The heat shimmered up from the blacktop in little ripples like water disturbed in the wake of river fish. It radiated up through the soles of Florina's cheap old trainers, picking through the spots where the tread had worn thin and making her feet sweaty and swollen. She stared enviously at the patches of shade under the trees that wilted in their planter-box prisons. With the hot, heavy air, even the shade wouldn't be much cooler, but her curly hair stuck to the back of her neck and her face flushed a feverish red, so she didn't much care.
Her sister Farina had already left, but not before telling her not to leave that spot. Florina had promised her that she wouldn't move from that blacktop, and so she resolutely stood a little straighter, pretending she didn't care. Maybe she wouldn't if she didn't think about it. Maybe she wouldn't feel the straps of her secondhand backpack digging into her shoulders, or she wouldn't notice that everyone else had long since gone home. By all means, she should have gone home too, except Farina was her ride and Farina had to stay after school. Florina couldn't quite remember why. She thought it might've been for her women's rugby practice, but then it might've been just to see her boyfriend, Dart Conner. Because of Dart's foul mouth and wild demeanor, Florina couldn't speak to him without cowering behind her sister, but she couldn't quite manage to tell Farina what she thought of Dart or of staying late after school, for that matter.
Her backpack hit the ground with a dull thud. It figured Farina wouldn't lug her dopey younger sister around with her, but Florina still almost wished she'd tagged along. She didn't have any friends of her own. Just her siblings, too-serious Fiora and too-reckless Farina, and a new school full of unfamiliar faces. Farina knew these people—she boldly threw herself in the middle of everything and seemed to know everyone in the school. Farina was independent and proud and tough and didn't get left behind in sweltering bus ports and bade to stay. Florina sat alone at lunch and tried to pretend that she wanted to, that she was above the coarse lunchroom chatter, like Fiora was, and that she didn't need the approval of her classmates, not that she was a skinny poor kid with a bad stutter and a fear of men and a nervous smile.
The sound of muffled footsteps snapped her out of her daydreaming, even as she realized it wasn't Farina—Farina clomped around in combat boots that she bought at the military surplus store. These footsteps belonged to a boy, maybe a little older than her, his hair long and wavy in a way that hadn't been too popular in decades. He wore ankle-high leather boots and clothes that looked like they hadn't been worn before that day, their niceness and newness taken for granted at the start of a school year. Florina had her shoes from last year and Farina's old rugby shirt and Fiora's skirt from middle school, and she shrunk upon herself and tried to pretend that she didn't notice how shabby she looked in comparison.
She thought of proud imperious Fiora, president of the Rotary Club, of grinning popular Farina.
"Hi," she said.
The boy started, knocking his wire-rimmed glasses askew and nearly dropping the thick books he held against his chest. His features were delicate, bordering on androgynous. Even in his boots, he was only a smidgeon taller than Florina herself and about as skinny.
"Hello," he said warily, shuffling his bag and books as if he didn't know what to do with his hands. His voice held a hint of an Etrurian accent, airy and out of place in the middle of Lycia.
"May I…May I ask what you're doing here?" Florina said. She winced at her own rudeness, and wondered if she should say something to make amends, but she felt too awkward to speak.
"I come back here to read sometimes. It's quiet." He paused, fiddled with his glasses, and belatedly asked, "What about you?"
"Me? Oh, I'm, uh, waiting for my sister. She's got something to do," she explained lamely. "I, um…I'm Florina."
"My name is Erk Reglay," he said. He looked her top to bottom, eyes lingering on her tangled mane of hair and her secondhand clothing with questions he was too polite to ask.
His staring made her squirm, and so she asked, "You said you read out here? W-What sort of books?"
Her cheeks burned red as she tripped over the word, and her gaze dropped to the ground. Erk only nodded mutely and walked over to the red brick planter-box in the shade. Little flecks of sunlight slipped through the leaves to dapple him with gold, his dark hair speckled like a starry night sky. For a moment, he was beautiful and elegant, before the heel of his new shoes caught on a rock and he stumbled. His books and his glasses tumbled to the ground.
