I stuffed my sleeve-encased hands into my sweatshirt pocket and rounded my shoulders, sinking comfortably low into the hard plastic chair that backed my classroom desk. Sarah hadn't showed up at school that day, and third period was considerably less tolerable without her. I sighed quietly, wishing my best friend were there so I could get her thoughts on last night.
Mr. Weathill finally caught my attention when he began to read off a list of students who would be working together on an upcoming project.
Project? I thought dimly as I tried to figure out what had been going on in class since I had zoned out. I scanned the paper projected on the wall by Weathill's overhead. Apparently we would be doing a presentation of some sort, in groups of two. I immediately started hoping to hear my name called out along with Sarah's, but didn't really expect it. There was no way Weathill would ever pair up the two of us for a project.
"Sarah Leavenly and Jimmy Carsten," Weathill called out. Damn, I thought forlornly, my optimistic hopes dashed. Sucks for her, though. Everyone knew Carsten was a total flake. Sarah would have to do all the work herself if she cared about passing. Which, I reflected, she probably wouldn't.
"Dick Grayson and Sam Williams," Weathill announced. Not bad, I thought. Dick's all studious and whatever. Didn't he win something in some science fair? Or something. We caught each other's eyes and gave friendly smiles. And cute as hell.
After class, Dick came up to my desk.
"Hey," he said, in a voice a bit lower and smoother than I had expected. I realized that I had never really talked with him before. He gave me a smile that was way too handsome for a seventeen-year-old boy; the urge to give a goofy grin and a dazed "hi" rose within me, but was quickly overcome.
"Hey," I rejoined, casual and cool as a cucumber instead. I lifted my ragged, tattered, beloved messenger bag onto my shoulder and stood to leave for my next class. I wished belatedly that I had dressed nicer today. Or, you know, at least dressed in clothes I hadn't worn yesterday. I'd slept at Rick's place last night, since a trek home from the Upper East Side was way too far for a nighttime walk. At least I had one of his sweatshirts on top.
"Where are you headed?" Dick asked.
"Oh. Uh." Curiously, I came up with a blank and had to think for a moment before I could respond with, "Uhh. Math."
"Great," he said. "I'm headed to the English hallway." We proceeded down the aisle of desks toward the door. "So when should we get together to do this project?"
I tried not to let it show that I had no idea when the presentation was due, or indeed, was it was about. "Um." I answered. "Anytime."
"O-kay," he said slowly, "well can we do it at your house? Mine won't work out."
"Oh. Umm, actually, mine won't work, either. Sorry."
"Oh. Well, the library then?"
"Err." Due to the previously-mentioned, unfortunate, and still-unresolved incident of a few years back, I still wasn't exactly welcome at the library. "That…doesn't actually work for me. I know a coffee shop we can go to? It's in Wayne Tower, downtown; it's really nice."
A look crossed his face briefly. "Okay, that's alright. Are you free after school?"
"Sure." I still had no idea what we were supposed to do for this project. "Sounds good. I'll meet you there."
I skipped last period to run home and pick out the cleanest and least ragged-looking clothes I could find. I took a few shortcuts and ended up at Wayne Tower early, sitting down in my usual chair and immediately pulling out Zhivago. I wondered briefly if Wayne might show up again, but dismissed the idea. Lightning doesn't strike three times in three days.
Dick showed up a few minutes later and started taking out folders and notebooks and such. I followed his lead, but could really only take out a single binder, and a heavily used one at that. I sneaked a glance at Dick to see if he judged, but he didn't look twice at my tattered binder. Nevertheless, I kept it in my lap and not on the table with his shiny notebooks so as to avoid the embarrassment of their juxtaposition. Like Holden with his suitcases, I thought. Except in reverse because-
"This is a nice place," Dick said, looking around, his words all light-toned and small-talky. "What are you getting?"
I faltered. "Oh. Actually…I'm not getting anything."
"Why not? I thought you said you like this place."
"Umm, yeah…but I'm, uh, not thirsty or anything."
"Oh. Well, what do you recommend?"
I thought quickly. "The…latte?"
He looked bemused. "Just a plain latte? That's their best?"
"Err. Yeah. It is." Shit, I thought. Should it be something else? How am I supposed to know?
"Okay. Well, I'll try it." I watched him go up to the counter and order, taking out a shiny black wallet. Dang, I thought. Nice wallet. Real leather?
He returned with a white glass mug full of a steaming liquid that looked like really milky coffee.
"It's good," he said, taking a sip. "This place is pretty expensive though, isn't it?"
"Uhh…yeah. But it's worth it," I bluffed again. Christ, I had never even looked at the menu board. Had I ever even been up to the countertop? "I guess these Wayne Corp. bigwigs are willing to pay a lot for a little coffee. Have you ever been here before?"
"No, no," he said, looking down at his folders and pulling out a piece of paper. "Should we start on the project?" I peered at the sheet upside down. '20th Century Americana: First Quarter Term Paper' ran across the top.
I flipped open my binder and found that sheet a few down the pile. I pulled it out triumphantly.
"So, what should we do?" he looked at me and picked up his mug.
Okay. 20th-century Americana, 20th-century Americana. I have no idea. "Um. I don't know. Do you have any ideas?"
"Well, I was thinking we could talk about literature. I thought you'd be interested in that, too."
"Huh?"
"Well, I see you reading all the time," he explained.
