Submitted for Feedback - 'The Dashboard Confessional'
~October 17, 2003
Detroit, Michigan~


He'd checked out of the motel room, argued over the long distance charges, paid the bill an hour ago. The mini-refrigerator had been emptied of the groceries purchased. Whistler had no idea if orange juice would spoil between Detroit, Rhiannon's house, to Collins, and ultimately Syracuse.

The engine had been turned over, switched off, repeated four times.

The visage in the rear-view mirror stared back at the Agent, nodded to say it understood the conflicting thoughts that swirled in his head. That this was his purpose. Her destiny.

That he had to say good-bye to his friend, the first he'd made in years. And hope Rhiannon would fulfill her promise as a newly-anointed Slayer.

Seven days were all it took to find her, convince her of what she was fated to be, and deliver her from one segment of her life to another. In the big picture of Whistler’s immortality, a week was a fraction of time, barely noteworthy. He might’ve conceived of it as too quick. But for Rhiannon, a girl of sixteen, that week was the longest in her memory. It was a bridge that stretched tirelessly from her past to her future, and she showed no hesitancy to cross it.

Never was it more obvious. Outside the little blue house with its arthritic dog, Rhiannon sat on an overturned recycling bin. A hodgepodge of duffel bags and clothes baskets formed a barricade behind her. There was defiance in her chin, an outright refusal to acknowledge that her dad was sitting on the couch, a beer in his hand, under the pretense of watching a ball game. The front door stood open, allowing the television sounds to filter through the screen porch and out to her ears.

The Lees were world famous for verbal stand-offs. Well, at least famous on the block. The latest shouting match lasted for eight hours, off and on, before their home got swallowed up in silence.

Across the street, their neighbor Ms. Russell pretended to do things like pot plants and sweep her sidewalk, just to be outside. Everybody knew she eavesdropped. And while Rhiannon sat there with her feet sticking off the curb and a sullen expression, she knew the old bag was hoping for another show.

“Whatever. Not like I care what you think,” she grumbled. Rhiannon picked up a handful of gravel, chucked a few pieces across the street, and felt satisfied when they littered up the sidewalk again. Maybe the woman would sweep herself into a coronary.

She pushed up her sleeve and checked her watch. Way to be late. Rhiannon scratched her forearm and craned her neck to see past the parked cars. Maybe he got lost. No, he didn’t get lost.

He was lost.

Not geographically. It was impossible for Whistler to get turned around, take the wrong back-road, end up in the sticks when he aimed for the boonies. When he agreed to work for The Powers so long ago, they gifted him with an internal global positioning system. Wherever he needed to be, who he needed to find, it was as if he could see their pinpoint light from space, that everything else was dim in comparison.

Rhiannon, until she was delivered to her Watcher, would outshine the sun. And given how she'd imprinted herself upon his psyche, the Agent suspected that wasn't going to change anytime soon. He took every side-street, found an excuse to stop at the same 7-11 he'd found her a week ago. Purposefully drove ten miles lower than the posted speed limit. Whistler hoped she'd give up waiting for him.

Of course, she never would.

Finally he rounded the corner to her street, crept up to the blue house and the girl waiting for her life to begin part two.

By the time he reached curbside, she was already on her feet, in a rush of concurrent excitement and fear. All the sudden she felt hasty, and she wondered if her father might change his mind and come out the screen door... Tell her she wasn’t allowed to go or something. It was weird. Nothing would stop her from leaving; He couldn’t stand in her way. But as the teenager hurried to get out, the little girl that still spoke in the back of her head asked him please, please just try it anyway.

She didn’t look, though, to see that the porch was empty. The brunette simply opened the backseat door and began to toss her duffels inside. Dad watched from the doorframe, not that she knew it.

“Hey,” she greeted Whistler, and squeezed a wicker basket in next to the duffels. “I thought you got carjacked or something.” She smiled at him, tardiness already forgiven. It wasn’t physical exertion, but she was out of breath.

As she worked to pack the back of his Black Impala with the contents of her sixteen-year life, Whistler stepped out and lit up a smoke. He took a slow, lumbering route around back and popped the trunk, in case any of her duffels wouldn't fit.

