Chapter 29: 29. Dances and Dragons

Tears bead in the corner of Barclay's bulging eyes. Laughter thunders out of his mouth between cheeks too red to be healthy. With his leg resting on a straight-back chair stolen from the waiting area, he slaps a hand against his thigh and speaks through the tears and laughter. "She dumped the whole bowl of spaghetti on her head! Looked like Medusa straight out of an Italian horror movie!"

Avery's cheeks flush with a fresh wave of warmth for the third time since Barclay's intrusion. "Stop it, Barclay!"

Sophia perches on the edge of her seat, sipping at her tea. A series of dark circles flow up the too-wide straw and disappear: tapioca pearls. She covers her mouth and chews. "I'd like to hear another story."

"Come on, that's not fair! I don't know any embarrassing stories about you as a kid and Barclay shouldn't even be here!"

Amid Avery's pleading, Barclay twiddles his mustache between his fingers. His eyes light up. "How about when I was a chaperone for Avery's class on a field trip down to Douglass? What was that, middle school?"

Avery slams her palms on the table and jumps to her feet with a scrape of her chair along the tile floor. "No! No, no, no. Definitely not. Stop!"

Another sip of tea and Sophia nods at the musclebound hero. "I'm listening."

Barclay pivots the back of his chair to face Sophia and he drops onto the seat, straddling the backrest — bold considering the cut of his tights. "So there was this lass that Avery had a crush on and she'd finally got the courage to talk to her... but only through me. Avery asked me to pass a note to her. I refused of course, but you should have seen —"

The hero next to Barclay — Scrypher — coughs from under her mask, imitation porcelain face unmoving and chrome helmet reflecting the group's faces. Her voice comes in a light, steady tone. Full of control, full of practice. Full of monotony. "Should we be deviating from patrol like this?"

All the pressure in Avery's chest disappears and cold rushes up her neck. Relief. Thank god: kid Avery story time is over. She falls back into her chair. "Who are you, by the way? I've never seen you in town."

Near imperceptible, Scrypher shifts her head toward Avery. "I'm not permitted to say."

Rude, but better than story time. Avery darts her eyes to Barclay. "Who is she?"

Barclay looks between the other three, then slaps a hand against his head. "Oh, I'm sorry. I got so lost in the stories that I forgot to introduce you all! This is Scrypher. She's a federally licensed hero that's shadowing me for a new initiative they're running at the FBH. They're trying to get their heroes acquainted with the people they protect on a more human level. It's probably easy to get lost in statistics when you're dealing with events on the scale they do, so I think it's a great idea! She'll be running patrols with me for a couple months before going back to— well I don't know where she's going back to, she won't tell me."

Another slight shift of chrome and porcelain. "As I told you at the start of this partnership: I'm not permitted to share that information."

Barclay bats a hand through the air as a physical dismissal of her reminder. "Yeah, national security and all that. I understand. As for your question: this type of interaction with locals is the key to building trust! And camaraderie!"

Scrypher unclenches a hand from behind her back and waves at the bustling cafe surrounding them. "What about the other people? You're not interacting with them like you are this young woman and her date. Won't that breed malcontent? Or even worse, rumors that you'll play favorites in an emergency?"

Warmth flushes Avery's face for a different reason this time. Young woman? Really? "You don't sound much older than me."

The porcelain doesn't change, doesn't shift. "I imagine that we're close in age. 'Young woman' just felt better to say in that sentence, so I said it."

Annoying. "Do you always talk to people like this?"

Scrypher shifts and something odd happens. Like a hiccup in time: a moment of silence and everything speeding up to fill the gap an instant later. "No. I don't usually talk to people outside of my duties. Do you always have pancakes for breakfast?"

Barclay pushes off his chair's backrest with a nervous laugh and a swipe of his hand down the back of his bald head. "We should get going, huh?" He nudges Scrypher toward the entrance. "Sorry for the intrusion, ladies. I'll say hi if I see you again Sophia! Wonderful meeting you!"

Panic, confusion, something. It makes Avery shift against her seat, her breath catch in her chest. All she can do is stare at the pair as they weave through the crowd and back out onto their patrol. What the hell. How did she know that dad cooked pancakes this morning?

The door and its threshold meet with screeching: screaming out against a backdrop of twisting, crackling wood as Barclay tugs at the brass handle.

Lisa raises her voice above the crowd, anger tinting her words with a vicious flair. "You've got to —"

Barclay interrupts her. "Lift up! Yes, sorry! We're on our way now, thanks for the hospitality Lisa!" He ushers Scrypher out in front of him and they're both gone with a click of the door's latch.

