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"Damn!" a high-pitched voice says quite clearly, and water splashes up into Elicia's face.
When she rubs the sting of chlorine from her eyes, Katy is running up and down the fence line barking her excited bark. The culprit is easy for Elicia to spot: a bright green tennis ball bobbing in the water less than a meter in front of her. She picks it up.
"Katy, quiet," she calls and Katy obeys after a last short bark, lumbering to a halt to stare up at the fence with her golden tail wagging.
A head appears over the fence where Katy is staring, then a long leg, and then an entire girl tumbles over into Mama Winnie's back yard before Elicia can even say anything. Katy goes up to greet the girl the same way she does Elicia every summer, licking the palms of her hands and nuzzling into her rumpled tennis skirt. The girl laughs and scratches behind Katy's ears, her shiny black bob falling in a mess around her face.
Self-consciously Elicia paddles over to the side of the pool and hangs onto it, wondering if she should get out.
"Oh!" the girl says when she looks toward the pool and sees Elicia. Her eyes go to Elicia's hand and the water-logged ball in it. "Who are you?"
"Elicia Hughes," Elicia says automatically, taken aback, before she remembers she's supposed to be here and this tennis ball isn't. "Is this yours?"
"Yes!" the girl says. "Thanks! My serve gets overenthusiastic and I'm out of practice. Go away, Katy." She pats Katy gently away from her and comes trotting over to the poolside where she crouches down by Elicia, grinning, strands of hair sticking to her brown face that's shiny with sweat. "You're Mrs. Hughes' granddaughter?"
"Yes," Elicia says and tries not to goggle in fascination. Even sweaty and breathing hard, tie askew and one white stocking fallen halfway down her leg, this girl looks like she could have stepped out of a summer edition of The Allure. "Who are you? "
"Josie." The girl sticks out a hand. "Josie Zeroual. Nice to meet you."
Every year since Elicia was nine and her mother trusted her to travel down the South line alone she's spent the longest part of her summer holidays with Mama Winnie and Katy here in the big house in Fios. In those five years she has never seen a single person in this neighborhood under the age of fifty. She stares at Josie while she shakes her hand.
"Did you just get back from Aerugo?" Josie is saying. After her moment of surprise she seems perfectly comfortable with the whole situation. Elicia is still gaping. "I hit about a million balls over here last week. Katy likes to chase them when they don't go in the pool, so I was using it for her play time after walks. I can serve them toward the back, it's just that they go in the creek and there's the worst poison ivy in there. I can't serve that way" — she jerks a thumb back toward the fence — "because General Vought will have a cow. I hit a ball into his yard once and he called to yell at my dad. Mrs. Hughes is much nicer. Do you play?"
"I don't," Elicia says. She feels her mouth twitch into a smile to match Josie's. Somehow with the way Josie asks, the whirlwind of questions feels like a hug, or splashing down into a pool. The eagerness soaks into her like water. "I swim for school, but I am so uncoordinated on land. I wish I played just for the uniform. Your outfit is the bee's knees."
"Thank you!" Josie tugs up her descending stocking. "You're probably better at swimming than I am at tennis. I've never properly played. I just grab my racket and start whacking these things around, clearly. Here, I'll take it and stop bothering you, Elicia Hughes."
Josie holds out her hand. Elicia stares at it for a full second before remembering. Her face gets hot. She passes the dripping ball over hastily. "It's not a bother," she says. "Really. I didn't know anyone my — our age lived here."
"Well, I didn't for a long time, until last fall." Josie heads for the fence and ruffles Katy's ears, then vaults up in a single fluid motion. "It's nice to be back. Nice to meet you, too. See you around?"
"Sure," Elicia says, dazed. "Nice to meet you."
Josie drops out of sight with a wave.
"No, young Mr. Zeroual always owned that house," Mama Winnie tells Elicia over tea that afternoon when Elicia asks. Tea in the afternoon is a distinct Mama Winnie tradition, like apple pie in fall is for Mom. Like clockwork, she'll wrap up her pastel work or her letter-writing and call Elicia in from the pool and they'll sit together in the breakfast room and have tea. "He built it for the family. Of course you would remember it being vacant. When you were ten you called it a ghost house."
Elicia remembers that — something about the way the huge mansion loomed silent and dark in the dusk had captivated her on their evening walks with Katy. She used to make Mama Winnie walk on the other side of the road when they were going to pass it. But… "You always said nobody lived there after the war," Elicia says, fascinated. "I thought the owners were dead. Where were they?"
"Well, old Mr. Zeroual immigrated from Imazi and built the family business off Cretan wine imports, which young Mr. Zeroual took over, so of course after the Fuhrer" — Mama Winnie always means the old President, Bradley, when she says it with that tone in her voice — "closed the western borders in the war, there was nothing to be done with that. And poor Mrs. Zeroual with her two sweet sisters living upstairs ever since the civil war, none of them able to get a job or go outside without a scare, so there was nothing to be done with that , and the four of them and little Josephine moved all the way back to Imazi to be with old Mr. Zeroual's family. And would you believe that they've only just now come back! It was a disgrace. Absolutely disgusting." Mama Winnie takes a prim sip of her tea and shakes her head. "All I can say is, I wish them well."
"Oh," says Elicia, digesting the story. "Are they going to stay?"
"Young Mr. Zeroual said they intend to, and I certainly hope so. Katy gets lonely without you around and Josephine takes such good care of her when I'm at the gallery shows. I told you Josephine was watching her while we were at the beach, you didn't ask about that."
"I thought you meant your friend Josephine." The artist Josephine is one of the most impressive members of Mama Winnie's regular circle, a rake-thin old woman with her hair buzzed close to the scalp who wears her paint-stained carpenter boots everywhere. She owns about thirty cats by Elicia's last estimation, so it had been surprising to hear she was taking care of Katy, but Elicia learned long ago to take Mama Winnie's people in stride.
"Oh, my god, Josephine Parish?" Mama Winnie lets out one of her surprise hoots of laughter, her fingers still curled daintily around the teacup resting midair. "With Katy? Don't make me laugh. No, Josephine Zeroual is a sweet girl. The poor thing is lonely with her mother and father in and out of the house all the time and nobody but this old coot around to talk to." Mama Winnie taps herself on the chest and chuckles. "I told her she would like you." So make sure she does, her raised eyebrows say.
"She's nice," Elicia says. Privately she worries that Mama Winnie has over-exaggerated her qualities to the fence-hopping fashion model she met earlier today, but she'll do what she can.
"Well, I'm glad we're in agreement." Mama Winnie knocks back the rest of her tea in the politest gulp Elicia has ever seen. "Don't get me talking politics again, Elicia, you know it gets me all worked up. You show that girl a good time."
The doorbell rings next morning while Elicia is washing the breakfast dishes.
"It's for you!" Mama Winnie calls from the front hall over Katy's barking.
Elicia puts the plate and bowl up on the drying rack and hurries to the front door, hands still dripping wet. She gives them a few quick shakes and pushes gently past Katy to see Josie Zeroual standing at the door with a shiny blue bicycle leaned up against her legs.
"Hi Elicia! Sara kicked me out so she could study," Josie says, flashing that bright smile. "I told her if she was going to be that way I was going to the soda parlor for an egg cream, and she couldn't have any. Want to come along?"
Even after the conversation with Mama Winnie yesterday a part of Elicia remembered Josie as a vision or a mirage, like some kind of forest spirit from the fairy tales her mother used to read her, who appear briefly then dart out of your life without evidence of ever having existed. But Josie is here in the flesh, her wind-tossed bob loose around her face, collared shirt and bloomers even more perfectly in order than her tennis outfit was yesterday.
"Do you have a bike? Want to hop on the back here?" Josie pats the second seat on her bicycle, not noticing or else not caring about Elicia's dazed state.
"Yes —- no — thanks, I mean, I do have one." Elicia thanks her lucky stars for Mama Winnie's birthday present last year, an adult bicycle with beautiful red and white framework, tall enough for fourteen-year-old legs. There's no room to stow it in the apartment in Central and she's close enough to school to walk, so she's always kept it here in Fios. "Just a minute, let me go get it."
