Clearing Things Up

Now's a good time to mention that I retcon things a lot. I wrote this (and the previous chapter tbh) when I was in a bad mood, so I'm lowkey less confident about this story than usual. I think it's fine, but there's a nonzero chance that someday I'll go back and change a few lines. You've been warned lmao

This wasn’t Katherine’s first time being grounded, but the restrictions were different this time around. She wasn't allowed to use the phone as often, and she was on thin ice when it came to the TV. She was in Sunday school now, and she had to study the Bible twice as much at home too. A good understanding of God's word would fortify her mind against the Enemy, her parents had said. She hated perusing the Bible more than she had to, but she found that she missed using the phone and watching TV just as much.

For the first couple of days since the incident, Katherine was so mad she didn’t even want to look at any electronics. But when she thought about it, she missed having Landon around. Freely conversing with a demon who always did what they pleased made her own life feel less restrictive, and now it seemed like she'd never get that feeling back. On day five of being grounded, she tried calling Landon while her parents were at work. She didn’t even know what to say, but she was starting to feel bad about what she’d said, and she wanted to let Landon know somehow. They didn’t respond, nor did they answer any of her other attempts to get in touch. It sunk in just how much control they’d had over their social interactions before. Katherine had been relying on the fact that Landon was always keeping an ear out for her, itching for a chance to drop by or hang out for a few hours. When they ignored her, she didn’t have a way to start the conversation. That was when she really started feeling weak and isolated, which she supposed meant that the grounding was doing its job.

Seven days in, Katherine realized that maybe she did have a way. Landon had mentioned once that the magical dimension they teleported through — Radiospace, she believed they called it — was a dark void that mirrored the real world almost perfectly. Only electronics were visible, and Landon used their placements as a map to figure out what which setting was which. Plus, they often spoke about seeing and smelling people through screens and speakers. They knew how to avoid Katherine’s house because there was a cluster of electronics that smelled and looked like where she lived. But if she managed to lure them to a completely different setting, she might have a shot at getting in contact with them.

The only problem was, she was stuck at home. Occasionally Mama brought her along to run errands, but besides that she wasn’t allowed to leave the house. She hated wasting away her summer while her friends got to go the mall and watch movies together. The most she got to do was ride with her mother to the grocery store and complain about how the summer heat made the car seats hot to the touch. Today, as she carried paper bags of vegetables and meats into the house, she thought about how she could possibly escape. There was a tree in the front yard, one of those tall winding ones with thick branches. When it was windy, its leaves brushed up against her bedroom window. She wasn’t the best at climbing trees, but maybe when her parents weren’t home…

Katherine shook that outlandish thought out of her head, causing Mama to give her a weird look. She was so worried about following the rules all the time, she hadn’t considered that she could just walk out of the front door whenever she was home alone. Her parents hadn’t taken her key to the house, either, so she could get back whenever she wanted. She imagined that if Landon knew what she was thinking they’d be a little proud; simply walking away seemed like something that they would do.

She still needed a way to actually lure Landon, though. She double-checked the grocery bags and found a box of lime jello mix. Jello wasn’t her favorite food, but she’d formed a habit of asking her parents to buy jello so that when Landon visited, she’d be able to offer food outside of her own emotions. Landon had also mentioned breaking into people’s kitchens just to eat their jello or make the dessert with their supplies. It was the perfect bait. Katherine left the jello on the counter as she put away the rest of the groceries and started making it the second she got the chance. Pops wasn’t home today, so when Mama left to shop at a different store Katherine took the opportunity laid in front of her. She poured the jello into a Tupperware bowl, grabbed the little red radio she kept in her room and dipped.

Katherine rode her bike to her destination, a baby blue one with a basket large enough to hold the bowl and the portable radio. There were a couple places she could think of to place the bait, but she settled on an empty lot in a shopping center that hadn’t gotten much usage lately. It’d been replaced by a shiny new mall ten minutes away by car — the same mall that her mother was probably at right now. She gingerly set down the bowl and the radio in the center of the lot, removed the bowl’s lid, then walked her bike to the backside of a nearby building and hid. Now that she thought about it, this plan didn’t even make any sense. She had no guarantee that Landon would actually be hunting for jello right now; she didn’t even know how well could smell jello through the radio’s speaker. But returning home empty-handed when she was already supposed to be grounded seemed worse, so she sat down behind a large tree and waited. Hopefully ants or bees wouldn’t get into the jello.

After what was probably an eternity, Katherine heard warbled voices coming from the lot. She forced herself not to get too excited — she figured that the stronger her emotions, the easier it’d be for Landon to sense her presence. She peeked at the lot from behind the building and tried to keep it together as she watched Landon’s upper body emerge from the radio. Kept her mouth shut as the demon suspiciously eyed their surroundings, then sniffed the bowl. Tamped down her disgust as they plunged their hand into the jello and shoveled the stuff into their mouth, then lick their hand clean.

Katherine gave up after Landon did that three more times. She stormed out and yelled, “You can teleport anywhere in the world and you didn’t take the time to find a spoon first? That’s so weird!”

