Shoto had never seen a jukebox before, and he was surprised there was one in the diner.
In fact, the entire diner was straight out of Americana in the 1950's. The red couched with vinyl on the surface squeaked with every movement as the gleaming marble floors were freshly-waxed. The linoleum table top in the booth had been wiped to the point of revealing his reflection on the surface with the swinging fluorescent lamps shining hot light from above. A waitress strolled past in a polka-dot miniskirt and white apron with the sizzle of the diner's grill snapping bacon and ham and wafting the evaporating juices into the fans that spun on the ceiling.
Across from him, Momo played with a basket of fries and pushed them across her plate. She had eaten little over the past few days with grey bags forming under her eyes. Her normal voluminous hair had been tapered down to uneven streaks that jutted out from her head. She traced her finger on the top of a straw poking out of a strawberry milkshake. Right behind her, the jukebox that Shoto had been so enamored in played some old song from the aforementioned decade.
Shoto cleared his throat. Emotional talks were far from his specialty. In these instances, he wished his quirk were more in lines with being a conversationalist than shooting out ice and fire.
"I thought the burger was good," Shoto said.
"I think we should break up," Momo did not bother to raise her head from her plate, staring down at her fires as if they would disappear the moment they left her view.
Shoto, without much emotion, shook his head. "Was the burger really that bad? You can pick the restaurant next time."
Momo leveled her head up towards Shoto's eye level. Her face contorted with angry wrinkles not unlike a bull charging at a sleeping matador. "Is that supposed to be a joke?"
The Pro-Hero stroked his chin and grabbed a fry from his plate. He munched on half of the slaty potato stick before dropping the rest onto the table below. "You know, this isn't my fault."
"Oh, so it's my fault," Momo crossed her arms and sneered at the boy.
"No," Shoto nearly shouted. "Not at all. I never thought of it that way."
"Well, the others seem to think that," Momo drawled in a low and dangerous tone. "And you haven't done a thing to stop it."
"I don't listen to gossip," Shoto said. "What are we? Five? Why should we care what they say?"
"How do you expect people to come to my hero agency if they think that about us? That we're unstable? Weak?
"Nobody thinks you're weak," Shoto shook his head. "In fact, everyone has been telling me how strong you've bee-."
"Oh, so they do know," Momo said.
Shoto paused and looked down at his phone. It vibrated with an alert of a villain attack in Akihabara. When he looked up, Momo glared at the hero with the intensity of the sun.
"Level Two. No big."
"No, you should go," Momo took a draw from her milkshake.
"I want to be here with you."
"I don't."
Shoto huffed out a hot breath. He lurched himself up and slid out of the booth. "Fine. I'll go and save some people," He said while marching towards the exit. "Then, we'll talk in the apartment."
"I won't be there."
Shoto spun around on his heels and loomed over Momo in the chair. "Listen, this isn't my fault. And it's not really yours, either. It's something that happens, and we got to get over it. There are alternatives and we can do all of them for all I care."
"No," Momo snapped back. "There are no alternatives to this. Not for what I want."
Shoto slammed his hand on the back of the booth. "In that case, you'll have to find someone else."
"Good," Momo took one more drag from her milkshake. "I didn't want to have kids with you anyway."
In this moment, Shoto wanted badly to call up Momo again.
"This is a really fun map," Alistair said as he peered down at the folded out paper crinkled next to his sleeping bag. The young boy rested his head in his hands, elbows digging into the dirt around the flickering fire that bore an amber shadow over his slim face. "I love all the little lines on it. Nice and squiggly."
Shoto, who sat next to the fireplace on a log, poked a stick into the flames. The top of the stick broiled to an hot scarlet as the tinder flickered into fire. Paying little mind to Alistair, he pushed a chunk of charcoal around the center of the flume which caused a sharp crackle to spit out an ember from the fire pit.