At this time on any other morning Elicia would be reading or swimming or walking Katy, or maybe trying chalk pastels again with Mama Winnie in the studio. There's something surreal about pedaling out of her grandmother's neighborhood at breakneck speed instead, racing a strange, pretty girl down the road into town. The warm breeze whips her braids out behind her and the sunlight streams down onto her face in streaks through the young green leaves overhead. Elicia could burst from happiness.
They park their bicycles side by side in front of Griggs' Pharmacy. When they get into the shade of the indoors Elicia breathes a sigh of relief at the cool air striking her face.
"This place is my favorite," she says over her shoulder to Josie, coming in behind her. "I know you said you wanted an egg cream but their malts are out of this world."
"I didn't know!" Josie laughs a little and runs a hand through her perpetually disheveled short hair. "I haven't been here yet. I took a wild guess… you'll have to tell me what's good. Amma and Dad always take me into South when they want to go out, and Sara won't come with me because she's too busy with school, and I knew I would look like a goof coming here on my own. So thanks!"
"No problem." Elicia is certain Josie wouldn't look like a goof anywhere, on her own or otherwise.
Because life never gives Elicia a break, George Griggs is working the soda counter that morning, his eyes as sparkly and blue as ever. He has a new haircut this summer, soft and longer than before so that his auburn side bangs fall into his eyes under his soda jerk's cap. "Elicia Hughes!" he says. "Welcome back, kiddo! How was the beach?"
"Nice, thanks." Elicia straightens up and makes perfect eye contact. Speaking of looking like a goof! She pushes one braid behind her ear, feeling juvenile with her pigtails next to Josie's gorgeous bob. "How's school?"
"Tough," George says, and pulls an adorable face. Elicia's stomach flips over. "This year was ridiculous. You should have seen all the kids agitating over the referendum last fall. Gee, you got tall."
"Thank you," Elicia says. My mom took me to one of the protests, she wants to add proudly, but that might be trying too hard. I'm fourteen now, she wants to say, but knows that would be too kiddish. She would sound like a baby. Is Josie looking at her? "One chocolate malt, please. With whipped cream. Hold the cherry."
"You got it!" He looks to Josie. "And for you?"
"I'll share," Elicia tells her under her breath. "You get what you want."
"Umm…" Josie looks up at the big menu in curling black and red script behind George. "Could I have a raspberry Aerugo soda, please?"
"Yes ma'am." George tips his cap and goes to make their orders.
"So tell me about your fly boy!" Josie exclaims gleefully when they're sitting on the concrete stoop out front, sipping their orders through long striped straws. "His hair's funny."
Elicia blushes deep pink. "He is not my fly boy," she mumbles around her straw, wanting to sink into the ground.
When she and Mama Winnie come to Griggs' they always sit inside at a booth so Mama Winnie can judge the headlines in the national papers and ask Elicia what her Uncle Roy is going to do to fix that, and Elicia gives her sass back, and they laugh. Mama Winnie does not ask her about George.
"A college boy," Josie says and goes off into a fit of giggles. "Are you stuck on him?"
"Dry up!" Elicia says, starting to giggle too in spite of herself. "I've known him since I was nine. No way."
"Well…" Josie waggles her eyebrows and gives Elicia a look out of the corners of her eyes.
"He's just cute," Elicia says. "Don't you think so? Here, try this. It's good." She shoves her frosty glass at Josie, her stomach jittering in a way that makes her not know if she wants the conversation to end or keep going.
"I don't know, boys are overrated." Josie takes the chocolate malt from Elicia's hand, their fingers brushing in a way that makes Elicia's stomach jitter more, and sips delicately at the straw the way Mama Winnie drinks her tea. "You're right, this is amazing. Want some of mine?"
The tartness of raspberry explodes on Elicia's tongue with the bubbly sweetness of the soda, fizzing in her stomach while Josie smiles sideways at he.
Josie shows up at the front door around the same time next morning and asks if Katy wants to go for a walk. Katy always wants to go for a walk, and Elicia wants to come with her, so they all walk down to the neighborhood park where Josie pulls out an old tennis ball for Katy to chase around. Elicia sits on the grass and watches Josie throw, the muscles in her arm shifting under her skin.
"I bet you are way more coordinated than you think," Josie says while Katy is off looking for a long throw in the bushes at the park's edge. "I bet you'd be great at tennis."
"I don't know." Elicia's friends at school tried to talk her into going out for the new basketball team last year with the exact same argument, and the results were pitiful. She'd cried about it for days after tryouts while her mom stroked her hair, hugged her, bought her chocolate and told her… "My growth spurt just hit me like a train."
"Don't pull my leg, you swim, don't you? And I'm sure you're amazing at that." Katy comes back with the ball and drops it, slobbering, into Josie's hand. "Good girl. I know you'd be good, we should try. You can use Amma's racket."
"Well, all right," Elicia says, something warm and funny-feeling squeezing her heart in her chest. Watching Josie pet Katy's head and ruffle her ears she feels oddly too big for her body. At least with just Josie around it won't be as humiliating as tryouts.
They give it a good shot for a long few hours in the afternoon heat. Elicia races from side to side on one end of the tennis court in the Zerouals' huge backyard as Josie's serves rain down around her, swinging wildly and clipping a ball once in a while. Sweat pours down her face. A voice in the back of her mind is trying to tell her she should be embarrassed, but she can't stop laughing.
"Now you're on the trolley!" Josie yells when Elicia finally manages to swat a ball back at her. "Keep it up!"
Out of pure luck Elicia hits the ball again when Josie sends it back across the net, and again the next time. Her third returning swing sends it right into the net. Her head buzzes with excitement anyway. She stands with her hands on her knees, breathing hard.
"Attagirl!" Josie waves at her encouragingly. "See? You're a natural!"
After a few more short rallies, Elicia is panting and light-headed. Josie is sweating too, her tennis shirt and skirt sticking to her arms and legs and both stockings beginning to fall down around her ankles.
"I'm beat," Elicia shouts, as much as she can shout. "Can we get a water break?"
"You read my mind!" says Josie, and then, when Elicia props up the racket and heads for the back gate to go around to Mama Winnie's, she adds, "No, come on in here, let me get you something."
For all the years it's loomed empty and foreboding like an old ghost mansion next door, the Zerouals' house smells new, all the interior walls bright with fresh white paint. Mimicking Josie, Elicia slips out of her shoes just inside the back door. She follows Josie on sock feet into the huge, white kitchen where cardboard moving boxes still sit open on the counters. The kitchen itself is almost three times as large as the living rom in her mom's apartment.
"I love your house," Elicia says in a hushed voice, feeling like she would disturb it if she talked at her usual volume. "It's so pretty."
"Thanks." Josie rummages around in a box for two cups, then fills them with water from a glass jar sitting on the counter and passes one to Elicia. Her hand on the back of Elicia's fingers is a hot jolt of energy. "I like it too, I think. It's bigger than I'm used to. It gets lonely."
Elicia stops gulping down her water. "Hm?" She swallows her mouthful. "Lonely?"
"Just when Dad and Amma are out. Want more?" Josie takes the cup from Elicia and refills it. "They're re-opening the store in West right now. They were all over the place in Imazi too, but I had all the cousins around my Pepere's house in Ayun Atrus… most of them are a lot older or younger than me, but at least there were people. "
"Excuse me, am I not people ?" a voice drawls from across the room.
Elicia's head whips up. A young woman is leaning against the doorframe, pale eyebrows raised above her glasses, her feathery white hair falling around her face in a disheveled bob that's the perfect echo of Josie's.
"Oh, shut up," Josie says, and snickers. "I didn't know you were people. I thought you were a very serious student."
"Hi," the woman says to Elicia, ignoring Josie. "Sorry to bother you. Josie, I said I was studying."
"That's my Aunt Sara," Josie says to Elicia. "She used to be a live wire, but now she's a very serious student . Sara, that's Elicia Hughes. She's a swimmer and tennis pro and totally gorgeous, as you can see, plus she knows where all the cool cats go in Fios. We weren't even making any noise."
