Author's Note: Yeah, sure, it kind of 'borrows' from 'Speedy Gonzales' a little too much, and even Elton John hates how popular it eventually became, but to hell with it: 'Crocodile Rock' is one of the catchiest goddamn pop songs ever written.

Fight me.

.

.

"The Quick Slowfox"

Morrisville – 1984

They found a suitable spot to camp in the greenery beside the restaurant patio. The concrete slab set into the sloping ground was besieged on one side by a dense army of hollies, their barbed leaves an unpleasant deterrent to anything without a fur coat.

Or a freakish regenerative ability. Take your pick.

Penance led Whip into a makeshift den abutting that concrete wall, a good six feet or so beneath the patio, pulling back branches and taking cuts himself to keep her protected. Once they were settled he went to work lapping up the blood from his wounds, running his tongue over his arms. This amused Whip to no end. When she chuckled at his little display Penance grunted and shrugged.

"What? I don't have any wet wipes, you know..."

They talked strategy for a time, but Penance's heart wasn't in it. He spent the time half-heartedly cleaning the blade of his little knife, cutting off most of Whip's tactical discussions with indifferent grunts. When a long silence came between them he looked over at the girl, pressing one cheek against the cool concrete wall.

"What'd he like to read?"

"Who?" Whip asked.

"Your brother. His comics, I mean. What'd he like to read?"

She blinked, staring down at her lap, obviously caught off-guard by the question.

"Oh, I told you: any old fool thing. Superheroes in spandex, mostly. That 'n all kinds of nonsense. He was really into these caveman stories right before... y'know..."

"'Caveman stories'?"

She shook her head, squinting for a moment and making those freckles on her face contort.

"Uh, no: not really caveman, I guess. Like, a jacked guy in a loincloth. But not Tarzan; some dude with a giant sword—"

Penance moved his cheek off the wall.

"Conan?"

The girl snapped her fingers, pointing at the boy and nodding.

"Yeah. Barbarian, not caveman. Whatever."

"Maybe we really would've gotten along." Penance smiled. "He had pretty good taste."

"Never figured you'd much like stories of super-strong dudes running around with big honking swords. Thought you might be one for really outlandish fiction."

Penance gave the girl a wry wink. He went back to cleaning his blade, shrugging.

"I like the movies better," he said. "That Austrian guy that plays Conan can barely pronounce his English, but there's just something about him that's really... I don't know... 'charismatic', I guess. I hear they're gonna try making him a villain in his next movie: some kind of science fiction monster without any emotions." The boy scoffed. "Brilliant idea..."

"You think that'd be easier for you?" Whip asked.

"What?"

"Bein' a 'science fiction monster without any emotions'?"

One of the boy's eyebrows crested at this. He smirked.

"Guess I've only got half of that equation working for me. Maybe there's something to that: if I didn't get so moody so often maybe I wouldn't make so many mistakes." He put the back of his head to the wall, staring into the greenery with a distant look in his blue eyes. "I'd never have gotten to know you, if that were true. Don't know if that was totally a 'mistake' or not, though." He flashed her another little impish smirk.

Whip scoffed.

"As I recall I lured you into my lair with a cigarette," she said. "That's more feedin' your addiction, not tuggin' your heartstrings—"

"I didn't go with you because of the cigarette." He returned his gaze to the greenery. "I went with you because I was lonely, and it was crushing me like a vice grip."

Whip's playful smile fell at this; she didn't have anything to say in return, so she said nothing. That was basically the right thing to say in any event, he guessed.

"Maybe I didn't care about making mistakes, too," Penance continued, "because part of me does want to die. Did, anyway..."

After a long pause Whip got up from against the wall and knelt before the boy, picking his chin up with two fingers and forcing eye contact.

"And what do you wanna do now?" She asked.

Penance met her eyes; he smirked and held up his little knife.

"Put the pointy end of this thing where it belongs: in Black Hat's windpipe."

Whip matched the boy's devilish smirk.

"Your steel is strong enough for the job, isn't it?"

At this Penance lost his smile. He toyed with the knife, expertly flitting the grip about his fingers and making the watery blade 'dance' all around his hand. He caught it after a few seconds, holding it tight, and he skirted his palm over the razor-sharp tip, eyes dreamy.

"'Steel isn't strong'..."

Whip tilted her head; her constellation of her freckles twisted about once again.

"What's that?"

Penance shook his head.

"Nothing. It's just something from that first Conan movie. Basically that real strength doesn't come from a strong blade; it's nothing compared to the spirit of the person wielding it."

"Y'mean 'where there's a will there's a way', eh?"