This had been repeated so often the packing became like a game of Tetris to the Agent. 'Stack the square boxes on top of one another, slide the duffel to the right.' He hoisted an oblong cardboard box and positioned inside the trunk. "Who'd wanna take this old bucket?" he mused to the Slayer. "Sure she'll get you were you're going, but if this is your idea of style, then you lack common sense."

He popped a look towards the house, caught sight of Rhiannon's father peeking out. Whistler thought better than to mention it. Instead he waved his cigarette across the street. "There's one in every suburb," the hatted man laughed. "In two minutes she's on the phone telling her bowling league about this."

Rhiannon hefted an overstuffed laundry bag into the trunk. She looked past Whistler’s profile, rolled her eyes at Ms. Russell, who now picked her way across a flowerbed in a pair of old slippers. “Forget her,” she groused. The glowing red tip of Whistler’s cigarette snagged her attention. On an impulse, the Slayer stole it from him, took a puff, and flicked it all the way across the street into an azalea bush.

With the mild triumph only a teenager could possess, Rhiannon slammed the trunk. Just an exclamation point on the end of a sentence that taunted, I’m out of here! “You ready?”

"Didn't forget anything?" Whistler held back a moment, giving the Slayer a chance to prolong the inevitable. Once they were in the car, when the motor started up again, put into drive...

There was no turning back.

Rhiannon took a step back. She rocked on her feet and studied his face, trying to suss out what wasn’t the same. “What’s wrong?” It didn’t make sense, but she got a feeling he was stalling. “It’s like you said, it’s not far. Besides, I can buy another toothbrush.” That part she threw in for a joke.

Up on the porch, Rhiannon’s dad neglected his post. The dog whined but was too lazy to get up.

'What's wrong? I could be sending you to an early death 'cuz you got marked with a gift. And seein' as how you're my only friend I kinda don't wanna see you get your throat ripped out.' Was he that transparent? Whistler shook his head, stepped back to the driver's side of the car and slipped inside. He fished out another Pall Mall and lit it. "Nothin', Rhi. I just get nostalgic sometimes."

He inserted the key into the ignition. "We're burnin' daylight."

Nostalgic for what? So far as she could tell, there was no reason to get nostalgic. Rhiannon climbed in beside him and shut the heavy door. Inside it smelled like vinyl from the seat cushions and the contents of his ashtray. She smoothed her fingers across the dashboard. It was maybe a mile from them to the hood ornament.

A solitary air freshener dangled from the rearview. Now that she concentrated on it, Rhiannon could smell faintly the artificial odor of pine trees. She touched that, too, and made it sway beneath the glass. The rearview mirror offered silent explanation of how differently they perceived things. When Whistler looked up, he saw his eyes, his conscience. And all that Rhiannon could see was the reflection of her packed bags and the street of her childhood beyond them.

“I’m ready when you are.” She breathed and tucked her hands between her knees.

Right. She was sixteen, with her life ahead of her. What was Rhiannon supposed to miss? Snowball fights behind three-foot forts in the middle of February? Fumbling hands attempting to find second base while pining for another cherry slushee behind the convenience store? She had a different path ahead of her and it would be those moments she'd miss. If she got the chance to.

Whistler was nostalgic for five months ago. Before the world wobbled sideways and he was cast on the open road rounding up strangers. But, as he revved the engine, he realized that if the die hadn't been cast, if the spell hadn't been spoken, then he wouldn't be in his overloaded car with a young woman who was too eager to embrace her future.

"Let's do this," he offered and put the car in drive. His right hand on the wheel, the left holding his cigarette outside the rolled-down window.

The car rumbled away from the curb.

Rhiannon watched in the side view as her front porch got smaller and farther away. A few turns and they would put the aging neighborhood behind them altogether. She cranked down the window and paid attention to the particularities of it... the dogs barking, the weary shutters on houses, a person shutting his storm door, a woman who hadn’t brought in her newspaper in days, the smell of propane under a grill, the shadows creeping long beneath the trees.

