]

For the first time in what felt like days, Naomi smiled -- a full-on, honest smile. She released her light grip on her necklace, grabbing her bookbag and hoisting it over her shoulder again.

"I'm Naomi."

A sense of relief washed over the teenager as Echo offered her a chance to sit and collect herself. She felt the weight lift from her shoulders, despite the bag.

"Thank you so much," she said. "You sure I won't be a bother?"

[wolfs_daughter]

"I live alone. That means this is my space and I can do what I want with it."

Echo had left the door unlocked because she'd only stepped out onto the porch, and she pushed it open to let herself back in. 'Naomi'. Even her name was Biblical. But as long as she didn't start proselytizing, this didn't have to be terrible.

Inside, the trailer was slightly cluttered but clean. Folded laundry waited on the couch for her to put it away. Library books had been stacked on the coffee table. Several different pairs of sneakers were scattered around the room. She felt a slight twinge when she saw the bong sitting next to the paperbacks from the library.

"It doesn't look like it, but the couch is really comfortable."

[nomadic_naomi]

Naomi smiled at her surroundings as she crossed the threshold, again slipping her bookbag off her shoulder and setting it down on the floor. It was certainly different from home -- and it wasn't a bad thing. Everything back home was so spotless, so ordered...this felt much more genuine.

She sank herself into the couch with a relieved sigh, glad to stop for once.

"I like it," she said, her eyes wandering. "It's soooo different than back home."

[wolfs_daughter]

The late hour when the hybrid woke up had made it necessary to turn some lights on, and now that she could see her guest she could tell that Naomi was even younger than she sounded. Eighteen or nineteen at most. She was also cute. Echo made herself stop looking.

"I have to keep things kinda picked up because I only have so much space, but I'm lazy about it." She said it from her place in the tiny kitchen as she dumped the bowl and spoon into the sink. That could be cleaned up later.

"Where's home?" she asked as she moved back into the living area. At least the bedroom was separate, at the end of a narrow hallway. "And what's in California?"

[nomadic_naomi]

"Salt Lake City."

Naomi figured she'd be homesick, considering this was the first time she'd ever left the state of Utah without her family. But she didn't miss Utah all that much; maybe it was because she only gone a day, or maybe it was because of everything else she had to deal with.

Maybe homesickness wasn't immediate. Maybe that was still coming.

"College," she continued, ruffling her hair to get out a knot. The desert was surprisingly windy. "Folks are paying for me to go to UC-San Diego. I don't start til the fall, but they decided to send me down early, let me get used to...things."

[wolfs_daughter]

"You're...driving? To San Diego?"

That didn't scan. Echo wasn't a geography expert by any means, but surely there had to be buses that traveled that distance. And a bus wouldn't break down and then randomly disappear in the middle of nowhere. Well, okay, not nowhere, but Searchlight wasn't exactly a bustling metropolis where you could just call a taxi to come pick you up either.

"It's an awful long time until fall," she ventured. "Winter's really just getting here. What are you planning to study?"

[nomadic_naomi]

Naomi offered a sheepish smile, knowing how insane the whole thing sounded. And, truth be told, she felt out of her element. Not just because she was in a different state all by herself, but because she was interacting with someone whose beliefs she didn't know.

Her childhood had been very controlled and sheltered in that regard. Her family's connections meant almost every Naomi met in her early years was also Mormon, and her schools didn't have much diversity.

Not that Naomi harbored ill will toward those who were different, she just...didn't know how to interact with them.

"My father's idea," she shrugged. "He's paying for everything, but he wouldn't buy me a plane ticket to get down there. He insisted I take my brother's car.

"Which will be news to my brother once he gets back from Africa."

[wolfs_daughter]

"Africa. Huh. Wow, that's..."

Echo didn't know what to say to that. She knew most of the precepts of Christianity, how people were supposed to act when they believed in a higher power, but reality usually differed from that. Then again, her family's exile from the commune had taught her that even pagans could be intolerant. Since then, she'd fashioned her own belief system, one she could live with.

"Is he a missionary or something?" she asked carefully. Papa always said that the worst things you could try to discuss with a stranger were religion and politics, but her curiosity was piqued. Knowledge could make you not just smarter, but safer.

[nomadic_naomi]

Naomi perked up a bit at the chance to talk about Elijah. They were close, closer than a lot of other siblings she knew. They rarely bickered, and a part of Naomi still wished she could've gone to Africa, too.

If nothing else, Elijah would still have his Aspen.

"Yep, he's helping feed impoverished children," she practically beamed. "He's been gone about half a year, I guess? I dunno, I lose track of time real easy."