On the ledge of a lookout cliff, the two had made camp for the night overlooking the thick valley of redwoods rising to a canopy just a few feet underneath the surface of the overlook. The point had visibility that stretched for miles revealing the thick underbrush of the forest sparkling under the bright full moonlight. Over the crackles of the fire, a few crickets chirped away in the bushes a few feet away that separated the campsite to the main trail that rose upward through the mountain.
The hike up to that point had been uneventful. Brushing past the prickly bushes and rough bases of the redwood trees that towered above, Shoto led the way over the dirt trail above the thick canopy. Bursting out over the valley, they were drenched in the neon orange glow of the setting sun with the quiet breeze wafting the crisp northern California air over their nostrils. With a quiet whistle tickling his ears, Shoto decided it was best to stay there for the night since the peak of the mountain was still a few hours away.
The stars shifted above with the speed of the soft breeze that tussled Shoto's hair over his eyes. Feeling a strand poke at him, he blinked and dropped the stick. Rubbing away at his eye, he looked over the fire at Alistair who smiled at the map.
"That's normally what maps do," Shoto said in a droll tone. "The squiggle."
Alistair stretched his arms out like a cat and turned to his side to better face Shoto. The boy had been cheerful and charming enough during their trip. He would ask mundane questions about his life which Shoto answered in generic ways. The boy would hum to himself and kick an occasional pebble out of the way. He seemed carefree and slightly teasing not unlike a hyper golden retriever puppy. In a way, it caught Shoto off guard with just how harmless the boy appeared. However, there was a strange undercurrent of danger that seemed to leak from the boy's bright green eyes. It was almost like he was toying with Shoto, but he had no idea what that could mean for him.
"You know, Mister Todoroki," Alistair said. "You don't seem like the kind of person to just go hiking in the forest."
Shoto stared beyond the fire at the boy whose face was framed by the licking flames. "Do I not look athletic enough?"
"You seem like a person with a plan," Alistair said. "You're here for some reason, aren't you?"
"That's not your business," Shoto got up and headed for his hiking pack. He unzipped the top and rolled out his blue sleeping bag. Before he did, he looked at the small manila file above the pack and slid his fingers into the envelope. Poking his head into the bag, he assured himself by seeing a few pages of paper still secure in the folder. He pushed the folder to the bottom of the bag and pulled the sleeping bag out.
"C'mon, Mister Todoroki. You can tell me," Alistair said in a nearly teasing tone. "A persons secrets are best kept with a stranger."
Shoto unfurled the bag. Without another thought, he drew a quick breath. "I'm dying."
Alistair's smile waned just a hair with the flicker of light jumping across his immaculate face. Shoto sat himself onto the sleeping bag and crossed his legs to face the boy. When he paused, Alistair tilted his head to goad Shoto onward.
"I don't have much longer," Shoto said. "And I need to clear up some things before I go."
"So you're doing some sightseeing before you burn the bed?" Alistair ticked his tongue at the roof of his mouth like a disappointed teacher. "Again, you don't seem like someone to be that sentimental."
"Well, you don't know me, do you kid?" Shoto asked in a frustrated speed. "I'm telling you I'm dying. Stop guessing all this stuff about me."
Alistair rolled a small pebble with his fingertip around the dirt before him. The minuscule rock left a trail that kicked away some of the dirt in front of him. A dark shadow cast from the fire on his face as he smirked down at the insignificant pebble.
Shoto sat back on his elbows in a uncharacteristic lazy pose as his face softened. "Sorry. I should be better around people I just met."
"Don't think of us as just meeting, Mister Todoroki," Alistair said. "In a way, I feel like I know a lot about you already."
"Oh, so you heard about me," Shoto said.
Alistair flicked the pebble into the fire. The graphite rock disappeared into the furnace at the base of kindling as the boy went still. Shoto lifted his head up at the sudden response as Alistair bore sharp eye contact with the Pro-Hero. A strange heat absent the fire rubbed at his chest.