Elicia stifles a giggle at that description of herself.
"Sounds like fun," Sara says, deadpan, and yawns. "Josie, I don't want to be a grouch, but if I could please just have my Wednesdays…"
"Sure, of course, you can have your Wednesdays, sorry!" Josie sounds more amused than exasperated. "Next week give me a reverse curfew or something. Gosh, we were just thirsty. C'mon Elicia — enjoy your books !" she adds over her shoulder as she pulls on her tennis shoes, though Sara has disappeared from the doorway.
When they step outside the summer air meets them with a hot rush like opening an oven. "Anyway, that's Sara," Josie says. "A wet blanket, as you can see, but what can you do." Her dark eyes are dancing with amusement when Elicia looks at her.
"I love her haircut," Elicia says, then adds, feeling shy, "and yours."
"Really?" Josie's eyes widen in delight. "You do? I did them both myself last year. When I saw you, I worried it was out of style. Yours is so cute."
Pushing a stray strand behind her ear, Elicia feels her face start to warm over with self-consciousness again. "No, you both look really fashionable." She's embarrassed to admit it, but… "My mom wouldn't let me last summer. She said it was too adult, but it's all the rage right now."
"Good, I copied it from Jenny Mantl on the September cover of The Allure last year. She's my favorite." Josie grins, her eyes drifting off into the distance for a second. "I practiced on the cousins first. Dad hated it but Sara made me do hers as soon as she saw mine so I guess it looked all right. Say, want me to do yours too?"
"I" — Elicia practically vibrates with excitement. She can't quite spit out the yes . "I don't know if my mom would like it," she has to say.
"Is she strict?" Josie asks. "Old-fashioned?"
"No, just..." Elicia touches one braid where it hangs down her back, runs her fingers over its length and plays mindlessly with the trailing tuft at the end, imagining it soft and light and loose on the back of her neck like she imagines Josie's must feel. She thinks about hugging her mom goodbye at the train station last month. "Just protective. And she says Mama Winnie is always letting me do things, so that would just prove her right. I don't want them to get in another argument."
Josie makes a sympathetic sound. "My amma liked mine. How would your dad feel about it?"
"He's dead," Elicia says, and waits with a silent wince for Josie's face to do the thing everybody's face always does when she drops that one in the conversation.
"Oh!" Josie's face goes through a kind of metamorphosis. Then, "Sorry," she says, like everybody always does.
"It's okay, it happened when I was really little," Elicia says. "He would probably like it, though. Mama Winnie says he was a wild card." Because she was so little when it happened, she can't say. Her only real memory of her dad is fuzzy, a big hug and someone lifting her off the ground, way up high until her stomach drops and she's laughing. Around that time she mostly just remembers her mom crying a lot. She waits for Josie to ask So, do you want to talk about it? or apologize again, or something.
"There's another point for it though, if he would like it," Josie says brightly after a second. "I think you should do it. If your mom doesn't like it, you can grow it back. But she'll come around, like my dad. And Mrs. Hughes will love it, obviously."
It takes Elicia a second to differentiate Mama Winnie and her mom in her mind when Josie says Mrs. Hughes but when she does she laughs. "All her friends have wild hair," she says. "She'll love it."
Turns out, Josie still has to dig her best haircutting supplies out of a box she doesn't know the exact location of in her house, so it takes another week before the bobbing occurs.
"You moved in last year and you haven't unpacked?" Elicia is incredulous.
"Just last winter. I can always find what I need." Josie shrugs. "Most of it has been in storage forever. Dad and Amma want to get everything set up perfectly now that we're back, since we're going to stay this time, but we haven't had time yet."
The day of reckoning comes at last, when Josie locates her favorite scissors buried under a pile of scarves in the back of her closet. She bursts into Mama Winnie's house earlier than normal, and Mama Winnie makes her have breakfast with them while she fills Elicia in.
"This is the elephant's eyebrows, Mrs. Hughes," Josie says, inhaling half of her pancakes in a swift couple of bites. "Thank you so much. Elicia, they were under all of my amma's family's old scarves that Sara keeps lugging around with her. She never wears them, she says in Amestris she isn't going to use any of that, I don't know how my best scissors got under there. I didn't even think to look, whoever put those in there is going to catch it from me, you'd better believe…"
At the Zerouals' house Josie lets them in the front door and leads Elicia through the parlor to the stairs. Halfway through the parlor, there's a soft grumbling sound and Sara's rumpled white head emerges from what Elicia had taken to be a rumpled pile of books and blankets on the long couch there.
"Late night?" Josie says, unflappable. "Go to bed."
"Ugh, but the stairs," Sara says, and withdraws tortoise-like under the blanket.
Elicia stares.
"She's just obsessed with passing her entry exam so she can go to university," Josie explains, when she has Elicia in her room. Josie's bedroom looks more lived-in than the rest of the house, piles of books and clothes scattered around the room and two massive stacks of records teetering on top of the dresser. The walls aren't whitewashed here; they're a light, sunshiney yellow. "Amma wanted her to stay in Ayun Atrus, or at least somewhere in Imazi, but she's set on going to school in East City. Good for her, I guess. It made her into the biggest square you ever saw."
Elicia obediently sits where Josie indicates, a tall kitchen chair that must have been chosen for its height. A huge mirror stretches before her on the wall and she stares at herself, her too-fluffy braids and too-chubby cheeks and the three pimples dotted above her left eyebrow. When she complains about it at home Mom always tousles her hair and hugs her and says You're beautiful, my baby, this age just runs over some people like a train.
Sometimes Elicia thinks that train must have dragged her under it all along the rails. "What does she want to go to school for?"
"To study bugs, if you can believe it. Agriculture." Josie digs around in another box and pulls out a dark sheet, which she gives a few triumphant flaps before spreading it over Elicia. "There's a good agriculture school at East University and she wants to study the effect of… I forget what they're called, some kind of beetle on cotton plants. I don't understand it, but you know how it is. Do you have any sisters?"
Gentle hands tug the sheet up at the back of Elicia's neck. Her skin tingles. Josie clips it in place with something and pulls her braids free. "No," she says, belatedly remembering the question. "I'm an only child."
"She's technically my amma's sister, but she's more like mine." Josie begins to undo Elicia's braids with a practiced hand. "Mostly in how much of a pain she is, as you saw. Dad and Amma raised her since she was little so by the time I came around she thought she owned the place! At least she doesn't think I'm a spoiled brat, like Aunt Aynur." She says it lightly, but her hands pause halfway up Elicia's first braid.
"How…" Elicia looks at herself in the mirror, as if staring into her eyes could help her make sense of it. She watches Josie's face, vague behind her shoulder. "Um, what was that like?"
"What, growing up with Sara?" The smile flits back across Josie's face and her hands move on Elicia's hair again, unbraiding it quickly. "She was a lot of fun. She got us into so much trouble with my aunts and uncles in Ayun Atrus, stealing candy and sneaking around after dark… she was bad . I wish she didn't have to grow up and discover beetles."
Elicia's braids are all undone now, the weight of hair falling against her neck and down her back. Combing her fingers down, Josie fluffs it out, making a clucking sound with her tongue. A shiver runs down Elicia's spine and starts a funny shivery feeling in her belly like a chain reaction.
"Your hair is so beautiful," Josie says. "I hope I don't mess it up. Say, enough about my sad life. Tell me about your dad, I hear he was wild and loved bob cuts!"
"Oh… well…" Elicia fumbles. People mostly tell her they're sorry about her family, and anyway, it's not like she has much to tell about someone who passed away before she had a fully functioning memory. "No one else says he was wild, exactly, just Mama Winnie. She kicked him out when he joined the military and never talked to him again."
"Get out!" Josie whistles softly. Elicia can't read her face in the mirror.
"It was a different time," Elicia says, in a haze of confusion between her desire to defend Mama Winnie and what she knows her mom would say, and the odd feeling in her stomach as Josie brings out a comb and begins to gently brush her hair. "My grandpa was a professor, and he got fired from his school for teaching something the president didn't like, right before my dad applied to the academy, and I think… they were upset. And he wasn't a very good president," she has to add, because Mom and Mama Winnie do at least agree on that. "But my dad didn't join up because he liked the president."