The teenager sighed. "I wanted to go, too, but my father wouldn't hear of it. He insisted I go to college. Said it would be my mission. Which..." Again, Naomi shrugged. "I dunno, not many of my friends are going to college.

"And the ones who are? They're going to BYU."

[wolfs_daughter]

"I was gonna do the college thing. They have some good schools near Seattle, which is where I came down from, but I went to work after I graduated from high school instead. Then I decided to take a real sabbatical and get away for a couple of years. Live out of state and try to be an actual working artist."

There was a chair close to the cluttered couch, and Echo plopped down in it, crossing one foot over the other. She was going to have to add a drawing of the alien to her sketchbook. As an attempt to purge the image from her mind.

"Utah's Mormon country," the hybrid said. "Do only the guys go on missions and stuff?"

[nomadic_naomi]

"No, boys and girls go. My father just..." Another sigh, this one more exasperated than the others. "I don't know."

If Naomi were honest with herself, she was glad to get all of this out. She didn't have anyone to talk to back home about this sort of thing -- because it would inevitably get back to her father -- and it was nice to just vent, even if it was to a complete stranger.

"My father was always big on me going to school, going to school out of state," she said, mostly to herself. "Never gave a reason, and me being the obedient girl I am, I never questioned it.

"But..." Her eyes narrowed. "That's not normal. Right?"

[wolfs_daughter]

"Normal is relative." You have no idea how much that's true.

Then again, Echo had never really been the sort to question her parents either. They'd put her in public school, and she hadn't argued even though it was hellish for her. Graduation had been the best day of her life. Everything that had happened since then started because she survived high school.

But she also knew Papa had his reasons, and she believed it when he said he loved her because he wouldn't lie. The world was an unkind place, and if he urged her to suppress the Wolf and live in secret he was only trying to keep her safe. Her first inching steps to get to know her other half were halting at best, and she was still struggling to come to terms with her duality. So she understood where Naomi was coming from.

"I thought about going all the way across the country to New York when I left home, but there's too many people and too much noise there. It looks like a really exciting city when I see it on the news and stuff, but I think maybe I've got a good reason to be here. I just don't know what it is yet."

[nomadic_naomi]

New York scared Naomi. Hell, to a degree, San Diego scared her.

It's not like Salt Lake City was a podunk, middle-of-nowhere town with one stoplight, but it was cozy in its own unique way. It felt smaller than it really was, partly because it seemed to Naomi like everyone knew everyone else, so the thought of those other large cities unnerved her.

Still, experiencing one would be good for her, right? Assuming she actually made it out of this place.

"I guess," she mused, chewing on her lip, "if I'm supposed to know my father's intentions, I'll find out soon enough."

[wolfs_daughter]

"Do you have money for a place to sleep tonight? I'd say you can crash on the couch, but, uh..."

There was no tactful way for Echo to say that she'd only intended this to be a rest stop, but she was more generous with her funds than she was with her personal space. If Naomi needed cash, she had some socked away from the last check Mama had sent. Without a car, the other girl wasn't going anywhere until she got that resolved, so they could consider it a loan. The El Rey wasn't glamorous by any stretch of anyone's imagination, but it meant a bed and a roof over your head.

"I can give you a lift," she added, gesturing towards where her van was parked outside. "It's not far, but you've probably already walked your feet off today, and it was practically dark when I noticed you. When did you eat last? I've got leftovers in the fridge."

[nomadic_naomi]

Another smile crept onto the teenager's face, though this one was more tired than the others. The events of the past couple days were finally starting to catch up with Naomi, and her eyes were starting to get heavy.

"Yeah, I got cash," she said. "My folks didn't throw me out there completely without a life raft, thank God."

She stood and stretched, and for the first time, she truly felt all the walking she had done over the past day. Her feet were sore, and she made a mental note to soak her legs in warm water as soon as she could -- a trick one of her running friends from high school taught her.

"A ride would be great," she agreed. "If it's not too much trouble, I mean."

[wolfs_daughter]

"Nah, it's no problem. I slept most of the day, so I'm probably gonna be up all night reading or something."

Echo retrieved the keys to the van from their customary place in the bowl of loose change next to the door, then did a discreet armpit check. Ew. She should shower and change clothes when she got back. That smell from the crater was still lingering, and she didn't know if it could give her another contact high.

"If you're sure you don't want a bite to eat first, I'm ready to go whenever you are."

[nomadic_naomi]

Naomi hoisted her backpack over her shoulders again, hooking her thumbs in the straps and offering Echo a grateful smile. "I really appreciate it," she said, silently shuddering at the thought of the shape her feet would be in.

Sand and gravel and pavement probably weren't that great on old sneakers.

"I'll worry about the car tomorrow," she said, mostly to herself. "Right now, I just want a nice bath and some sleep."