Tandy Bowen doesn't have to pick between (cloakndagger) wrote in repose,
Re: tandy & holly; the music store
The thing was, Tandy hadn't been in Repose from birth. Her mom wasn't from here. She was cultivated in grand drawing rooms somewhere out East, somewhere teeth looked like pearls and girls were strung with them on their 21st birthday, where the size of a girl's waist was probably more important than her IQ. It was like sweet tea dripping through the veins of Southern belles, only Tandy's mom lived on coffee and the acidic cruelty of women who grew up with the kind of winter that frosted through any kind of emotional depth. Her dad wasn't from here, and he'd been the kind of unfortunate who talked to strange people on the subway in the city. A nice guy, but he was also really dead and Tandy hadn't had the opportunity to ask him about, yk, light knives or any kind of weird. Which, given her dad was still her gut-instinct for explaining the unexplainable, she felt that knot tight in her throat, which was beyond making any kind of sense, because he was exceptionally dead.
She watched Holly circle the desk at the kind of pace that an old man might have considered reasonable, and Tandy had watched a lot of people. She'd looked for weaknesses, the way most things that have gone a little feral do, for the kind of weakness that could be exploited. She didn't look it, she looked kinda harmless, the kind of ditzy blonde that most people smiled at in passing. But she noticed, which was instinctive, gut-deep where the old fear lived, which was kernels and embers instead of constant kindling.
"I lived for those crime shows," which, shocker, right? She remembered watching them in long stints, broken only by the need for more popcorn and listening out for her mom's return home. But legit, he'd gone home? For a minute, Tandy looked at the guy who probably hated switching worse, given the accumulation of people and stuff he had going for him right now. "That must have sucked. For both of you."
But like, the train and Tandy shook her head. "I don't remember a train. I remember a field. No train-rides for me."