A/N: Just a quick one-shot I jotted up. JacinxWinter, written in 1950s Georgia, during the time of the African-American segregation in America. Hope you enjoy, and please review!
Disclaimer: I own neither the image nor the Lunar Chronicles series, or any of its consequent subsidiaries.
Note: Because this is a historical one-shot, I use historical language that may be constituted today as politically incorrect. I use the word 'Negro' a few times. This is only due to the historical context. Thanks!
1958
The heat falling on the Georgia small town was sweltering, settling like layers of a Betty Crocker cake. It wavered in the air, thick and palpable, battled with plastic, handheld fans and dingy air conditioning units. The scent of sweat and dirt and the Georgia summer hung heavy, interposed occasionally with the sweet smell of perfume or a patch of wilted carnations lounging sad and sorrowful in sun-bleached flowerbeds.
Jacin Clay stood on the corner of a dusty street, leaning against the low-slung general store. It was a hot day, unsurprising for August in southeast Georgia, the sort that made even the mosquitoes flee to the shade of the ash trees. It was late on a Sunday afternoon, and people were waddling about; dark-skinned women with their billowing dresses and old, lean farmhands, wrinkled and stooped. The town held an eerily quiet quality, as if the heat had sucked the voice out of everyone, reached a clawed hand down their throats and ripped out their song. Even the birds were silent.
Jacin wiped a hand across his forehead. His father was in the general store, buying margarine and a box of Marlboro cigarettes. Jacin wished, more than anything else, that his father hadn't dragged him into town today. Usually Jacin preferred to trek into the town center, people-watching and scuffing his shoes on the grit that gathered in the cracks in the asphalt, but today he would've liked to lounge about in bed. It was one of those days that took the life out of you, made it impossible to do anything but stare at the ceiling and relive past mistakes.
Jacin watched a few men across the street perform a spitting contest, hocking globules of tobacco-stained saliva onto the ground. He wrinkled his nose in distaste, flicking his gaze over to the ramshackle church. The building was falling down, the steeple stilted. The doors were wide open, welcoming in the stifling air, and Jacin wondered if God made the world hot by mistake. Surely he couldn't have intended to create hundred-degree temperatures. It must, he decided, have been a divine mistake.
And that was when she saw her.
She was impossibly beautiful, so much so, in fact, that Jason had to do a double-take. Eyes like honey dripping from a honeycomb, lopsided smile with pink lips, straight nose, cheekbones arched and delicate. Her sable hair hung in corkscrew curls around her face, framing her ebony skin. She was wearing a loose sundress the color of cornflowers and a pair of beat-up saddle shoes.
She was black, stunning, and staring right back at Jacin.
He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing skittishly in his throat as she made her way over to him, skipping along the way. She looked about fifteen or so, a year or two younger than Jacin. The sunshine caught her hair and embraced it, wrapping around the silky-smooth tendril.
"Hey," she said, eying him boldly.
Jacin cleared his throat, pushing himself off the wall. He'd talked to blacks before, of course. His parents had employed a black nanny when he was younger, and now a black woman named Maybelle did most of the cooking in their house. But this was different, somehow. Maybe because Jacin didn't think of her as the help; he thought of her as a pretty girl who'd deigned to give him a grin.
Still, never before had Jacin felt more conscious of his pale skin.
"Hey," he said. He paused, wondering what he should say next. He'd never really flirted with girls before. Girls had flirted with him, but they had been the ones leading the conversation, and they had never made him feel like this girl did; conspicuous and nervous, with sweaty palms and a swirling stomach.
He needn't have worried. "So," she said, eyes glimmering with mischief. "Whaddaya doin' out on a day like this? Got a wish for heatstroke?" Her voice was lilted with a Southern accent, smooth and slow like molasses drizzled from a jar.
"Um, no," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "My dad, he's inside. Buying margarine and cigarettes."
"Hmm," she said, walking beside him and leaning against the wall, crossing her arms. The sundress was different from the flowing muumuus many Negro women in Jacin's town wore – not quite fitted, but not quite like a potato sack, either. It suited her. "Fascinatin'."
What was fascinating, Jacin thought, was the way her skin caught the sun, gulping it up and hugging the warmth, sunbathing in it. He shook his head, as if to clear cobwebs. "My name's Jacin," he said, sticking out his hand. In that moment, it didn't even occur to him that he was about to shake hands with a girl – a Negro girl, no less.
She stared at his hand for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to accept, and then clasped it, pumping his hand up and down lethargically. "My name's Winter," she said.
Winter. And just like that, with the mention of her name, Jacin felt dizzy and cool, as if the season had swept through the small town, bringing along a deluge of snow flurries and a fleeting frost. He felt the sweat under his armpits dissipate and his nose grow pink with the chill.
"Jacin?"
He jumped, whirling around and yanking his hand from Winter's grip only to see his father standing behind him, watching him apprehensively. Watching Jacin and Winter together, really.
"Yeah?" he asked, his voice cracking a little.
His father eyed Winter distastefully. "Let's go." He grabbed Jason by the shirt collar like he was six years old again, about to get smacked with his father's leather belt. His cheeks reddened with embarrassment, but Winter just smiled at him, blinking her eyes sleepily. His stomach flopped over, his heart leaping into his throat. He had a squirming sensation in his gut, but it was the good sort of squirming sensation. Pleasant, welcome, even.
"That girl there is a Negro," his father hissed in Jacin's ear. "We don't associate with them, you hear me?" His father's grip tightened, punishing and reproving.
But Jacin wasn't listening. He was twisting around, catching one last glimpse of Winter standing on the street corner, sweet and beautiful in her cornflower sundress and floppy saddle shoes, the sun soaking into her ebony skin. Forbidden, and all the more enticing for it.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed! Please review, you make my day when you do!