"So how did you end up here?"
"After he died…" Elicia lived through the messy conclusion of that story for five years of her life until she turned nine and a ceasefire was reached. "Mama Winnie got back in touch with my mom. She didn't want to see my mom, she wanted to see me. I don't know how she knew I existed."
Josie picks up a spray bottle from the dresser and starts wetting Elicia's hair down. "Do you have other grandparents?"
"My mom's parents both live in Central. We see them a lot." Elicia tries to think of a way to describe Grandpa and Grandma, gingerbread and hugs and veiled disapproval of Mom's parenting techniques with no sweet dogs or artist friends to speak of in their house just outside Central, and settles on, "They're nice."
"My amma's parents are dead," Josie says. "Like your dad, but I never met them. My dad's parents are a hoot. My pepere has a motorcycle and he would take me driving all over the country in Fios when I was way too little. We would go see giraffes, elephants, these big buffalo..."
Elicia has only seen an elephant once, in a movie. She gapes.
"My dad and amma were always mad at him when they found out, and Aynur was mad at me, but I didn't care." After a last squirt to the top of Elicia's soaking head, Josie puts the spray bottle aside and starts to comb out her hair. In the mirror Josie's face goes from serious to twisty to what looks like quiet laughter. "I couldn't understand anyone for the first year until I learned the Ayun dialect, so Pepere and Amma taught me and Sara at home. Dad was mad after my cousins started speaking the dialect with me too… even in the Imazi back country I'm supposed to be a modern Amestrian woman." Josie places her hands under her chin and tilts her head to the side, pursing her lips primly in the mirror.
"Why didn't he like the bob, then?" Elicia murmurs, and they both spiral into giggles.
"I can't believe you like my hair," Josie says once they both recover and she starts to clip Elicia's hair up following some mystical pattern. "I did it on an impulse. I was positive I came up here looking like some country bumpkin, and when I hopped over the fence and you saw me, my heart almost stopped. Level with me, it's a mess." She says that conspiratorially, into Elicia's ear. The skin down the side of Elicia's neck and her whole arm tingles and shivers, her heart somersaulting.
"No," Elicia insists, her mind all confusion. "I love it. Barely any girls at my school have gotten their parents to actually do it. You look just like Jenny."
"Not as blonde as Jenny." Josie twirls a strand of her own dark hair around her finger.
"But cuter," Elicia's mouth says before her muddled mind can catch up. When she hears herself say that she bites her tongue and stares down into her lap, not wanting to look up into the mirror and not knowing for the life of her why she's so embarrassed. She gives her friends compliments all the time and doesn't feel this stupid.
"I seriously doubt it." Elicia still doesn't look but Josie's voice sounds like she's smiling.
For the next few minutes, Elicia floats on air, drifting in a funny kind of dizziness while Josie combs out her hair and snips away at the ends. The falling strands tickle the back of her neck and catch on her cheeks. She closes her eyes and floats some more, anchored to the ground only by the heat of the blood rushing under her cheeks and the motion of Josie's hands in her hair.
"I shouldn't try bangs," Josie murmurs in her left ear after a while, "probably. But you'd look so good. If they came out."
"I trust you," Elicia says. Her mouth tingles when she talks. Her head feels light and different, and she thinks she can feel the damp ends of hair brushing her neck. She wonders what it looks like now.
"Never say that." Josie's grinning again, Elicia can tell by the way she says it, can sense her circling around to stand in front of the chair and assess Elicia gravely. "We'll see."
The process of cutting bangs is more ticklish than the regular cutting. Elicia's nose itches when the hair falls over it, and her forehead itches, and her eyelids want to twitch and blink whenever a piece of hair gets onto them. Josie's hand brushes her cheek, dry and warm. The scissors snip steadily away.
"They're as even as I can get them, I think," Josie finally announces. She stands away. "Sara has a better blowdryer than me. Don't open your eyes, it's not ready yet."
Dutifully, Elicia keeps her eyes closed while Josie's footsteps leave the room, through the distant rummaging and the sound of Josie yelling something unintelligible downstairs and Sara's barely audible reply, and when Josie's footsteps return. She sits quietly while Josie dries her hair just as gently and carefully as she cut it. Cool fingers tickle her scalp and fluff up her hair lightly, toss her ticklish bangs on her forehead, tuck her hair behind her ears and then untuck it while the dryer roars. By the time Josie is finished, Elicia is lightheaded again. A puff of wind could lift her to her feet. The dryer switches off and her heart dances on tiptoe in anticipation.
"Alright, Miss Hughes," Josie says and breathes out loudly. "What's the verdict?"
Seized by the sudden urge to cover her face and peek between her fingers, Elicia straightens up in the chair, her hair brushing the back of her neck as she moves, and cracks open one eye —
"No, wait!" Hands warm with urgency clamp over her face. "I'm so stupid. Don't look."
Elicia can't breathe. Her eyes open into the warm darkness created by Josie's hands. Something softly brushes the tips of her eyelashes when she blinks. Josie's little finger rests right at the corner of her mouth, about to slip into the groove of her lips. What's happening to her?
"Are your eyes closed? Promise your eyes are closed." The hands tighten over her face.
"Yes," Elicia says and closes her eyes quick enough that she only gets a glimpse of light in the room when Josie's hands fall away.
"I forgot the finishing touch," Josie explains, walking around behind her. "For the real look, I want to get you all dolled up."
When Josie's fingers touch Elicia's face again they're cold and wet, sticky with something that reminds her of her mom's night cream the few times she's been allowed to use it: thick and chilly with a light fragrance of flowers.
"This is... technically my amma's," Josie mumbles. "Don't worry, I'm allowed to borrow it."
"What is it?" Elicia asks as Josie starts to rub the stuff into her cheeks and forehead, pushing her new bangs out of the way.
"Oh, just some face cream, for a foundation. It isn't tinted like some of the new ones, it's like lotion, it'll definitely go on your skin tone."
Get you all dolled up, echoes in Elicia's mind. "For makeup?"
"You bet! You'll look like a regular old Jenny Mantl. Do you ever wear it?"
"No." Elicia's mom gave her lip pomade for a birthday present last year. "I asked my mom for some for my fourteenth birthday, and, well…"
Josie makes a sympathetic noise and pats the last of the cream into her cheeks. "She didn't want to give you any? Too protective?"
"No, she thought it was nice. She gave me lipstick. It was pink." Elicia wore it once, to the solstice military ball in winter when Uncle Roy brought Mom as his usual plus one (plus Elicia), and felt like an elephant. "I looked like a clown."
"Elicia Hughes, you did not look like a clown!" Josie's indignant breath stirs the bangs over hear forehead. "Don't even say that!"
"You didn't see it," says Elicia ruefully.
"I have some lipstick right here. You will not look like a clown." More rummaging, and Elicia parts her lips expectantly, but when the rummaging stops she feels a ticklish touch on her cheeks instead. "How about rouge? Kohl? Eyelashes?"
"No," Elicia admits, hoping Josie won't laugh. Some of her friends use rouge, but after being the elephant at the military ball she didn't take them up on their offers to share in the washroom during lunch. "I'm telling you, I'll be hideous."
"I will make you a star." Josie brushes determinedly at her cheeks. "Sit still."
After the rouge Josie goes for her eyes with a curler and a brush. Elicia has never felt anything like the tug of the curler or the little swipes of the brush around the rim of her eyelid and she twitches, trying not to laugh uncontrollably.
"You're lucky my cousins are so squirmy," Josie tells her, "or I'd have to hold you down. I got lots of practice."
"You still could," Elicia suggests, "hold me down," and her stomach does a funny flip at the thought of Josie very gently holding on to both of her wrists to keep her still, and leaning in — but oh, how would Josie do her eye makeup then? What would Josie do? Elicia is glad for the rouge on her cheeks. She suppresses the urge to squirm more.
"Hm." Josie moves on to Elicia's other eye.