Every day of her life, she lived on that street. With premature wisdom, she predicted it wouldn’t look the same to her after today. Rhiannon wondered if any of them knew about vampires, too. But there was apathy there, a kind of numb acceptance that made people settle in for decades in those houses and never look any farther than their neighbors’ yards, or the confines of a television set, for signs of life. That wasn’t her.

Maybe she was in a hurry to see purpose where there was none. Maybe it was easy to leave because she lied, lied and made it seem like that life had nothing worthwhile to offer, when she was just ungrateful for the banality of it. But introspection wouldn‘t get her anywhere except hung up and freaked out or sorry.

Rhiannon slumped against the seat and let it go. She shut her eyes until the sights and sounds and smells were gone, and the world outside the Impala was less personal.

The wind caught ash from Whistler's cigarette and carried it on the breeze of history as they made their way out of Rhiannon's past and rounded the corner, full throttle now as they inched towards the highway.

The silence was uncomfortable. The Agent had spent countless hours driving, alone with his thoughts or distracted by the drone of talk radio. And the one time he had another person to speak with, as short as it would be to their destination, he couldn't find the words to open a conversation. Strike that. He did have the words. They just began with 'when you're settled in,' and 'after you're unpacked'.

Go with what you know. "So you must be looking forward to getting a start on your training." Flick. The cigarette disappeared into the background.

Rhiannon shrugged. She wanted to open his glove compartment but didn’t.

Instead, she inspected her fingernails and decided they looked like shit. A part of her fervently hoped Collins wasn‘t a hand shaker. Under the thighs they went. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying not to think about it. I mean, not the training part, that’s okay, but... the part where it’s a stranger. I feel like I ought to pay rent or something. How’m I supposed to be comfortable eating his food and using his bathroom and--.”

There she fumbled the conversational ball. Truthfully, Rhiannon didn’t like taking charity from people. The fierce, stubborn streak of ‘I can take care of myself’ played a part, but not as much as the awkwardness of always being in a position of debt or gratitude. “When I’m eighteen,” she went on, “maybe I’ll live by myself. You know, nearby or whatever? You said I don’t always have to do what he tells me.” The wind blew strong across the front seat. Rhiannon finger-combed strands of hair out of her eyes and peered at him.

"Heh." Whistler smiled at that. She listened to him. He was used to being ignored, a small cog in an awfully big clock. "The best of 'em, Rhi, she didn't always listen to her Watcher. Still alive too. Indirectly responsible for her city getting swallowed by a Hellmouth, but still." His eyes met hers briefly, before turning back to the road. The painted yellow lines mesmerized as the car sped along the concrete.

A Hellmouth. It brought to mind an open, earthy maw with giant teeth that chewed up buildings and parked cars and burped with a sulfuric smell. She wondered if it was like that. Rhiannon watched him, even after Whistler turned away. But he didn’t say anything else.

“How come your suitcase is in the trunk?” The question sprang up out of nowhere. It was literally as if the mental picture of it was a seed in Rhiannon's memory that had only just germinated.

He hadn't expected that.

He'd opened the door on a subject the Powers weren't keen on him broaching, but as before with their sparring, Whistler'd found a back-door. Instead, Rhiannon asked why he lived out of his car. "It keeps my clothes in one place?" the Agent responded. "I... move around a lot. Comes with the job."

The impromptu macaroni and cheese wasn't just a trick, it was a way of life. When he had money, Whistler would book in for a night at a motel. The more run-down, the stiffer the mattress, as he liked it. Sleeping in the back seat of his car did no favors to his back. But usually it was a quick wash-up at the local YMCA, meals in greasy sporks. If he was severely desperate, the Agent lined up at a mission for a sandwich.

Oh, the glamour.

The man had skills. Should he ever resign, he fancied he could get a job fixing things. He used to make shoes, though they had machines for that now. But being on the road for so long, Whistler wasn't sure if he was capable of settling in one city. "Not much chance to head home for fresh laundry and a shave, ya know? Not when there's girls like you who need a ride." Whistler retrieved the soft-pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, held it out to Rhiannon.

She ignored the offer, which left him hanging.

“No, I meant...” Rhiannon's brain trickled information down the pipeline, exceedingly slow.

Oh. He’s leaving.

