As fate would have it, pretending to be the funky-cool-persona she made up on a whim doesn't make packing easier. It makes shoving clothes in her duffel bag more of a mindfuck. Maybe that's what happens when your mind is fucked. She should have anticipated that. 

Or maybe it's her fault. Maybe it always has been. When something is endemic to your personality, it's your fault for not counteracting it, right? This was congenital; she let it linger; and therefore she has committed some sort of moral wrongdoing. 

That's a totally normal thing to think, Tiff. Good job. Nailed it in one. She shoves another pair of socks into her bag.

It's hard not to think of herself that way. Preteen Tiff, however real that incarnation was, couldn't put together an overnight bag for her grandparents' house without an hour of debate. Girl Scout camping trips were easier. At least she didn't have to make the list herself. In the great beyond of several-years-gone, she's just as much of a compulsive overpacker, and she knows that.

Without Kepler there to smack things out of her hands, the canvas duffel ends up packed full of the the run-of-the-mill, average, normal, usual suspects, as normal as random bits and bobs from old portable CD players are; as normal as two weeks' worth of underwear for what she's pretty sure is going to be a two-days trip could possibly be; as normal as any of the packed-up, removed, and shoved-back-in pieces of suddenly-foudroyant, repulsive, hard-to-bear anything are. There comes a point where she has to bite the bullet and decide that yeah, actually, she does need a glass paperweight with a glow-in-the-dark marble inside it. She does need one sock with a hole in it that doesn't match up to any other sock. She does need to shove sunglasses shaped like alien eyes deep into the side pocket. None of these things are going to be important and she knows it. She just can't bear to keep taking things out of her bag. She can't keep touching it. It's better to just kick it at the bedroom door and be done with it. Her stocking foot against the side with the shirts is her abluent. There is her backpack on the floor full of camping supplies, there is her duffel bag with all her clothes and assorted effluvium bullshit, and there is the fact she needs to stare in the eye: she's herself and she has no clue what she's doing.

Kepler could have prevented this, she admits. She pauses to lean against the wall at the foot of the stairs, pulling on her boots with a sigh. He's not anathema to her cause. Even if he were, it would have taken longer than it should.

Yeah, whatever. She hooks her keys to her belt and drags her stuff outside. She has a show to get on the road and shit to get into the car— preferably before her aunt gets home and realizes what happened. She lets it carry her through unlocking the doors and tossing her stuff into the backseat.

Leaning in through the open driver's side door, she checks the clock on the dash of the Honda that the Agent told her to borrow. Time doesn't mean much to her. No matter how much she tries, she can't get herself to get it on that intrinsic level that everyone else does. According to the little blue-green numbers, though, it took less time than she thought— thirteen minutes after she started packing to get her overstuffed canvas bag into this jalopy, each spent chiding herself for pacing around her room and rummaging through her drawers when she could have just grabbed her tools, her ray gun, and some spare underwear.

No, of course she didn't do the simple thing. She packed that radio she bought at a yard sale to scrap for spare parts; she packed a half-eaten package of trail mix she's pretty sure she'll have to ditch at customs; she packed a sweater, because she knows she's going to get cold; she packed every reagent she keeps in the garage fridge— and she leans forward to stash those in the compartment that the golden-yellow sticky note stuck to the dash told her about. Thank god for the Agent's incredibly annoying knowledge of how she works. She even packed half of the contents of her top desk drawer for no reason other than just-in-case. The toolbox and the tent are in the trunk; her ray gun is in the packaging that makes it look like a toy, like the note warned her to; and she has a water bottle in the cupholder opposite the audio recorder that she's pretty sure Suzette is going to want running for at least some of this trip. She left a note for Andy, she left a note for Aunt Esther, she left a voicemail for Dr. Deseret on the morgue's machine, and she let Mr. Beck know what was happening and why she couldn't work at the bookstore for a couple days (and that Bloodsaw didn't need to know, thank you, she'd tell them herself).

Did she even pack deodorant? Oh, god. Dread stabs like lightning, cold and sharp to the pit of her stomach. She checks her day-to-day bag, still slung around her shoulder. It's still there.

Good. She closes her eyes, breathes in, and lets the bag fall back to hip height. Good.