"Not any of that hero stuff. I hardly know anything about it," Alistair demurred. "But I think I know enough about you already. You seem like the kind of person that's been held down by many disappointments in life. But the disappointments come from other people. How they've treated you. How they've fought you. How they seem to live their lives carefree and happy without any input from you. All of those people you met, and you feel they would be just fine without you, right?"
"Wait a sec, dummy," Shoto said. "I've never said anything like th-."
"You don't have to," Alistair said. "You're envious. Aren't you? Envious of others and how they can lead such simple and fulfilling lives. Meanwhile, you're a hero that saves many of these people. Yet, you're as dissatisfied as you could be. Of course, having brain cancer doesn't help matters. But this poison in your heart stretches long before that. What was it, Shoto? What was the thing you really wanted that you could never quite get?"
Shoto bit his lip and hung head towards the ground. He wiggled his toes and scrunched them in the dirt with clumps of the cool mocha earth being ground it by his feet. The snaps of the fire broke through the silence as he thought back to much of his time raising Katsu and working his way up through the Pro-Hero ranks.
"I...," Shoto started. "I wanted to be better than my father."
Alistair nodded. "Were you?"
Shoto shook his head. "I wasn't really a dad. I didn't even adopt him legally. So...it never felt like the same thing."
"And there was a girl you wanted to do this with? And she stopped caring about you?"
Shoto bunched his legs up to his chest and hugged his arms around them in a protective cocoon. "Maybe that was what happened."
Alistair chuckled and laid himself on his side. The rest of his face hidden behind the tall fire, he sighed as he rested his head on a his bag which he used as a makeshift pillow. "Envy is a potent sin, Shoto. It can consume and kill a person. But it can also fuel a person to their goals. And maybe that's the mindset you need to have. There's a way to get what you want and to combat the poison that springs within your soul."
Shoto said nothing as he dug through the boy's words. He had no idea how the boy sounded so verbose all of a sudden. However, it captivated Shoto as he narrowed his eyes towards the fire were the boy was hidden from him.
But...quite frankly," Alistair yawned. "I'm about to pass out. It's been a long day. Wake me up before dawn. I'd love to get up to the summit in time for sunrise. Would make things very...dramatic when we arrive."
Shoto nodded. "Good night."
Before he turned in, Shoto laid on his back and stared up at the stars. They were obscured by the plume of smoke that rose up and then evaporated into a dark mist that caused a slight glare from the twinkling giants that swam millions of light years away in distant universes. In a way, it was the first time Shoto had felt peace in a while not just for baring his soul to Alistair but by laying there with no expectations or needs other than sleep.
Yet...
Shoto knew something was deeply wrong. And he would have to confront it the next day.
"How," Shoto whispered to himself underneath the sizzling of the tinder next to him from the fire. "Did he know all that?"
Better yet...
How did he know I had brain cancer?
Moxie jiggled the handle of the doorway with the lock clanging onto the latch. She pressed a hairpin deep into the key hole and wriggled the metal while trying to turn the chrome handle. It was later in the day, with the sun long hidden underneath the rolling waves of the ocean beyond the cliff outside. In the hallway, only the dim fluorescent emergency lights illuminated the beige walls of the wide hallway. A soft hum from the frigid air bumbling in the rafters above massaged Moxie's ears as the crunch of metal churned on the oak door in front of her.
She was having no luck. The lock would not budge. She grit her teeth and closed one eye. Resting her forehead on the door, she tried to find the right angle for the hairpin to free the door from the locks' clutches. Her nimble fingers twiddled with the pin and dug deep into her thumb leaving a small indentation. She narrowed her eyes and peered into the tight crevice. With another twist, she pushed the pin into the lock again.
Snap.
Moxie pulled back the pin. The copper wire around the halfway point was bent and snapped hanging on by just a thread. Moxie sighed with her back tensing, biting her lip just slight with her alabaster teeth. With a lackadaisical wave, she threw the pin on the ground by her bare knees and thumped her head on the handle.