Penance nodded, eyes still dreamily fixed on his knife. After a moment, however, he looked up at Whip, his lips mischievously curled.

"Maybe where there's a Willa Will—"

The girl's cinnamon eyes widened into saucers. She gave the boy two punches, one to his left shoulder and one to his right, in quick succession.

"You do that again," she warned him, "and I'll take that li'l butter knife of yours from you while you're sleeping and ram it right through your gut!"

Penance's smirk widened.

"That'd get me up better than an alarm clock."

The girl gave him one final punch to the shoulder, this one more playful than forceful, and she returned to her place by his side, her back against the concrete.

"So, did your brother read any—"

"All the same to you," Whip interrupted the boy, "I think I'm done dealin' with ghosts for the time being."

Penance looked over at her, his face somber. He nodded respectfully, then faced forward again.

After a moment Whip grunted, rooting around in her pants pockets.

"Speakin' of the dearly departed. Or not so dearly..."

She produced Father Kenaz's wallet and opened the billfold compartment. She pulled a folded piece of white paper from it and flicked it out into Penance's lap. The boy stared down at the paper, taking hold of it in one hand. He noticed his name on the outer fold, done up in small but sure handwriting.

"What's this?" The boy asked.

"Kenaz had that slipped in between the lining of the wallet. I guess that's why he had that safety pin holding everything together in there: to make sure you'd take the whole wallet and not just the cash."

The boy's eyes remained fixed on the delicate lettering on the paper. He briefly started moving the folded paper in between his fingers, making it 'dance' like his little knife did, until eventually he stuffed it in his shorts pocket, grunting dismissively.

"You're not gonna read it?"

He shook his head.

"I think I'm done dealing with ghosts for the time being, as well..."

Whip nodded at this, facing forward like the boy. Penance's eyes had gone dreamy again, and after a moment he took up his knife and gently planted the tip against one of his knuckles; he held the thing up, perfectly balanced on his clenched fist.

"You know: Uallas taught me everything about forging steel the right way. When it comes down to everything else, though... I get to wondering whether it's just a bad batch..."

"Mmm?" Whip gave the boy a confused look.

Penance shook his head and waved one hand at her. He thrust his clenched fist upward, making the blade fly up in the air, then he snatched it out of its freefall by the hilt; he gracefully tucked it into place on his shorts.

"Nothing," he mumbled. "Guess I just kinda feel like a salmon swimming up the wrong stream..."

The girl looked like she wanted to press him on whatever point he was trying to make, but she eventually leaned back down against the wall. For the longest time only the ambient sounds of the city outside their little den met their ears.

Penance would be the one to ultimately break the silence, bouncing the back of his head on the concrete wall to point out the restaurant behind them.

"You think this place serves salmon?" He asked.

Whip shook her head.

"You are totally hopeless," she muttered.

X

X

X

The sylvan surroundings managed to lull Whip into a brief nap. She figured she needed it. As accustomed to rough living as she was she still hadn't slept well at that Italian immortal's apartment. The hardwood floor was tough even on her back. Now the sun's light barely streamed through the dense hollies above her head; it was a fair distance off from its noonday position, so maybe her 'brief' nap was really an hours-long event. She struggled to her feet and popped her spine, wiggling the sleep out of her limbs.

Penance was nowhere to be seen, but this didn't worry her. She knew he hadn't run off, and he shouldn't be too far away. She felt, deep down inside, that she could trust him on that.

"If you can't call him 'docile', you can at least call 'im 'tame'," she smirked.

Elton John blared from a tinny speaker up on the patio overhead, his orchestra belting out a rocking beat.

"Have you heard the dogs at night— somewhere on the hill— chasing some poor criminal, and I guess they're out to kill..."

That's all she needed, waking up to some overblown piece of honkey rock. She instinctively tuned the song out of her head, and instead another sound met her ears: a familiar voice up on the patio, speaking quickly and enthusiastically.

And in Spanish.

She narrowed her eyes, suspicious, and then slowly made her way out of the holly den and up the incline, eventually coming to the back of the employees' patio, where she could clamber up the side. She peeked over the edge like a wary squirrel on the prowl for a nut; she saw Penance standing at the rear door of the restaurant leading into the kitchen, talking with two Hispanic-looking men in white cook's clothes, one sitting on an upturned crate with a peeler and a bag of potatoes, the other unboxing a pallet of produce stacked up beside the door.

The man peeling potatoes was chuckling at Penance, waving a dismissive hand, his sun-worn face wrinkled up with a bemused grin.