Rhiannon felt her cheeks growing hot. Of course he would go, probably as soon as her last bag hit the sidewalk. There were other girls that needed Calling. But for some reason, Rhiannon hadn’t connected the dots, and it seemed baldly stupid of her now. Well, what did you expect? Him to camp out for another week or so, just to make sure you like it? You’re not his responsibility.

Then she remembered. He actually told her once already, just how long he would stay. Rhiannon cranked up her window. It wasn’t cold, but she felt like doing something with her hands. You’re lame, god you’re so lame. And it didn’t even make sense. Rhiannon didn’t attach herself like that. She wouldn’t even let Nevin call her his girlfriend after he got to home plate, and he was the first to get near it.

“Don’t worry about it, I know the drill. You’re just the guy that gets me there. Nobody really. I’ll forget you in a week, right?”

Whistler felt hot. He wanted to roll down his window, only the pane of glass was already buried in the car door.

"Yeah. That's what I said, didn't I?" He believed it then. Remember? Don't learn their names, call 'em 'kid' or something equally non-threatening and anonymous. Keep focused on the road ahead, not where you are now. Forget most of them won't see their next birthday.

So why was it, when he thought of Rhiannon, he saw ink and stars? And neon?

"You will, ya know. You'll be busy with training and slaying and life. Heh, even if I dropped in to visit at some point, you'd have trouble remembering my name." But I won't forget you.

“That’s stupid,” said Rhiannon.

She punched in the cigarette lighter.

Who the hell was she, an amnesiac diva? Did she look like a girl that forgot people, as soon as their use was up? “You’re not a free ride, are you? Not... public transportation.” She sounded acidic. The lighter popped out, but she didn’t have anything to burn. Rhiannon pulled it out and stared at the hot coils.

"Look all I'm sayin' is that I'm never in one place long enough to care about!" Whistler didn't know why he was so hot under the collar. Or why the brunette so effectively found and pushed this particular button.

He pulled out a Pall Mall but didn't light it. "I've got the road and motels and macaroni and cheese in a coffee pot and plenty of pissed off teenagers whose boyfriends toss cherry Slurpees at my car when I show up with an engraved invitation to a world that’d make most people cover their eyes with fingers and that's while it's on a movie screen.

"Give me one good reason, Rhiannon. One reason why I'm so memorable."

She leaned over and yelled it to his profile.

“Because you look at me!”

The volume of it was startling.

“And I threw the fucking Slurpee... okay?” Rhiannon dropped back into her seat, stuck the lighter back in the console.

They missed the on-ramp.

The highway that would take them three miles east, then south another half-mile to Collins, in the rearview with the swinging pine tree air freshener. Whistler drove three-and-a-half blocks further, pulled the car into a Denny's parking lot and stalled the engine. "I look at ya because there's something to see," he spoke, breaking the forced silence.

“I’ll remember you because you’re worth knowing,” she countered. “You didn’t have to hang around... You could’ve just jotted his address on a gum wrapper and said ‘see ya, kid’, and then I’d have been dead behind the fucking 7-11, but you didn’t, did you?” Rhiannon folded her arms. “So I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? A couple months from now, who still remembers, who still sees.”

"A couple of months." The hatted man nodded slightly. He pressed the lighter and waited for the coils to heat. "Deal. Two months from today. I'm at Collins' door. If you're waiting outside, we come here for breakfast." A familiar - to Whistler at least - pop and the device was pulled back to light his cigarette. He was tempted to invite the Slayer into the restaurant for a meal, to further delay their inevitable parting.

A long exhale. "Oh, nearly forgot. Something for you under the front seat. Just don't tell your Watcher that I picked 'em up for ya. Better if thinks you've been inhaling for a while. Even though he'll probably try and make ya quit."

She reached under, a little worried about ink pens or other weird crap stabbing her in the fingers, but all Rhiannon found was her first full pack of cigarettes. First a stake (it was in her gray duffel), now a ticket to nicotine addiction. Rhiannon squeezed the pack, but not too hard, lest it crush the contents. “You trying to get me killed?”

"If I was, I wouldn't have chased you behind the convenience store," came the smirked reply. "Besides, who else are ya gonna bum from? You think your boyfriend's gonna smuggle 'em into the compound?"

