fine, you know what, FINE, iâm just going to LEAN INTO being an on-fire garbage can, whatever. this is who i am now. whatever. WHATEVER!!!! death comes for all of us.Â
Daphne Blake is very good at almost everything. She should be: she practices. Fencing, polo, archery, dance, tennis, volleyball, karate, yoga. She wrings them out of herself minute by minute, gesture by gesture until her muscles have memory.
She doesnât mind the work. Daphne likes to struggle. She likes the feeling of victory when she gets to the end: learning a music piece, defeating an opponent, adding a language to the rĂ©sumĂ© sheâs been building since she was ten. She doesnât have to be the best, but she likes to be better.
Daisy revolutionized city-based trauma centers, Dawn redefined modeling with her The Body Is Art campaign, Dorothy was the first woman to win the Triple Crown of Motorsport, and Delilah is so highly decorated sheâs run out of room on her dress blues.
Daphneâs sisters were born with the promise of one perfect thing written on their palms. Daphne was born with empty hands, and cannot make anything perfect. Daphne is only ever very, very good.
Norville âShaggyâ Rogers is high, right now. He is looking at the spiral of stucco on his ceiling, his dog Scoobyâs head on his stomach, one hand in a bag of Cheetos and the other holding a joint. He isnât floating, but heâs thinking about it.
âDaph,â he says, heavy eyes blinking open. âWhat timeâzit?â
Daphne lowers her epee. She has a national tournament this weekend. Her parents might come.
Then again, Shaggy knows, they might not.
âFour-fifteen,â Daphne tells him. She flicks her red ponytail off her shoulder, adjusting and readjusting her grip on the sword until it meets some unwritten standard. âWhen you finish your Cheetos weâll go over to the fair grounds. It wonât open until seven so we can have a look around before it gets busy.â
Daphne is a nationally ranked fencer; captains the Crystal Cove Country Club womenâs polo, archery, and tennis teams; speaks French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian; she can even apply eyeliner on a train. Shaggy saw her do it once, in Paris.
Daphne is the child Shaggy thinks his parents probably wanted. Good at everything she tries, and tries at everything she does.
Shaggy had his first panic attack at age nine. He was seated at a piano. It was his first recital and he was going to play a piece by BĂ©la BartĂłk. He had liked the song while learning it: fast, uneven, somehow new every time, new enough to keep up with the way his brain could never seem to settle. Shaggy liked it because he was never bored playing it, and he was always bored, in a strange way, in a way that made his heart beat fast and, sometimes, his stomach ache as if he was starving. Sometimes he was bored even when he wasnât boredâsometimes he became distracted and forgot what he was doing. He lost things all the time. It drove his mother crazy. It made his parents yell like the first three bars of the BartĂłk piece, Norville! focus Norville! sit still Norville! Norville! Norville!
Shaggy fell apart in trembles on the piano bench, in front of everybody, in front of his panicked teacher and his wide-eyed classmates and his father, who only sighed and said he was doing it for attention.
âShaggy,â Daphne says, and he realizes his eyes have fallen shut again. When he opens them, sheâs bent over him, grinning, too sharp. Daphne is always a little too sharp.
âYouâre not gonna chicken out on me, are you?â
Shaggy thinks about it. He feels good. Calm. Daphne always makes him feel calm. Sheâs kinetic and sharp-sharp-sharp. She sucks up all the energy in the room and leaves him feeling like he finally has enough room to breathe.
âNo,â he decides, âbut Iâm bringing Scoob and weâre stopping for burgers.â
Fred Jones is an Eagle Scout. The boys on the football team make fun of him, but the boys on the football team also go nuts for the jalapeño cheddar popcorn he sells, so frankly Fred thinks they can shut it. Fred had liked having tasks he had to complete before he became an Eagle. He had liked learning about nature, about how to survive in the woods, about how to build a fire.
He had liked learning how to identify tracks and what a branch looks like when it has been broken by human hands. Heâs not going to be a park ranger or anything but he likes knowing how to leave something undisturbed. He likes thinking of nature the way theyâd taught him to think of a crime scene at Forensics camp: How are things? How should they be?
Anyway, Fredâs dad had been excited. He likes when Fred gets elected to thingsâcaptain of the football team, president of Student Council, Editor-in-Chief of the high school paper.
