Welcome to Night Vale

Chapter 31

Jackie pulled up to the front of Diane’s house. She looked down at her hand, which was crumpling up the paper and then letting it spring open uncreased again and again. The drive had been quiet since she told Diane the story of the paper.

“I know the man in the tan jacket you’re talking about,” Diane broke the silence. “His name is Evan.”

“If you say so. I don’t remember the name he gave me. Efran maybe?”

“I used to work with him, I think. But I’m starting to feel that what we think may not be the most reliable test of truth.”

“John Peters. You know, the farmer? He told me that you were involved with the man in the tan jacket.”

“John said that?”

“Well, nah, not outright. But he implied it, sure.”

Diane shook her head.

“That man. He always loves to be ahead of the gossip. So much so I think he makes up half of it.”

“All of these men,” said Jackie. “Each one carrying a mystery that’s not as interesting as he thinks. I don’t want their mysteries. I want a life on an even level.”

Diane nodded. Jackie’s exhaustion was also her own.

“Or maybe I want to grow older,” Jackie said. “Maybe that is what I want. But I want to do it because I’m ready, not because someone else is ready for me.”

She found that when she looked at Diane now, she saw a woman who, yes, happened to be older than her, but, yes, also had her own worries, her own worrying lot in life. Jackie softened her voice.

“Who are we following, Diane? Who’s the blond man at the diner? And at the bank and the movie theater and who knows where else?”

“He’s a police officer too,” said Diane.

It’s amazing how much a roll of dimes weighs, the house thought.

“So who is he?”

“Josh’s father. Left town when Josh was born.”

“Asshole.”

Diane smiled. She hadn’t talked about Troy leaving since shortly after it happened. It always felt somehow like a mistake she had made. An embarrassing moment for her. Jackie’s response was honest and simple, and in just two syllables put all the onus on Troy.

After all the back-and-forth with Josh, the weird business at work, it felt good to have a person on her side.

“He showed up again recently. I don’t know why he did. I’m worried that he wants back in Josh’s life. And of course Josh is interested in knowing his dad, whatever that word means.”

“Ah, let him. He’ll just find out his dad’s a jerk. Like, Troy was cute. You got pregnant. He skipped town. He’s an asshole. Josh can figure all that out on his own. He’s not much younger than me.”

He wasn’t, it was true. The limited scale of the human life startled Diane. There was so little actual time between ages that felt vastly different. She had categorized Jackie as different than Josh, and herself as different than Jackie, but the span of years between any two of them wasn’t much of a span at all.

“None of us knows what we want to do when we’re his age. When we’re your age, when you’re my age,” said Diane, “any age, I guess. We think we do, and sometimes we’re right, but only ever in retrospect.”

Her tone was halfway between reminiscence and lecture. Jackie sighed but let her talk. She knew that messages were for the sender, not the receiver.

“Troy and I loved each other. We called it ‘unconditional love,’ which was true. Once conditions arose, the love dissipated.”

“Everything that’s happened has gotten me thinking about a lot of stuff I’ve tried hard to not think about. Like, I’ve never loved anyone,” said Jackie. “Not that I can remember. I know this town, but I don’t feel like I’m on the same time scale as it. Something went off.”

“Love is hard,” said Diane, who hadn’t really listened to what Jackie had said. “I wish Josh could love his father conditionally.”

“The kid is smart. He’ll know what to do.”

“How old are you, Jackie? If you don’t mind.”

“Nineteen, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I don’t feel nineteen.” Jackie looked out the window at the houses across the street that were thinking nothing at all. “A woman who calls herself Mom asked me about stuff from when I was a kid, but I couldn’t remember any of it. People think I’m a child, but if so, I’ve been a child for a long time. I don’t know how old I am.”

Talking about this made Jackie feel like she was looking down from somewhere high, or like she was staring straight up at a cloudless point of sky.

“People look at me and call me a girl or tell me I’m too young to run a pawnshop. They wonder how I’m able to handle a tough business like that, and I don’t know. I just do. Always have. It’s the only thing I know how to do. Far as I can tell I’ve been doing it for centuries.”

“Well, when you’re nineteen, everything feels like forever,” Diane said, staring at the dash and lightly touching the air-conditioning vent. “I don’t know. Did you ever think of just turning twenty?”

“I gotta go,” Jackie said.

“Okay.”

“Meaning this is my car.”

“Right.”

Diane grabbed her belongings.

“Hey,” she said. “I said I was going to let you ask the questions at Leann’s, and then I didn’t let you. That wasn’t right of me.”

“Guess we all suck sometimes.”

Diane and Jackie held a look for a moment, and this changed nothing about how they felt about each other. But there was a kind of simple peace that came from holding a gaze.

Diane broke it off and shut the door. As she raised her hand to wave and opened her mouth to say “Good-bye,” Jackie’s car drove off.

She walked into the house, set her things down, and turned on the radio. Cecil’s voice relaxed her. He was announcing some upcoming events in town. There was a new exhibit at the Museum of Forbidden Technologies that sounded interesting. Unfortunately, Diane had never been able to go to the museum because all of its exhibits are classified, and no one is allowed to see them. It is a felony to go to that museum.

Diane flipped through the day’s mail as Cecil continued on. It didn’t matter what he said. The world is terrifying. It always is. But Cecil reminded her that it was okay to relax in a terrifying world.

The mail was junk: a couple of furniture catalogs, a credit card offer, a dead mouse, and a flyer with coupons for 50 percent off the moon. The faceless old woman who secretly lives in her home had censored the credit card offer, using charcoal to blot out entire lines and amounts. Diane looked through the coupons, considering what a great deal it would be if anyone actually wanted the moon. It’s a hideous rock, Diane thought. You couldn’t pay me to take it.

The moon is a trick of light suggested to us by the seas, the house thought.

From the radio, Diane heard the word “Chuckwalla.” This was the street she lived on. She stopped thinking about the moon and the mail and made her way to the living room. She stared at the radio. In lieu of her ears’ inability to open up, she widened her eyes to better hear Cecil’s voice. She listened to what he had to say, moving from distant unease to personal unease to panic.

There are not a lot of blue Mazda coupes with double red stripes. Diane had just been sitting in one.

There are quite a few burgundy Ford hatchbacks. Diane owned one of them.

Everything she was afraid of was happening at once. She was only afraid of one thing.

“No,” she shouted. She shouted it over and over because she didn’t know what she could do to change anything and at least shouting made her feel better. No one could hear except the house and the faceless old woman who secretly lives in it.

Diane opened the door to her garage. She turned on the light. There was no burgundy Ford hatchback.

“Goddammit, Josh.”

Diane ran to Josh’s room. She knocked. She knocked again. She opened his door. He was not there.

She worried for Jackie’s safety. She seethed over Josh’s disobedience.

Josh did not answer his phone. Neither did Jackie. The calls went straight to voice mail.

Diane texted both of them. No response. She ran out her front door, down Chuckwalla Road, past several crisscrossing streets, toward the crash.

Is the roof the head of the house, or the hair, or is it a hat? thought the house.

“This is just the start of it,” whispered the faceless old woman from behind Diane’s washing machine.