Boiling Isles RPG

Amity’s POV

Three days. It was three days before the dance.

Their party had made another pass at the red mountain today, they’d attempted it a few times and apparently it was something that Luz had tried to do on her own with no luck. Unfortunately, even with Lazura’s briefing beforehand along with her telling them exactly what to do during the fight, they still lost badly. It was the middle of the week so Willow and Gus got offline after that and Amity had stayed on for a bit talking with Luz over the discord chat about the dance and how excited they were to meet each other. Amity could tell from Luz’s voice that she was nervous and Amity could only hope that her own nervousness wasn’t coming across as she typed out her responses.

Amity had stayed on for as long as she could, but after a while she felt her eyes starting to droop and had to say goodnight.

As she closed her laptop, Amity reached for the pin she had on her desk. The symbol for the light cantrip that represented their party’s sigil seemed to glow in her hands. This was what she and Luz had agreed on so that they would be able to recognize each other. She’d designed it using a 3-D modeling program she’d found online and blackmailed the twins into using the 3-D printer in Emira’s art class to make it. Amity’s siblings had been a bit confused as to why she was using up what little blackmail she had on such a seemingly insignificant thing, but they were happy to see her delete the video of what really happened to their father’s favorite model boat last summer. She was never actually going to show their parents of course but it was more about homeostasis as the twins have dirt on her too, not that they ever intend to use that either.

Amity ran her thumb over the rim of the symbol, feeling the near unnoticeable roughness that was a result of the printer not being able to make perfect curves. It felt so light in her hands. A small smile was on her face as she finally rose from her desk chair and slipped under the covers of her bed. The pin remained in her hand even as she slipped into unconsciousness. Only three more days.

Luz’s POV

Three days.

Luz felt tears welling up in her eyes but refused to let them fall.

There were only three days until the dance and… she didn’t make it. She’d saved every spare penny, worked day and night on fixing Eda’s junk, but even with the older woman’s skills, she could only sell her stuff so quickly.

She and her mom had quickly determined that the most affordable option would be a suit because a lot of the individual parts of it could be bought more cheaply from separate stores. She’d gotten a comfortable white button down shirt and a pair of black dress pants that weren’t worn thin like all of her jeans, but the expensive thing was going to be the suit jacket. In the back of her mind, Luz had known in the beginning of the week that she wasn’t going to make it. Eda’s big selling days were the weekends and she’d given Luz what she was owed for what she had managed to sell. Luz probably could have asked for an advance on her next week’s paycheck but she wasn’t about to beg for something that she hadn’t earned yet, and besides, they would need that money for next week.

Then today, Luz found another collection notice in their mailbox. Another rate had gone up. Luz’s mom had told her not to worry about the bills this month and to put the money towards the dance and she’d been taking a few extra shifts at the hospital to make up the difference. Looking at the notice, Luz could already tell that it wasn’t going to be enough. She wasn’t going to be able to afford the jacket anyway, so before her mom could get home and tell her not to, Luz paid the bill. After all, she thought with a shuddering laugh, what’s the difference if she was gonna be short anyway?

Luz sat in her desk chair with her knees tucked up against her chest. In her hand, she gripped the pin she had painstakingly made by twisting stripped wire into the shape of her party’s sigil. She’d been so close too.

Over the past few months, she’d revealed to Salix and Caesar that she went to the same school as them and they’d seemed really excited to meet just as Witchling had been. A few days ago, Luz had asked Caesar about the dress code, hoping that he’d say they were pretty lenient, but of course that wasn’t the case. She was already going to be pushing her luck by wearing her converse even if she’d switched out the duct tape for a matching shade of purple. No, if she wanted to go she’d need a suit jacket. One that she wasn’t going to get.

Luz hiccupped as she tried to keep her breathing steady. It wasn’t working. Maybe she could convince Witchling to meet her at a restaurant instead, but after all the trouble they went through to plan this it wouldn’t be fair to her. Luz grit her teeth and pressed her knuckles into the space between her eyes, trying to use the small bit of pain as a distraction but it wasn’t working. Why did she have to be such a disappointment?

“Luz?”

Luz snapped upright, her gaze shooting to the door of her bedroom. Her mom stood in the doorway, her hand still on the doorknob. How long had she been there, Luz hadn’t heard her car coming up the driveway, she was supposed to be coming home late tonight again, what time was it?

“Mami,” Luz said as cheerfully as she could manage, her voice cracking in the process. She quickly turned around and tried not to make it obvious that she was wiping at her eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you knock.” She picked up her alarm clock to look like she was doing something, it was 3:45 in the morning.

“Mija, what’s wrong?” Luz winced at the concern in her mother’s voice.

“Nothing! Nothing’s wrong Mami, I just-” Luz’s voice failed as she felt a hand on her shoulder gently turning her to face the older woman. She looked tired, Luz thought as her mother brushed away the tears that had managed to escape with the pad of her thumb. Tired and worried.

Her mother was kneeling in front of her now, as though she were consoling a crying child by going down to their height so as not to scare them further. Slowly, her mother brought her hands up to cup the sides of Luz’s face. “Luz, what’s going on?” Her hands were soft and warm despite the callouses from decades of hard word and the chill of winter air.

Luz thought about lying. She could tell her mom she did poorly on a test which wouldn’t matter because she wouldn’t be able to afford college anyway. Then she could hide her lack of a suit jacket under her sweatshirt when she rides her bike to the dance before hiding in the bushes for two hours. Her mom might believe it. Or she might choose to believe it because there was nothing they could do about it now anyway.