Landon yelped and grabbed the bowl, then disappeared back into Radiospace. Katherine cursed herself for letting them get away. She should’ve approached them more slowly, maybe offer some kind of bribe to convince them to stay. She kicked loose gravel around for a couple of minutes before turning around to grab her bike so she could ride back home.

Just as she took her first step the radio trembled and buzzed some, and Landon poured themself out. They had an oddly grave look on their face, and they were carrying their box this time. They motioned for her to sit down and sat cross-legged in front of her, box set neatly in front of them.

She did sit down and watched as they opened the box and took some items out: a pair of socks, a journal, a hardcover book. They were silent as they did it, which was unnerving. Katherine figured they’d be upset, but they were always making some type of noise. She hadn’t realized she’d hurt them so badly.

“You’re one of the slowest people I’ve ever met.”

Katherine was insulted until she realized that Landon was quoting her own words. Maybe their intention was to remind her of the argument, setting the stage for whatever they were about to say next. Landon pointed to the socks. They were knitted with white yarn, and their sizes didn’t match but they otherwise looked wearable. “This is the first time I created any clothing. I taught myself how to do it by copying what humans did. That’s how I learned to sew and crochet, too.”
The demon opened up the journal next, and Katherine saw that it was filled with their handwriting. Some pages were dedicated to writing one letter of the alphabet over and over, and others contained words or short phrases. All of it was difficult to read; Landon had never had neat handwriting. “This is the journal I used to teach myself how to write. I had to practice really hard because my hands don’t write the way I want them to, but I can still do it.”

Last was the book. It had a faded yellow cover and many of the words were underlined, circled, or highlighted. The relatively simple vocabulary and sentence structure implied it was a children’s book, but there were handwritten notes in the margins guiding the reader on how to pronounce certain words. “And this is one of the books I used to teach myself how to read. I’m a slow reader and reading tiny words is difficult, but I didn’t need to go to school for it.”

Landon met Katherine’s eyes and, in a voice dripping with spite, declared, “So I’m not slow. I can’t be if I did all of this. Right?”

“R-Right.” Landon had mentioned teaching themself to do all of these things, but she hadn’t realized they’d put in so much effort, especially when it came to the reading and writing. Those were subjects that Landon actively disliked. She couldn’t deny that that was impressive. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings like that. I was really angry and wasn’t really thinking about what my words meant. I’m sorry.”

“Mm-hmm.” Landon put their belongings away and shut the box, then placed their hands on their knees and started rocking back and forth slightly. Katherine hadn’t seen them do that before, but maybe it was like the gurgle they made when they were in a good mood: a physical way of indicating how they were feeling. “You smell pretty sorry, so I guess you mean it. I don’t really hold grudges so I’ll forgive you eventually, but not yet. We need to talk first.”

Katherine stared at the ground in shame. Bits of gravel left indents in her brown skin. The sensation was distracting, so she pulled her knees up to her chest to lessen it. “I wanted to talk to you, too. About the way you… the way we didn’t understand what the other was saying.” She hoped that wording wouldn’t upset Landon further. Calling them slow was a step too far, but there’d definitely been some kind of miscommunication between the two of them.

Thankfully, Landon agreed. “Yeah, I didn’t get it. Nothing about the conversation seemed wrong to me. You still feel the same as your parents to me, too.”
Katherine frowned and started, “But I actually like you.”

“I know. Remember when we first met? You said, ‘The Lord doesn't intimidate you, and you look half dead. Who wouldn't find you scary?’” Landon copied Katherine's high-pitched voice in addition to her words this time, and their imitation was spot-on. “You had a cross necklace to try and scare me off, too. You’re only a little scared of me now, but every human has the same initial reaction to me that you did. If you feared me at first but we’re friends now, why wouldn’t your parents be the same? What makes you different?”

It took Katherine a few moments to come up with a response. She spluttered, “I don’t know. I’m just more open-minded, I guess. Adults be stuck in their ways, and my parents been real worried about all the news about Satanists kidnapping children and stuff. Whatever the case, they just hate you more than I ever would. That’s why Pops shot you.” She tried not to let that last sentence sound bitter.
Landon saw — smelled? — through her effort. They cocked their head and asked,

“You’re bitter now? Why?”

“Because I still don’t understand your logic. Even if my parents and I were the same, you still disregarded my warnings and let them attack you. When we first met you didn’t leave the house even though I told you not to. I really am glad we’re friends now, but…” Katherine sighed. “The way we met’s just really questionable, Landon.”

The demon blinked. “Even though I was cheering you up?”

“Before you cheered me up you was scaring the living daylights out of me!” Katherine huffed and tried to lower her voice. “You know that being scared is generally a bad thing, right?”

“A bad thing, right?” Landon shook their head agonizingly slowly. “No? It’s just another delicious emotion and how humans are supposed to feel when they see me, right?”