"Hiya, Moxie," Blake shouted.
Moxie squealed and battered her head on the handle. She fell back and whipped around to face the two spectators. Rounding the corner, James and Blake stopped at the girl resting on her haunches in front of the non-descript door. The two raven-haired boys stared down at the girl as she scrambled back up to her feet. Her dress shoe slipped on the tile and she crashed her side into the door which gave off a loud clatter on the frame. She grunted out in pain and rubbed her shoulder.
"What are you two doing here?" Moxie asked with a nervous grimace.
"I think you should answer that first," James shoved his hands in his pockets and slouched as he approached the girl on the floor. "Isn't curfew in an hour?"
"I just...I just noticed there was a...bug," Moxie said. "Yeah, a bug."
"In the door lock," Blake said.
"A lot of bugs hide in there. I had to kill it."
"Why?" James asked.
"It's tradition where I'm from. Bad luck to walk by a bug and not try and squash it," Moxie emitted a nervous chuckle.
"So what's up with the hairpin?" James said.
Moxie looked down at the pin in her hand. "I use it for hair."
Blake connected the dots. He shook his head and approached the door. "You know, Moxie. If you want to pick a lock, you need something stronger than a hairpin. Here, I got this," he said.
He flipped out of his pocket a thick black handle and unfolded the tool at the center. He flicked open the blade and dug it into the lock of the handle.
"Why do so many people in our class carry weapons?" James asked to no one in particular. "And you," he pointed as he turned to Moxie.
"Me?"
"Why are you breaking into this room? What is this?"
Moxie bite her finger and shifted her gaze towards the door. Blake hummed to himself while trying to crack open the lock. She would rather keep the other students in the class in the dark about her motives. She would hate for anything else to get out for Katsu to hear about it without Shoto being upfront. Also, he had a feeling someone would try and stop her or tattle on her to Deku or Bakugo if they found out about her plan. She did not exactly have the cleanest record at the school.
"It's not your gator to wrangle," Moxie said.
James was taken aback and raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"
Moxie shook her head. "I'm just trying to do something good for someone is all.
With a quick flick, the lock released and crunched under the weight of the blade. Blake pulled down on the handle and pushed the door open.
"Ta-da!" Blake waved a hand into the dark room. "Your thieving awaits, princess!"
The room was a simple rectangle with a wooden workbench that stretched over most of the center. Around the perimeter was a long silver rack that wrapped around the entire room in front of white cinderblocks covering the walls. Within the racks held cardboard boxes with the musty smell of wood and the containers permeating the air. Only the small slits of moonlight on thin windows illuminated the room from the outside.
Moxie brushed past Blake and hustled towards the far end of the room. She traced her finger over the small placards on the racks which revealed different letter ranges in the alphabet. She sashayed over the linoleum floor towards the corner of the room. She mouthed out a couple of words to herself before ending up at the very end of the wall. She tapped her finger on of the last placards and pulled out the crate on the rack above. The cardboard hissed when she yanked it out and tilted the contents to see over the rim.
James frowned seeing Moxie dig her hands through the box. A few tinkles of glass and the smattering of plastic on plastic, and Moxie's face lit up in recognition. She grabbed a small rectangular device, not unlike an old GPS and shoved the box back onto the rack. Pressing a button on the front, Moxie reached down and took out a small plastic baggie which appeared to have nothing save for a white strand of hair barely seen in the dark room.
"What is that?" James asked.
"Hey, that looks just like that thing Martel used on the first day," Blake said.
"Katsu told me about the device he used to track where Mister Bakugo had gone," Moxie said. "Thought that it'd be in the Lost and Found room or something since he's still in the hospital."
Moxie took out the strand of hair and slid it into the thin metal slot at the top end of the device. With a quick whirr, the device buzzed and then illuminated the small screen on the face above the button with a map. A red dot throbbed on the screen as Moxie's face glowed with the screen's contents reflected off her eyes.
