Lacey is summoned out of her safe space in the corner of the couch by a knock at the front door.

At first, she freezes in place, her mind immediately rushing to depictions of red-eyed shadows and long-armed demons from the woods (definitely not something she's been fond of thinking about, what with the mindless cheesy rom-com she's got plastered up on the television) waiting outside. Logic wins out soon after, but still, she hastily grabs hold of a brown couch pillow - y'know, for protection - and makes her way to the front door on light feet. She raises up on them carefully to peek through the peephole.

She's met with the impatient visage of Gideon Lucas standing on her front porch, swinging his arms back and forth and looking very bored but also very distracted by the various sounds dropping in under the afternoon light. This guy again? He turns his head, and his face bubbles up through the glass, fish-eyed. Too much. Too much nose. Too much of him in her sights.

Sighing, she lets the pillow hang limp at her side and opens the door, only wincing a little bit when a sting runs through her bandaged fingers. "Hello?" She winces at the hoarseness of her unused voice, too.

He's quick to turn his attention to her, and his face lights with interest, bushy brows raised and blue eyes ablaze with life. "Hi! Miss me?" He seems pleased with his joke - it must be a joke, Lacey thinks - until his gaze falls to her hands. His face tightens, and he seems rather confused. "What'd you go and do that for?"

She glances down at her own hands, at the white strips she's been picking at throughout the day. She offers up the same explanation she'd given Jeremy: "Bumped into a mirror. It fell on me. I was dumb and tried to clean it up." Same as yesterday, she leaves out the part about the candles (shoved at the bottom of the trash can outside) and the spoiled ghost kid (shoved to the back of her mind) and the rising fear that a demon will rip her mind out and also knock the trash over while they're at it because demons are assholes. "What do you want?"

He seems to have trouble tearing his eyes away from her fingers, but all the same, he manages, offering up a few plastic containers. "I wanted to bring these back. Tell Mr. Waits his plan was foolproof and she actually believed I cooked it. Until I slipped. But anyways, yeah." Lacey nods and takes the containers from his hands, but as she's doing so, the expected follow-up comes, slow and steady, treading on slippery ground. "Also...I've been asking around and I think we might have a good place to really, mm, dig into our investigation, start interrogating people. Y'know? Plenty of people at the trailer park might know something." A pause. "You in?"

The first response that comes to mind is, "No way," followed by a door slam, but she forces herself to think, fiddling with the containers. As tired and desperate for alone time as she is, the thought of closing the door and locking herself back up in the dark without knowing what waits within it is incredibly unappealing. Plus, she's got no way to know how long this sporadic work call is gonna take her dad. Considering, she leans against the doorway. "How far a walk is it?" The answer will be the dealbreaker.

A grin slips onto his face. "Oh, don't worry 'bout all that. My mom's off work today so she's letting me borrow her car. Fifteen minute drive tops, probably less. So?"

Damn her earlier decision for this to be the dealbreaker. She sighs and picks herself off the threshold. "Fine. I'm in. But no forest searches and no strange men who live on hills. Got it?" She points the plastic accusatorily at her opponent, hoping it'll scare him into compliance.

He lifts his arms in surrender, loosely jingling his keys in one of his raised hands. "We'll save all that for another time. Scout's honor."

"Of course you were a boy scout," Lacey mumbles. She patters away to put up her things and returns fully jacketed in something grey, excessive in pockets, and water-resistant, since she can never tell when it'll start downpouring anymore. The weather channel is useless and the water does what it wants.

"Alright," she says, locking the front door behind her, "let's get this over with. I plan to pick up my television binge once this is over."

"Can I-"

"No, you may not join."

They bound down the porch to his car: a silver, rounded thing, well-kept for the most part, but definitely old. There's a dent in the passenger side door - a big one - and with reluctance, she gets in, hoping it didn't get so large due to multiple collisions in the exact same spot. Gideon notices her trepidation, and as he folds his lanky body into the driver side, he says, "Don't worry. My mom did that one. I'm a good driver."

