The Chronicles of a Public Bus (part 2.07)

Friday, 6:00, route 31

Without her even realizing it, Drake’s “official” seat in the back of the bus has somehow become Willow’s as well. As she hunkers down next to him, pouting into the collar of her jacket and pulling out her polka-dot hand-warmers to press them to her cold-reddened cheeks, she notes with distaste that she did not premeditate this seating. Her old habit of sitting as close to the front as possible has been killed with maximum efficiency.

“Oh, you brought hand-warmers?” Drake murmurs, tilting his head towards Willow. His breath is like the pleasant beam of a heat lamp. “Smart. Are they from the drama club’s bazaar?”

Willow nods in sluggish content. “That tall girl who played Rosalind last spring sewed them. If you weren’t a European dragon, I’d recommend you buy a pair this year.”

“Not all European dragons are fire-breathers you know. After the European Enlightenment started and everyone started making theories about our true natures, we mutated a bit.” At this, Drake lifts the corners of his mouth in a sheepish grin and pokes the center of a dot on Willow’s hand-warmers. “Of course, I do happen to be one of the fiery ones.”

Though Willow opens her mouth to ask what other kinds there are, she pauses and lets a different question slip out. “And are you all fire dragon or just half?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. “Your text yesterday afternoon didn’t say much.”

Drake nearly chokes. He runs his fingers through his hair, pulling the strands almost flat against his head. “I, uh, well…”

“Well what? You invited me over to watch your transformation, left school without giving even a hint about what happened, and then cancelled! I’m trying to be open with you about being a moon spirit, but you never want to talk about us being powerful folk unless Divinity brings it up first.”

Light glistens in Drake’s eyes, and Willow holds her breath in apprehension. Was she too harsh?

As the first tear slips from Drake’s eyes, forming a tiny trail down his scale-dotted cheeks, he deflates. His elbows fall to his knees, and his head drops into his hands, and he cries. Saltwater floods his palms, and his shoulders shake.

“My first hoard piece,” he sobs, “some woman stole half of it before it even arrived. And then… and then…” He wipes his eyes on the backs of his hands, but his voice is still ragged. “Mom and I almost caught the thief, but the moment we let our guards down, the woman grabbed the half that arrived and vanished using a paper spell.”

Willow’s mouth opens and closes like a fish’s, but she can’t find words. From her stunned silence, Drake takes his cue to continue.

“Mom called my grandpa to ask what we should do, since the chessboard is still technically his, but he just said he already had someone on it.”

“O-okay, so everything will be fine soon, right?”

With a huge sniffle, Drake drags his head up. He turns to look straight at Willow, aware that his eyes are red-rimmed, and a bit of snot still drips from his nose. “I don’t know,” he says, voice quivering. “My grandpa is an old dragon. He’s nice to me, but he doesn’t see regular people or powerful folk who aren’t, you know, white, as much more than very sophisticated animals.”

All Willow can do is bite her lip.

“What if he’s orchestrating something really terrible? I don’t want a chess set that someone killed for.”

“You think your grandfather would hire an assassin?”

Drake gulps. “It’s a possibility. He employs a Supervillain as a jack-of-all-trades personal secretary, and you know what Martin told us about Supervillain powers warping people.”

Despite the uselessness of the gesture, Willow presses one of her hand-warmers to Drake’s cheek and offers an uncertain smile. “As if I could forget when Martin spent all of lunch explaining the epigenetics behind hero and villain personalities. Not that I understood what epigenetics are.”

No laughter follows Willow’s comment, but Drake makes one short, breathy snort before almost smiling in return. “Epigenetics is the study of how the environment affects gene expression. You can at least remember the dictionary definition, since Martin repeated it so many times for us.”

“Please don’t remind me how awful I am at science.”

“You’re not awful at it,” Drake says. “You scored poorly on one test last year and now you’re beating yourself up. One low grade doesn’t mean you can’t go into medicine.”

Biting her lip, Willow slides a hand-warmer to her nose and tilts her head back so that the fabric drapes over the shallow slopes of her face, and she can feel the heat radiating from each tiny grain of rice inside. “I know. It’s just that Jie-jie was so perfect and… ugh. This isn’t important right now.”

“Jie-jie? Is that Chinese for older sister?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Willow says, mouth pursed in sullen stubbornness. “We should be thinking about your grandfather’s psycho secretary, not my inadequacies as a moon spirit.”

Drake twists his features in confusion, eyebrows raised in uneven peaks. “Er, yes, we probably should do that, but what do your grades have to do with being a moon spirit?”

“I’ll tell you over cheesecake.”