The lipstick goes the fastest once Josie decides on a color from her amma's wide selection. "My cousin taught me the best application technique," Josie explains, businesslike, swiping the lipstick over Elicia's mouth. "This is how everyone does it. You go like this, and like this — oops."
A finger darts up to Elicia's upper lip and presses down, soft as a whisper, to wipe what must have been a smudge away. The warmth of it lingers.
"There!" Josie sighs. "If you're a clown, you're a real knockout of a clown. Open up."
Elicia opens her eyes in the middle of a laugh and stops, her mouth halfway open.
A woman stares back at her from the mirror, someone who looks a little like Jenny Mantl in The Allure but a lot more like the black-and-white photo of Elicia's mom in her wedding dress that hangs in the hallway at home, if Elicia's mom's short hair had been styled twenty years later. Her eyes are wide and vibrant green, outlined by kohl and long black lashes. Her parted lips are a cherry-red cupid's bow, and her hair — her hair curls up against her cheeks in shining waves, bangs sweeping low over her forehead in an elegant wave. Elicia raises a hand up to touch the bangs and watches the young woman in the mirror follow her.
"That is not me," Elicia finds breath to say. "Get out."
In the reflection behind her, Josie is grinning. She tosses her twin bob. "Well? Do you like it?"
"I…" Now that she's started touching her hair, Elicia can't stop. She brushes her bangs back and lets them fall over her forehead. She rumples her short hair with her fingers and shakes her head, feeling the lightness of her loose hair. In her throat, her heart is there, choking her. "Oh, Josie."
Josie's smile in the mirror gets even bigger, but she doesn't say anything, just looks at Elicia.
"How did you learn how to do this?" Elicia gasps when she can get a word out. "This is better than, than… whoever does Jenny's hair. She should hire you."
"Don't kid around, it's nowhere near that level," Josie says immediately, but her smile doesn't fade. "I practiced on all my little cousins, and some of the big ones, who would let me. And Sara, obviously. I figured it out, but there were some real hack jobs in there, believe me."
"Are bobs in , in Imazi?"
"In the big cities, just like everywhere, yes. At least from what I saw in the capital on our way back. It's more modern." Josie pats her own bob. "My pepere's house is huge but it's in the middle of nowhere, and most ladies in the small towns cover their hair, so who knows what's going on under there!" She waggles her eyebrows. "Just joking, I saw under my older cousins'. And most of those are bobs too now, because I made them let me. But it was all practice for here."
"Practicing?" Elicia echoes.
"Oh…" Josie's smile fades a hair and she looks down at her hands, seeming oddly shy for a second before she looks back up. "I can tell you, if you want, but you can't laugh."
Elicia shakes her head mutely, her own transformation forgotten, her eyes fixed on Josie's face. I would never laugh at you.
"I didn't go to school in Imazi, because Amma and Pepere taught me," Josie says, "but I have to go this year, to boarding school in South, to where Pepere sent my dad after they came here. He hated it, but he wants me to go. Which is fine. But you've met me, Elicia, you know what kind of person I am. The old Josie Zeroual was all this with the hair of a country bumpkin and the fashion sense of a potato. Nobody would like that Josie."
"Josie without a bob?" Elicia is confused.
"Oh, without the bob, without the clothes, without the tennis…" Josie waves her hand vaguely. "I never had friends in Imazi, just my cousins and Sara. So I needed to practice."
"I don't like you because of your bob," Elicia says, even more confused. "I like you because…" and then her mind gets stuck on something about that and her tongue gets twisted up like a pretzel and her face heats up.
"I didn't mean that!" Josie covers her face then runs her hands back through her hair. "I didn't mean you! Or, I thought I would have to practice on you, but then you were you , and gosh, that was a relief. You have no idea the heart attack you gave me when I came in over the fence and saw you just floating there. You're from Central , you know everything. I thought you would probably hate me."
"I don't know, there are some stupid people in Central," Elicia feels bound to point out, which loosens her tongue. "Mama Winnie would say the whole parliament and the military, for starters." She certainly can't imagine someone looking at her and thinking she knows everything.
Josie laughs. "Maybe."
"You just thought all that because Mama Winnie talked me up."
"I guess, but she didn't say anything wrong. You're friendly, smart, funny, pretty…"
"That's only because of you, just now," Elicia mumbles, dropping her gaze to her own hands in her lap. Her face is still hot.
"No, you were before," Josie says, and lapses into silence. She resumes just as suddenly, a few seconds later. "She did say you were a natural artistic talent. I haven't seen any of that yet."
"You may have a chance." Elicia gives her head another experimental shake, the soft ends of her hair tickling her skin. "Don't get excited."
For the better part of the week after that Mama Winnie is finishing her seascapes, a process which fascinates Josie when she finds out about it. They spend most of those days in the studio, staining their fingers and smocks with an ocean-hued smears of chalk, following along with Mama Winnie as best they both can while Josie fields questions about how her parents are up to these days and her grandfather's health and what her mother thought about the result of the referendum. It makes Elicia cringe, at first, but Josie takes the questioning like a champion, winking at Elicia whenever Mama Winnie gets too outlandishly far into politics.
"I told you, she's a nice girl," Mama Winnie says meditatively one night that Josie doesn't stay over for supper. "And a natural artistic talent, too."
"You say everyone's a natural artistic talent."
"That's the nature of art," Mama Winnie says. "Which reminds me, you should see Charles' latest exhibition. I'll take you, if we can get up to Rush Valley one of these weeks. The man is doing magical things."
"He installed an old bathtub in the middle of a room," Elicia tells Josie the next morning. That was what Mama Winnie had described to her. "With the water stains and everything."
They're standing in the Zerouals' big front yard, letting Katy nose around the flowers and shrubs to find a nice place to go before they walk her to town.
"Did he paint on it or anything?" Josie's nose wrinkles in curiosity.
"No, just a tub, I think." Elicia shrugs. "She says he was making a statement about society."
"The bathtub society?" Josie giggles.
"I don't know." Even after years traveling around the South to summer exhibits and gallery showings with Mama Winnie, some of the finer points of modern art criticism elude Elicia. She pushes her bangs out of her eyes, the sun growing warmer on the back of her neck.
"It's getting hot, we should start soon." Josie nudges her with an elbow. "We can't walk as fast as we bike."
"You're right. Katy! Come here!" Elicia looks around for the dog, who has made her way over to the far front corner of the house and is sniffing around in the undergrowth beneath a big bay window. In the daylight, with all the other windows clean and glittering proudly, the missing, boarded-up pane of that window sticks out like a speck of charcoal on a blank canvas. "What happened to your window?"
"Oh, nothing, it's always been that way." Josie tousles Katy's ears when she returns, while Elicia clips the leash on her. "Someone pitched a brick through it when I was a baby. The panes were custom made, and my dad hasn't had time to find a replacement that's good enough for him. We don't use the front dining room anyway, Dad and Amma aren't around enough to have guests right now."
"A brick? " Elicia stares.
"That was what got Amma fed up." Josie turns toward the road but her head stays turned, looking back at the house for a second. "That's what she says, anyway. Mostly she was scared, I think. That's when she made Dad move us all to Ayun Atrus, and he didn't want to be alone, so he came with us even though him and Pepere hate each other." Josie rolls her shoulders and sets off, Elicia and Katy following behind her at a trot.
"They made me and Sara go stay in a hotel in South last winter," Josie adds after they've walked in silence to the end of the street, accompanied only by the jingle of Katy's leash and collar, "during the demonstrations, because they were in Creta for business and Amma was worried. Sara didn't want to. She said nothing was going to happen, and nothing happened."
"Oh," Elicia says. She feels Josie glance sideways at her.
"I know it's gloomy," Josie says. "But that's Amma for you. She doesn't think we're safe here."
"Do you feel safe?"
"I don't know." Josie shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her dungarees. "I'm going to stay here longer, and find out for myself. I'm not going back to Imazi like Aynur, that's for damn sure. At least not for a long time."
