With the celebration from the night before, there was no school today, which Harry was happy for but the lack of sleep gnawed at him. The light streamed in from the cracks within the slum, and his mind focused on the shadows. Something moved in the shadows he was sure of. Something moved around him, but it wasn't Lucy. The warmth got to him, and he threw off the non-exist covers. The air was too thick and consuming. The heat ate at him from the insides. When Harry's eyes closed, all he saw was Lucy lying in her own blood, all those people dead.
His eyes flashed open after maybe an hour of rocking sleep, and he remembered the news report well: fifty-six dead and one-hundred-and-eighteen injured, the deadest school shooting in the history of the U.S., and still nothing had changed in America. It was no wonder that Lucy had gotten out while she could. Her words had been, "You never think it'll happen to you, and then it comes. And you're left wondering what the hell happened." Harry understood those words all too well.
Rolling over, Harry watched Lucy intently, how calm she was, the thin cloth over her body, almost liked she belonged in a morgue. Her face straight in the air, nose high, her back only slightly arched. She could have been dead if he didn't know better.
Lucy begged for no pity, no change in how he looked at her, which surely everyone changed who they were already her after they knew; she didn't want Harry to be another one of those. But Harry changed when he heard her story, how he looked and how he acted around her. He swore to himself that it wasn't bad but rather great because they had an understanding. But he knew she didn't want to get to close to people, only to lose them, only to have them disappear. One day those people were there, and then they snatched from you.
Harry waited patiently, thinking that maybe Lucy would rise in the light, in the calm panic she made most nights, but she never rose, maybe because of the light or maybe because she was comfortable with him. She slept, exhausted from the long night.
Closing his eyes and diving deep into his memories of the night before, before she told him what those scars really meant, when they danced, and he touched her ever-so-gently. The music swirled around him in dancing bodies. Her skin was cold, stuck in wherever she came from, a place she didn't name. However, Harry knew now, the name of the city and the place where she flew from. When they danced, there was a relaxation about her, so graceful in her movements, years of dance practice. He desperately wanted to keep up with her, so he tried just as hard. Lucy flew in the air, so light on her toes, and he wanted to go with her. Her cold skin covered in scars, burned his fingertips, a special kind of heat radiating off of her. He wished to touch her again.
Harry didn't know how long he slept because he woke up with Lucy standing in the doorway of the slum, the door cracked open as she watched outside. Quietly as he could, he moved from his bed, which Lucy noticed immediately. Her eyes wandered over to him before she turned back to the outside. The sun was high in the sky, mid-day, as Harry reached her. He wished to touch her again and he did. His fingertips brushed along her skin.
"You're hot," he whispered.
"I try." She winked. And like that, Lucy was back to her old self, or to what Harry saw from her before. He would never know what she was like before, way back then.
But really, Lucy burned up under Harry's fingertips, like something stirred underneath her skin, pumping through her veins. Her eyes focused outward, but when Harry looked, he saw nothing exciting. People were out and moving around, but her eyes were focused past that, upon the horizon, perhaps across the world.
"Are you waiting for something?" Harry asked.
"Aren't we all?" was her only response, but there was something in her words that struck a cord with him. Lucy pulled her hair back into a pony and smiled to herself. "In nine months or so, there will be a lot of births."
Harry agreed to that. "But what do you really wait for?"
"The night." Lucy's lips turned up in a smile. "Honestly, I didn't think I would miss it so much, but I miss the rain and the cold, the unrelenting wind that pounds against you. I want snow." Her fingers curled into her palms. "I'm waiting for the rain."
"It rarely rains here."
"Are you a meteorologist?"
"No."
"Good, because I think you're wrong." Her eyes rested upon the horizon and then upon the sky, believing rain was coming.
"Are you psychic?" Harry asked.
Her eyes shifted down to him coldly, and he thought he said the wrong thing. Of course she wasn't psychic or the shooting wouldn't have happened to her. "No. Why?" she wondered.
"You just seem so sure that it's going to rain."
She laughed into the air. "It must seem crazy because it rains, I assume of course, constantly in Britain."
"There are sunny days," he inputted.