All that's left to do now is get Kepler. Wherever the hell that little fuck got off to.

She breathes in deeply, trying to quell her nerves again. She can get behind the wheel. It's not that hard. It's just a matter of making it seem like hers. It'll come naturally, beyond that. Like riding a bike.

A big metal death trap of a bike where the slightest wrong move could kill anyone in a crosswalk. Right. Cool.

Whatever. She drove it here. She can drive it to other places. On some rational level, she knows a car is safer than a motorcycle. Since when has that thing clawing at her sternum cared about what her rational mind thinks, though? One of these days, she'll crack herself open like a lobster and pry it out of her. Today, though, she's driving— and it has to be her car in her mind for that to work.

The Agent told her that he put a small hanging dinosaur around the rearview with the vanilla air freshener because he figured she would like that. She had to take both down when she was driving it back to the house. Anything waving and bobbing in her vision is a hazard— not because it distracts her, per se, but because it drives her up the wall in a keen mixture of frustration and panic that she can't tamp down.

No. Wait, no. That's classically a distraction.

With the dinosaur removed from the rearview, she settles for installing a gift from Denny elsewhere: a sturdy black space-patterned visor CD holder. She fastens it into place with the thick crunch of velcro after plucking a definitely-illegally-burned and very sparsely-labeled MIX 9 from the third slot. With that in the radio, her own air freshener bleeding coconut-lime into the nauseating too-clean-car-smell, she takes a drink of water and backs out of the driveway.

She's gotten better at driving since last Halloween. Even in her own mind's contribution to the collective fever-dreamscape last year, she was bad enough at it that she lived on the tips of her toes, perpetually jumpy and glancing from the windshield to the rearview to the child in the backseat. At the very least, she hasn't slammed on the brakes so hard that she jammed someone else's wrist. When she hits them at a stop sign she wasn't expecting (but should have), all she gets is a seatbelt to the neck.

In her defense, she didn't drive often, and she didn't know it was a dream. She thought she was still grounded. She's sure as shit going to be grounded later, when her aunt finds out she got arrested. Again. At the golf course. Again.

That's a lie. She's never been arrested at the golf course before. She just likes to think she's a worse person than she is— and she hates golf courses anyway. They're a waste of land and water; and they're a sign of everything wrong in the world; and she'd tear them all up and do something different with them if she could. The pesticides, the deforestation, and the sheer lack of biodiversity necessary to maintain that kind of area alone just kind of boil her blood. Where's the fun in golf? Where's the fun in a tiny little cart bumbling along a big lawn? Who okayed that?

Wincing, she stops gripping the wheel like a child inside an overlarge plastic shopping cart and turns towards the stupid fucking golf course.

It's not even in Lake Wonder. That's the dumb thing about it. The Pines at Lake Wonder are just outside town limits, on the second left-hand turn and a long, winding road up the mountainside. There's an easier way to get to Kepler, she knows, but she'd rather not cut into the air and get there. It's easier to pull up to where she saw him last and start from where she saw him last. Normal things first; weirder, more experimental things second. That's the order of operations, isn't it?

She knows there's no order of operations. Sometimes she just does shit. Right now, it's staying in the car.

Even if she doesn't look at it, she knows it's there. The golf course is too expansive an acreage to ignore. It lives in her peripheral vision like an ocean of verdigris mocking until it's lacerated by the yellow caution tape of what she supposedly did out on the green, here near the fence shellacked charmingly, purposely-rustic fence where the woods and the road meet. It's maybe two hundred feet away by the time someone realizes it's her behind the wheel of that Honda— and by the time she thinks to stop herself.

Sure, Sheriff Watson can step out into the road and glare at her with his hands on his belted hips, but that doesn't mean she has to consider mowing him down for more than half a second before pulling off to the side of the road.

She pops open her door and steps out.

"Miss Sheridan," he announces, voice accented in that way that marks him as one of those people born and raised here— and who probably intends to die somewhere on these roads like so many of his forebears. "Come back to the scene of the crime, I see."

She pauses like she hasn't been caught. "Hey there, Sheriff. How can I help—"

"Cut the crap, Tiffany."

