Chapter 36: Equivalence

Spring came late again, arriving quite suddenly toward the end of April. Ms. Carlisle didn't come to school that day, and Riza ate lunch alone in the yard beneath the pear tree. There were no blossoms yet, but she had no one to give them to this year. From the other side of the yard, she saw Claire watching her; the girl had other friends, of course, but ever since she had let Riza see her vulnerable, the teasing had stopped. Or maybe it had stopped when Chris had hurt her, too. The boy and his friends still found an ideal target in Riza. With a sense of resignation settling over her, she watched them approach.

Riza shrank against the trunk of the tree. She had nothing to give them—she hadn't even had anything to eat for lunch with Ms. Carlisle gone. But when she looked up to face her threat, none of the boys had a chance to speak.

"What do you want with her?" Claire's breathless voice startled Chris almost as much as it did Riza.

The shock that rippled through the small crowd bought enough time for Riza to push herself up. She still leaned against the tree for support, but at least she felt braver on her feet.

"What do you care?" Chris spat back, his attention no longer on Riza. "She's nothing to you."

Claire laughed. "I don't care who she is. No one should have to deal with a bastard like you." She extended a hand to Riza. "Come on."

Disbelief muddling her head, Riza placed her fingers against Claire's. When they were far enough away but still not quite to Claire's friends, Riza let her hand fall to her side again. "Thank you," she said.

"I'm sorry he was bothering you." A long silence stretched between them and Claire bit her lip, rocking back onto her heels. Just as Riza turned to leave, she said, "I'm sorry, too. For the way I used to treat you."

That was the biggest surprise of all. Riza froze, her eyes wide. Yes, the other girls from her class had all but left her alone since the day Claire had run into the classroom during lunch with a tearstained face, but she had thought of it as an uneasy truce. She had never expected an apology. And now that she had received one, she didn't know how to respond. Her tongue didn't seem as willing to cooperate as it had only moments before. A stuttered thanks was all she could manage.

Claire accepted it with a gracious smile. "Would you like to sit with us in case they come back?"

"I—no, that's alright. I'm fine, thank you." For all she knew, the other girls still feared her. Still hated her. Just because Claire had had a change of heart didn't mean that anyone else had. Riza fisted her hands in her skirt and turned away.

"Then I'll sit with you."

The words came as a shock. Struggling for words once again, Riza inclined her head gratefully and the two girls returned to the tree Riza had been sitting under before the boys had harassed her. With new leaves trembling in the breeze overhead and sunlight warming her face, Riza glanced nervously at Claire. "Why?" she asked.

Claire shrugged. "Because I was wrong about you," she said as though admitting it might scorch her tongue. "You don't even know the first thing about alchemy, do you?"

"If I did, I might have been able to stand up for myself." Riza pulled her knees up to her chest. If she could have performed even a simple transmutation, she was certain that people would have decided to leave her alone long ago.

"You stood up for that boy."

Hugging her legs tighter, Riza said, "He was my friend."

"So that's true, then? You two really were friends and you never…"

"Never what?" Riza asked, eyes narrowing. "If you're talking about the rumors you and your friends started, then no, we never did."

Claire twisted a blade of grass between her thumb and index finger, unwilling or perhaps unable to meet Riza's gaze. "All those horrible things I said about you—I'm sorry."

"Thank you," Riza said.

"May I ask why he left? Or is that too personal?"

A part of Riza wanted to ask why it mattered to her, wanted to ask why Claire was being so nice today. Perhaps it was a form of penance and Claire getting to know Riza and befriending her might make up a small part of the pain she had caused over the years. But all the accusations of being a monster, a freak, a know-it-all, and lately, a whore, could not truly be washed away in one lunch period. Riza buried her face between her knees, promising herself that she wouldn't cry. She had spent an entire recess trying to get gum out of her hair once and she hadn't cried then. She had even held in her tears on the nights when the obscene questions about her relationship with Roy had made her want to sob or throw up or both.

