Chapter Text
The first time he sees her is on a Sunday morning. It's mid-September, and summer still has its hooks in, desperately clinging to the heat. But there is a breeze and he only half pays attention to how it feels because he's focused on how it moves her hair. It's dark red and coils like blood down her back; it's wild and beautifully untamed. He wonders briefly what it feels like.
Ducked under the rickety lean-to that moonlights as a gazebo, she sits hunched over a stack of papers - envelopes, he thinks - and stares at them. He can't see much from his vantage point on the porch, but he watches how her shoulders stiffen, and she lifts her chin in a way he could only describe as proud. It's her eyes that get him, bright chips of blue staring down at the stack in front of her as if she could set it on fire with her mind.
So he watches her watch her envelopes, wondering if he ought to go over and introduce himself and offer her a beer. But something keeps his feet on the porch, his back leaning against the door jamb. He's being weird; he knows he's being weird. This is fine for right now, he tells himself. I can wait.
She pushes back from the rickety table under the rickety gazebo and stands. Even from his half-assed hiding place, he can see that she's small, verging on tiny. Pale, slender hands slip into her jacket pockets, rummaging around before pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a plastic lighter.
He likes to think that he doesn't have an oral fixation, and maybe, on some days, it's true. But standing in the shadow of his front door, his gaze is locked on her. She bounces the cigarette pack against her palm and the cellophane crinkles. She sets a cigarette between her lips, lightly holding it as she lights it. He wishes he was closer and could better see just what shade of pink her lips were and how the flame from the lighter illuminated her skin. He's fucked. That's the only logical conclusion he can draw.
Her hand suddenly darts out and grabs the stack of envelopes; they must be letters, crushing them in her palm until he's sure her knuckles are white. There was a look of hatred on her face, only momentarily, before it vanished beneath an icy facade, and she held up her lighter again.
Flames licked at the corners of the envelopes, slowly making their way toward her fingertips and leaving ash in their wake. He almost yelled out to her then to tell her to drop it before she hurt herself. Just as the fire became close enough to caress her fingers, just as he began to open his mouth, she dropped the smoldering mess into the nearby trash can. She batted away the billowing ash before turning on her heel and walking towards the trailer park entrance as if she didn't care.
*
The next time he sees her is in homeroom. He sits in the back of the class, long legs stretched out in front of him, and his body slumped down in his seat. When he sees her walk into the room, he straightens up and leans forward slightly, dark eyes watching her as she ignores the stares of their classmates. The soles of her low-heeled boots click against the battered floor as she moves down the row of desks. He forgets to breathe momentarily as she stops at the empty desk in front of him and drops her bag on the floor; it’s seen better days.
She regards him for a moment, her face impassive with the exception of one delicately arched brow. Her hair isn’t as wild as the previous day; she’s wrangled it into a thick rope of a braid that hangs nearly to her waist. It’s pretty, but he finds he hates how it’s restrained. But he doesn’t know why he even has an opinion; he doesn’t even know her. He doesn’t even know her name.
“Seat taken?” she asks, picking at the skin around her nails as she speaks. To anyone else, she was the picture of nonchalance, but to him, it felt like she was hiding.
He shakes his head, holding his ring-covered hand out as if to give her his leave. “Nah. All yours,” he says with a smile.
For a second, the corner of her mouth twitches upward into a ghost of a smile, and he feels cheated, like somehow the sun would shine brighter if she really did smile; he suddenly has a new mission. Then she sits, and he realizes just how small she is and how delicate she seems, her body drowning in the worn green sweater that she’s wearing. Yet she’d been standing beneath that gazebo burning those letters, letting the fire kiss her fingertips. Suddenly, he realizes that that delicateness is a ruse. It’s armor.
When she turns around, it startles him. “I’m Vee, by the way,” she says. Her eyes were unwavering and so very, very blue.
He smiles again, so vast that his cheeks begin to hurt. “Eddie.”
*
Vee is sitting on his throne.
The thought repeatedly plays in his mind like a broken record, and he feels like a cliche. He doesn’t know just how long he stands there watching her, the strap of his backpack clutched in a white-knuckled hand. It’s not as if she’s doing anything, but there she sits with her legs thrown up over the arm of the chair as she carefully flips the page of her book. He thinks she looks as if she belongs there, her body relaxed and her face open. Her expression changes as she reads, emotions flittering across in rapid succession. Eddie thinks it may be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
Then the sheep come tumbling in. They’re all loud and clumsy excitement as they push past him into their sacred space. At that moment, the spell is broken, and he can’t help but feel a pang of sadness as she tenses, pulls her legs to her chest, and holds her book against her neck as a shield. His brow furrows as he pulls the strap of his bag up over his shoulder, but he quickly gives her an easy smile.
A chorus of voices around him, a few breaking as they let out a tidal wave of questions. Who the fuck is that? Who’s she? Is she joining the party? It echoes in the room, and he rolls his eyes.
“Hey, Vee,” he says, his voice silencing his flock.
“Eddie,” she replies as she slips a piece of paper into her book and moves to stand. It’s an old Stephen King paperback, and she keeps it close to her chest. “Sorry. I didn’t realize this room was being used.”
Gareth answers before he even has the chance to open his mouth. “We have this room every week. It’s on the damn corkboard outside,” he says, his Farrah hair flying around his face. Eddie abruptly claps him on the back of the head.
“There’s a lady present. Can you try to be less of a dillweed?”
Gareth rubs the back of his head. He has the sense to look sheepishly up at Vee, give a little shrug, and mumble an apology.
She looks at them all in turn before she meets Eddie’s gaze again, and he swears that she seems amused. “Didn’t realize there was a damn corkboard outside,” she says as she picks up the bag at her feet and carefully steps down from the throne. Eddie thinks that every move she seems to make is graceful.
“See you around, Eddie,” she says with a nod as she moves past him and his little cabal toward the door. Some of her hair has come loose from her braid and swirls wildly around her head; he fights the urge to reach out and pull the rest of it free. Her arm brushes his, and he smells roses and smoke, making his mouth dry.
Eddie swallows thickly. “Vee.”
Then, the door is swinging closed behind her.