As it turns out, the only reason he's a good driver is because he doesn't drive faster than three miles an hour. At one point, their slow crawl irritates Lacey so much that she starts tugging at her hair. "You can't go any faster? At all?"

"I don't wanna hydroplane," he says, struggling to stay focused on the road.

"Gideon, you're on a straight road and it's not even raining. Just go."

But, he ignores her, and they wind up at their destination in the promised fifteen minutes. Tires crunch over gravel that hasn't had time to dry, gravel that stretches in a path throughout the park, but bordered on either side by grass so green it makes Lacey's eyes hurt. And on this grass sits trailers - rows and rows of them, some parked nice and neat and built upon with the intent to stay put, and some haphazard, either with the intent to just drop in for now and move on later or a genuine lack of care. It's not a large area, but they all manage to cram in nice and close so that only a few stragglers sit by the fringe of forestry encircling the clearing.

Despite the disorder of the place, Gideon manages to pull into an empty patch of grass and park. He has an air about him, vibrating excitedly in his seat as he turns to Lacey and shuts the engine off. "We might get something good today. I intend to get something good today."

"We'd better. I could sure use something good about now," Lacey mutters, already pushing her way out. The air is icy compared to the heat Gideon'd had on blast in the car, and she wraps herself up in her own arms. She looks out across the roof of the car at Gideon, and beyond him, towards the old face peering curiously through the small back window of their trailer. Usually she's able to tell the difference between a spirit and a living human, but here, she's not so sure. It sends an icy chill across her cheeks unrelated to the less-than-convenient weather.

Gideon is first to start walking aimlessly up the gravel path, and Lacey falls into a rhythm a little bit behind him. It doesn't take long for her to pick up on the fact that there are quite a few people milling about, and that these people will halt their milling to give the two of them unwanted stares, stares that aren't necessarily menacing, but not necessarily friendly, either. She's never been the best at reading people, but this road of quiet eyes only highlights that weakness. There, that young woman checking the overwatered daisies in a bucket, she glances up with her hand buried deep in moist dirt, wide-eyed. That man on the other side of the path, he pauses on his cigarette drawl, watching them pass as he blows a slow stream of smoke from his nostrils. Lacey can't tell what they're thinking, what they're feeling. All she knows is that the excessive eye contact is making her uncomfortable. Paranoid.

She hugs herself tighter, but it won't keep the cold out.

When she glances at Gideon, she finds that he's clenching and unclenching his jaw as his eyes roam the area. He must be on edge, too, but the moment his eyes seem to lock on someone promising, all that tension falls away, and a particular confidence fills his back, his shoulders. He puts a spring in his step and walks up to them. Lacey remains on the path, but slows as she watches and listens.

"Hi there, ma'am," he says faintly, "I don't mean to take too much of your time, but I was wondering if you knew anything about Erie, or Stella, or-"

"Who?"

"-The missing kids, ma'am. I'm just trying-"

"No, sorry, I don't know anything." The woman's voice is soft and uninterested, and even though Gideon is perched upon his feet, ready to press further, she's already walking away, skirt billowing around her ankles as she moves onto some task more valuable than this.

He's left there with this look of, "Well, alright" on his face. But it doesn't stop him. He just locks onto some other person, some new target, and carries himself over with the same long, firm strides as before. It amazes Lacey, really, how he's able to just...do that.

Lacey pauses, standing in the middle of the gravel walkway as awkwardly as one possibly can. She means to wait and listen as Gideon tries to warm up to some old man who seems to be hard of hearing, but there's movement in her peripheral, and she's distracted.

The girl who walks by is a pretty one. Young, about her age, maybe a year older. She holds a graceful youth in her high cheekbones and smooth skin. Small chin, careful features. Her walk is strong, like Gideon's, but it's much more relaxed, and it gives her time to look down at Lacey as she passes, sandy hair blowing out of her eyes, which narrow comfortably with interest. She's got these clunky headphones on her head, though, of a metallic pinkish color...rose gold, maybe. On the sides, a purple glow interrupts the rose gold, spinning, spinning, spinning in little circles of dancing color. A bit hard to see while it's still daylight. It's weird. But the coy smile she gives Lacey as she passes is a smile that breaks apart any snap judgments she may have been making.