Sophia nods at the counter after a sip of tea, where two to-go cups sit. "They forgot their drinks."

Avery jumps at Sophia's voice, forgotten given how quiet she was toward the end of that conversation. Avery begins to lift out of her chair before she realizes what she's doing. "Should we run those out to them?"

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"Hell no. Scrypher freaks me out."

Guilt hits Avery with a shifting queasiness in her heart, but that last line from Scrypher plays back in her mind and she falls back down, firm against the seat of the chair. "Yeah. Me too."

Sophia sucks up the last of her tapioca pearls and talks through chews with a hand over her mouth. "She gives me some really bad vibes. Not surprising I guess, being a fed and all. Gross."

"What's wrong with feds?"

Sophia straightens up in her chair and gets closer, like she's about to share a secret. "You've read into the process for federal licensing, right? They filter candidates through some really weird tests. We're talking messed up on the level of all those federally sanctioned tests on the public. Combined."

A nervous laugh escapes Avery's mouth. "Oh, I'm sorry. I don't know too much about that stuff. I should really have taken more history courses..."

"They don't teach it in history class; that's how the feds like it." Sophia plonks her empty cup on the table and shakes her head. "I—I'm sorry, can we drop this? I know I brought it up, but I don't want to get too worked up. That whole interaction with them was draining already... Do you maybe want to go somewhere else? This place is a bit sour for me now."

She hates it. She hates you. You need to apologize.

Tendrils of compulsion wiggle in Avery's chest in a short burst of panic, of pressure. Bullshit. Sophia wouldn't want to go somewhere else with her if she felt that way. Would she? "Do you have a place in mind?"

"Sorry to put you on the spot, but no. Still new to the area and I don't have a clue what might be a fun spot. Is there a neat bar nearby or something?"

Another nervous chuckle. "About that— I haven't drank yet. I turned twenty-one a couple months ago, but with school wrapping up and getting a job for the first time and unpacking and... it's slipped my mind. I'd prefer my first time drinking wasn't on a first date."

"Oh, of—of course. Do you have any ideas?"

"Let me think..." Avery pauses, drumming her fingers in series against the the cushioned arm of her armchair. Inspiration strikes like lightening and her heart goes abuzz with energy. "Let's go dancing! I know a place that does swing dancing lessons for first timers and they're open today."

Sophia shifts her eyes past Avery. "I'm not sure I have the energy for that... Even then, I've never even been dancing and I can't keep a beat for the life of me. It's hard to parse out the music when everything is moving and everyone's being loud."

Unease settles on Avery, flipping her stomach: was that a for sure no? "If you're sure. But if you'd like to give it a shot I don't mind if you leave as soon as you want out. I've been before so I can lead and following is a piece of cake if you're with someone who's experienced."

You're pressuring her; you're taking a choice away from her. You're terrible. Apologize.

God, shut up. Avery clenches her hands into fists under the table.

Sophia shifts her eyes back to Avery, her face twisting into a pained expression full of guilt. "You wouldn't mind me skipping out in the middle of it? Or right away if I'm not feeling it?"

"Not even a little!"

"Well... I think I could try." Sophia exhales and her shoulders fall, her face relaxes. "Promise to keep this conversation in mind, though?"

Was Sophia holding her breath that whole time? Stop that, focus. "Yes! Yes, of course! Wouldn't dream of forgetting it." Avery pushes out her chair and slaps her hands onto her knees. "Shall we go, then?"

All the lights are out in Avery's house. Her parents are probably asleep, and she should be too if she wants her sleep schedule intact by Monday. She tiptoes over creaking wood floors, past the dining room, through the kitchen door, and slips a leftover pancake off a plate in the fridge. It's cold: less floppy than when they were fresh at breakfast time. Just how she likes a late night pancake. She finishes it in two bites, then sneaks back to her room.

No more cardboard boxes. They're all unpacked now and the room looks just like how it did when she was a kid. Her favorite stuffed animals sit in a line on the top of a dresser in the corner of her room, her laptop open at her tiny desk that she outgrew long ago, her overflowing closet with clothes that all look a little too similar to each other.

She collapses onto her bed, letting her mind wander through the precious memories of that night. Live swing music; the unending counting of steps; the two of them swirling atop the dance floor like they were floating, spinning maple seeds that refuse to separate on their way down from their tree. The genuine smile on Sophia's face. On her own face. Avery's stomach soars into her chest, floating about on the wings of butterflies.

And she falls asleep. That smile still there.

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