Penance, meanwhile, spread both his hands to either side, speaking with an animated flourish.

"Es la verdad! Y me encanta la catedral en Orizaba; un amarillo hermoso en la torre. Pero su Tlachichuca, tambien, tiene sus encantos. En Pascua hacen maravillas con la arena coloreada."

The man arched one scruffy black eyebrow at this, seemingly interested in the boy's words, but still he leered at the boy with a skeptical smirk. He spoke with a tricky and testing cadence to his voice, as if rattling off a riddle.

"Y te gusta al 'Pico', chico?"

Penance met his smirk, wagging one finger at the man.

"Me encantalo en la cocina, y tambien en la valle. Citlaltépetl, verdad?" Penance crossed his arms over his chest. "He escaladalo, actualmente."

The man's smirk gave way to a disbelieving scoff, but Penance's words did seem to impress him, nonetheless. He pointed right back at the boy.

"No se si puedes escalar, chico, pero puedes hablar, al menos."

The man unboxing the produce, who up until now was chuckling with amusement at the banter between the boy and the other man, stopped a moment and cocked his head at Penance.

"Oye: hablas extraño, chico; de donde eres?"

"Un montón de lugares diferentes," the boy answered.

The man dismissed the boy with a grunt and carried an armload of produce into the restaurant.

Whip, meanwhile, decided to make her presence known, inelegantly scrambling up the patio ledge. As she approached the man pointed his potato peeler at her, looking to Penance.

"Quién es esa?"

Penance smiled.

"No puede ver? Es un chotacabras, naturalmente."

The cook looked the girl up and down with eyes that were far from friendly.

"No es una ladrona, eh?"

Penance chuckled, looking back at the girl with a mischievous smile.

"Solamente de corazones." He arched his brow as if suddenly remembering something and then pointed back at the man. "Y calzoncillos, tambien."

Now it was the man's turn to dismiss Penance with a playful grunt, going back to peeling his potatoes.

Before Whip could get a word out Penance pointed at her, just as animated as when he was speaking with the man. 'Animated' might not be selling it: he was more 'giddy', almost like a little kid trying to show off his favorite toy to an adult.

"Wai— wai— wai—" He motioned for her to stop where she was, not bothering with full words, let alone a sentence. Whip stopped about a dozen feet from the boy, closer to the middle of the patio. The boy looked back at the man, then pointed at the battered black radio/cassette player sitting up against the building.

"Estan escuchando a la radio, o..."

"Mmm," the man shook his head, "cinta."

The boy clapped his hands, beaming with a toothy smile.

"Uh, puedoooo…"Penance motioned to the player with his head, hands clasped together expectantly.

The man looked at the cassette player, then the boy. He grumbled with irritation, but Penance put on the charm, twisting his toothy smile up into something that was almost a pathetic parody of childish hopefulness.

Whip figured that with a pleading grin like that Penance could get as much gruel at whatever orphanage you'd care to name.

"Eh," the man waved at the player, his sun-scorched faced twisted about as if he'd bitten into a lime.

Penance wasted no time, leaping over to the player like a kid diving under the Christmas tree. He fiddled with the fast-forward button, speeding the cassette along, catching random yelps and yowls from various songs along the way. Whip, more amused with the boy's sudden, well, boyish enthusiasm than anything else gradually came back to earth.

"Pen: I told you I don't go for this honkey kinda rock, y'know, so—"

"Sh- sh- shhh..." Penance hissed as he dialed into the right place on the tape. Elton John's twangy voice suddenly hit their ears, screaming out the tail-end of another song.

"Goddamnit, you're all gonna die. You're all gonna die!"

Whip arched her brow, sighing.

"Upliftin' as a weighted chain," she grumbled.

Penance, meanwhile, had gotten to his feet and sauntered back over onto the patio, standing a few feet from Whip. He shook his arms and rolled his head around, not satisfied until he heard a nice, loud pop. He closed his eyes as the music faded out and waited for the next song to begin.

A few bold piano chords gave way to an electronic organ, churning out a saccharine little tune. As the intro went on Penance bounced up and down off his heels, as if willing his entire body into time with the corny music.

And then good ol' Elton started singing again.

"I remember when rock was young... me and Suzie had so much fun... holding hands and skimmin' stones... had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own..."

Whip could place the tune. Vaguely enough, anyway. But the second the singing started she wasn't paying any attention to the beat of the music; something far more amazing was going on right before her eyes.