It makes her cavewoman brain emerge: Girl hot, she thinks. Then the nervous brain takes over, and she ducks her head like she'd never seen the girl at all. Still, she has to bite her lip to keep from grinning. She only lets it go once the girl has turned away and carried on towards her destination. Then comes the sigh. I'm practically salivating with desperation. This is just sad.

Something else that's sad is Gideon's deflated expression as he returns to Lacey in the middle of the pathway and gestures for them to keep walking. "No one wants to talk about it," he says. "It's like some taboo topic either nobody wants to get involved in or nobody's been paying attention to. I don't get it. I'm not even asking for much. I just need one person to speak up."

Lacey's about to say something - that people often avoid the topic of death, especially when it comes to youth with so much potential - when another voice drifts from a ways away, calling out. "You kids lost or somethin'?"

There's this certain quality to the woman's voice, a uniqueness Lacey's heard a thousand times but not quite like this. It's a sweetened drawl, tired but sugary. The sort of voice you'd expect to say "darlin'" and "apple pie" in every conversation without fail. There's weight to it, too. Something heavy, something low. Something that commands attention, which she does in all of five words. Lacey and Gideon look to the source without pause.

Whoever she is, she stands at the front of some clunker from the 90s, the tan hood propped up by rods. Despite her question, she doesn't seem to give them much mind, her gaze focused on the engine in front of her. In one oily hand, she holds some tool Lacey doesn't know the name of. The other one pushes the sleeve of a baggy grey sweatshirt up to the elbows. She looks a bit worse for wear, what with the dirt and grime and the holes ripped near the collar of the hoodie, but her face still has this ethereal quality to it, framed by loose curls colored like butterscotch. Somehow, when she scratches the side of her slender nose and leaves behind a dark smear, she looks even more intriguing. Hawk-like.

"Well?" Her eyes flick up to Lacey and Gideon for a moment, an unexpected dart of brown catching what little sunlight remains and flinging it forward. Brightened pinpoints. In that moment, familiarity rushes over Lacey, as do images of a woman pulling a man along by the front of his pants in the parking lot of a diner. "Do you two have tongues or are you just gonna stand there and ignore me?"

Gideon glances at Lacey, and Lacey shares a look with him. His lips switch into a small grin. Then he's jogging forward like all the rejections in the world couldn't bother him, because now he has this.

"Hello, ma'am! I-"

"Oh, don't bother. Dolly works fine." She doesn't take her eyes away from the work beneath her, brows furrowed as she squints at the various mechanical parts. "You're not from this side of town. I recognize a stranger when I see one. No family up here, I would've seen you by now. You got turned around. Now, I've got time to give directions, but shoot fast."

Gideon looks a little shocked at her sudden assumptions, and he stands there watching, lips parted. No doubt he's scrambling for soft, sugar-coated words. But Lacey doesn't have time for that. She clears her throat and crosses her arms over her chest. "Actually, we're right where we meant to be. We're looking for our friend and this bucko over here had the bright idea to ask around. We just want..." She trails off, searching for the right word.

"A lead," Gideon finishes. The softness has filled his hands, his throat, his legs as they carry him a few steps closer to the woman. "It's very important that we find him- Erie, I mean. Erie Mott, one of the missing kids. I'm sure you heard about that girl who washed up-"

"'Course I heard of that girl who washed up. You'd have to be blind and deaf if you didn't. Horrible thing." Dolly punctuates her sentence with a harsh tug on something in the hood, followed by clattering noise.

"So have you seen anything?" Gideon presses, filling his tone with nothing stronger than mild curiosity. "Heard anything suspicious go bump in the night?"

What a little actor, Lacey thinks. He's been practically shitting himself about finding Erie since I met him.

Dolly finally lifts her head to respond, but before she can, her eyes catch on something in her peripheral, and her open mouth slowly presses itself into a thin line. Her eyes harden, her back straightens. Lacey notices how her fingers wrap tightly around the silver tool in her hand. Naturally, she follows her gaze.

