Boiling Isles RPG

Luz’s POV

The weeks were flying by as Luz counted down the days until the winter formal. There were still a few weeks to go but she was excited nonetheless. The weather was starting to get cold so Luz had to bundle up more for her bike rides to and from the school and as ice on the sidewalk was becoming more and more of a common occurrence she’d needed to take more of a slow and steady pace to avoid slipping. Thankfully the water was back on in their house at this point so she didn’t need to wake up even earlier to shower at school anymore.

Both Luz’s mom and Eda had been very happy to hear that she was planning on going to the school dance after all. Her mom was happy that she was making more of an effort to be social and Eda was happy that she wouldn’t be alone since apparently Vice Principal Clawthorn had made it clear that King was not allowed to accompany her. Luz had started to bring more junk home with her so that she could make more in commissions and in her remaining free time had been riding her bike to some clothing stores to try to see if she could afford anything nice enough for the dance. So far she could not, but she was getting there… Slowly.

Luz sighed and checked her watch. It was a Tuesday so that meant she was supposed to tutor Amity but the other girl was running a few minutes behind, it wasn’t much but considering Amity was usually insanely punctual it was saying something. Come to think of it, Amity had been acting a little weird lately. Luz wasn’t always the most perceptive when it came to how people acted around her, a side effect of a lifetime of keeping her head down hoping to be ignored, but she was pretty sure that Amity was acting differently. Her voice sounded brighter than it had before and she was smiling more freely around Luz, especially when they were studying at Eda’s. Luz had even gotten her to laugh with a few bad puns of her own, usually Salix and Caesar were her only audience when it came to bad jokes but Amity seemed to really enjoy them as well. Amity had even made more of an effort to tell off Boscha when she was being a jerk, of course this only led to Boscha doing more of her dirty work during passing periods or anywhere else Amity couldn’t see, though Luz still appreciated the effort.

Sure Amity had seemed to be warming up to Luz as they interacted more, but since Amity had started doing better in precalc it was like her personality did a complete one-eighty from when they’d first interacted. Admittedly Amity didn’t have much room to improve grade-wise but she’d looked really happy when they’d gotten their most recent test grades back yesterday and her grade had been a ninety-seven. Luz was just happy that Amity was able to relax a bit now that she was meeting her goals and wasn’t as much of a stick in the mud as she had been, though in terms of sticks in the mud Luz shouldn’t have been judging

“Hey! Sorry I’m late!” Luz looked up to see Amity trudging towards her over browning grass. “I was catching up with some people.”

“It’s not a problem.” Luz tossed the pink helmet in Amity’s direction which she caught and promptly placed on her head before plopping down on the back of Luz’s bike. After bickering for the first few rides to The Owl House they had fallen into a pretty steady routine. “You may want to hold on a tight, it’s pretty icy out today.” Luz said over her shoulder as she kicked off.

Then, after a few seconds, Luz felt Amity wrap her arms around her waist. Luz felt herself freeze for a second, letting the wheels glide on their own. She still wasn’t used to nonthreatening physical contact even through her sweatshirt and the layers of clothes she had under it, but Amity was… warm, comforting even. Luz took a breath and kept pedaling. She was alright. This was alright.

Despite the delay, they reached The Owl House at the usual time but when they arrived they were met with a locked door and the lights out. There was a sign in the window. ‘Personal Emergency. Closed for the day.’ Then at the bottom: ‘Luz, I would have called but you don’t have a phone. Do whatever you want, I’ll pay you for the day anyway.’

“Huh,” Luz said. They’d stepped off of the bike and were standing in front of the doorway.

“Is this normal?” Amity asked, glancing up at Luz.

“No, but it’s in character.” Luz scratched her head. She had a key and knew that Eda would be okay with them going inside but Luz wasn’t sure if she was comfortable with being there on her own with just Amity. She glanced at the girl beside her, “Oh, are you really cold?”

“What? No, not really. Why?” Amity was talking a little quickly.

“Nothing, your face is just a little red. I figured it was from the cold.” Luz could have sworn Amity’s face got a little redder.

“Oh, yeah. It’s just the wind chill. I’m fine!” Amity smiled at her and Luz suddenly wasn’t feeling that cold either.

Luz peered through the window of the store. It looked so vacant without Eda’s usual bright presence. Besides, a lot of the more complicated projects she’d been working on were back in her room. She nodded towards the door, “We can go inside, but honestly being in there without Eda kind of creeps me out. Would you be okay with going to my house today? I don’t live too far and I think we’ve got some hot cocoa mix if you’d like some.” She’d gotten the mix on sale during mid-spring last year, it was a giant tin that was set to expire ten years from now and she had considered it a major score. As the weather got colder Luz had been itching for an excuse to break into it and this seemed like a good enough reason.

Luz looked to the girl beside her and noticed that Amity was looking up at her pretty intently. As Luz made eye contact, Amity blinked and seemed to snap to attention. “Yeah!” She said a little loudly, then quieted back down. “Yes, I’d like that.” She smiled softly as she tucked a strand of hair that had fallen loose from her pony tale behind her ear.

Luz felt herself grinning, “Alright then, let’s head out!”

Amity’s POV

Despite the chill of the early winter air, Amity felt warm as she and Luz rode down the hills towards the edge of town. Her arms were wrapped around Luz’s waist again, she’d been told to hold on tight after all.

Amity glanced around at the houses on the street as they pulled into a neighborhood. She probably shouldn’t have been surprised that Luz didn’t live in a neighborhood as nice as her own, but she felt a bit of unease as they turned into a driveway. The houses on the street were small with chipped paint and brown grass, a few even had broken windows that their owners had attempted to fix with plywood and duct tape. At least Luz’s house didn’t look like it had been broken into even if it was as shabby as the rest. They hopped off the bike and Luz started walking it towards the house’s garage.