Penance flipped his body to the side, one hand outstretched to Whip, as if to hold her hand. His other hand stretched out behind him and fell into a jazzy wave. He launched into a semi-circle around the girl. Between his hands and his feet every muscle in his torso fell into rhythm; his shoulders bobbed about in perfect syncopation, his hips juked and jived with practiced undulations, and his legs were a blurry maelstrom, all his footfalls perfectly synched to the sound of the song.

He spun about, arms extended, cradling an imaginary partner, and he launched into a few aerial cartwheels, coming down surely on his feet each time and then releasing his 'partner' from the embrace. The moment Elton screamed the words 'crocodile rocking' Penance extended one arm out in front of him, palm up, and brought his other arm swinging gracefully over his shoulder, slamming that palm down on the stationary one twice in quick succession, and then another two times after that.

Several times he made strange sweeping gestures at his spread legs, moving his arms around behind him only to sweep them back up, closing his legs and continuing the dance.

At the breaks between verses— where the lyrics devolved into a ditzy falsetto, repeating the phrase 'la la la la la'— the boy suddenly stopped, again facing an imaginary partner, and his hands fell into a lightning-quick routine of claps, punctuated by high-fiving the air in front of him with either hand in a complex rhythm. Whip could scarcely follow the movement.

Needless to say the girl's jaw was squarely on the floor as she watched Penance perform his little routine. She'd seen his usual manner of 'exercise' firsthand— and all the blood and tears that it brought— but the boy dancing before her now was something entirely different. Something impossible, almost. Surely something she wouldn't have expected.

Something like an artist.

As bug-eyed and filled with wonder as she was Whip had to laugh when she finally realized why Penance kept clapping his palms together like that when the words 'crocodile rocking' came up: he was mimicking a crock's jaws clapping together. Somehow this realization made Whip as giddy as the boy— such a corny, childish move in a dance with steps that might give an Olympic gymnast pause— and she thought he might take offense at her laughter. But if anything it spurred him on; Penance's concentrated face soon beamed with a grin, as well.

He struck a final pose as the music faded out, doused with sweat and panting like a dog. The man peeling potatoes chuckled and gave the boy a smattering of applause, barking some compliments in Spanish. Whip, however, could still only gape at him in wonder.

"How... what the... how'd you do all that?"

Penance, body still elegantly posed with one hand outstretched before her, wiggled his brow and beckoned with his fingers.

"Y'wanna see?" He cooed.

"I— me?" Whip crossed her arms, scoffing and looking to one side. "Don't be foolish, kid! We don't got time to... I mean..."

Again Penance wiggled his brow, a playful smile on his face.

"What? Am I keeping you from something? Think of it as a quick crash-course..."

"As in trippin' and crashin' my skull into the concrete, you mean?"

The boy's smile widened.

"Hey: if this is the most dangerous thing you end up doing with me then you've kinda come out ahead, don't you think?" Another absurd brow wiggle. "Besides: who wants to live forever?"

It was, of course, all patently ridiculous. Here, with cops and black-suited goons all on the prowl, danger around every corner, and every moment conceivably their last— enemies hot on their heels— this ridiculous little boy was proposing dance lessons.

And to stupid honky rock, of all things.

It was impossible. Stupid.

Stupidly impossible.

And the little boy in question was, indeed, being utterly ridiculous.

But— and mind you this isn't something Whip really cared about, honestly— this little boy was being, at least for the moment, very like a little boy. Something about that was strange to Whip, knowing the Penance she knew. It was almost— and it wasn't, mind you, because honestly she really didn't care— kind of endearing.

It was kinda... well, sweet, in a way.

Still incredibly stupid.

And stupidly incredible...

All the same, she figured she might as well indulge him. At least have him work all the stupidity and foolishness out of his system, in any event.

The point is that when she reluctantly offered her hand to him it was just with that in mind. And that alone.

"Don't expect me to be spreading my legs like you were doin'; I'll tear a hole in these pants."

"Good news," Penance took her hand, chuckling. "You won't have to spread your legs like that—"

"Well, then that's fine—"

"—'cause when I spread my legs, well, that's when you'll be diving through 'em."

X

X

X

Penance sportingly omitted the tandem aerial cartwheels from the lesson, instead instructing her on the basics (such as they could be called 'basics') of the steps and claps. Those synchronized patty-cake high-fives during the falsetto were murder, and near-literally; at one point Whip almost 'busted' the boy's nose back into place with her misguided palm.