"The Redwoods," Moxie said. "That's where he is."
Without another word, Moxie shoved the device into her pocket and rushed around the island counter towards the door. Just as she brushed past Blake, James reached out and grabbed her forearm with a slight squeeze. Moxie froze in her tracks and gasped at the sudden contact with James and his warm hands.
"Where the hell are you going?" James asked. "Don't you know what tomorrow is?"
"I'll be back by the start of the Festival," Moxie shook off James' arm.
"You're not jeopardizing your chance at a good internship for...for who exactly? That Todoroki guy?" James asked.
"I never said I was going out for him," Moxie said in a louder voice as she stepped back from James.
The boy frowned and marched towards Moxie as she shrunk back towards the doorway. "That hair in the plastic bag was freaking white, you manatee," James said. "Who else around here has white hair? You're trying to track him down and find him, aren't you?"
"Why do you care?" Moxie's back slapped the wall behind her as she crossed her arms defensively in front of her chest.
"Because I want you to have a chance to be a hero and not one of these losers that screws around all day with garbage," James waved his hands around. "Have you noticed just how worthless most of our class is? We have that stupid Canadian mongoose barking out orders to people like the teacher's pet he is. Then, we have that raccoon that listens to shitty music all the time. Jesus, I can hear his voice from here. He's so loud. Then, there's that scrawny weakling with that stupid virus in him. Most everybody in our class is weak and useless. Nobody takes any of this seriously!"
"And you think I don't?" Moxie furrowed her eyebrows and stood up straight against James. "Why'd you think I'm here? I'm my own girl and I can make my own decisions. I'm not here for nobody. Not you, not Katsu, not Mister Todoroki."
"Then why are you doing things for him?" James raised his voice in a shout. "He doesn't care about you."
"Because I can help him. Last time I checked, heroes do that. They help."
"Oh, amazing insight, Socrates," James rolled his eyes with his face flushing red from frustration. "What comic book did you rip that from?"
"It was my daddy who told me that. And ff you actually cared about me," Moxie said. "You wouldn't make fun of me."
"I don't care about you," James puffed out a mirthless chuckle. "Why would I care about you? You're just as annoying as the rest of them. I just don't want to see our class get embarrassed in front of everybody."
"You're lying," Moxie said. "Remember in the hospital? You trusted me with that secret. And I haven't said a thing to nobody."
"Secret?" Blake chimed in from behind the two with a jovial tone. "I wanna know about secrets."
James ignored Blake and ticked his tongue. "If you go to that Todoroki guy, I'm telling Deku. And you'll be breaking curfew. Probably expelled with all the laws you've broken by now. Oh, but your 'daddy' said it was alright, huh?" James mocked her again. "After all, you don't have to use your quirk much if you just shoot people with a shotgun."
"Exactly. He did tell me to do that," Moxie began to raise her own voice. "So what?"
"Gee, did he tell you that before or after his seventh jar of moonshine. That's all you people do down in the bayou, right," James mocked her with a southern accent. "Drink and shoot things?"
"He don't drink like that no more," Moxie raised a trembling finger at James. "He's better. And at least I care about my family. And they care about me."
"Oh, yeah right," James put his hands on his hips. "They care about you. That's why your mom left you, isn't it?"
Moxie gasped. Her heart palpitated as she dropped her outstretched arm and gaped at James and his words. She could hear her heart beating in her chest from the harsh din in her ears. Her face as hot as the muggy air outside in the salty oceanside breeze, her eyes widened with shock. Her faze frozen, her grey eyes became glassy and refracted the image of James in her view back to him. Her shoulders slumped with her eyes becoming damp. She sniffled and swallowed what seemed to be a lump the size of a bowling ball in her throat.
The silence swirled between them with only the low hum of the air conditioning filling the void. James, realizing his words, broke eye contact with Moxie and viewed the toes of his shoes.