She only corrects him in her head: Tiffany May. "I'm not here to touch your crime scene. I'm just here for— something else."

"What on earth you possibly have left behind here? What could warrant returning to the scene of the crime?" He approaches.

"I'm not touching your crime scene. And, for the record, you shouldn't be eating in it."

"Now, why on earth would I believe that nonsense?"

"You probably should. Like, if you wanted to trust any of the evidence you were collecting, you might tell Vargas to quit eating his pizza behind the perimeter." She doesn't raise her voice. She knows he can hear her from here. More than that, she knows he doesn't care.

"You know that wasn't what I was talking about."

She raises her eyebrows a little, not challenging, but asking for clarification. "Why would you believe I'm not here to touch the crime scene?"

His non-answer is answer enough.

"Because I'm not, man." She doesn't bother hiding her retreat. Waving him off, she turns on her toes and keeps walking. "Like you'd believe me if I told you. And like it's any of your business."

"I think it's my business if you're here to mess with my crime scene an hour after I arrested you."

"I'm not touching your crime scene. See? Look. Watch. Look at this. I'm actively walking away from it." Pivoting sharply, she crosses the unpainted two-lane street to the source of the shuffling, squeaking, chewing noises he clearly hasn't noticed yet.

"Don't be smart with me."

"It's kind of hard not to."

Right. Fuck. The first rule of dealing with cops: don't fucking talk to them. Why does she always forget it? Silently chiding herself, Tiff stops in the loose stones and dirt at the edge of the mountain's incline, reaches deep into some brambles, and stops when she feels warm flesh and fur. There's her boy. She can't keep a smile off her face as she pulls back and up to disentangle him from the bush.

Kepler squeaks in protest, trying to grab at the bush. There he is, though: a rat the size of a dog, greedily eating purple-black round, flat berries from the branches of the pink-stemmed plant he was in. She gathers him up in her arms, holding him like a toddler on her hip and wondering just how anyone could miss the fact that she takes this stupid fucking rat with her everywhere she can. She would think that they wouldn't miss a rat the size and, certainly, weight of something like a Springer Spaniel. She wouldn't know what a spaniel is, actually. She doesn't know dogs. That's Denny's business.

She does know business, though. While Sheriff Watson keeps saying things to her (gibberish, at this point, but still words she can't tune out), she watches in sudden cold-stomached horror as Kepler shoves another berry into his mouth and realizes what he's eating. The plant he's eating from has a purple stem and shocks of green branches where the lateness of the season hasn't set in; white flowers; leaves so simple they're almost stereotypical, even when they droop down to the dirt; and berries so purple they look black in places.

"Kepler," she hisses, smacking his hands.

He smacks her wrists and keeps chewing furiously.

"Stop eating the fucking—" She sticks her fingers in his mouth. When he bites down on her hand, she squeaks, "Stop eating the poke sallet!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," the sheriff interrupts, "do you have something more important going on with that rat than—"

"Yeah, actually," she says, trying to scoop out bits of berry around the gnashing, gnawing teeth of Kepler and struggling with the much harder task of not crying. She looks the rat— her rat, her beloved boy— in the eye. "Why'd you do that? Why'd you eat poison? I told you! I told you that was poison!"

He stops chewing for a moment.

"When we were up here with Bryce to pick up that armoire and you ran off and tried to eat them, I told you— I told you they're poison! You can't eat poke sallet!"

Something shines behind those eyes. Both of them know he's more intelligent than he lets people outside their circle realize. It comes through now, like it's only just dawning that she's not playing a game with him; she's worried. No-fucking-duh. As gently as he did on the day Peepaw stabbed her in the chest, he places a dirty, juice-stained hand flat on her cheek and turns his head to dribble-spit the berries out of his mouth. They catch and cling to his teeth and fur, but he tries.

Chest heaving, mind coasting down the highway at the speed limit like his hand resting there did that much to keep her from losing it, she thinks it over. He's been here for a while. His fur's stained pretty thoroughly with juice. If emesis was going to begin, as it does with poisoning from this plant, it was going to start a bit ago.

"Can you eat this?" she whispers, mind and voice tinged as much with wonder as worry.

He blinks. He doesn't nod. It's not a no.