Naturally she was most skeptical of the steps requiring her to slide— head-first— through the narrow opening between the boy's skinny legs, sliding on a sheaf of butcher paper generously donated by the cook, trusting Penance to grab her on the other side and pull her back up into formation. Given what she knew of the boy's physical abilities (being on the receiving end of a choke-hold from him) she initially felt a bit like a kitten in the arms of a gorilla, but Penance's application of his unusual strength here was startlingly different: measured and controlled, without any hint of forcefulness. Yes: he caught all of the older girl's bodily momentum with his arms, and the strength he used to control her as she careened through his legs and up into the air was ungodly, but there was something else to it. It was gentle. Ridiculously gentle. At each slide Whip only really felt the force of, say, a child spun around in its parent's arms. There was force, yes, but that force was even and tempered.

After the fifth practice slide or so Whip started to feel something on all subsequent slides that she'd never have thought possible: she felt safe, and that she needn't hold back. She knew Penance would catch her on the other side, and he'd spin her around in one piece. She never thought there could be such grace in such strength, but after enough time practicing with the boy she felt she could throw herself headlong from any position right into him, and he'd see her come out of it safe and sound.

Gone was that doubting, brooding little boy, at least for the moment. In his moves he was more than confident: he was flawless and constant as a star in the sky.

And he needed to be; his little dance number had more than a few near-suicidal twists to it. The most harrowing (besides the omitted aerial cartwheeling) was at the line in the chorus where "Suzie wore her dresses tight", at which point Penance would come up behind Whip and trace a semi-risqué outline around the girl's hips and waist with his hands, then grip her by the lower legs and fling her up and over his head, twisting her in the air, until she came down facing him from behind, to then spin him by the shoulder and continue the dance.

"The girl I invented this dance with knew how to jump up just right," Penance explained. "But don't worry: I think I can just toss you as you are and get you to land in about the right position; you don't really have to do a thing."

That made Whip feel a little like a horseshoe, and she didn't quite know how to feel about that. At least she always landed right side up. And maybe she was just a horseshoe in his hands, but at least that meant she was lucky, and after a couple hours practice she was still in one piece.

And that was lucky enough, really.

She was, in fact, even somewhat eager to try tackling the entire song in one go, rather than burning holes in the cassette tape, practicing individual sections as they went, but by late afternoon the head chef of the restaurant showed up to manage the evening rush, and he wasn't having any pop rock played within earshot. He was a cantankerous looking old grouch with a hunch to his back and a limp in his gait, and he quite rudely confiscated the radio and tuned it to his own station.

The potato peeler, however, was more appreciative of the kids' efforts, again giving them a hearty round of applause as they were 'retired' from their dance.

Penance thought the main chef's accent sounded like a certain region of Germany, and so he gambled on playing himself off from there, concocting a little fake family history on the fly. But when the chef reacted to the boy's introduction it appeared the kid had gone bust. The stooped man flared his eyes at the boy and barked shrill words back at him, making a strange, curt gesture with his fist and arm that— although Whip couldn't be certain— appeared to be telling the boy to do something rather lewd to himself. The chef turned to re-enter the restaurant, leaving Penance to scurry back to her with his tail firmly between his legs.

"What happened?" She asked.

"Got my accents wrong, this time, and especially my family history," the boy's face bore an adorable flush of blood. He scratched awkwardly at the nape of his neck. "Not German. He's Czech, and from the Sudetenland..."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning we probably shouldn't order the soup," Penance chuckled nervously. "He'd probably piss in it..."

X

X

X

They went to lounge on the far edge of the patio, sprawled out like starfish to let the concrete siphon off the heat from their bodies. As they cooled so did the mood; the first stars were barely visible in the pre-twilight sky, and they could still hear that radio from the restaurant kitchen, now switched to a big band station playing a sedate waltz.

"Imagine: a guy with a temper like that listenin' to sissy ballroom music," Whip chuckled. She stole a swig of whiskey from the bottle in her pants, then turned her head to look at Penance, bunching up her hair braid under her cheek, forming a makeshift pillow. "And you know that you gotta tell me now, right?"

Penance, eyes tracing the forming constellations of stars overhead, gave her an innocent little shrug.

"Tell you what?"

"'What', he says," Whip grumbled. "Like how in the everlasting hell you can dance like that?"

The boy still stared up at the stars; an evasive smile formed on his lips.

"For one thing I've been dancing since before they invented the telescope; that has to count for something—"

"That crazed jiving," Whip said, "is damn-near insane. And what's this about a girl inventing it with you?"

The boy relented, rising off his back and hugging his bare knees with his hands.

"Oh, it was like 90-percent her: this girl I went to school with in South Carolina. I just threw in my two cents on a few of the parts. We— well, she— made up the dance to compete in a school talent show. That was the year this album came out, so it'd be... uh..."

He squinted, flipping through the Rolodex of all the dates in his head.

