Fear for the Inevitable
Luz’s POV
The days slipped into weeks which slipped into months. The ground was finally thawing out after a long winter, but Luz could hardly tell that it was supposed to be spring as the rain coming down in sheets chilled her to the bone anyway. For the last few weeks, the days were starting to get long enough that she was no longer biking to school by street lamb but this was the kind of weather that made the sky dark all day long and made it especially difficult to wake up in the morning. Really, the day’s only saving grace was that it was a Wednesday which meant that she didn’t have to interact with a certain green haired girl that afternoon.
As per their agreement, every Tuesday and Thursday, Amity would wait by Luz’s bike and would respectfully receive the handful of papers without saying a word. Every now and again, Amity attempted to break the silence and Luz would feel all of the blood rush out of her face until she could race off to sort herself out somewhere where no one else could see. The first time Amity had approached her, Luz had actually ended up throwing up in some bushes halfway to Eda’s, but thankfully any time since then she’d only gotten nauseous to the point of needing to sit down for a minute after the coast was clear of Amity.
Unfortunately, Luz was also getting a similarly sickening reaction from hearing Willow or Gus speak. After a bit of thought, she’d tried to talk to them as Amity had asked of her, but the second she’d heard their voices it was like everything just came rushing back to her and she’d just walked away before they could see her. Yes, in her head she knew that this wasn’t really their fault. Luz had gone over it a million times and could see that, had Boscha not decided to be a complete and utter bitch that night, everything probably would have been fine, they might have even laughed about Amity being nervous and it could have ended up being a nice moment to talk about.
But Boscha was a bitch, and Luz got hurt, and Amity, Willow, and Gus were there and had been lying to her and now Luz felt like this and couldn’t help it.
It was kind of like when Luz had gotten sick after eating sushi the one time her mom had found it cheap enough to buy as a treat. If Luz or her mom had been any more experienced in raw supermarket fish, they probably would have known that buying sushi that cheap probably wasn’t going to go well, but they’d eaten it anyway and had both gotten massively sick from it. Luz hasn’t been able to even look at sushi since then without feeling her stomach curdle.
Thoughts of sushi and green haired girls aside, despite having trouble waking up that morning, Luz was still the first person in the classroom. Normally, on days like this she’d attempt to get a few more minutes of sleep at her desk before everyone else got in, but the rain had truly done wonders to get the sleep out of her system.
Trying to focus on anything but the way her socks squished as she shifted in her seat, Luz waved her hands dry and grabbed her sketchbook from her backpack. Over the course of the last few months she’d nearly filled it to completion with sketches and notes and bits of code that she’d managed to figure out during the school day after being stuck on it while at home.
Luz could hardly believe what she had accomplished with her project in such little time. She’d specifically designed the level to be as complicated as she could make it in order to stretch it out for as long as she could. Secret areas, spaces where one wouldn’t think there would be spaces and areas with so many moving parts she had spent days working through them in order to make sure that it would work without a hitch. Different routes to take, different weapons to use, she even got Eda to record some voice over work for some of the characters. Then, once she was done with that, Luz had asked to borrow a drawing tablet and stylus from the school’s art department so that she could properly reskin everything, giving the previously completely medieval world style a more steampunk aesthetic that’s heavily hinted at in the artificer missions from last year.
At this point she’d run through her project dozens of times and was at the stage of trying to break it in order to make sure that all of the bugs have been weeded out and, the last few times she wasn’t really able to find anything.
It was almost bitter sweet for her. Luz was proud of herself for nearly being done, with only the need for a few more perfect test runs before she could deem it perfect, but at the same time this was it. Once she hit submit, it would largely be over. Luz had really bet that this would have taken her a lot longer, or at least that she would have had another idea for what to do afterwards, but after months of grinding like it was her job, she had nothing.
The classroom door opened, snapping Luz from her thoughts, but she just kept her eyes on her notebook as Mr. Bump and the other students filed in. She could feel the glances that Amity and Willow shot her way as they went to their seats but, thankfully, they didn’t try to interact with her.
Then, like a disturbance in the force, Luz heard it. The rhythmic pounding of a pair of boots that Luz had had the displeasure of being kicked with on more than one occasion echoed through the room as Boscha stepped through the door and Luz immediately felt as though the wind had gotten knocked out of her without even being touched. As bad as she felt around Amity, Willow, and Gus; Boscha was always much worse. A swell of panic rose in her chest just as it had every time the red head blipped across her radar and it took everything in her to remain as still as possible, as though the soccer player were a T-rex she was trying not to be noticed by.
Luz tried and failed to swallow the lump in her throat as Boscha walked by. A shiver ran down her spine as she felt the girl’s ice cold gaze rake over her, but to Luz’s relief, that was all Boscha did as she took her usual seat behind Luz.
The bell range and Mr. Bump turned to face the class after he finished scribbling out a practice problem on the board. “Ms. Noceda, I believe that we’ve spoken about wearing hoods while in class.”
“Right, sorry.” Luz mumbled as she lowered her hood down.
Then she heard it. The drip.
It was as thought Luz’s entire world came to a screaching hault as she realized her mistake. The one she had now made for the second time that school year. Luz grit her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut as she heard Boscha scrape the droplets of water off of her desk and could feel the air turn to ice as the other girl burned a hole in the back of Luz’s skull with her eyes.
Luz had always considered herself able to learn from her mistakes, not walking down the same ally she’d gotten mugged on once, not taking food to school after it had been stollen, not pissing off a person after they’d already shoved her into a locker. Yet here she was, repeating history worse than the people who kept trying to invade Russia during winter. At the very least, she knew that Boscha wouldn’t try anything during class, but Luz wasn’t sure how long it would take for Boscha to deliver whatever punishment she intended for her.
Her mind circled like a vulture over its meal until the bell rang for the end of the period after a seemingly impossibly short amount of time. Luz didn’t hesitate before jumping to her feet and sprinting out of the door, not trying to tell if Boscha was following her or not. She sprinted all of the way to the other side of the school just to make sure she was safe before bursting through a bathroom that was thankfully empty so early in the morning and locking herself inside one of the stalls.
For a solid minute, the only sound throughout the bathroom was her heart beating in her ears. Luz still wasn’t sure if Boscha had followed her or even seen where she was going but it was only after the bell for the next period souned off that Luz allowed herself to take a full breath of air.
It was another few seconds before Luz allowed her muscles to unclench and for her to let herself put her feet back on the ground as she’d had them up on the toilet seat beforehand. And another several more minutes were spent calming herself down enough to think straight until she finally stopped shaking long enough for Luz to set her jaw and slip her laptop out of her backpack.
The school’s wifi was slow but at this point, getting to class on time was the least of her concerns. She logged onto the private server and copied the file for the playable version of the mission she had spent so long working on, then she opened up the online chatroom where she had previously shared The Artificer's Staff, and before she could talk herself out of it, pasted and hit submit.
Luz released another shuddering breath as the file uploaded and honestly, it was almost disappointing how anticlimactic it looked just sitting there on the web page. She closed her laptop and tucked it back inside her bag as she stepped outside of the stall. Sure she would have liked to do one or two more test runs, but who was she kidding, it had been ready for half a month, and she’d just been stalling. Her greatest project yet was ready and it was out there and if Luz died within the next twenty four hours in a freak accident that the police wouldn’t be able to trace back to Boscha, then at least she’d done something with her life that she was proud enough to share with someone else.
Luz let the bathroom door bang shut behind her as she headed to her next class.