She cut a look at him. Lifted up to tuck the pack in her hip pocket. “Don’t you listen? What’d I tell you?”

"Oh, I heard." He kept his eyes on the Slayer. "If you're gonna go around proudly proclaiming he's not your boyfriend, you might wanna convince him of that. Boys talk, ya know."

“Yeah, and if he tells anybody he scored? I’ll kick his ass. Since I can.” Rhiannon lifted her feet onto the seat and dug her fingers into her shoelaces. So now Whistler wanted to give her guy advice, too? Only one way to cure that: details. “Or maybe I‘ll tell everybody he couldn’t find his way around my vagina with a reference book and a tour guide.” She gave a pointed look to the ignition, and the key still dangling.

Whistler needed a road map to figure out how the conversation went from cigarettes to dating to Rhiannon's... he refused to take that any further. His internal GPS shorted out.

The hatted man started the car, circled the restaurant and crept back on the street. This time they didn't miss the interstate. "Two months," he said, willing the last two minutes away.

“December 17th,” she said. It was funny, but Rhiannon had the most unusual sense of... satisfaction, having freaked him out about that.

It stayed with her all the three-and-a-half miles down the Interstate and into Collins’s nice neighborhood, with its brick ranchers and mowed lawns and four-dour sedans. The deeper into the suburb he took her, the more nervous Rhiannon’s stomach became. She plucked at her laces and watched the passing homes. The car ride came to a slow stop in front of a modest one-story house in red brick. Its yard had an established vibe about it, simplistic and clean and firmly middle class. There was a garage out back.

Whistler let the car idle a few moments before switching off the ignition. End of the line. All passengers please make sure all belongings are retrieved before exiting.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Open. Shut. "Not a bad neighborhood."

“Yeah.”

Oh my god. What am I doing here?

Rhiannon pulled the handle and let the Impala’s heavy door open itself. The bottom corner dragged low and took a chunk out of the lawn. She touched the dashboard again and allowed her fingers to linger, but then, sensing that she was about to choke, Rhiannon swallowed and got out of the car, quickly so she wouldn’t change her mind. Almost immediately, she began to toss bags and baskets onto the soft grass. “Can you pop the trunk?”

No.

"Sure."

Fingers pulled the latch; a metallic 'plink' echoed. Whistler opened the door and quickly pulled it shut as a Toyota whizzed by. Finally he climbed out and helped remove the last of Rhiannon's belongings. He got the boxes as far as the main step.

She walked up behind him and let the bags drop off her shoulders. Thunk, thunk.

Rhiannon tipped up her chin, in order to look past the brick steps to the white front door. It had a brass knocker. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to rap that or just knock, or maybe there was a bell.

Tell me it’s okay to be scared.

She refused to look it. “Well... I can do it from here.”

"Yeah." He didn't need to poke in her mind to know what Rhiannon was thinking. But he caught the broadcast regardless. "You're allowed to be nervous," he continued. "I'd be concerned if you weren't."

Rhiannon looked crestfallen. “Am I see-through?” The last thing she wanted was for Collins, whoever he was, to get a bad first read off her. Namely, that she was a weak teenaged girl who’d be too scared to put up a fight.

He reached a hand up, stopped short of touching the Slayer's chin. It felt like the right thing to do, and also the worst. "A little." He smiled warmly. "But you were kinda loud up here." Whistler pressed a finger against his temple. "It's gonna be okay."

Rhiannon nodded, a lot. “I know. And don’t worry,” she said, trading her fears away and pretending they were his, “I’m not gonna... Pass the torch.” She decided to try for a smile and as it turned out, she had a faint set of dimples. A kiss to the Agent’s left cheek, given really fast, and with an even quicker retreat. “Bye.”

Whistler held back, hands stuffed in pockets. He refused to say the word. "December seventeenth. Breakfast at Denny's."

She nodded.

As he backed off towards the black Impala, Rhiannon climbed the steps to greet destiny head-on. She knocked with her fist and squared her shoulders. When the door opened to a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair and a mole above his lip, she could still feel Whistler behind her.

She stuck out her hand.

“Hi. I’m Rhiannon. I’m a vampire Slayer.”