Fred hadnât wanted any of those positions, but his dad didnât get excited about a lot of things, andâŠit was nice. When he did.
Fredâs phone buzzes. He flicks open the lock screen and reads Velmaâs text: meathead bring a flashlight.
hi Velma, Fred types back. my day was great thanks for asking.
Fred has enough time to go to the kitchen and make himself a ham sandwich before Velma replies. The text says neat story. Thirty seconds later, she follows up with, iâm outside.
Fred looks out the window behind the sink. Mrs. Dinkleyâs terrible van is idling in their driveway and Velma is already getting out of it, jogging up to Fredâs front door. He shoves his feet into the tennis shoes heâd last abandoned in the foyer and opens the door before Velma can knock, catching her with her hand half-raised.
âLookit you, eager beaver,â she drawls. âDâyou have the flashlight?â
Fred lifts his keychain. Itâs got a small but powerful flashlight dangling between his house and locker keys. âAlways be prepared,â he recites.
She cranes her neck as she peers over her shoulder. âIs your dad home?â she asks.
âNo, heâs got a town hall meeting until dinner. They announced the plans to build a parking structure where the Neubright Community Center is and everyoneâs pissed.â
âWith great power, etcetera etcetera,â says Velma, then pauses. âWait, the community center in south Cove? The only one with free daycare and after-school programs?â
âWow. Like, fuck your dad.â
Fred doesnât say anything. He knows. He knows. But itâs his dad.
Velma winces into the silence. âUh. Anyway. We should get going. The fair opens at seven and we want to get there before the crowds move in.â
Velma Dinkley is almost always right, but never says the right thing. She doesnât know why. She doesnât mean to. Words come tumbling out of her mouth before she can stop them, and they almost always lead to that terrible beat of silence where the wrongness hangs, suspended, until someone is gracious enough to speak into it.
Everything lines up in Velmaâs head: numbers, logic, equations, puzzles, those stupid Mensa games. But it never comes out right, or at least not just right. Her mother says she gets âa toneâ when she speaks sometimes that makes other people feel like she thinks theyâre stupid.
First of all, itâs not Velmaâs fault if people are stupid, and itâs not her fault if they know it, and itâs not her fault if they find out only in comparison to Velma being smarter than they are.
But of course Velma lives in the world, so itâs not her fault but it is her problem.
She hadnât meant fuck your dad, for example. What she had meant was: fuck the mayor. The mayor is Fredâs dad but she hadnât meant to say it like that. Fred idolizes his dad. Velma knows that.
Anyway, Fred never gets mad. Everyone else gets mad eventually but Fred hasnât, not since they were kids at Forensics camp together and Velma hadnât had anyone to partner with and had been trying so hard not to show anyone that it bothered her. And then Fred had said, âHey, we can have three in our group.â
Velma gets things right and people wrong. Her mother says sheâll grow out of it. Velma isnât sure.
âSo what makes you think we can do what the police canât?â Fred asks, taking a left-handed turn that Velma wouldnât have risked.
Velma rolls her eyes. âThe police said that a ghost pirate tried to commit murder by tampering with a roller coaster, Fred. If our baseline of detection is âjinkies! we think a ghost did it,â I am sure we can find something to bring to the table.â
Fred laughs. âWe can put that in our report,â he says.
âScoob wants a BLT,â Shaggy informs her, and Daphne rolls her eyes.
âScoobyâs a dog, so heâs getting the cheapest thing on the menu,â she says.
Shaggy frowns. âDaph, youâre like, a literal millionaire,â he points out. âAnd weâre at the drive-thru of a Dennyâs. Splurge on the BLT, dude.â
âPotheads who live in four-story houses shouldnât throw stones,â Daphne snaps back.