"'73? Really?" He stared down at the concrete, a look of awe on his face. "More than ten years. Doesn't seem that long."

"Where does the time go, huh?"

He looked down at Whip; the girl gave him a somber smile, no hint of teasing in it. He responded with a similar cold smile.

"Yeah, I get to wondering." Again he looked up at the stars. "But I guess that song kinda saved my life, in a way."

"Do tell?"

"Well, I was, uh, I was using pretty bad, back then..."

The girl squinted.

"'Using'?"

Penance reached into the backpack beside him without looking down at it, rummaging for a moment before coming up with the syringe.

"This." He spoke calmly, as if he were showing her a pencil. He twirled the syringe between his fingers, like he did with his knife earlier.

Whip slowly lifted her head off the ground, eyeing the syringe.

"What in the flyin' fuck—"

"I told you about that when we first met, remember—"

"Y— you said you were an alcoholic—"

Penance caught the syringe off his fingers in a steady grip, pointing the tip of it at her.

"I said I was an 'addict'. That was when you offered me a sip of alcohol in your 'penthouse', remember? I stopped drinking when I got clean. They say you should, when you do. Too easy to replace one addiction with another, you know."

The girl's face still sagged slack as she looked at the needle in his hand. She forced her mouth closed and wagged her head.

"And your cigarettes—"

"I'm not that worried about lung cancer," he smirked. "And I've been smoking since my teens. I mean, my— you know what I mean. That I wasn't gonna give up. Besides, those've always been more a special treat than a steady vice. It's not easy smoking as a 'kid'. And it keeps getting harder. Wasn't more than 100 years ago no one had laws about that kind of thing, not that I'd go totally unchallenged..."

Whip got off her back as he spoke, pushing herself up by her elbows. She cocked her head at the syringe in his hand.

"Kid: is that really smack?"

He nodded.

The girl's brown eyes turned deathly serious; she extended one hand to him.

"Give it here. Now."

"So you can smash it on the ground?"

"Somethin' like that, yeah."

Penance considered the syringe, then looked at Whip. He shook his head.

The girl opened her mouth to protest but Penance held up a finger.

"I'm not gonna use it. At least not like that, anyway."

Whip's eyes narrowed and she gave him a skeptical frown.

"Then why keep it?" She demanded.

Penance shrugged.

"I don't know." He carelessly deposited it back in his pack. "A little bird told me I should—"

Whip bounced one thumb off her chest.

"Well this little bird says toss it!"

Penance considered Whip's protective indignation; even with her dark and ugly scowl he had to laugh. That didn't improve the girl's countenance.

"What?" She barked.

"She'd get to looking that way," Penance said, "whenever I tried ducking out of rehearsals. It took us months to get that dance down. Planning, rehearsing..." The boy's smile widened. "'Convalescing', too. But I'd try to make sure she landed on me when things went wrong. Most of the time, at least."

Whip huffed through her nose, eyes wandering to the boy's backpack. She seemed to be in the mood for a fight, but maybe she didn't have the energy for it. Or maybe it was the other way around. But for whatever reason she decided to lean back on her elbows, still sulking, but her voice more subdued.

"Who was she?" Whip asked.

Penance shrugged.

"I don't remember that much before we met, just that I'd found a living situation where I could get my 'fix' pretty much on demand, and that I was using way too much—"

"Any number above 'zero' kinda fits the bill for that sorta thing—"

"I'd lost track of time," Penance said. "I was in 8th grade, and I almost never get to 8th grade, you know? Around that time people start asking all kinds of questions..."

"Like why you're not gettin' any bigger, you mean?"

Penance nodded.

"And I didn't care 'cause... well, junkies don't really care about anything other than their next fix. When I first met her I didn't think much of her; she never talked in class, and really kept to herself. First thing that kinda interested me about her is that she seemed to be me in reverse, at least a little bit."

When Whip's brow furrowed Penance motioned up and down his body.

"I was too 'young' to be in 8th grade, but then she seemed too 'old' to be there, somehow."

"Was she..."

The boy shook his head.

"I was a junkie, not an idiot. I introduced myself by 'accidentally' bumping into her in the lunch line, and I was sure to make my bare skin touch hers. No sparks." A smile crept up the boy's face that could almost be called 'bashful'. "None like that, anyway; she wasn't an immortal."