Katherine buried her head in her hands. “That’s the completely wrong answer! Fear a really uncomfortable emotion from the perspective of whoever’s feeling it. You might be enjoying it, but humans don’t. You ain’t never felt scared before?”
Landon shook their head again, more confidently this time. “No one here can kill me and physical attacks don’t really hurt me, so there’s not much to be afraid of.”

“So you ain’t good at putting yourself in other people’s shoes either?”

“Well, this is what I meant when I said we need to talk. I know that humans have a lot of ‘bad’ emotions, but I can’t read their minds and see what they think about those feelings. All I see is a potential snack. I won’t understand why they feel that way unless they tell me. I guess when you told me that your parents would hate me, that was your way of telling me that I shouldn’t be friends with them. But to me, it looked like they were going to come around to me at any moment. I really wasn’t trying to make you upset with me,” Landon pleaded.

Katherine thought back to how she’d met Landon in the first place. “What about when you first met me? My screams wasn’t enough to get the point across?”

“I think screams sound really nice,” Landon admitted. “I didn’t know you were that upset because you were making such a fun sound. If you’d explained how being scared is really uncomfortable for you, maybe I would’ve gotten it. But I just… Can’t figure out what emotions mean on my own very well. I’m not slow, it’s just hard.” They let out a slow whirr, like a computer’s fan struggling to keep its hardware cool.

“I’m a little confused, but I think I get it,” Katherine conceded. “Is it a demon thing?”

“Is it a demon thing? Maybe, but I don’t think so,” Landon mused. “I haven’t met any other demons yet, but something about it just feels different from the other things I do. But maybe it’ll make more sense if I put it this way: every social situation has its own rules, right?”

“Uh-huh.” Katherine could think of all kinds of unspoken rules: don’t stare, introduce yourself and ask how the other is doing, try not to point.

“Well, sometimes following the rules is easy, like during the second time we met. When I cheered you up I was mostly thinking about how your emotions taste, but I also wanted you to feel better because I already learned that crying over relationships like that is a bad thing. The rule was to make you feel better, and I know how to do that.

“But last week, that situation had more complicated rules. When I meet new people, the rule is to be friendly until they stop trying to hurt me or to get away from me. I guess there was a new rule saying that I had to leave, but I don’t understand how to follow both rules at once. I went with the first one because I really like having you as a friend and I thought it’d be nice to have a couple more.”
Katherine realized this lined up with Landon’s behavior in general. They often stared, or said strange things seemingly without realizing it. There were lots of unspoken rules that they broke, and usually it was harmless but occasionally it resulted in messy situations like this. “That does make more sense. Although, that second rule ain’t new…”

“… But the emotions prompting it didn’t make sense, so I didn’t realize that I was supposed to follow it instead,” Landon finished. “If you want me to follow the rules, you have to explain them first.”

“How often am I supposed to explain?” Katherine didn’t want Landon to be in the dark, but if she tried to point out every little mistake they made she’d never finish.
Landon shrugged. “Whenever you’re worried that something really bad is gonna happen, I guess. I don’t like arguing or crying, so I don’t want this to happen again.”

“Okay. But can I just say one thing?” When Landon nodded, she continued, “Even if we in a sticky situation, I can’t tell you what to do and why every single time. I literally didn’t have the chance to explain why my parents hated you last week. I kept getting interrupted, and my dad had a gun. I was scared he might shoot me!”

“It would be really bad if you got shot,” Landon mumbled in agreement.

“Exactly! So even if you don’t understand what I’m saying, sometimes you just gotta trust me and go with it anyway until I get a chance to elaborate. It ain’t fair to me if you disregard my effort to keep the both of us from getting hurt, right?”

“It’s not fair,” Landon echoed. “I guess I made a mistake too. I’m sorry, Kath.”

“It’s fine, Landon. I really do wanna keep being your friend, even if we met in a weird way. I’m glad we sorted this all out.”

Landon stopped rocking and gave Katherine a hopeful look. “Do you still hate getting hugs, or…?”

“I never hated your hugs, silly. I was just upset at the time.” Katherine opened her arms for a hug and Landon all but crashed into her, gurgling excitedly while she tried to keep them from crushing her. “Jeez, I be forgetting how strong you are.”

Landon loosened their vice grip around her rib cage just a little bit, but they didn’t let go. “I have to make up for a week of not seeing you. By the way, remember that foghorn noise I made?”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“It’s not just a regular foghorn. It was from a radio drama I heard when I was three or four years old.”

Katherine snickered and playfully complained, “How was I supposed to guess that? You such a smart aleck when it comes to playing games!”

“I’m just doing whatever it takes to win!”

“Is that why you ate my pieces when we played checkers that one time? Even though you had to cough them up just a couple minutes later ‘cause your weird demon stomach couldn’t keep them none of them down?” Katherine retorted.

Landon finally let go and dramatically flopped onto the ground. “It would’ve worked if you’d just stopped paying attention like I hoped you would!” Their voice was filled with exaggerated anguish, and they let out another one of their raucous cackles.

“Or maybe you just bad at board games!” Katherine laughed even harder, and the two of them continued their banter. She almost forgot about the fact that she was grounded. She was just glad to be with her best friend again.