Looking around again, Amity had a sudden epiphany that these houses matched the build style of the shack that Edric and Emera used to get drunk at back when they were still in high school. Maybe this was the same neighborhood. Her siblings used to send her pictures with messages telling her that she was missing out. She had been in middle school for most of these experiences so she really wasn’t sure what they had wanted her to do, not that they would have any memory of it when she would ask them the next day.

“You coming or what?” Amity turned back to see Luz holding the garage door open for her. Shaking herself from her thoughts, Amity ducked inside and Luz let the door fall, locking it again with a padlock.

The two of them walked through the door that led to the rest of the house and Amity followed Luz’s example of leaving her shoes on the mat in the garage. It was a little chilly inside so Amity opted to keep her jacket on and Luz didn’t make an effort to remove her sweatshirt either. As Luz showed her to the kitchen where they’d be working Amity couldn’t help but notice how bare the house looked. The walls were beige and void of pictures, the kitchen consisted of a small plastic table and two wooden chairs. The other two chairs of the set of four were set up in what must have been the living room; they were pressed against the wall with a few cardboard boxes set up in front of them. The box in the middle of the room was labeled ‘Medical Textbooks’ and had a television remote on it, then the opposite side of the room had a few more boxes, the one in the middle held up a boxy TV that was covered in a fine layer of dust and the boxes next to it had a few small picture frames set up. One held a photo of what must have been a young Luz in a purple sweater grinning widely into the camera and leaning against a window sill, the other held a wedding photo of a tall man in a navy suit and a short, stout woman with curly hair in a beautiful white dress. They were smiling widely at each other and Amity couldn’t help but compare it to the large photo that her parents had of their wedding where they looked into the camera with neutral expressions as though it was the eighteen hundreds. Luz’s parents actually look happy, Amity noted but she didn't have time to dwell on it before Luz had corralled her into a chair at the kitchen table.

Amity started by flipping through the pages of their tests like last time, comparing their answers and looking at the techniques that Luz used in the ones that Amity has made mistakes on. Luz had gotten a full one hundred and five and Amity had to wonder if she’d just not noticed that the last few questions were extra credit like last time or if she’d actually meant to do them.

While Amity was looking over the papers, Luz had gone to her room to grab whatever project she’d brought home to work on. She never seems to stop working, Amity thought. After a few minutes, Amity finished going over the two exams and her gaze wandered to some of the other papers scattered over the kitchen table. For a moment she thought about what her mother would say about the stack of coupons clipped to a rather short grocery list. ‘If someone can’t afford something without a coupon then they don’t deserve it in the first place.’ Amity had never really thought about that statement before, but at the moment the phrase she’d heard from her mother often didn’t give her a good feeling in her stomach.

She shook her head and glanced at the other stack of papers sitting on the table. A small smile came over her face as she realised that they were magazine clippings for different formal wear options from different outlet stores. There were sticky notes on some of them with messages that, at first, Amity thought she couldn’t read because of bad handwriting, but at a second glance she realized that it was because the notes were written in Spanish.

“Have you finished with the tests yet?” Luz asked as she returned to the kitchen. She held a laptop that had been half taken apart in one hand and a rusty, old toolbox in the other.

“Yeah.” Amity said, glancing up as Luz put her stuff down. “Your strategy for number fourteen was interesting though,” Amity pointed to one of the questions that Luz had gotten wrong, “how did you know to tie in the first equation?”

Luz sat down next to her and leaned in closer to get a better look at the papers. Amity suddenly became aware that she could smell her shampoo. Couldn’t place the scent but that didn’t change the fact that it was nice. “Oh yeah, that one was interesting.” Luz pulled out a scrap of paper and started to break down the equation. “So, if you look closely, the information given doesn’t match the equation that we need to find the answer that they’re looking for. But these two here can be plugged into this other equation from the beginning…”

Amity listened to Luz talk, explaining the problem to her calmly and expertly without talking down to her like others might have. Just like Lazura. For what must have been the millionth time in the past few weeks, Amity wondered how she didn’t realize that they were the same person sooner.

The two of them continued in silence for a while after that. Luz climbed onto a counter to get the tin of hot cocoa mix from a high shelf and Amity texted her siblings the address so that they’d know where to pick her up later. It was going to take them a little longer to get across town from the college they attend, but sitting in Luz’s kitchen, drinking hot cocoa as Luz stuck her tongue out in focus while she examined a piece of the computer’s hardware, Amity couldn’t bring herself to mind.

As Amity finished up the last of her math homework for the night and started putting her books away, she finally managed to work up the courage to take a small risk. “So are you planning on going to the dance?”

Luz glanced up from the computer’s parts to see Amity holding up some of the magazine clippings she’d noticed earlier. “Oh, yeah I am.” There was a small smile on Luz’s face as she took a picture of a suit jacket from Amity’s hands and looked at it herself. “My mom’s been helping me try to figure out what to wear, I haven’t really gotten any new dress clothes since my growth spurt so I’ve been doing some extra commissions for Eda to try to pull together some extra funds for it.” She gestured to the computer in front of her.

Amity felt a small pang in her chest, she knew that Lazura had needed to work more lately and often chatted with them online while working on what Amity was able to deduce were commissions even though Lazura never let anything slip about her job. It cut into their ability to do missions in the game since Lazura was usually the one keeping the rest of them from dying immediately but of course they all understood. It was nice just having her there to talk to anyway. Though, up until that point Amity didn’t know that the reason she was missing out on the game so much was because of the dance. She just hoped that it would be worth it when Luz figured out that it was her. Amity felt her smile grow just a little bit. It would be worth it, she was sure of that much.