âOkay, girl wearing a Burberry tracksuitââ
âUh, maâam? Is that all?â
Daphne blows a long breath out of her nose. She glances at Scooby, who is sitting in the back seat but with his head on the arm rest between them. He looks up at her and whuffles what she swears to God sounds like, âplease.â
âNo,â she tells the machine, sighing. âAnd a BLT.â
âSweet!â Shaggy cries and holds his hand up for Scooby to high-five. He ruffles the hair at the top of his dogâs head and beams over at Daphne like sheâs won him a prize. âThe Scoob looooooooves bacon.â
In the fourth grade, Daphne found Shaggy in the hallway, shaking so hard she thought his teeth might fall out. Some kid from the grade aboveâRed somethingâwas standing over him, calling him names. Daphne hadnât really thought about it before punching that kid in the nose. She hadnât thought about it before crouching down in front of Shaggy and trying to get him to breath steady. She hadnât known what to say, but Shaggy had joked, âLike, wow, you hit like a girl,â between shuddering breaths and Daphne had laughed.
Nobody in Daphneâs family is good at telling jokes. Not like Shaggy is.
âEat those quick, you two. Iâd hate it if the scent of delicious burgers lured the pirate ghost to us.â
Shaggy swallows a big bite. âLikeâyou didnât say there would be a ghost!â
Daphne is neither convinced nor unconvinced of the reality of ghosts, so she shrugs. âI said we were going to check out the fair grounds! I thought you knew they said it was haunted.â
âLike, why would I know that?â
âIt was all over the news!â
âI donât read the news!â
âWell, ghosts probably arenât real,â Daphne assures him as they pull into the parking lot.
ââProbablyâ is like, not as reassuring as you think it is, Daph,â Shaggy mutters, but gets out of the car and directs Scooby to get out, too. Heâs still gently high, and his belly is full, and itâs not dark out yet.
And anyway, Daphneâs here. Heâs seen her split an apple with an arrow from across two tennis courts.
âCâmon,â Daphne wheedles. âIâll make you guys some Scooby snacks when we get home.â
Shaggyâs about to answer when another car pulls into the lotâwith any luck, it will be fairgrounds staff and theyâll be told to leave.
Instead of that, Fred Jones gets out of the car with a girl that Shaggy has Latin class with. Shaggy knows three things about Fred Jones:
His Student Council presidential campaign rested on cafeteria and vending machine reform.
He and Daphne kissed once, in the seventh grade, on a dare. Â
âJones, what are you doing here?â Daphne asks, crossing her arms over her chest.
Shaggy guesses it wasnât a very good kiss.
âHi, Daphne,â Fred says. He likes Daphne. Itâs not that he canât tell that Daphne basically hates him; he can, but he likes her anyway. He likes what her hair looks like when she sits in front of him, and how she grips her pencils too tightly. As far as he can tell she hates him because he beat her for Most Promising in their freshman year yearbook, which seems unfair because itâs not like Fred voted for himself.
Velma knocks his shoulder with hers. âTheyâre saying a ghost broke that roller-coaster that fell apart last week,â she says. âWeâre going to figure out what really happened.â
âSo, like, you donât think it was a ghost?â asks the guy Daphneâs with, a tall and shaggy-haired kid Fredâs pretty sure is stoned. âHa, ha. Ghosts. Right?â
âRight,â says Fred, as reassuringly at he can. The guy seems nervous, so Fred puts a hand on his shoulder. âIâm sure it was just mechanical failure.â
âAnyway, what are you doing here?â Velma asks, eyeing Daphne Blake skeptically. Fred had kissed her in the seventh grade and told Velma afterwards that her lips had tasted like clouds. Velma had said that clouds had no taste.
âScoob and I just came for, like, the free burgers,â says the guy with Daphne, who Velma is pretty sure is named something preposterous like Orville or Neville. âWe hunt neither ghosts nor, like, pirates.â
âWell, great news for you: weâre going to prove it wasnât either of those stupid ideas,â Velma tells him. âRight, Fred?â
âSure thing,â Fred says.
Daphne snorts, then tightens her ponytail. âWhatever,â she mutters. âCome on, Shaggy.â
Velma frowns. âWaitâyou do think it was the spirit of the Dread Pirate Roberts?â
âThe existence of the afterlife can neither be proven nor disproven,â Daphne says, and throws a grin over her shoulder thatâs so sharp Velma feels her lip get bloody from it. âAll Iâm saying is, if it was the spirit of the Dread Pirate Whats-His-NameâŠâ she shrugs, and shoves the sleeves of her track suit up over her elbows. Fredâs smile widens.
âThen Iâm gonna fight a fucking ghost.â
jacobvanloon
areudirty
baratheonpilled