"I guess that's too personal," Claire said, breaking the silence that stretched between them. "We don't have to talk about him."

Uncertain of what else there was to talk about, Riza gave voice to the question she had been considering all morning, "Do you know where Ms. Carlisle lives?"

Of all the things Claire might have expected her to say, this certainly hadn't made the list. She stared at Riza with parted lips for a moment before frowning and cupping her chin thoughtfully. "I'm not sure. What does it matter anyway? It's not like the substitute didn't tell us what the reading assignments are."

"It's not that," Riza mumbled.

Claire's expression softened. "Is it because you're hungry? If you want to come home with me after school, I'll find something for you. It can be a peace offering so you know you can trust me."

Riza shook her head. "Thank you for the offer," she said, looking down at the fabric of her skirt stretched across her lap. "I just wanted to make sure she's okay. She did the same for me last winter and I want to return the favor."

Before Claire could respond, the bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period. The two girls hurried to their feet, Claire looking over her shoulder to where her friends were still sitting. They seemed to be laughing. Riza felt a twinge of loneliness—for Roy, for Ms. Carlisle, for the possible future of a friendship with Claire made possible by today's attempt at reconciliation. Perhaps she should have told her about Roy's departure after all, even if she had left out the kisses she suspected had everything to do with her father's unwillingness to hear Roy out, despite his insistence to the contrary. But there would be time enough for that later if they truly became friends, so she kept her silence the rest of the way to the classroom.

The afternoon passed slowly as Riza frowned over the assignment the substitute had passed out as soon as the last group of students passed through the door. It wasn't particularly difficult, but reading and setting up each problem took ages. Her only distraction came when Claire asked for a hall pass. She finished three problems before the other girl returned, surreptitiously placing a scrap of paper under Riza's notebook before settling at her desk.

Riza made certain the substitute wasn't watching before removing the paper. An address was written on it in neat cursive. She tucked it inside the cover of her notebook. How Claire had managed to find Ms. Carlisle's address on a bathroom break, she couldn't guess, but there was nothing else it could be. "Thank you," she whispered, hoping it was just loud enough for her to hear.

After class had ended and Riza had repeated her thanks and said goodbye, she made her way through the narrow streets, looking for the address. Her search led her to a run-down apartment complex on a deserted corner she had never been to before, far from the center of town on the opposite side from the road that led home.

The inside smelled a bit like her father's attic; the stagnant, musty air made her nose prickle. Holding back a sneeze, she made her way to the stairs. They were even creakier than the ones she was used to and the confined space felt like one the towers in the stories she had read as a child about knights and dragons, though it smelled of urine and cigarette smoke rather than charred bones. By the time she reached the third floor, she felt somewhat queasy. One of the numbers had fallen off Ms. Carlisle's door, leaving behind a faint imprint of where it had been on the dark finish. Riza knocked.

Silence followed, but after several moments, the metallic sounds of locks being undone reached Riza's ears. The door swung inward, revealing a robe-clad, puffy-eyed Ms. Carlisle, dabbing at her face with a handkerchief. "Oh," she said with a small hiccup, a touch of relief in her shaky voice. "It's you. Come in."

"Were you expecting someone else?" Riza asked gently, following her teacher inside.

"I thought it might be the neighbors with a complaint. The walls aren't very thick." She forced a watery smile.

Riza frowned in response. "What's wrong? I can see you've been crying."

Wordlessly, Ms. Carlisle gestured to the coffee table, where a creased sheet of paper lay beside an envelope bearing a seal Riza recognized. The seal of Amestris. She knew at once what had happened but was unsure how to approach it. She felt sick to her stomach all over again.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. Her fists clenched as she struggled to swallow the lump in her throat. It refused to budge no matter how hard she tried. "I'm sorry. Is—is there anything I can do?"

Ms. Carlisle shuffled toward the sofa, sank into the cushions and buried her face in her hands, all the while shaking her head.

"Would you like me to leave?" Riza asked, still standing beside the door. Ms. Carlisle shook her head again. "Would you like a hug?"

