We’ve met Vicki’s best friend, now it’s time to meet Angelina’s.
The two young people you see before you are Kara Sauer and Jason Olsen. They’re a bit busy at the moment. They attempted a ritual to drive out the dark spiritual forces attacking Belford in the fall of 1994, and maybe it was starting to work, because those dark spiritual forces counterattacked. Right now they’re fending off The Roadster – the surprisingly solid ghost of a local hoodlum who was killed in a suspicious car accident in the Fifties – and a local dog who’s usually a big friendly fluffo but is currently acting more like a satanically possessed wolverine.
They’re roughly the same age as the other characters we’ve met so far, though it seems likely that Kara is the oldest of the lot. She’s definitely the wisest, and in many ways has a “big sister” sort of relationship with the rest…even if she might hope for something different.
Kara is the only lesbian who’s out of the closet in Belford in the Fall of 1994. Mostly. They’re trying really hard to keep Angelina’s parents from finding out about it out of the entirely justified fear that they will react…badly.
(By the time they do find out, because of course they do, the dark force invading Belford from the mist that terrible fall has started taking people over, and it’s hard to know for sure if their reaction is their own, if that gives you an idea of just how bad it is.)
(To be honest, when I wrote this book, I was a bit naïve as to just how much shit an open lesbian living in a small town in the Nineties would have gone through. Or a Latina, for that matter, let alone one who’s caught the attention of the son of one of the local power players. By the nature of this sort of story, they both suffer significant harassment, but my imagination fell short of reality. Rule one for horror writers: if it’s physically possible and you can imagine it, someone has done it to a fellow human being. I’m ashamed of my naivete, but perhaps that shame should be saved for those who make reality that bad.)
Like many outsiders in the Nineties, Kara is a witch, in the religious sense. This has not helped with the harassment she gets around town. It has helped with protecting herself and her friends from the dark forces moving in Belford. The only one of her friends who didn’t benefit from Kara’s wards was Angelina, and her house is so laden with sincerely believed-in Catholic bric-a-brac that it’s a mystical fortress already. Unfortunately, at the time that this picture takes place, Kara’s attempt to punch way above her weight class by driving out the dark force itself has gone badly wrong.
(That’s her athame she’s holding, by the way, so it’s useful as both a weapon and a holy symbol against Creatures of Darkness. Both of those qualities are relevant right now.)
And Kara’s contribution to the battle against the dark forces besieging Belford isn’t limited to the mystical. She is the most studious and intellectual of Angelina’s friends, and a lover of the weird into the bargain. Over the years, she’s made a study of Belford’s history, and she’s found a lot of the strange incidents that tend to happen in Belford in bad times. The bizarre violence, the disappearances, the strange sightings in the rivers, and the mass deaths that end each cycle. More than anyone, Kara knows that they need to stop what’s happening.
Kara and Jason are both in love with Angelina, though Kara doesn’t talk about it much, especially not to Angelina herself. What would be the point? The girl is straight as a ruler, and her family still makes her uncomfortable with her sexuality.
But that isn’t all they have in common. Actually, they’re dear friends, and have been their whole lives. When Kara decided that she wanted to try heterosexual sex to see if maybe she was bi, it was Jason she trusted with the task.
(Results: nope. All it did was prove that she really is 100% gay.)
(They were a bit worried to tell Angelina about that little adventure, but they should have known better. Angelina takes the “don’t judge” part of Christianity seriously.)
As you may have guessed by now, Jay is Angelina’s love interest. And he’s good for her in that role, too. His simple, honest adoration helps Angelina through some crises of self-confidence…and helps her a bit with the aforementioned discomfort with her sexuality, too. It’s in keeping with his generally affectionate nature; his rib-threatening “viking hugs” are famous among his circle of friends.
But how boring would he be if that was all there was to him, especially after everything I just wrote about Kara above?
Jay is an artist. Mostly a painter. He stays after school voluntarily in order to have uninterrupted time with the art supplies. His bedroom is filled with his work, and his walls are painted according to his latest inspiration. He’s one of the few people in Belford to still have a van with a mural on its side, but since the mural is his own work, it has more meaning than such a thing usually would.
Jay may not technically be a genius as such, but he is damn good. One of those blessed combinations of talent and inclination that work together to create someone who starts out better than the rest and is constantly working to improve themselves because that’s what he wants to do. If he lives through the fall of 1994, Jason will actually be able to make a living, and a good one, with his art. During that fall, his art has meaning and power that may actually save his friend’s lives.
And if not his art, he has knowledge that might do the job. The Olsens have deep roots in Belford, and Jason’s grandfather has stories about the last time Bad Times came to Belford, stories even Kara doesn’t know.
This picture captures Jay more or less as I imagined him, except maybe for the hair. Kara I always pictured as quite a bit curvier. Partly because some parts of her, including her look, were based on people I knew. But also because Kara – like those people, as it happens – is an odd combination of archetypes. She’s a flannel-clad, short-haired tomboy who might have grown up into full-on butch, but she’s also Velma from Scooby Doo complete with terrible eyesight and encyclopedic knowledge of odd subjects, with a generous helping of wise pagan Earth Mother. The final result is someone who doesn’t give much real thought to her own femininity but couldn’t hide it if she wanted to.
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For the rest of Kara and Jason’s story, head on over to Amazon and pick up a copy of Hometown on Kindle or Paperback. Free on Kindle Unlimited! And while you’re there, check out the rest of the library!