Right. She remembers all too late that they're not alone. She swallows, nods, and adjusts her grip on him so he can crawl up onto her shoulders. It's a heavy shift, but he prefers it. What's she going to do? Not let the giant alien rat climb her like a cat tree?

"Well, Sheriff," she says, trying to stride past him, still catching her breath and drying out from desperate grief, "it's been real, but I've got to go do some shit for the government now. See ya."

"I don't know if I believe that one," he says, long and slow.

"You don't have to believe me for it to be true. How do you think I got out of this bind—" Kepler's tail curls around her arm; she bats it away from her elbow gently. Looking up at him, she reminds him, "I told you to quit that. It makes my hands itchy. I've got to drive and I can't do that with itchy hands."

"See, now you sound like Bryce's father," he remarks, like it's a bad thing.

She pauses a couple steps away from the car. She could keep going. She doesn't know if she wants to. It feels a little like getting yelled at by her grandfather, but with the added thrill of getting to say fuck you to a cop and confusion of just wanting to get out of here. She has things to do. She can't just stay here. "I don't know what that's supposed to mean. Is that about Mr. Baker sanding things? When he's upset?"

"I reckon Bryce should've come live with a real man all those years ago," he continues, like she didn't say anything at all. "Given his mother wasn't around. Maybe he would have turned out right."

"Or maybe you would have made him worse." She rolls her eyes and closes the gap between herself and the car. Pulling it open, she decides, "Honestly, you kind of did."

"No, I know you and your kind. You come in and stir things up. You're loud about it. You mess up the lives of good boys like Bryce by spreading things that could have been handled quietly."

"You could be more subtle in the way you're saying this, you know."

"You could be more subtle."

"Good job. You did banter." She heaves Kepler off her shoulders and lets him scramble into the car. He narrows his eyes at most of the things in there, but doesn't object to the passenger's seat when she points at it and turns back to Sheriff Watson. "Listen, man. We both know two things are true here. First of all, I'm not the one who crashed that golf cart, but you can't arrest a rat, and you can't pin it on me now that the government cleared me, so yay me, I win again— and I'm going to spiral about it later, don't worry, I'm going to punish myself so hard. And, two, I'm not the reason that Bryce's life turned out the way it did. I'm not the one who outed what he did— and neither did Eliza, or Darius, or Eddy, or any of us. I don't know who did, but it wasn't us. But god, man, maybe—"

"Well, Tiffany, that's the biggest crock of excuses I've ever heard."

She tries not to bark back that those aren't excuses and that her name is Tiffany May. "Maybe you should have been the one to do something about it."

"To my own grandson?"

"You're the sheriff." She climbs into the driver's seat. It's a stupid thing to have but, god, "Do your job."

"Don't tell me how to—"

"The only time I told you how was when I told you not to eat in the crime scene." She closes the door, starts the car, and starts pulling out of where she parked. As she drives, she gives him a dead-expressioned little wave out of time to the blaring Veruca Salt.

Once she's down the road and he's out of her sight, she lets out a breath she was entirely aware she was holding in. That could have gone much worse. She could have run her mouth in a thousand different directions. Thank god for her single ounce of self-control.

"And you," she says, looking over to Kepler. "Buckle yourself in, man. And quit eating poison without telling me you can eat poison first."

He pouts and turns away from her, sitting with his long, curved back against the chair; he shoves a berry in his mouth.

"Don't give me that."

He chews faster.

"Oh my god."

She reaches into the bag of trail mix and tosses a raisin at him. In response, he reaches over and snatches the entire bag away.

"And what are you doing now?"

He holds up the raisin, reaches into the bag with the cleaner of two hands, and pulls out another.

"You don't have to sort out the raisins. I know not to eat them."

He pulls out a third raisin.

"Fine. Suit yourself." Raising her eyebrows like a challenge accepted, she turns toward the main road like her GPS tells her to. Here is the Honda Accord the government is making her drive; here is the rat in her passenger's seat; here is a CD switching between Bratmobile and Skating Polly; and here, mapped out on the clunky GPS mounted to the dash, is the drive to the border. The promise of a probable-haunting and a maybe-necromancer taunts her from the infinite worry about how crossing the border is supposed to work.

There's no more hiding from Canada.