"I know."
"You know?"
Resting her eyes on him, Lucy sighed. "I worked hard for a whole year to save up enough money through my job. I did a ton of fundraisers. I asked for money for Christmas and my birthday. I filled out scholarships and grants. I did all of this work so that I might have just over $3,000 to pay for an eleven-days-long trip across Ireland and the U.K." Harry paused, thinking what it was like for her. "There were fourteen of us that went with the school-trip, and I was the youngest as a sophomore going into my junior year of high school. We spent a lot of time in Ireland, and it is beautiful there, especially the green rolling hills."
"It is," Harry agreed.
"We spent three days in London, and I didn't think it was enough. But when I got home, thinking about London scared me because it was so massive." She swallowed. "It was the first time I had been out of the U.S. It was the first time I had been away from my family for more than twelve hours. For the first time to be away from my family, I chose to go across the world."
"Why to Ireland and Britain?"
Lucy took a step forward, almost be swallowed up by the heat. "I still believed in fairytales back then, I guess. I would meet Prince Charming and we would live happily ever after." She rolled her eyes. "But the reason for I know that the sun shines in the U.K. is because I got a sunburn in London. Can you believe that?"
Harry laughed aloud, huffing low. No, he couldn't believe that. He believed it was impossible to get a sunburn in the U.K., but she had gotten one in London. "What was your favorite part of Britain?"
"I want to say London. I did love it there, even though it was massive and crowded. I was always scared I would get lost, but people were always friendly to me there actually." She shrugged in indifference. "I also really liked... oh, I can't remember the name, but it was a small town outside of London, maybe an hour away, right by the ocean. We stopped there to take a break with the drive, and while people went shopping or got food, I went to the ocean. I come from a state in the U.S. where there are a lot of lakes, some of them are massive, but we are so far away from an ocean." Her body was relaxed, as if she lived again in the moment, where her hair rippled around her from the salty breeze, which tickled her skin but it never made her shiver. "It was so cold, but the sand was almost white and the water was gray. The rolling green hills almost marched up to the water. It was peaceful. Nothing bothered me there. I was the happiest I've ever been there."
Harry watched Lucy intently, and her eyes shimmered of the same happiness but now casted in some sort of sadness at the loss of what could've been. Lucy knew she was going home to see her family after that eleven-days-long trip, to be reunited with them, but she couldn't go home now to be reunited with them. There wasn't anywhere for her to go back to.
"Lucy," Harry began, clearing his throat. Slowly, her eyes came to him. "After you leave here, what will you do?"
She arched an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"Will you go home?
"I still have family there, but I don't think I'll ever go home." She shrugged. "I don't know if it's really my home any longer. I think I lost that home when I lost my family." Lucy's eyes were careful where they looked, not to look at him directly but to not look away. There was no sign of weakness. "I have still so much left to see in the world. I have still so much to do. There are so many places I've yet to go." She hesitated slightly. "There are so many people I haven't kissed."
This time, Harry arched an eyebrow. "Kissed?"
"To love another person is extremely difficult, Harry, even for a heartbreaker like you."
He was almost offended by the accusation that she was a "heartbreaker." Placing the words carefully in his head, he spoke, "I don't break hearts...."
"Yes, you do. And you make them weak in the knees. You make their heartbeats quicken, and they sweat. You make girls scream, especially grown women when you look them in the eyes. I'm sure some guys even love you, while the others want to be you." She circled him, a little bit, walking almost away from the heat altogether. "You have the whole world to watch you."
"Yet, you just want to kiss everyone."
"Someone," she corrected.
"Who?" Harry asked.
She shrugged.
"Well, yes," he agreed. "I would like to kiss someone."
"Who?" she questioned.
Lucy didn't have to wait long, because his lips pressed against hers then. Harry touched her again. He wasn't hungry, begging for more. He didn't push too hard. Perhaps, he was almost hesitant about the situation, unsure if she meant him. It could have easily been someone else, and Harry almost turned pink at the thought. Though, he didn't stay pink long because she kissed back, almost taking control in a second, how she wanted it done. His hesitation was gone.