"I'm glad you want to stay," Elicia says quietly, her eyes on her hand holding Katy's leash. Something bubbles up in her heart like a cup brimming over with a wanting-to-cry feeling and a wanting-to-laugh feeling, a wanting feeling she can't put a name on. " I'm happy you're here."
She hears the smile in Josie's voice. "Me too."
Thankfully, Mr. Griggs is stationed in his proper place behind the counter at Griggs' today. Josie gets a vanilla malt and Elicia gets an egg cream and they go to drink them in their regular station on the curb outside. Of course George shows up anyway.
"Hello, George!" Josie calls before Elicia even sees him crossing the street in their direction.
"Hi there, girls!" He waves back. "You're looking chipper today. Elicia, what about that hair!"
Elicia flushes. "Thanks," she mumbles, and avoids eye contact until he disappears through the door into Griggs'. The rush of cool air when it closes fans her bangs over her face.
"Oh Geooorge ," Josie sings under her breath, and leans into Elicia's shoulder. "Cash or check, George?"
"Stop it!" Elicia wants to die, but she can't stop laughing, especially when Josie starts making kissing noises in her direction. "Don't!" She bats playfully at Josie, her arms feeling hot and awkward when she moves them, when her hands brush Josie's hair and shoulders.
Josie sits back, a lopsided smile on her face. "Well, if you're not going to tell him you like him, wouldn't you be better off just getting over him?"
"I don't like him," Elicia says. "I don't know him. Haven't you ever seen a good-looking person before?"
"I know how to spot a good-looking person, I'm looking at one right now," Josie says, and smirks, and Elicia can't take the time to examine the inner turmoil that casts her stomach into because Josie immediately adds, "Anyway, he looks like one of those little dogs, with the little bangs. The hair."
"He does not!" Elicia squeaks, but she's off laughing again. "That is mean!"
"It's the little dog hair!" Josie insists. "The smile! The eyes! Come on!"
"Look at this face!" Elicia tugs gently on Katy's collar and Katy obligingly puts her face down between the two of them, looking curiously from one to the other. "You think he looks like that?" She scratches under Katy's collar, twisting her fingers up in the silky hair, and Katy snuffles at her cheek with a wet nose.
"No, that's an insult to Katy," Josie says through her laughter.
They stay a long time at Griggs' and they're late going back, because they take the long way around past the only theater in Fios to read off the films showing there. Josie has already seen all of them in South and Elicia already saw them all in Central, in the spring. There's nothing new, as usual here. When Mama Winnie wants to take Elicia to see an art film, which she invariably does at least once or twice a summer, they go into South too.
Because of the detour the three of them, Josie and Elicia and Katy, have to walk back to the house in the full heat of the afternoon. Elicia feels like she's dripping by the time they reach the front door. She steals a glance over at Josie, whose hair is droopier and plastered to her face.
"I'm beat," Josie announces, dropping onto the big couch in Mama Winnie's first sitting room with a loud sigh. Katy flops down onto the floor with an echoing sigh. "Imazi is not that humid. I'm never going to get used to this."
"Let me get you some water!" Elicia says.
Like a voice from the sky, a faerie queen in a story, Mama Winnie's voice drifts down the stairs. "Girls, the pool is open."
"They don't even have Jenny's newest film!" Josie is complaining not twenty minutes later, floating sprawled on her back in the middle of the pool and looking as comfortable as she did flopped on the couch. "You would think even they'd be able to get it, right? That's what I'm looking forward to about school, even if the rest of it is horrific. Dad said the boys at his school all used to push each other's heads in the toilet and I am petrified of that."
"You're right, I don't even know who orders their movies," Elicia says. From where she's sitting on the hot stone at the side of the pool, she dips one leg into the water, then the other, letting the cool shiver under her skin and thrill her. She looks at Josie lying in the water, hair fanned out around her head like a pillow, lips parted in relaxation, the skin of her arms and legs and exposed stomach glistening in the sun. Instead of the pool, Elicia looks quickly up into the cloudless sky and squints around the sunlight. "I don't think you have to worry about anything. I go to school with a lot of girls and nobody ever tried to push my head… you know."
Elicia looks down again, sweating, and sees Josie cast a look at her out of the corners of her eyes. "Well, they might try to push mine ."
"Then fight them." The suggestion comes easily to Elicia, although she's never been in a fight.
"I can't do that!" Josie rights herself in the water with a splash and a giggle. "I never fought anyone. Only Aynur, but she always just pushed me down and sat on me because she's so much older."
"No, I mean it," Elicia says. Suddenly shy of the way Josie is watching her, she braces her hands on the edge, rough stone scraping her palms, and slips slowly in. The cold water rises up to her chest, tickling around her collarbone. "I can show you. My uncle taught me, in case…" In case some young punk ever gives you a problem at school, Elicia, she remembers Uncle Roy telling her, his eyes sparkling, when she was eleven and scared to move up a grade into the big school down the road. Of course, she hadn't told him she was scared — she thought he was a mind reader. She knows now her mom had told it to him, obviously. She can still see him going through the motions with her, how to plant her weight and draw back. "...in case of things," Elicia finishes, embarrassed to say anything about boys. "I know how to punch."
"Can you show me?" With a long stroke of her arms under the water, Josie glides up to Elicia. "I can't say I would ever do it, I would get in so much trouble. How do you know? Is that why no one ever pushed your head in a toilet? You punched them all?" The sun reflects off the water, catching the glittering chestnut light in Josie's dark brown eyes when she looks up at Elicia. "You're a woman of many talents!"
"I…" Elicia stares at Josie, her mind a blank. Even in her one-piece, she feels exposed, in the quiet backyard in the water under the sun with Josie standing so close. She's never felt like this in her life . Maybe it's heatstroke. "No, but I guess they knew I could," she blurts out when her tongue and throat remember how to work. "Confidence?"
"You do have a lot of that," Josie says, leaning up closer.
"Maybe it's from knowing how to punch people."
Unable to handle the tightening in her chest, Elicia spins around and plunges away toward the opposite side of the pool with a mighty splash, flailing her arms in big arcs around her. When she gets to the wall she turns back to Josie, who is laughing.
The pressure in Elicia's heart gives way to an odd feeling as open as the blue sky above them or the water when she pushes through it. Stretching out her arms, she spins again in a big circle, her feet paddling excitedly of their own accord. She wants to be standing back next to Josie, closer and closer in the quiet afternoon. She wants to be moving. She wants to yell.
"Cool down, Esther Hunter," Josie says with a whistle, "or we're going to have to find you a Red St. Clair."
Further away it's easier to remember how to talk. "As if!" Elicia takes a mouthful of water and spouts it out back at Josie, and only thinks afterward that a baby would do something like that. She blushes. "I'm an elephant on the dance floor. Don't make me think about it."
"You do spit water around like one." Josie shifts up and down in the water, then starts to paddle over. "Do you do a lot of dancing, in Central?"
"Not me," Elicia admits, watching Josie get closer. Her heart has calmed down now, and she smiles when Josie joins her at the wall. "Only upperclassmen are old enough get into the dance halls, and I'm so clumsy. No one would ever invite me."
"You're about ten times better at everything than you say you are," Josie says. "Just like tennis, and getting dolled up. I can only guess that means you really are the next Esther Hunter."
"I promise, I'm not." Elicia laughs. "My uncle taught me to ballroom dance" — honestly, if she wants to benefit from everything interesting about Elicia, Josie might as well just phone up Uncle Roy — "which, I hope you don't want to see because I am an elephant. And we do school dances." At least they have since Elicia was twelve. Those are more fun, because she can go in a group, and a few of her friends' older sisters know people from Aerugo and overseas and taught them all swing last year. Elicia doesn't think she's very good at it, for sure not compared to Esther Hunter, but she enjoys it.
"School dances?" Josie's eyes brighten.
"I never went with a boy ," Elicia adds. It seems important for Josie to know this. "Just my friends. But you've been to…" School dances, she was going to say, but she remembers Josie didn't exactly go to school. "Parties, right?" She can't imagine someone like Josie not being invited to a party, in Amestris or Imazi or anywhere else.