"Oh. Yeah." I blinked, surprised. Pleasantly surprised. "Yeah, we can totally do literature," I said. "I mean, I don't read a ton of American stuff, but-" shit, Sam, don't sound too enthusiastic. This is no time to start babbling about the merits of European lit. I toned it down a bit. "Yeah. Yeah, that's cool."
"Great. So…twentieth century. Hemingway?"
"Well," I said, "would they really let us do Hemingway? I mean, he spent most of his life in exile – France, Spain, South America…if it's about Americana, we should probably do someone who really wrote about America, you know?" I frowned. "Umm, Faulkner? Except I've only read one thing by him…"
He looked at me in consternation. "Er, I've never read anything by him." Shit, am I sounding too enthusiastic again?
"Oh! Okay. Well…there's Steinbeck. He's really, really American."
"Oh, yeah. Sounds good." He gave me one more ridiculously handsome smile, the third in the last few hours. I gave a goofy grin in return.
I ambled down Euclid St., my hands shoved in the pouch of my sweatshirt and my hood draped loosely over my head. I had headphones in and was listening to my walkman; it wasn't late enough yet that I would need all my senses on the alert as I walked the streets.
I felt like doing something. But what? I considered the dojo, Sarah's place, maybe doing some homework. As I passed the open door of a bar, the smell of hot wings graced my nostrils like only the stench of spice and vinegar can. I glanced up at the bar's sign: the Red Door. Okay, the Red Door is…Juan, right? Yeah, Juan. I helped him smuggle some bags of trash into a restaurant's dumpster that one time. Alright, I thought, time to score some free hot wings.
I turned into the doorway and strode right up to the bar, trying to look like I belong there, and not like a wayward minor.
"Hi," I greeted the bartender, a young woman with a total of five lip piercings, plus a few scattered about her eyebrows and ears. "I'm looking for Juan?" She didn't react: no raised eyebrow, no knowing look, no suspicious stare. Good sign.
"Juan!" she called stridently behind her as she flipped a towel over her shoulder.
He poked a head around the corner of the slight hallway that led back to the kitchen. He looked at me for a second before recognition dawned.
"Hey, girl!" he smiled, coming toward me and wiping his hands on a dirty apron hanging loosely from his waist. "How's school treatin' you?"
Right, I had complained about something from school – what was it? A trig test? – when we'd met. "Ohh, alright," I drawled. "You got your own dumpster yet, or is Luigi's still paying for your trash pick-up?"
"Ehh, you know how it is," he said, spreading his hands and shrugging. "Dumpsters are expensive. And Luigi's found out; Rikki Tikki Tavern over in the Lower West Side is footing the bill these days. Matter of fact, I'm takin' out the trash tonight. You want to help?"
I looked at him seriously. "Can I get some free hot wings out of this?"
He laughed. "Of course, of course. Eva, get this girl an order of hot wings, anything she wants." The bartender looked a little miffed at playing waitress to a young girl – a minor, and everyone knew it – but called the order into the kitchen anyway.
I sat alone at the bar as I waited for my dinner. I briefly considered trying to order a drink off this girl, Eva, but decided against it.
"Nice tattoo," I said conversationally, my eyes on an intricately-detailed silhouette of a tree that seemed to grow out of her left hipbone and bloom on the left side of her waist.
She met my eyes squarely, dismissively. "Yggdrasil."
I blinked. "I'm sor-" I stopped; examined the tree again. "Oh," I said. "Yggdrasil. The World Tree."
We looked at each other, taken aback. "Norse mythology?" I asked curiously. I have to admit, multiply-pierced chick bartenders and ancient Scandinavian ideologies were not easily linked in my mind.
"Yes," she said, examining me. "My family is Norwegian." Now that she mentioned it, I detected a slight lilt to her words that was overlaid by simpler English tones.
"Cool," I said appreciatively. "So you, like, heard the stories as a kid?"
"I grew up with my grandmother," she said, her chilly tone warming by a few degrees. "She came here from the north of Norway. She still believed in trolls, even." She smiled wryly.
I smiled back. "I'm Sam," I said, sticking my hand across the bar. She took it.
"Eva."
The fumes reeking from my hot wings hit both our noses as my order was shoved across a counter somewhere at the end of the bar.
"You want something to drink with these?" she offered as she passed me the cheap plastic basket.
I smiled.
"Yo," I answered into my phone, which read "Sarah" across its tiny screen.
"Hey," she responded, her voice overriding the wail of a baby I could hear in the background. Sarah, unlike yours truly, had no cell phone and had to make do with her home phone and whatever working payphones she could find. But to be fair, I had gone to great lengths to get mine – a fancy piece of tech like a cell phone is hard to get in Gotham. In the end, it had been easier to order one legally than get one on the black market, and it had taken me a frickin' year to save up the money.
"What are you doing?" she sounded preoccupied. I started to worry that her truancy today hadn't been a simple disinclination to go to school, as it usually was.
"I'm on my way to the dojo," I answered cautiously. "What's up?"
There was a pause. "Do you think you could come over?"
"Sure. What's up?" I repeated myself.
Another pause. When she spoke, her voice sounded haunted and scared. "Aaron's grandma hasn't seen him since Sunday. I couldn't find him, either – I was looking all over town last night. He's missing."
I felt like something solid and heavy had grown spontaneously in my chest. Aaron was involved in some bad shit. We both knew the possibilities someone's disappearance could entail. Not death, exactly, not that extreme, but – well. We knew the possibilities.
"Yeah," I said, shooting for cheerful and ending up somewhere around hearty. "I'll be right over."
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