Erk himself followed shortly afterwards with a smothered gasp of pain. Florina rushed to his side as he squinted and groped along grass and asphalt. His fingers closed on a cigarette butt and he grimaced. Florina found them in a patch of crabgrass on the unattended lawn and wordlessly handed them to him. For a moment, his fingers brushed hers, his skin smooth and soft, and a tingle ran up her spine. Her palms were calloused from work, and dirt was caked under her short fingernails, her skin tanned in comparison to his ghostly paleness. Erk cleaned his glasses with the hem of his designer-brand shirt, nodding in silent thanks.
Up close, she could tell that his glasses didn't quite fit right; they were bent at the nosepiece and sat crookedly on his face.
"I'm so sorry! Did those break just now?" Florina asked, fearfully trying to calculate the cost of them. More than her family spent on food in a month, more likely than not.
He looked embarrassedly to the side.
"No. This is just…Thank you for your concern," he mumbled.
Florina suddenly remembered seeing that same sort of break on the glasses of the boys Dart's gang beat up behind the McRoland's. She wondered if Erk had been tormented in the same manner, but he hadn't asked about her threadbare clothing, so she didn't ask about his broken glasses. Instead, she handed him the physics book that lay, spine cracked and pages ruffled, on the ground.
"This is…I think this is yours?" she said, uncertainty morphing her words into a timid question.
A frown touched his features, and he looked sharply at her as if she'd been making fun of him. She cocked her head to the side, wondering how she could explain that she couldn't do something like that, and knowing that there was no real way to say so. His eyes were almond-shaped and his thin brows were perpetually lowered, giving him a distrustful, savage look, and she shrank back from him much the same as he withdrew from her.
"You look familiar, you know," he said, the words blunt and falling short of conversational. "Do you frequent the bookstore?"
She thought of the weighty price tags on the thick volumes and shook her head.
He looked puzzled, but he nodded anyway.
"I'm certain we don't have classes together. Clubs, maybe?"
"I…I'm not in any."
"Siblings?"
"Two."
He looked at his lap without another word. Erk's arms were crossed tightly across his chest and his shoulders were hunched, book balanced on his knees. He looked like he was trying to curl in upon himself, like a hedgehog, and Florina realized sickly that he could see Farina in her.
She sat next to him, as close as she dared. Florina didn't touch him, didn't pat him on the back or clap him on the shoulder; her hands shook, and she unconsciously mimicked his closed-off posture. She hoped he couldn't see the spaghetti sauce stain on her skirt, from the year Farina wore it, while he still wouldn't look her in the eye.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I wouldn't…I just spend all my time with…"
She broke off. Horses were embarrassing to bring up, or so she'd been told. They were for little girls, not those going into high school, not those who wanted to be taken seriously. She just liked the comforting feel of a velvety nose pressed into her palm, the soft intelligence of warm brown eyes, the way they all knew her and walked over for apple slices or alfalfa cubes when she vaulted the fence into their paddocks. They made this slice of Lycia feel slightly more like home, even.
Erk's eyes bored into her, a silent inquisition, a demand.
"Horses," she said, so quickly and quietly the word didn't even sound coherent to her own ears.
His eyes lit up like paper lanterns at the hoedown her neighbors down the street had hosted a few weeks before. The parents had been polite enough to invite the new family, her family, and their daughter had been nice to her. Lyn Chehalis was older even than Farina, and she was just as proud, but she'd let Florina hang out with her and her friends while the parents sat in sets of two, barring her mother, and drank watermelon wine out of ball jars and discussed how the job market was going and what the other families had been doing. Lyn and her friends hadn't laughed at her, not even the jabbermouth, freckle-faced Wil Donnell, who'd ran away from home when he was twelve and been gone for weeks, and they'd even taught her how to squaredance, but soon the party had been over and she hadn't seen any of them since. Actually, that had been the last time she'd talked to someone besides her family since Erk had shown up, and her face flushed at the thought.
"Do you ride?" he asked.
"Sometimes," she said, thinking of the white gelding she'd been permitted to trail ride a few times in exchange for her work at the stables.
"I used to have one, before my family moved," Erk said, fiddling with his glasses again. "We had to give her away, I'm afraid."
