✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

23. My Clueless Morning

This bonus chapter is dedicated to babysofia, with thanks for all your support. I really appreciate everyone who makes it easier for me to keep sharing these stories.

"We'll take my car," Ffrances said, and I just nodded. My truck was reliable, but it might not create the right atmosphere for being driven to a swanky movie premiere. Not that anyone else would even see it, but it would put us in the right frame of mind. Stylish clothes and a luxury sportscar were exactly what we needed to start thinking of ourselves as a successful society family.

"I forgot my jacket," Tess said as we reached Ffrances's car. I was already sitting in the passenger seat, ready to close the door, but I swung my legs out of the car again and started hunting for the keys I had just dropped into my purse.

"Do you need it?" I asked. "I'll –"

"I'll get it!" she called back from the door, and I could see that she already had her own key in hand. So I called back an instruction to hurry up, and did my best to fasten my seat belt without creasing my new clothes.

"You'd almost think she needed an excuse to go back into the house," Ffrances commented with a smirk. With all the chaos of hurrying, it took me a second to work out what she could have meant.

"She's been remarkably mature this morning," I said with a shrug, "and didn't say anything about my choice of clothes for her. I'm quite proud of her, but I hope that doing everything herself isn't imposing some psychological toll."

"You said she went to bed early. She's mentioned being tired in the morning a few times before, but she seems like a fresh early bird today. Makes me wonder if she needed some pharmacological help to sleep without worries. To guarantee she's not worrying or half asleep this morning. Think she might have done that again?"

"I wouldn't be surprised," I said, after a few seconds thought. "I don't think that's healthy in the long term. But you think she'd do that when she needs to be up early in the morning?"

"Sleeping pills would make it easier for her to get a good rest and wake up fresh in the morning. And it would explain why she hung her jacket up again after getting changed. She wanted an excuse to go back into the house when we were about to leave. So she can put laundry on."

"Wow... I didn't even think about that. I've kind of been listening for the sound of the machine running in the morning, so I know if she wants a little privacy. But she would have fooled me completely."

"Yeah. Anyway, I do think it would be better to give her another way to approach it. After what you said before, about using hypnosis, I had a look online. Apparently it's not exactly unheard of, but not normally something a health professional would countenance. And I think I can see ways it could be done while minimising risks. Less risks than using OTC drugs, in any case. And... I'm not sure, but I think it might be beneficial to put someone else in control. So she has to ask permission, it's not something she can just do by herself. Means you can make sure she doesn't abuse it."

"You'd really be willing to..."

"I think I can see the appeal, if I try to put myself in her shoes. And giving her a way to do that when you think it's a good idea, without side effects, is going to be better than letting her research it herself. She's going to do it anyway, so it would be good if we know exactly what she's up to. So... if she's willing to confess what she wants..."

"I'll talk to her," I said. "I might have mentioned it in passing, as something I've heard of people doing. And she seems like she'd much prefer to do it in a safe way. But at the same time, she's asked me to promise that I won't tell you about her secret. But hopefully she'll have the courage to come out to us; I think she knows the risks of what she's doing."

Ffrances opened her mouth to reply, but I put my hand on hers to get her attention, and she turned to see that Tess was already running towards the care. She knew that the little one didn't want us talking about her problem, and I think she could understand that.

"So, are we expecting horror or espionage?" she asked instead.

"The movie? I don't know, from those teasers it could be either. Some of those guys look scary enough. Is horror an option? There was so many shadows that it's hard to tell if they're human or–"

"All ready now?" Ffrances interrupted as Tess closed the car door behind her. We both nodded, and then the car moved away.

"You haven't checked out the comics?" Tess asked, and it took me a second to realise she was talking to me.

"No. I barely know anything about it. I watched the trailers that are already out, but nobody has any idea what the movie is about. It's only a bunch of fans guessing that it's based on that guy's comics, and then there's like three different series to choose from. Where do I start? I guess that's why you two are arguing over the genre, right?"

"The accents in the trailer," she answered. "Sounds pretty gritty to me, down to earth. I think it looks like a crime movie, inner city violence or something. I can see the espionage stories coming out like that if they're pushing for realism, especially if they're bringing the Russians in. But I wouldn't mind if it turned out to be more horror."

"See, I don't buy that," Ffrances answered. And I would have been willing to bet she was right; over breakfast I'd got the impression that Tess had asked all her friends if they'd heard about it the night before, and then absorbed as much information about the comics as she could online. Ffrances, on the other hand, had been a fan for years, and the few times I'd seen her talking to others about it I'd got the impression she could quote the backstory of every minor character from memory. She was a veritable human encyclopedia on at least two of those series of comics, and she'd been buzzing with excitement every time there was the vaguest hint of a leak about this movie. I was starting to regret not learning more about it before now; but I'd assumed that she would help bring me up to speed on the comics some time before the movie was actually out.

"No?"

"It does feel like the underworld, but I can't imagine them doing that movie without Victor Cassarone, and there's nobody credited who might fit the role. And you saw the trailer, right? Jackson at the end, with that scar. Tell me he's not playing Junior."

"I... uhh..." Tess mumbled. "I don't actually know Junior. But there's a lot of people who think that character is meant to be Justice Goldstein. I've not seen much of him, but it seems to fit."

I at least knew the actor they were talking about, and I remembered him in a single second at the end of one of the trailers, slamming his fist down on a table and growing "Mine". Not exactly the biggest clue to the identity of a character, when you didn't know which franchise a movie might even be attached to. But I'd seen more than a couple of debates online, and from the scale of the debate now I suspected that this might be the future of movie marketing. Everybody wanted to be the first to know, and that was driving massive speculation. It was almost impossible not to have heard of Tags even if you knew nothing about it. I was interested in that precisely because it was so different from any of the audience influence techniques I'd studied in the past.