Luz opened her mouth, a bad geography grade on the tip of her tongue… but she couldn’t lie. Not about something that her mom cared so much about, something that they both had cared so much about. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I can’t go Mami.” Her voice came out choked. “I couldn’t save enough for the jacket, and the dress code…” she sniffed. “I can’t go.”

Her eyes were squeezed tight, she couldn’t bear to look her mother in the eye. The silence between them lasted for so long that if it weren’t for the hands pressed comfortingly against the sides of her jaw, Luz would have thought that her mother had left.

“Do you still have the other clothes you bought?” Her mother’s voice was so soft.

Luz swallowed again, then gave a nod that felt more like a shiver. “They still have the tags on so I’ll return them tomorrow-”

“Put them on.” her voice was so calm.

Luz opened her eyes to see her mother looking at her with an expression of comfort. She redirected her gaze to avoid looking her in the eye. “Mom, it’s okay, it probably wouldn’t have been that great any-”

“Mija, put them on okay?” Her mother stood up, letting her hands linger on Luz’s head before finally dropping them to her sides. “I’ll be right back.”

Luz watched from her seat as her mom walked out of the room with a sense of purpose in her stride. She had no idea what was going through her mom’s head but the woman had sounded so sure about whatever it was. Slowly, Luz forced herself to her feet, hearing her joints crack as she relieved them from the position she’d been in for way too long. She made her way over to her closet and, careful not to disturb the tags, started to pull on the articles of clothing. Black dress pants and a white button down shirt. They were stiff and a little itchy but that was because they were new and meant to look nice rather than be practical. She couldn’t tie the tie without a youtube video so she just stuck it under the collar of her shirt. There was no mirror in her room but Luz had an intuitive sense that she probably looked like a circus monkey dressed up in a costume. That was what she felt like anyway.

All too soon, there was a knock at the door. Luz didn’t have it in her to speak and tell her mom to come in so instead she padded across the hardwood floor in her socks full of holes and opened the door herself. Her mother had a flat white box in her hands and patiently waited for Luz to step aside and allow her entry before she stepped inside.

After setting the box down gently on the bed, Luz’s mom stood in front of her and took the ends of the tie in her hands. Luz watched as her mom tied a simple knot with practiced ease then reached down and opened the box on the bed.

For a moment, Luz could only blink as her mother held up the content. “Mami, I can’t-”

“Just try it on okay?” Her mother smiled softly as she held out a navy blue suit jacket, the same one that her father had worn in the wedding photo in the living room. There weren’t a lot of pictures of him around the house as the memories were too painful for her mom, but she just hadn’t been able to bring herself to pack away that one photo. Luz couldn’t count the number of hours she’d spent staring at that specific picture, memorizing every detail because there was nothing else to do while her mom was at work and she’d been too little to shovel driveways or rake leaves for extra money.

Hesitantly, Luz placed her hands on the jacket and slid it over her shoulders.

“The sleeves are a little long,” her mother noted, buttoning the front and brushing some of the dust off of the shoulders. It smelled a bit musty, likely from being in a box for so long, but also faintly of cologne. Luz held still as her mother rolled up the sleeves until they were the right length then pulled a few bobby pins out of her hair to pin them in place. Gently, she straightened Luz’s tie again and led her out of the room as though she were a small child, into the bathroom and in front of the mirror.

Luz didn’t want to look, she knew her eyes were going to be red and swollen, that her face was fixed into a ‘no I wasn’t crying’ expression, that this suit was made for the wedding of a man who was on his way to accomplishing everything he’d set out to do in life and that she wasn’t worthy enough to wear it.

“Mija.” The voice was so gentle. Luz felt a warm hand place itself at her back reassuringly. “Por favor mira.” It felt like an eternity, but slowly, Luz brought her eyes up to the mirror.

It was… Luz blinked and for a second all she could do was stare, then… she stood up straight, adjusted the jacket so it wasn’t hanging crooked from her slouching, and set her jaw in an expression that didn’t radiate the definition of ‘pathetic’. Because… she didn’t look pathetic. Not once in her life had Luz even had clothes that really fit her, they would buy them a few sizes too big from discount stores and Luz would wear them until they were either too small or falling apart at the seams. Even now that she’d finished growing, most of what she wore on a daily basis hung awkwardly on her. But this… this fit. It wasn’t professionally tailored or anything but she probably wouldn’t need a belt to keep her pants from falling down, her shirt wasn’t so tight that it looked like it was strangling her, and the jacket…

“We all knew you didn’t get your height from me,” her mother said with a soft chuckle as she reached up to fix a strand of Luz’s hair. “What do you think?”

What did she think? Luz took a breath. She thought she looked… good. Not just good. Better than good. “Are… are you sure Mami?”

Her mother smiled up at her in the reflection of the mirror. “I’ll take it to the dry cleaners tomorrow, then pick it up the next day in time for the dance. You can go back to the store and exchange the pants for a color that matches.” She picked some of the lint off of the jacket, it hadn’t been properly cleaned since it had been put into storage. “Luz, you deserve to have a good night and I trust you more than you can know.” Her fingers lingered on the sleeve of the jacket. “Just please be careful, okay?”

Luz felt a small smile growing on her face. Without hesitation, she leaned down and hugged her mother as tightly as she could. “Gracias, Mami. I will.”