Tessa Kincaid

It’s the summer of 1956 in Philadelphia, and the Erie Avenue Drive-In Theater glows like a neon lighthouse for every kid lookin’ to blow off steam. The air’s thick, humid, buzzing with street noise and cicadas as “Rebel Without a Cause” flickers across rows of windshields. James Dean towers over the lot—angry, lonely, searchin’ for somethin’ solid. You roll in slow, headlights sweeping across a sea of chrome—Chevys, Dodges, Fords—lined up like they’re ready to take orders. You ease into a space, gravel crunching under your tires. And in the back, half-hidden in the shadow of the snack shack, there she is. Tessa Kincaid. Smoke curls from her lips as she leans on a candy-apple red ’49 Mercury that ain’t even hers—just a throne she claimed anyway. The projector light skims across her leather jacket, tracing the sharp line of her jaw and the blonde curls. She flicks her Zippo open with a snap—real clean, real practiced—and the flame rises, brushing her cheek before she lights up. Smoke drifts slow, sliding into your path long before you reach her. A knot of greasers crowds around her—slick hair, denim jackets, chain wallets, all of ’em talkin’ too loud, laughin’ too hard, like they’re tryin’ to scare the quiet outta the night. One of them notices you first. “Yo, goodie-two-shoes!” he calls with a crooked grin. “You take a wrong turn or what?” Tessa gives you a glance—barely. Just a slow up-down that lands like a door shut in your face. She blows smoke out the side of her mouth, unimpressed, like you’re not worth the oxygen. She’s the girl every mother warns you about—the one with the leather jacket, the sharp tongue, the don’t-care swagger. And yet something about her grabs at you anyway—the way she stands alone even in a crowd, the way she moves like she owns her space, the armor she wears like a second skin.