Two days and one discussion with Hector later, I knew her name. Daphne. One of Hector's various cousins, I think Carmen, chilled with her. Daphne, junior, sixteen year old Daphne. Photographer for the yearbook, in charge of making sure everyone and every club at school had a picture. Straight-A, perfect attendance, permit carrying Daphne.
Finding out that information had been easy. It should have been as much of a turn off as the orange dress had been, but then I remembered the way she laughed and knew there had to be more to her than that. So here I was on Thursday not paying attention in fourth period History, wondering why I hadn't noticed her before. We were in the same grade even if I was a year older. I should have run into her before Monday in the quad at lunch but I noticed that while I was actively looking out for her now, she was suspiciously absent from every hallway and classroom I seemed to inhabit over the course of the day. Maybe I should switch up the way that I get from class to class.
The bell rang. I gathered my notebook and shuffled out into the hall teeming with students, taking the long way back to my locker but I didn't see her. Walking into the quad, my feet immediately took me to our usual table. Dom was already there; his arm draped around some girl with blond hair, idly touching her in ways I knew would have her on Dom's sexual scorecard later this afternoon. Vince was there too, eating his lunch as if it was water to a man in the desert. Vince loved to eat. I sat next to Vince, facing Dom and began to eat my lunch, letting my eyes roam idly over the others filling in the tables close to ours.
"Hey guys," a soft voice I recognized said causing me to look up. Mia had taken the seat next to Dom and I hadn't noticed. I knew however that where she was her best friend Letty wasn't far behind. Sure enough, a moment later Letty was sliding into the seat next to mine, giving me and Vince head nods before taking a vested interest in her lunch. I smiled and Mia rolled her eyes. We both knew that Letty had a crush on Dom and she would not be pleased that Dom was putting his attention elsewhere.
"So Han man, you almost finished with the new mods?" Letty asked me. Cars, I grinned, damn she was something else. When I met Letty three years ago she had been all about cars then too. We all were. Some things don't change. But at fifteen, she had started to see something not only in cars but in Dom too. It was like a switch had been flipped on, turning tomboy-Letty into someone I couldn't classify. She still dressed like a tomboy but I had noticed that she was taking care with her appearance to remind us, well more like remind Dom, that she was a girl too.
"Yeah. I'm adding the new exhaust and then I'll be done," I replied, noticing that while her face had been towards mine, she had been sneaking glances at Dom and the blond girl. I could tell that Letty was working to keep her face impassive but her eyes were beginning to fill with fire.
"What about you? You finish up that project for Mr. Toretto?"
"Nah man," damn she still hadn't looked away. How she could keep her head in the conversation and her eyes on the foreplay happening across the table, I would never understand. "I've got to go work on it today." Her face was fast losing the mask of indifference; the corners of her mouth began to curl into a snarl.
"Hey Let, Han, V," Mia addressed each of us in turn. Mia was like that, a fifteen year old mother hen that saw and understood what we each needed and kept our tempers in check. This isn't to say that Mia didn't have a temper. All Toretto's have tempers. But Mia was a princess: charming, girly, and able to control her temper better than the men in her family. Yet, her fetish for looking and acting feminine didn't hide the fact that she enjoyed cars too. She didn't work on them the way the rest of us did. She just drove and understood our obsession. And she mothered us.
"Are any of you coming for dinner tonight?" Way to go diplomat Mia. She always knew how to diffuse a situation. Letty was forced to look at Mia instead of Dom to answer.
"Yeah girl, I'll be there," Letty said, less of an edge in her voice. Vince and I nodded yes. Mia didn't ask Dom or the blond girl. Since dinner would be at the Toretto's and their father expected them to eat dinner together, we knew that Dom would be there. But I also knew that Mia's omission of the blond girl was both deliberate and understood by every member of the table. If Mia didn't ask you, you weren't invited. The blond was not allowed to sit in on family time. That's why Mia was a princess. With one inquiry she had diplomatically and effectively shut out the interloper, reminded Letty how important she was to our little family, and diffused a volatile temper. Plus, she had made Vince really happy with the promise of a home cooked meal. Hey, I wasn't joking when I said he liked to eat.