Boiling Isles RPG

Luz’s POV

Luz poked her tongue out from between her teeth as she struggled to steady the lamp on her desk. She was trying to best illuminate the pieces of the laptop that she had strategically taken apart after getting home from the hospital the day before. Even if the cast around her hand was inconvenient, she was grateful that she’d only busted her wrist so her fingers were still usable. Luz’s mother had taken her to the hospital immediately after the meeting with Vice Principal Clawthorn where Luz was able to actually get properly treated and bandaged instead of the patchwork that the school nurse was able to get done before their parents had shown up. Thankfully, since her mom worked at the hospital, they were able to get whatever wasn’t covered by their insurance waived so they didn’t need to pay anything out of pocket and Luz finally got to meet some of the coworkers her mom had occasionally mentioned during their dinner conversations.

For the most part, Luz had a few scrapes and bruises, the worst of the damage though was the scrape on the left side and her wrist. The scrape had been quite a bit worse than she’d initially thought, a pretty large patch of skin had been roughed up and one of her mom’s coworkers had put some antibacterial cream over it before properly wrapping it. Then, after the open wounds had been taken care of, Luz had been ushered into an x-ray machine where it had been revealed that she’d broken her wrist. The doctor had actually said that the initial impact of her falling off of her bike had likely only fractured it, but apparently when Luz had used that hand to throw a few punches afterwards, it had aggravated the bone until it ended up with a worse break.

Throughout the entirety of the appointment, her mom had kind of been in business mode. She hadn’t said as much, but Camilia had made it clear that she was only interested in discussing Luz’s injuries and what needed to be done for her to get better, not the events leading up to how she got them.

Luz picked at the bright purple cast on her hand. She could see the bruises on her knuckles peeking beyond the cotton padding. Luz was still having trouble wrapping her head around what had happened. She’d been angry, more angry than she’d ever been; and in a way, releasing her anger had felt good.

Luz pierced her lips at the thought. She knew she should probably feel bad that it had felt good, she should be ashamed, scared, worried that it might lead down a worse path where she just started beating up all of her problems. Instead though, she just felt calm. Not numb, not uncaring. Just calm. Like the tension that had been building since she’d promised herself she wouldn’t fight back, had finally been released. Yeah, she hurt a bit, yes she’d gotten a week’s suspension, but so did Boscha; and Skara and Emily had each gotten three days.

Her mom hadn’t really said anything during the meeting with Vice Principal Clawthorn, or during dinner the night before, and Luz was a little worried about what was going through the woman’s head. Was she upset, concerned, taking time to formulate the most effective punishment possible? Luz was a little scared to find out, and frankly, she didn’t really want to think about it too hard.

Luz picked up a piece of her computer, thankfully it hadn’t been as damaged as she thought it was going to be. The frame was pretty badly cracked, the screen had been shattered, and she could imagine that the battery was never going to work properly again, but at the end of the day it could have been worse. She’d mostly been worried about water damage and issues with the software, but her memory card was safe and she’d made the habit long ago of using online saving mechanisms to avoid losing anything in situations like this. Luz had dried off what she could the night before and stuck the rest in rice but looking at what was there now, she knew that quite a bit of the hardware would need to be scrapped, and though the essential things looked fine, she’d need to get another computer before she could actually tell if her software had survived.

All in all, this sucked but not as badly as it could have.

They’d been staying on top of their bills pretty decently lately too. Luz had pretty much been splitting her time between school, her game development, and work exclusively so she’d been doing commissions like no one’s business. She looked over to the pile of junk sitting in the corner of her bedroom, waiting to be fixed and brought back to Eda’s shop, then she glanced at the clock. Still a few hours until her mom came back home and for once she didn’t really feel like fixing something, her computer parts were taking up too much space on her desk anyway and Eda was out of town visiting some old flame from her high school. Luz smirked when she thought back to Eda’s voice when she’d explained over the phone why Luz suddenly had a few days off and just needed to walk and feed King until Tuesday since she had a key.

Luz sighed and leaned back in her chair. She’d already made dinner, did the work she’d been assigned for that day of her suspension, and she had no computer to watch youtube on. Really she just wanted to do something that would make her mom not be mad at her anymore. Or at least less so. What would that be though? Luz already cooked and did most of the cleaning. Well… she guessed she couldn’t remember the last time she did a deep clean of the bathroom.

Groaning, Luz stretched before trudging over to the closet with their cleaning supplies. Anything to make herself look like the perfect, responsible daughter her mother wanted her to be, right?

Their cleaning supplies weren't exactly brand name but that didn’t stop them from being able to do their job. She started with the sink, getting the smears of toothpaste out of the bowl, then moved onto the tub, then the toilet. It sucked but she did it anyway, Working slowly and diligently to make sure not a single spot went unscrubbed. Then she moved everything off of the floor so that she could mop. This was always her least favorite part because it meant trying to maneuver the bulky mop head around all the weird nooks and crannies of the bathroom but in the end she managed just fine.