"I went to lots of parties in Ayun Atrus," Josie says. "Weddings and birthdays, mostly. It's so little that half the people there are my cousins, somehow, since Pepere built his big house out there."
"So you dance, too!"
"Not the kind of dancing they do in Central." Josie flicks the surface of the pool at her side, sending droplets of water splashing out across it. "Or overseas."
"You'd be a natural," Elicia says, thinking of Renee, one of the older sisters who taught them. She was tall and handsome and something in the smoothness of her movements, or the way her pretty skirt twirled around her legs, captivated Elicia. Sometimes she feels the same way looking at Josie. Maybe Elicia naturally notices good dancers.
"Would you teach me?" Josie breaks into her thoughts.
"Oh, I wouldn't be good at that." Elicia moves instinctively to whirl away and strike out across the pool again, but the wall is at her back and Josie in front. "I don't know what I'm doing myself half the time."
"I don't believe it!" Josie bounces on her toes underwater, moving that much closer. The tiny waves of her movement lap at Elicia's chest and upper arms. "You'd be better than me, that's for sure."
"If you think so." A smile comes over Elicia's face in spite of herself. "Don't expect too much."
"Only the world." Josie grins broadly at her, then her smile drops to a more serious face, maybe at the sight of the doubt in Elicia's eyes. "If you'll give it a try, I think it would be fun, but if you don't like it we can stop and listen to records… Oh! You haven't seen our records!"
"What is this?" Elicia holds up the record sleeve from on top of Josie's pile, stacked haphazardly on the Zeroual parlor floor next to Sara's two piles. After a week of cycling around the back trails, experimenting with Mrs. Zeroual's cosmetics collection, and watching every rerun in the Fios theater, they've finally gotten around to it. Most of the records scattered around them are Aerugan, some Amestrian, but this one's bright print is in a language she doesn't recognize.
"That's from overseas," Josie says, licking sticky cinnamon bun frosting off her fingers before going for another pastry from the plate sitting next to her on the floor. "The Federation. That one under it is from the Continent."
"From Imazi?" Elicia asks, picking up the one Josie indicated. This one's also titled in an unfamiliar flowing script.
"No, that band is from Ruktu." Josie sighs. "Pepere snagged that for me from a shop in the capital. I wanted to see them perform before we came back, but it never worked out. They're good but I don't know if you could really dance to them."
"The Federation ones would be better for dance, if that's what you're going to do," Sara says from the couch where she's curled under only one blanket today, watching them from over her book. "Just based on the rhythm, I think."
"You don't even dance." Josie rolls her eyes, though she's smiling. "You can come with, it's not too late. Elicia is still taking students. She can do wonders with the most hopeless cases." She winks at Elicia.
"Sorry I can't join," Sara tells Elicia over Josie's head. "I'd like to, I don't know swing. But she didn't tell me soon enough, and I made plans."
"That's okay," Elicia says, and "A hot date with a book!" Josie crows.
Sara sticks out her tongue at her from her vantage point on the couch. "What were you two screaming about in the kitchen, anyway?"
"I told Elicia how Amma says you'll never catch a man, with all your beetles," Josie says calmly without missing a beat, a smirk tugging at her mouth as she sets another record aside.
A laugh starts to bubble up in Elicia's chest, but she tamps it down.
"How rude!" Sara claps a hand over her forehead. "Maybe I want to catch a woman!"
"I thought you didn't believe in love." Josie puts another stack of records to the side.
"I don't, only school, but the point stands."
"This is what I have to live with," Josie says to Elicia and gives her a full-on grin. Elicia's heart flips over.
"Would she really, you know…" Elicia begins later as they start up the stairs to the empty studio in Mama Winnie's house, her arms full of records and Josie with Mr. Zeroual's record player in tow. She feels herself blushing and doesn't know what she meant to say. "You know…"
"Who, Sara?" Josie huffs and puffs her way up the stairs to the landing. "Would she what?"
"Get a crush on a girl." Elicia continues quickly up the stairs, clinging tighter to the records as she feels them start to slip. She doesn't know why her face gets all hot, talking about it. Some girls at her school go steady together, sometimes, and Mama Winnie's artist friend Josephine Parish is married to a woman, and she doesn't care. Saying it to Josie shouldn't matter.
"Sara?" Josie falls to pieces laughing on the stairs behind her. "She doesn't believe in love, only school. You heard her."
"Oh." That makes Elicia feel like a baby. She wonders why she felt the need to ask Josie about it.
" I obviously wouldn't mind," Josie says, and is quiet until they get to the top of the stairs. Then she says, "Would you?"
"No, of course I wouldn't mind." Elicia wants to drop her records on the floor and go bury her face in a pillow to hide her embarrassment at all the stupid things she's asking Josie today.
"No, I mean…" Josie is very quiet again. "Well, would you? Get a crush on a girl?"
Elicia is crimson and doesn't know why. "Maybe," she says. She's never thought about it before. Most girls are so much prettier than her, she doesn't think any of them would want to go steady with her whether she ever got a crush on one or not. "I guess."
Thinking about it makes Elicia feel silly, and clumsy, so she sits on the paint-spattered wood floor of the studio with her back against the old couch that's the only piece of furniture in the room, stacking and re-stacking the records in different orders while Josie sets up the record player. They ended up mostly picking Sara's for dancing — she had most of last year's hits that everybody knows, like Fly Away Home and Blue River Banks, but also all the most fascinating ones that Elicia always sees in the store and avoids so her mom won't ask about the sappy titles, Sweet Sugar Loving and Kiss Don't Tell and Hold Me All Night Long… She puts those on the bottom of the pile, because they make her feel awkward.
"We're all set!" Josie hops to her feet. "Are you ready to show me your hot moves?"
"Absolutely," Elicia says, though she isn't sure she is, really. Her stomach is still turning flips, like it felt in line for the roller coaster last summer when she and Mama Winnie went to the traveling carnival outside Fios: something she can't identify as fear or excitement. "Promise me you won't laugh if I look silly," she has to add.
"I'm the one who's going to look silly, out of both of us," says Josie. "In the worst case we'll look silly together."
That wouldn't be too bad. Elicia gives Josie a grateful smile and is met with one back.
"Do you want music right now?" Josie makes a move toward the record pile.
"Well…" Elicia walks into the middle of the studio, wood creaking softly under her tennis shoes. Light spills in around her through the wide windows in the wall facing the back yard. When she looks out she sees blue scraps of the pool through the oak trees' branches. She closes her eyes and tries to think of how Renee and the other girls taught her. "Maybe not to start. I can show you some of the steps. Come here."
Elicia knows the most important part is keeping her balance, but she's never good at that, so she just tells Josie it's important to stay centered and tries not to worry about it too much herself. From her place at Elicia's side, Josie nods, her face shifting into a look of intense concentration.
"You bend your knees like this, and you go up and down," Elicia explains, demonstrating, "in time to the music, like… one-two, one-two…"
"Bouncing? I can bounce." Josie mimics her, adding a shift and twist to her hips as she does it. "This is easy!"
"When they taught me they said it's more… not bouncing, but something else." Elicia feels herself start to go up on her toes as she continues, and mentally glues her heels down to the floor. "You have to keep your feet flat," she adds, more to herself.
"Oops," Josie mutters.
It's easy to explain how to shift your weight from one side to the other, pulsing with the music, and the rocking step isn't hard to show either, even though Elicia always flubs it when everything is combined. Josie follows along perfectly, of course, her hair flying when she adds the lifted knee to her side-to-side step. In the silence only broken by the thump of their feet and squeak of their sneakers on the floor, Josie's already beaming.
"You have to combine it now, like this." Elicia slows down to give an example of the left, right, rocking-step movement and almost trips over her own feet as usual. "Not like that. It's supposed to be sort of slow, slow, then fast."
"Slow… slow…" Josie rocks from one side to the other, murmuring the count to herself. "Fast step… like this?"
"You're so graceful!" Elicia says, something warm growing deep in her chest. Josie dancing, even a basic step, is as fun to watch as Josie serving tennis balls over a net. "Yes, then you're supposed to repeat it. You can put the knee lift there too." Watching Josie pick up the rhythm makes it easier for her to do herself, somehow, when she tries again. She sees and feels the movement of Josie's feet almost like they're her own.