"We both ended up in a theater class together. I was taking it because they didn't make you do too much in it, really. I guess she was in it for the same reason, because she slacked it almost as much as I did. She spent her time up in the cheap seats of the auditorium, just a little above where I sat, and for how little she talked I always found it funny how the nape of my neck would tingle in class. I'd always think that her eyes were on me, for some reason. We'd run into each other at strange times, too; sometimes right after I'd go shoot up I'd run into her outside the boys' room . At first I was worried that she was keeping tabs on me and somehow knew what I was doing in there, but that was impossible; there's no reason she'd care, anyway."

"Met enough junkies in my time to know they can get paranoid," Whip grumbled.

"Yeah. Eventually I started sitting up in the cheap seats with her. I mean, really it was just to be as far away from the teacher as possible, you know? But that's when we got to chatting..."

Penance twisted his hand around on his knee, examining his milky white wrist.

"She was weird, in a lot of ways; she had an honest-to-god tattoo on her inner wrist. It was this tribal-looking thing done up in blue ink: two circles, one inside the other, with these decorative dots between 'em, and a strange squiggly shape in the center, kinda like an ocean wave. I always thought it might be a funny-looking 'W', but she never told me what it was, or who had given it to her."

Whip squinted.

"A kid that age with a tattoo is a little weird, isn't it?"

"I'm even weirder," Penance smiled, "so I didn't really judge. She was standoffish with me at first, like she was with everyone else, but she warmed up to me a little bit over time. Enough so that when they announced the class talent show she signed us both up as a duo act, right out of the blue. And without telling me, at first. I tried to fight her on it but she only got that look on her face— like the one you gave me— and said we were a duo, whether I liked it or not. By then I was using too much to even really care, but the next week she started hitting me up with rehearsals, and they went on forever. It was almost non-stop; when I wasn't in class I was practicing with her, and that made it hard to..."

The boy's smile turned to a shamed frown. Again he hugged his kneecaps, staring down at the ground.

"She caught me, once, right in the act. I didn't know what she'd say, or what she'd do. When I went to her and tried to explain things she only got that bossy look on her face, dragged me outside and started up the rehearsals again, twice as hard-assed as before. She never said another word about it, you know? And after that I almost never had the time to use. We'd work the steps out, and we'd dance, and sweat, and... and..." He drew a long breath, shaking his head. "God: it was enough to keep me busy, at least. And then I managed to quit the junk entirely later that year, right after I left that 'life'."

Whip nodded along with the boy's story. She shrugged as he finished.

"Hey: at least you took the gold at your li'l talent show, right? There's no way a routine like that could lose."

Again Penance frowned. He met Whip's eyes and shook his head.

"Nah. One night, about a week before the contest, she climbed the tree outside my bedroom and knocked on the window. She was nearly in tears. She said she'd broken some set of 'rules' at the place she'd been living— she never let me come over, so I didn't really know if she was staying with foster parents, or what— and she was being sent away. I didn't know what to say— I couldn't really say anything— but before I could even try she just kinda put her hand through my hair, and..."

Penance looked down, he ran a few delicate fingers over the top of his head, slow and steady.

"There were headlights coming up the street, fast, and I guess they were looking for her, 'cause she slid down the tree trunk lickety-split and ran off to meet 'em. She got into a van, and that's the last time I ever saw her."

The boy returned his gaze to Whip.

"Every time after that, when I'd use, I'd see that bossy face of hers. Every time I'd hear that song I'd think of her. Before that shooting up made me feel peaceful, or at least calm, but after that it only made me feel 'empty'." Penance shook his head and sighed. "I dunno; I guess that doesn't make much sense, does it?"

Whip looked down at one of her propped elbows.

"Makes sense, enough, I think."

Penance's wistful frown turned to a small smile.

"Y'know, today was the first time I'd ever had an 'audience' for that dance: the cook. Nobody ever saw us when we practiced, I don't think. No one else ever got to see our dance. It's a shame. But maybe wherever she ended up she taught it to another boy; I don't know..."

Whip smirked.

"Well, sorry your first 'performance' had to be with a rookie like me. My feet are only good for scuttling up drainpipes and leapin' between rooftops."

"You were learning the steps faster than I ever did," the boy said. "But then I was always a slow learner..."

The pair reclined in silence as crickets made their first tentative chirpings in the greenery. The radio in the kitchen still blared its obnoxious ballroom music, strings and brass horns wailing in a whiney drone. Penance stared at the folds of his backpack for a time. Eventually Whip brought his head out of the fog.

"C'mere," she slithered up to her feet, jostling the blood back into her limbs, and she beckoned the boy to the center of the patio with a finger.

Penance watched her skeptically, finally standing up to join her.

"What?" He asked.

Whip motioned to the open kitchen door, then to the boy.

"How do you move to this stuff?"

