trivially.
Everything and anything you wanted to know (that I'd thought of already) about your typical teenage werewolf.
- She hates the rain. Not only because that when it starts pouring and you're walking along the road, it fucking sucks ass to have all your worldly possessions soaked in the space of five minutes when the drying out process involves taking every little thing out and hanging it somewhere for at least a couple hours to avoid mildew.
No, the real reason is that Lia's always ridiculously paranoid that if she gets all wet, she'll start reeking of that wet dog smell. She knows it's stupid and irrational and ridiculous, but still.
- She isn't a virgin, but she's only had sex the once. She was sixteen (claiming to be twenty), and half a week from the full moon, so she was more than a bit tetchier than usual. His name was Jerry, twenty-three and he'd just jumped on the road straight out of grad school - claimed he was doing the Kerouac thing just to try it out and Lia had smiled and nodded like she knew what he was even talking about. He'd driven her from Salt Lake City to Henderson, Nevada, never quitting on the jokes or the chitchat for a minute and Lia hardly stopped laughing the whole trip. He insisted on covering her part of the meals they stopped for along the way, even after her warning him and him seeing firsthand just how much she could put away in a sitting. They'd finally pulled into the truck stop at Henderson and grabbed some barbeque ribs from a drive-through to eat in the back of his cab. Jerry was still joking with a smudge of sauce at the corner of his mouth when Lia just leaned forward to lick the sauce away and kiss him.
It was a completely lovely first time until at the big moment, he groaned out her name - Teresa. The big moment still happened, but the cuddling afterward felt super fake and as soon as he'd rolled off her and fallen asleep, Lia extricated herself from his arm and hitched a ride going back to Utah, and from there to Colorado. She hasn't used that cover ID since.
- No alcohol for her. It's not so much a matter of principle, or knowing she's underage, or that it's bad for her. It's more the matter of alcohol being hella more expensive than her favored energy drinks, and super hella more expensive than a cold glass of water. You know. The free kind. Plus even if she did drink, her metabolism's fast enough that it wouldn't do a damned thing for her so it's even more of a waste of money.
- Whenever she steps inside a grocery or convenience store, her last stop - while the poor guy at the counter rings up all the food she's buying - is the magazine stand. She skips over the celeb tabloid rags and goes straight for the home design and gardening and interior decorating. She'll read them from cover to cover until they fall apart, smiling quietly to herself as she imagines herself living in these beautiful houses with the perfect furniture and the complementary color schemes with a perfectly manicured lawn outside framed with flowerbeds.
They're the only concessions she's willing to make - aloud or otherwise - to actually wanting a place to go and settle down in.
- When hitching, Lia employs her own particular code of conduct. It's been tweaked over the years after swapping stories and talk with various other travelers along the road, but the core of it is just basic common courtesy with a few specifics tacked on.
1. Please and thank you. These guys are nice enough to stop along the road or pick her up from a stop. The least she can do is mind her manners and be grateful for the ride.
2. Don't cuss if it ain't cool. Lia never curses until and unless she hears her driver curse first, and then limits herself to what they end up using. She doesn't want to put anyone off or make them uncomfortable - again, they don't have to pick her up.
3. Pay your own way. This is a mixture of manners along with pride and self-awareness. She can take care of herself, and being able to cover her own tabs is proof of that. There's also not wanting a driver to go and feel like he's "owed" anything by taking care of bills. She usually doesn't have this problem given how much she eats turns most anybody off of paying, but... Still.
4. No swiping. She never, ever, ever steals from a driver, no matter how much of a prick they turn out to be. You just don't shit where you eat, and stories of jacking hitchers get around.
5. No questions. She doesn't go snooping into their personal life, and if they don't return the favor, then it's gentle adjustments to other lines of conversation.
6. Driver gets dial privileges. Doesn't matter if she has to listen to Chinese opera on the radio for a hundred miles - it's not her cab, so it's not her call.
- Lia doesn't own a single set of pajamas - she just sleeps in whatever clothes she's been in for the day. The only exception is when it's been a really dirty or sweaty day - then she'll change into the next day's clothes to sleep in and put the dirty ones in her designated laundry bag, tucked away inside the main duffel compartment.
Oh, and included in her super chic sleep ensemble? Her shoes. She sleeps in those too. ...What? You never know what can end up happening in the middle of the night. Things happen. You don't know.
- She's fluent in Spanish. Basics from school, then spending six years sticking to mostly the Southwest, working in diners? Yeah. She's got a pretty fine accent and a pretty expansive vocabulary. ...Especially the curses. She's super proud of her R-rated stuff.
- She can fall asleep wherever. ...No, seriously, wherever. Sitting down, leaning against a building, scrunched up in a truck cab, hunched over in a doorway. And doesn't matter what's happening or how crazy things get, she can always make herself nod off. Well, except for when the full moon's getting closer, but that's not her fault, all right.