"I like to watch you," Josie says after a moment, still dancing. "You look so lively."
Elicia glances over to see if she's smirking, but Josie's eyes are sincere with just a trace of a smile. "Don't pull my leg," Elicia says, but she can't put very much weight behind it.
"I'm not!" Breathless, Josie adds a kick to her rocking step. It looks like fun, so Elicia copies it and finds with surprise that she can do it too. "You could just say thank you. I mean it, you know."
She's right. Elicia blushes. "Thank you."
"I think I have it down." Josie spins to face Elicia, does another few step repetitions, and stops, breathing hard, her eyes sparkling. "What do you think? Want to try some music?"
"You're perfect," Elicia says, because Josie is . She wishes suddenly with a rush of confusion and longing that Josie's dad and amma had found a boarding school in Central instead. In the back of her mind she sees the remaining weeks of summer stretch out before her, seeming short enough to dance through with a skip and a jump. She blinks and shakes the feeling off, her confusion only intensifying like an itch at the back of her brain. "Let's!"
Josie goes over to Elicia's pile. "You want this one first?" she says, lifting the bright, strangely titled overseas record sleeve off the top. "Do you think it'll be okay to dance to?"
"I don't know," Elicia says honestly. "I've never listened to anything from the Federation before." Most of what anyone dances to is from Aerugo, and the big Central stores still only carry Aerugan and Amestrian popular music, as far as she knows. Her mom always tells her it's unbelievable that there's so much Aerugan music available these days at all. Mama Winnie says that too every year about the Aerugan art films they see, then goes off into dark muttering about the fuhrer . "We should try!"
"It's good," Josie says. "Obviously I don't know if it's good for dancing, but in general, it's good. You'll like it." She slips the record out of the sleeve.
When the music swells up it's not quite like anything Elicia has ever heard, but the chorus of drums beating in the background catches her up instantly and tells her feet how to move. The beat carries her the way the water does when she swims at a meet, bearing her up and pushing her forward so it's not just her awkward self lurching around through thin air any more.
"I guess it is good for dancing!" Josie exclaims, and Elicia does a turn step to face her, one of the first times she's managed that and not messed it up. Josie's eyes are bright with glee, her bangs and short hair flying around her face as she dances. "I love this!" She reaches out to catch Elicia's hand and Elicia, not anticipating it, stops short.
Josie's hand tightens momentarily on her own, then goes slack. "We can partner dance this way, right?" Josie asks over the music. "Can you teach me?"
When Elicia pulls her hand back she can still feel the heat of Josie's hand on it, urgent and asking. No, is her first thought, then, I don't know, then, arguing with her flip-flopping stomach, But who would lead? She looks at Josie's eager face and none of those words will come.
"Sure!" Elicia says.
They put on Blue River Banks and Elicia shows Josie how to dance open position, as much as she can remember. She danced lead a couple of times when Renee and the other sisters were teaching them, so she puts out her right hand and rests her thumb on the back of Josie's hand when Josie sets it in hers. Her heart is beating like they've already started dancing.
"And then we do the same thing, mostly," she explains to Josie, determined to keep her cool.
"I love that you know how to lead," Josie says as they start to dance again. "I would be completely clueless with that." They pick up speed, side by side, Josie's hand twitching in Elicia's. "So do you pull me around or tell me what to do, or what?"
"Not with this, very much." Elicia doesn't actually know. "I don't think. I would maybe do this" — she tries to shift gently back, extending her arm, and yanks Josie with her none too gently.
"She's wild!" Josie stumbles over her feet, laughing as the two of them come apart.
"Not that way!" Without thinking twice about it Elicia catches Josie's hand again. "I don't know how."
"Maybe try slower, so I know what you're about to do?" Josie suggests.
It takes several records for them to get the hang of it, but by the time they do they've independently figured out how to twirl, too, even if the twirl they settle on maybe isn't the most technically correct one. They're both laughing by the time Josie drops Elicia's hand to switch to her Ruktu record.
"I think we can try closed position too." Elicia would never have thought to bring that up twenty minutes ago, but her heart is pounding, sending the blood leaping through her body until she knows she could say anything or do anything and it wouldn't matter at all. And she wants to. "It's mostly the same, just…" Shaking her hair back from her face she extends her arms in front of her in an oval. "Close."
"Aren't you scared I'll step all over your feet?" But Josie comes bounding over to her as the first song starts, lips parted in a silent laugh, to take Elicia's hand and rest her hand on Elicia's shoulder the way Elicia shows her.
For her own part, Elicia's heart nearly forgets its boldness when Josie steps into the oval of her space. She has to ignore the muddle of surprise and delight and fear in her chest and stomach and reach out with her open arm and place her open hand on Josie's back, the heat of Josie's skin flooding up into her palm through the shirt.
"And we have to turn out, like this, when we need to step," Elicia adds under her breath when the song begins, demonstrating. She barely knows where to look with Josie this close and Josie's face right there in front of her, if she just turned her head a little more. So she doesn't get distracted, she stares at Josie's ear instead.
The Ruktu record sounds familiar, not like the one from overseas, and Elicia mentions it as they whirl awkwardly around the room, kicking each other in the feet.
"All of Aerugo's popular singers stole half their ideas from all over the Continent," Josie says breezily, "and anyone who's any good on the Continent stole half of theirs from the Aerugo coast towns, so it's all getting to be the same. These fellows are smoother, though."
Elicia can hear that in the music, a rich lively river of sound flowing over them and between them, relaxing her arms and teaching her where to put her feet. On the next song Josie attempts a turn and gets their legs all tangled up in each other, and then Elicia tries to lead into it and kicks Josie in the shin, and they try it again and Josie steps square on Elicia's foot, and then the rest of the song is ruined with laughter.
They manage the turn on the next song, and a flowing, nearly perfect transition from closed to open position, that makes Elicia's chest want to burst with pride — or maybe overexertion. She's breathing hard. Across from her, so is Josie. The song picks up tempo.
"Twirl me in!" Josie says, lifting the hand that rests on Elicia's. Without even having to think about it, Elicia does. They're off again, shoes thudding and squeaking on the studio floor.
The dance becomes a dizzying rhythm, twirling and closing and opening, the dreamlike pause to change out a record and the sound of Josie's laughter in Elicia's ears, mingling with Elicia's own. Somewhere in the middle of one turn Elicia forgets to stare at Josie's ear, or her forehead, or her chin. She meets Josie's glowing eyes and then her heart is dancing too, her whole self drawn into perfect soaring motion by the light in Josie's face.
"Uncle, uncle!" Josie gasps, her steps slowing as the next song draws to a close. "I need a break, I'm soaked."
Elicia is sweating too under her shirt and skirt, her bangs sticking damply to her forehead. She pushes them away and staggers after Josie to the lumpy couch by the window, her chest heaving. Her heart rests somewhere outside her, like a bird winging off around the room.
They fall back onto the couch together, side by side. Josie laughs breathlessly. The sound tickles Elicia's ear and she turns, burrowing her cheek into the worn cushion as she faces Josie.
"I can tell you this much," Josie tells her, "you did not look silly." And Elicia believes it.
"If I looked anything close to the way you did…" Elicia begins. Her throat gets choked up with trying to figure out what to say and she can't finish. Josie stares into her face, unmoving, eyes wide and dark, lips open in a tired smile. "If you," Elicia tries again helplessly.
Josie stretches forward, closing the centimeters between them, and brushes her lips over the tip of Elicia's nose.
It tickles.
A shiver runs all the way down through Elicia to her toes, like dipping her foot in a chilly pool in reverse. Josie, she wants to say, but she can't. Her mouth doesn't want to move. Her lips don't want to talk, they want to —
Elicia tilts her head back until her mouth bumps into Josie's, warm and surprising even though she knew it would be there.
Behind her closed eyes Elicia sees the remaining weeks of summer stretch out before her again in a golden blaze of sun, day after day waiting to be filled with dancing and with Josie and this feeling.