James realized almost instantly the error of his words. He wished he could grab the words and snag them in his mouth before chucking them out the window. Instead, the seeped into Moxie like a poison and he could see that the girl became more downtrodden than ever. All he wanted was for her to leave things alone that she could not control, and here he was straight up insulting her.
"Uh...hey," James said. "I...I..."
Moxie, with another sniff, wiped away a tear that threatened to spill over her lids. Bucking back up to full height, she balled up her fist and launched herself forward at James. Swinging back her fist, she ejected it forward.
Smack.
James huffed out and buckled back into the wooden bench. He grabbed his eye as it throbbed under his palm. He buckled in pain and looked back at once he rested himself on the edge of the bench. Moxie, angry and flustered, wiped away another tear from her frowning face. With a soft cry, she dashed for the door and wrenched it open. The girl ran out of the room down the hallway, her heavy footsteps echoing in the midst of her fleeing figure.
As the steps died down, Blake walked over to James and looked up at the boy.
"So," Blake said. "Should we go after her or something?"
James said nothing while staring out at the empty doorway.
Drake sat in his room and tapped on the chessboard. Playing against himself was always challenging. Not because it was difficult for him to win, but because he was so boring and predictable.
He sat within a circle of air heaters that burled out scorching air that rang through his thin skin. He stretched his arm and craned his neck down towards the chess board. He had all of the pieces lined up properly for a new game. He thumped his ring finger on the edge of the cheap cardboard. The boy ran his other hand through his pointed red hair still damp from the shower he had just drowned himself in to rid the day from his body.
Scratching at the sleeve on his violet sweater, Drake spied out the black expanse of his window overlooking the meadow that stretched to the oceanside cliffs. If he froze long enough, he could just hear the waves on the shore. It made his eyelids as heavy as lead with the steel waves battering into the sand bars and massaging the copper rock that stood between the school and the ocean.
Drake shook his head and dumped the chess pieces back into the flimsy red box next to the board. He folded it up and shunted it towards the nightstand next to his bed. He rose to full height and threw himself onto his purple comforter. His limbs sore and his legs melding into the mattress, he turned off the light at his lamp. Only the ruby fluorescence of the heat lamps illuminated the room with the occasional chatter and clang occurring outside in the main common area of the first year boys' dormitory.
By himself, Drake ruffled himself into the sheets with his arm muscles finally relaxing for a change. His last training time had been tough on him before the festival. However, he knew this would be a big moment for him to break out. He never cared much for competition, but he knew he had to do well at the event in order to get a much better chance at having a good hero agency (and of course, one that was in a warm part of the globe).
Restlessness got the better of him, and he turned to check his phone. It was still early in Alaska, and he pulled up the number for his mother. It had been a while since he had spoken to her, but he figured it was good for both of their mental healths to do so now.
Drake went over to twist the switch for his lamp to be turned on. When he reached over, he lost his balance. His hand slammed down on his alarm clock radio which caused a loud crash. The switch for the radio flipped on, and a static shock erupted from the device. Then, it fizzled into an intelligible garble of words from a news program.
"...ack to KWRP News Primetime. Your traffic update this hour for the Los Angeles Metro Area. Hardly any traffic heading up through Santa Monica towards Malibu. However, a wreck on the 405 has made massive delays stretching to Riverside."
Drake grunted to himself and reached over for the radio again.
Then, a beep.
A loud, but staccato beep that interrupted the traffic reporter. It was a scratching buzzer that made the thin hairs on Drake's arms stand up. Not unlike an Amber Alert, the buzzer blared out in the dark room. Drake stared back at the radio and considered the strange noise.
Buzz. Buzz.
Buzz.
Then, a quick garble of static.
"Mohammed. Montserrat. Ivanovich. Mohammed. Montserrat. Mulholland. Protocol Three. Protocol Three."
Drake's brows furrowed at the words. A strange cacophony of english in a Russian-accented voice high-pitched and nasal squeaked out over the radio. The random potpourri of words made the boy narrow his eyes. Was this a hack at the radio station? Was someone pulling a prank?