The boy arched his brow.

"You serious?"

"You gotta know, right?" The girl crossed her arms. "I mean, you've been a prince and a pauper— by your own reckonin'— so sure: you know how to dance wild. But don't you also know how to dance fancy, too?"

The skepticism in Penance's face did not change.

Whip held out her hand.

"Just gimme another 'quick crash course', huh?"

The boy's brow arched even higher. Eventually he scoffed, smiling, and he shrugged.

"One of us has gotta lead," he explained, taking one of the girl's hands and putting his other hand around her waist. "Usually it's the taller person."

"Ain't it supposed to be the man?"

"There's not one here," Penance laughed. "All you got is me."

"Let's say the stronger person leads, then, huh?"

The boy's smile fell. He looked to one side.

"That'd still make things an open question, wouldn't it?" He sighed, again meeting the girl's eyes with a grin. "Let's settle on 'the person that knows the steps', huh? And the steps are : 'slow, slow, quick, quick'..."

Whip tilted her head, grunting at this. When the boy started moving, however, she soon figured out the basics of the motions, and after a while she could at least move in appreciable rhythm with the boy. When she finally felt comfortable enough with the motions to hold a conversation she questioned the boy.

"Your girl ever do sissy dances with you, or—"

Penance shook his head.

"Just the 'Crocodile Rock'. That took up all our time."

Whip grinned mischievously.

"And when did she make a move on you?"

Penance blinked, missing a step and accidentally bumping his face against Whip's collarbone.

"What?"

The girl's smirk grew more mischievous.

"C'mon! She was nuts for you, right? So, when'd she make her move? She had to at least come in for a kiss—"

The boy's cheeks flushed. He shook his head.

"It— no, it wasn't like that. She was just— y'know, we were partners—"

"Sure you were!" Whip laughed.

"She didn't— I mean—"

"You can't be that many centuries old and still believe in cooties, kid..."

Penance furrowed his brow. He flashed a sudden mischievous smirk of his own before whipping the girl out and away from his body, forcing her into a spin before grabbing her tight again in expert hands. She made an adorable grunt at the sudden maneuver, and came out of it less than pleased. That only made Penance smile wider.

"She did kiss me," the boy admitted. "But on the forehead. Kinda condescendingly, you know? Treating me like a little child with a wet smack on the head as a reward for doing good, or to encourage me when I wasn't. Reminds me of a girl I grew up with: Marisol. She'd do that, too: sometimes treat me like a really little boy, even though we were pretty much the same age. But then I was always kind of a scaredy-cat kid; she was stronger than me, too..."

At this Whip said nothing, merely following in the boy's rhythm. As the song came to an end Penance again spun her around, this time more gently, and with at least a little forewarning; he then held her tight in a final pose. Whip bent her head down and gave him a peck on his forehead.

The boy looked up at her, reading her face for signs of teasing or playfulness. He couldn't find any. She looked like she was waiting to see how he'd react, so he didn't.

It seemed that something about the moment made them both want to savor it. Silence ruled until Whip eventually broke it with a faint whisper.

"What're you afraid of, right now, Penance?"

He knew that she knew; he knew she could feel the tension in his bones and the fear ruling his heart. She knew he was scared— nigh-on terrified— no matter how much he chose to hide it. He knew she had to be feeling the same, too. What was unspoken between them was not 'unsaid'. Kingfisher was right about that much: you didn't always need words to say something, whether you wanted to or not.

But Penance mulled the exact words of her question for a moment: what was he afraid of right now, at this precise moment in time?

The boy smiled.

"Nothing in particular," he mumbled back.

Whip smiled in response.

When another number came up they danced to it as well, and Whip surprised the boy by taking the lead. It was an ugly business for a time, but eventually she settled into proper cadence and they moved up and down the patio, if not making their moves 'graceful' then at least 'recognizable'.

"The way I figure your girl probably never shared her dance with another boy," Whip said. "You're the only one with any business dancin' to that song, anyway."

"How do you figure that?" Penance asked.

The girl smirked.

"'Cause you're the one who actually remembers 'when rock was young', aren't you?"

He scoffed at the corny joke, but then the boy smirked.

"That's not the best part..."

"What is?" Whip cocked her head.

"Her name actually was 'Suzie'," the boy answered.

The girl blinked at this, and when Penance burst out with a laugh she had to join him. Their laughter echoed across the star-filled sky as they danced behind the Red Sunrise Grill, just the two of them, no ghosts or fears in sight.

And when the sun came up in the morning it was, indeed, as red as blood.

Neither of them would get a chance to see it.