This time, she nodded and Riza went to the couch to wrap her arms around the grief-stricken woman. "Thank you," Ms. Carlisle whispered. She rubbed her nose with her handkerchief.

Riza patted her back gently before pulling away. With knees turned in and hands in her lap, she stared at the letter on the coffee table; the ink bled around several dried tearstains, but she didn't mind. She had no intentions of reading it, only a morbid dread that she would receive a similar letter one day, followed by Roy himself, delivered in a casket draped in a flag. Before, it had only been a hazy, abstract fear, but now it felt like part of an inevitable future. She reached out to pat Ms. Carlisle's arm gently.

"I can make soup," she offered. It wasn't much, but she doubted Ms. Carlisle had eaten since she had received the letter.

Ms. Carlisle looked at her in surprise. "You don't have to take care of me, Riza. You should go home."

"I don't want to go home," Riza said. "My father's cough is much better than it's been. He doesn't need me and I'm used to taking care of people."

"That's very kind of you, but I still need to make arrangements in order to get to the funeral. Thanks for coming to see me."

Riza said goodbye and made her way back out to the street, head hung low. Of course she understood that Ms. Carlisle needed space to grieve. This wasn't a cold; Riza couldn't simply make soup or milk tea with honey to ease her discomfort. The only cure was time, she knew, but even that was no guarantee. She knew that as well as anyone and perhaps better than most. Nearly a decade later, her father was still grieving for her mother in his own way. Ms. Carlisle, at least, was more sensible than that; she wouldn't shut down the way her father had. But today, the pain of losing her brother was fresh.

At home, she put a kettle on and spread her homework across the table. Chemistry equations seemed to float up from the page, the combustion reactions accompanied by her father's voice; her throat felt clogged with imaginary smoke. Her back burned as well: the first phantom pain from her tattoo in months. She turned the page so violently it nearly tore away from the binding. "Damn it," she muttered.

Tongue between her teeth, she scanned the list of elements in the first problem, balancing the equation as she set it up, attempting to ignore her father's lecture on equivalent exchange as it burrowed its way unbidden from the back of her mind to the front. That had been her first lecture on alchemy, and her last. And it was a day she would rather forget. She had already seen the madness in his fire-lit face and made a vow to herself that she never wanted to become that.

The kettle whistled. Riza looked up, startled. Her heart was already racing from the unpleasant memories and her pen dropped to the floor. She made no effort to retrieve it. Her fingers didn't seem capable of such a task, even though they were perfectly still. It was as though her muscles had forgotten how to move at all, apart from those in her legs that carried her to the stove, seemingly of their own volition. Somehow, she managed to move the kettle from the heat. Even if she wasn't sure she would be able to scoop the leaves, it would stop the damn whistling.

The steam against her face was surprisingly pleasant; it cleared the imagined smell of smoke from her nostrils and her hands began to feel capable of movement again. Carefully, she prepared two mugs and retrieved a bottle of honey from the pantry while she waited for the leaves to steep. She stirred one drop into her father's mug.

He was coughing when she brought it to him, but it sounded dry and milder than it had in the weeks since she had spent most of her savings on medicine for him. She hoped the tea would help. But by the time the door swung shut behind her, he hadn't even returned her goodbye, absorbed as he was in whatever old tome he had been reading. She tried not to let it bother her, choosing instead to hold her own mug up to her face and breathe in the warm, calming steam.

Rather than returning to the kitchen and the chemistry assignment she couldn't bear to work on at the moment, she dark her tea in her room, sitting in front of her bookcase. The familiar titles did little to comfort her. Some, she deliberately removed and placed in a stack she had no idea what to do with. They were her mother's books; she couldn't bring herself to get rid of them entirely, even if she never again wanted to read about foolish tales of lost loves reunited—or worse, forever torn apart by war. She had plenty of other books to read, plenty of other things to fill her time. It's something I should have learned a long time ago, she mused. There is nothing romantic about death.