"That's too bad," she said wistfully. Her own family couldn't afford to even have monthly lessons, as she'd been told time and again, even as she sighed and watched the horses graze in the field. Farina worked with horses, too, but she saved every penny she earned, hoarding her money like a dragon of old. She still rode sometimes, sneaking bareback jaunts when the owner was out and making Florina tremble with nervousness. "What…What breed was she?"
"A bay quarterhorse/thoroughbred mix, Valkyrie's Soldier for Hire. Here, I have a picture of her somewhere," Erk said, fumbling through his bag.
A jumbled assortment of Polaroids spilled onto his lap and over the planter-box, some coming to rest on the blazing hot blacktop. Florina scooped them up, stacking them clumsily and handing them back to him. The one on top showed him and a girl with brilliant red hair standing outside the sign for Etruria Tech, both wearing forced, pained-looking smiles, the light from the camera flash glinting off of their glasses. Yet her hand was in his and, bad smiles or not, both looked happy to be there.
"I…Is this your girlfriend?" she asked, the idea making her upset for no reason. She hadn't known him more than ten minutes and his life wasn't any of her business, but it felt good to speak to someone. Erk didn't know about her single mother or anything more than that she was dorky Florina Bellerophon. He didn't even know that she was going to be a policewoman one day and help protect the people of the city. She dreamt she'd be good enough, and even if Farina teased her, it was enough to pull her to her feet when she'd been knocked down. Florina suddenly wanted to tell Erk as much, to tell him how he didn't need to look pityingly at her secondhand clothing, but pride held her tongue.
"What, me? I couldn't— Priscilla is...We grew up together," he said, self-consciously brushing his hair behind his ear. "She used to have me hold her hand to and from the bus stop, or when she was frightened, and neither of us really grew out of it."
He crossed his legs, shuffled the photos, uncrossed his legs.
"I know it's childish," Erk said, as if forestalling criticism.
"It's not," Florina said quickly. "My mother still does my hair. S-So you're only childish if I am."
Erk paused, a look of bewilderment crossing his face, before he hesitantly smiled. Florina timidly smiled back, willing herself not to tremble as she met his eyes. She didn't have the bravery to do anything more, but he pressed a photo of a brown horse into her hands, and their fingers brushed again, raising goosebumps along her arms.
A voice suddenly interrupted, "Oy! Florina! There you are!"
She jumped, dropping his picture. Erk's eyes were terror-wide, and he shrank back as Farina's shadow fell over the both of them. She was an imposing young woman—for she was most certainly a woman, while Florina was still a girl to anyone who looked at her, young and skittish and immature—and the three inches she had on Florina made her loom over the both of them. Her bright eyes were shadowed by messy bangs, while her ragged clothes made her seem warlike, like scarred armor that had seen combat time and again. They didn't hang pathetically off of her figure, but rather emphasized her well-muscled build, while her thinness made her look wiry instead of scrawny. Farina got in fights and she won them. She didn't duck her head and feebly attempt to ignore the derision aimed her way.
Farina raked her eyes over Erk and grinned her usual cocky grin.
"Friend of yours, Florina?"
She nodded timidly and folded her hands in her lap. Erk just looked back to his book as if willing himself to turn invisible.
"Well, say goodbye and let's get going. Fiora'll be mad if we're not back for dinner."
Florina nodded and slung her bag over both shoulders, following her sister. She waved a hesitant goodbye to Erk, knowing that he wasn't paying attention anyway.
She didn't expect him to look up and wave back, but he did, and he smiled shyly at her like they were sharing a secret. She smiled back. Farina wouldn't understand that talking to a nerdy boy with messy hair and perpetually slipping glasses was anything special, but in that instant, Florina knew that it was.
She had to jog to keep up with her sister's long strides, but she smiled to herself anyway. As they walked to Farina's rusty pickup, the sun just beginning to relinquish its vicelike grip on the world, she knew that she would remember Erk and that unsure way he talked about himself, would remember it as she returned to an empty house and to a regular, friendless week. It wouldn't change a thing.
Still, as she climbed into the passenger seat, she dug in her backpack for a notebook and wrote "Erk Reglay" across the top of the first page, for he was someone who understood, and that made him worth seeking out again.