Sunbound

☀ The Girl With Two Names

    Scout pushed the thought of Antonio, and all of the sentiments that came with it, out of her mind. She descended the stairs from her and her father's little apartment over the auto shop and joined him downstairs.

    Scott Compton was a short, but fairly muscular man that scowled as often as he breathed. He did not scowl for any particular reason, though. After his wife left him to care for a five-month old baby girl all by himself, scowling just became his natural expression. Contradictory to his face, which still appeared to be handsome in that mature way that salt-and-pepper-haired men tended to look, he never really was a negative person. He had a lighthearted nature to him, and a kindness imbibed deep in his bones. Ask him to do you a favor and he'll do you five, Scout always said.

    Looking at her father hunched over the reception desk with the phone squished between his shoulder and his ear, and his reading glasses struggling to get a grip on the end of his sweat-slicked nose, Scout observed that the only physical feature she ever got from him was his height. She would have been perfectly content accepting any other trait from her father, but she just so happened to be burdened with the only one she absolutely abhorred having — her shortness was near the top of her very extensive hate-list, right between mittens and bugs.

    Scout had only ever seen one photo of her mother — before her father "accidentally" dropped it down the garbage disposal, — and had long ago decided that she did not look like her much either. Virginia was six-foot, blonde, and blue-eyed. Scout was five-foot-two, brunette, and hazel-eyed. Virginia was oddly pale for having spent her entire youth in Arizona. Scout always seemed to hold a tan; not as good of a tan as her aunt Georgia Morgan, however, but it would do. And whereas Virginia had all of the elements of average, Scout, as her father would always say, had a face that belonged in a magazine. Scout would never take his word for it, though. He was her father, so as far as she was concerned, he was supposed to say things like that. It's in the job description.

    Scout watched as a bead of sweat raced across her father's forearm, passed the old, faded tattoo that was supposed to be an eagle, but looked more like a fist-sized, discolored birthmark these days. She had not noticed until then that she was also beginning to sweat. The Arizona heat was bad. It was always especially bad after a thunderstorm, which they had already experienced two of within the last hour and a half. Arizona's weather made the top-ten of her hate list; right above miniature forks.

    "Dad, it's hot," she whined.

    Scott, who was still on the phone, shot her that famous scowl. "It's Arizona, SJ," he whispered, placing his hand over the phone. "What am I supposed to do?"

    "Turn on the damn air conditioning," she glowered.

    Scott sighed. He reached his arm over the desk and flipped the switch on the wall's thermostat. A blast of cool air shot out of the vent over Scout's head, blowing her hair over her shoulders in an ombré cascade.

    "I should make you pay the bill next month," he said.

    Scout could not help but laugh at her father's expense. "Considering that you're the one who writes my paychecks, you'll still be paying for it."

    Scott's face fell back into that scowl as he tossed a pen at her. She caught it just before it could smack her in the forehead, and smiled brightly at him. That was their daily routine: Scout woke up late, forcing her father to answer the phone; she complained to him about the weather; he threatened to dock her check for having the air conditioning running all of the time; and then one would throw something at the other before Scott gave her a kiss on the cheek as she took over the phone call. Then he would disappear into the large auto garage to repair some Santan Valley resident's piece-of-crap jalopy.