Then, just as fast as it showed up...
"-no more traffic in the region," The announcer in his cheerful voice came back. "Boy, you'd think there would be more since it's a friday night. And tomorrow a big day! The first ever Sports' Festival at USAHS, Gretchen."
"That's right, Gerald," The female anchor stated. Early tomorrow afternoon, over a hundred students in the first year class at the new hero school will compete for the chance at gold as well as their internships at some of the finest hero agencies in the country!"
Drake sat with his back leaning on the headboard of his bed. He had no idea what to make of the broadcast intrusion. Did he seriously just imagine what he had heard? He thought back to the strange set of names. They almost sounded like codes or instructions for some event. The names did not ring any bells for him. Either that, or somebody in the Islam faith really admired the Prophet enough to interrupt the traffic report and let it be known.
With a heavy sigh, he decided it was most likely some HAM radio enthusiast messing around, Drake closed his eyes. He would call his mother before the festival. Now, he needed rest. The rest of the world went dark, and Drake rested his chin on his chest and dozed away with the radio still playing.
"And now, a little bit of classic R&B for you cool cats and kittens out there!"
In the car, the radio played softly in the background just enough to hide Moxie's occasional sniffles.
The girl cried behind the wheel and smeared away some of the tears from her eyes. Despite her sadness, she knew exactly what she had to do. She rumbled down Pacific Coast Highway with white headlights setting the road on fire with electricity. The sea of cars around her bumbled past as she turned onto the exit and veered off onto side road heading down towards the shore.
Moxie was tired, but mainly her heart ached with every drop of saline she had to wipe away from her reddened cheeks. The hearth of blackness in her chest suffocated her heart with the hard dent of pain causing her to shiver from the anxiety that racked her nerves. Once on the road with no other traffic, she looked back down at her phone and pressed a button. It was for her brother.
Straight to voicemail.
Moxie threw her phone onto the passenger seat next to her. She had tried to call almost everyone she knew. Her brother. Her father. Shoto. Katsu. Even Lloyd and Mister Deku. For some reason, nobody wanted to speak to her. The phone bounced and clattered off the door beside it. Resting on the ground, her phone glowed with the time indicating it was getting close to midnight. She imagined that was part of the reason nobody wanted to talk to her right now, but it did not help the feeling of loneliness disappear. Instead, it smothered her like a damp cloth rag squeezed over her nose. She gripped the leather steering wheel with her fingertips engraining indentations in the top.
With a shuddering sigh, Moxie grabbed the crucifix around her neck. For al the praying and worshipping she did, her patience and virtue was being tested hard at this moment. She had already failed by punching James, but she could at least keep it together before she reached her destination.
When she felt the steel edges of the crucifix, she felt another piece of jewelry around her neck.
Looking down at her palm, she smiled at the small ruby crystal right beside the crucifix. Alistair had been an incredibly easy person to talk to in the time she got to know him. It helped that he was not technically apart of this world, but she could not help but feel calmed from his smooth British accent and the way his green eyes seemed to assuage all of her daily stressed. At least he seemed to care about her even it had barely been a month. More so that some of the other students like James.
She really wished Alistair, or at least someone, was next to her in that chair.
Pulling into a long driveway, she parked the car right behind an old white van and hopped out of the car. She trudged up to the steps and knocked on the door.
When the door opened, an older man just at her height in a yellow bathroom and matching slippers turned on the porch light and rubbed his eyes. With a heavy yawn, he smacked his lips and gazed at the person before him. When he realized who it was, he blinked and took a step back.
"Moxie?" Steve asked. "Isn't it late?"
However, when he saw how upset Moxie looked, Steve softened his gaze. The girl tightened up her lips and swallowed down a deep lump in her throat.
"Oh, poor thing," Steve said. "Here, come inside. Let's talk."
He moved back. Moxie went inside the house.