It was only when she finally managed to squeeze the mop around the back of the toilet that she heard it. The soft scraping of something being pushed against the tile. Luz pierced her lips, she could ignore it, pretend she didn’t hear and finally be done with the cleaning; but instead she sighed and knelt down. She had to twist her arm at a weird angle in order to squeeze her cast around the pipe, but eventually her fingers wrapped around a strange circular object.

Frowning, Luz pulled her hand back only to blink as she realized what it was. Slowly, she shifted her weight until she was sitting with her back against the tub, rotating the light sigil pin around in her hands. She’d all but yanked it off the night of the dance before running the jacket under the sink but everything after the incident had blurred together so much that she had completely forgotten about it.

Luz furrowed her eyebrows as she examined the pin. Wire she’d stripped from what she’d had lying around, carefully coiled into the precise shape of their party’s sigil. It had taken her hours that she really didn’t have of working and reworking all in an attempt to impress Witchling.

Amity.

She’d wanted to impress Amity.

Luz had seen her after leaving the vice principal’s office. Amity had been standing alone in the foyer and they’d made eye contact. She hadn’t processed it until just now but… she hadn’t felt sick or hurt, it was just looking at someone that she knew.

Her thumb brushed against the ridges of the pin. She’d known for a long time that her emotions had been misplaced but for once they weren’t overwhelming her while thinking about these things. The dance, Boscha, Willow and Gus… and Amity.

“Luz?”

Her mother stood in the bathroom doorway, looking tired and stressed like usual but let out a breath of what seemed a little like relief as Luz looked up at her. Then she seemed to register what Luz was holding in her hands. Slowly the older woman walked over to the tub and, with the groan of someone who had been standing for far too long, sat down beside her on the ground.

When she spoke, the words that came out didn’t sound angry or disappointed. Just tired.

“I think we need to have a talk, Mija.”

Luz’s gaze returned to the sigil in her hands. “I’m sorry I got in trouble, Mami.” She ran the pad of her thumb over the wires, “I didn’t mean for it to happen, I just…” A sigh passed her lips as she slumped forward.

Camilia reached out and moved a strand of hair that had fallen in front of Luz’s face. “You’re very lucky the punishment wasn’t worse, Carino. You’ve never done anything like that before, what happened?”

A frown grew on Luz’s face. “I… I don’t know. I just… got so mad.” Images flashed in front of her eyes, her laptop broken, the gum in her hair, the shaving cream in her locker, her fingers turning blue as she tried to scrub the blood out of her jacket. Luz felt a pain in her fingers and had to relax herself as she’d begun gripping the pin too tightly. “It’s just been so bad for so long, Mami,” her lip started to quiver and she felt tears prickle in the corners of her eyes. She thought she was okay earlier, calm, okay with everything that had happened, clearly she’d been wrong. She curled in on herself, trying to make herself as small as possible. She still didn’t feel guilty about fighting but she did feel bad.

She felt her mother’s hand on her back. “Mija… Luz, I’m not mad. Talk to me… por favor?”

“I just…” She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling the pin in one hand and her cast on the other rubbing against her head. “I tried, I tried for so long not to do anything or be anything, to not draw attention to myself because it’s always just so terrible!” The tears started running down her face. “Everytime we moved it was just more of the same bullying and nothing ever stopped any of it! It only ever meant you missing work and me becoming even more of a target and Boscha was just such a bitch and… I just snapped.” Luz sniffed, she wasn’t yelling anymore. “I just snapped.”

At some point during her rant, Camilia had shifted so that her arm had gone around her daughter’s shoulders in a hug and Luz leaned into it. A small part of her was just thankful that her mom didn’t break out la chancla when she swore.

“Lo siento, Luz.” Her mother spoke softly and Luz felt a pair of lips press against the top of her head. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, I’m sorry I didn’t help you as much as I should have when… or saw the signs… I’m sorry for everything Luz. You didn’t deserve any of this. Please know that none of this is your fault.”

Luz twisted to wrap her arms around her mother in a little proper hug. She knew she was leaving wet spots in her mom’s scrubs but neither of them cared.

They stayed like that for several minutes with Luz breathing shakily into her mom’s shoulder while Camilia gently ran a hand over her back.

After a small eternity, Luz finally pulled away and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I did punch Boscha in the face though.”

To Luz’s surprise her mom chuckled. Luz looked up to see a small smile on the woman’s face as she brushed the hair out of Luz’s eyes. “Don’t tell anyone I told you this because I will deny it, but, I have a feeling she deserved it.”