A man of average appearance and height comes tumbling along through the grass, brown bottle in hand. He's got his eyes locked squarely on Dolly, and if that weren't obvious enough, once she meets his gaze, he slurs her name with drunken affection. "Dolly, babe. Lemme talk? Y'keep..." He gestures with his bottle and squints, searching the surrounding air for words. "Avoiding. Why can't y'just hear me out? I loved our time that night. Cozy. I miss y-"

Dolly is quick to point her tool at the man, a strict bow to her brows. She means business. "Listen, buddy. You act like you're the first heartbroken slob to get attached to the first thing your dick rebounds into. You're definitely not the first I've had to knock sense into. I won't have some infatuated fool creepin' around my home or settin' an example for other clients, so I suggest you turn right back around and go back to whatever bar or porch step you came from."

The man's jaw clenches and he chucks the beer bottle to the side with a disoriented grunt. It doesn't break, but whatever was left in it does spill out into the grass before stopping at Lacey's foot. Curling her lip, she kicks it away.

"I thought what we had was good...s'was special! Ain't never had somethin' so...relieving. Ain't you felt it too? C'mon, Dolls." The man takes a wide step forward, but Dolly remains unwavering. In fact, she seems a bit smug the moment the door (to what is assumed to be her trailer) behind her clatters open. From it, another man emerges, this one taller than the drunk, but shorter than Dolly. He's got this scrubby look about him, clothes hanging off his frame all gangly, a chin three days overdue for a shave. In the crook of his left arm he cradles a bag of chips, and in the other hand, a baseball bat. He doesn't so much as glance at the stranger as he descends the few steps. Just starts yapping and fiddling with that bat as casually as if it was a stick he picked up somewhere.

"'Sup, man. I think it's time you head home. We don't need any of this. It's late. Neighbors' kids are headed to bed. We're all ready to kick back. Now, I dunno about you, but I don't like when people give my friends trouble. Dolly here is my friend. You're not givin' her any trouble, now, are you?" His voice is shaky but not like he's scared; it's shaky like that's just how it is. His words are solid enough to make up for it, and even if they weren't, the bored way he twirls his bat and starts using it as a walking stick does.

Dolly, appeased, lowers her tool and shrugs. "I think he's tryin' to give me trouble, Clint. I really think he is."

"Aw. That's a shame." He looks towards the stranger and raises his brows, like he's about to deliver some inevitable but simple news. "Here she is, doin' me a solid, fixin' my car. It's only right I return the favor if she says the word." Then, hush-hush: "D'ya say the word, Dolly?"

"Fuck this," the drunk man mutters, and just like that, he's turned around, hand to his forehead, stumbling towards the clash of warm and cool from the impending twilight. Not much of a problem anymore.

"Thanks, Clint," Dolly says, turning back to the engine. She doesn't dive back into work, though; instead, her hands rest on the edges, and she lets her arms support her as she leans into it.

A pinpoint of spinning light catches Lacey's eye just beyond Dolly's elbow; she strains to get a clear image. Sure enough, that girl with the headphones is sitting pretty in a lawn chair in front of another trailer, legs crossed and bumping the air to the beat of some private tune. How she can handle shorts in weather like this is beyond Lacey, but that's the least of her worries when she finds the girl staring at her intently. Her lip is curled up in a neat smirk, and once she's sure she has Lacey's attention, she does a little wave, too.

Lacey looks away, feeling heat rise to her cheeks. Thankfully, Gideon's there to get things back on track. "So...about what you might've seen..."

Dolly releases an exasperated sigh. Her fingers pinch the edges she's gripping onto. She looks up, looks them both in the face. Hers is tired. "Usually people have to pay for my time. No exceptions for a couple of kids on a mission they should let the cops handle. I'm done with this conv-"

Before she can even finish her sentence, Gideon is fiddling with his back pocket, and then he's got his fingers digging through his wallet. A twenty emerges, gripped between his middle and index fingers, and he takes a step forward to offer it up to Dolly.