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The waitress came and they ordered black pearl tea, toast with condensed milk and coconut butter, and spring rolls. She stared at Val for a long moment before she left their table, as if evaluating whether or not they could pay.
Val took a deep breath and resisted the urge to bite the skin around her finger. "It's so weird that you're here."
"You look sick," Ruth said. "You're too skinny and your eyes are one big bruise."
"I—"
The waitress set their things down on the table, forestalling whatever Val had been about to say. Glad for the distraction, Val poked at her drink with the fat, blue straw, and then sucked up a large, sticky tapioca and a mouthful of sweet tea. Everything Val did seemed slow, her limbs so heavy that chewing on the tapioca felt exhausting.
"I know you're going to say that you're fine," Ruth said. "Just tell me that you really don't hate me."
Val felt something inside her waver and then she finally was able to start to explain. "I'm not mad at you anymore. I feel like such a sucker, though, and my mother… I just can't go back. At least not yet. Don't try to talk me into it."
"When then?" Ruth asked. "Where are you staying?"
Val just shook her head, putting another piece of toast in her mouth. They seemed to melt on her tongue, gone before she realized she'd eaten them all. At another table, a group of glitter-covered girls exploded in laughter. Two Indonesian men looked over at them, annoyed.
"So what did you name the kid?" Val asked.
"What?"
"Our flour baby. The one I ran off on without even paying child support."
Ruth grinned. "Sebastian. Like it?"
Val nodded.
"Well, here's something that you probably won't like," Ruth said. "I'm not going home unless you come with me."
No matter what Val said, she couldn't talk Ruth into leaving. Finally, thinking that seeing the actual squat might convince her, Val brought her down to the abandoned platform. With someone else there, Val noticed anew the stink of the place, sweat and urine and burnt-sugar Never, the animal bones on the track and the mounds of clothes that never got moved because they were crawling with bugs. Lolli had her kit unrolled and was shaking some Never onto a spoon. Dave was already soaring, the smoke from his cigarette forming the shapes of cartoon characters that chased each other with hammers.
"You've got to be kidding me," Luis said. "Let me guess. Another stray cat for Lolli to shove off onto the tracks.">"Are you unwell?" Ravus asked one morning when she was particularly shaky.
"I'm fine," Val lied. Her veins felt dry. She could feel them pulse along her arms, the black sores on the insides of her elbows hard and hurting.
He perched on the edge of his worktable gesturing toward her face with his practice stick as though it were a wand. Val held up her hand automatically, but if he had been going to strike her she would have been much too late to stop the blow.
"You're observably pale. Your parries are dismal…" He let the sentence remain unfinished.
"I guess I'm a little tired."
"Even your lips are pallid," he said, outlining them in the air with the wooden blade. His gaze was intense, unflinching. She wanted to open her mouth and tell him everything, tell him about stealing the drug, about the glamour it gave them, about all the confused feelings that seemed to be canceling themselves out inside of her, but what she found herself doing was taking a step closer so that he had to stop gesturing and move the stick aside to keep from injuring her with it.
"I'm just cold," she said softly. She was always cold these days, but it was winter, so maybe that wasn't so strange.
"Cold?" Ravus echoed. He took her arm and rubbed it between his hands, watching them as though they were betraying him. "Better?" he asked warily.
His skin felt hot, even through the cloth of her shirt, and his touch was both soothing and electric. She leaned into him without thinking. His thighs parted, rough black cloth scratching against her jeans as she moved between his long legs.
His eyes were half-lidded as he pushed himself off the desk, their bodies sliding together, his hands still holding hers. Then, suddenly, he froze.
"Is something—," she started, but he pushed away from her abruptly.
"You should go," he said, walking to the window and then just standing there. She knew he dared not part the blinds while it was still day outside. "Come back when you are feeling improved. It does neither of us any good to practice when you're sickly. If you need something, I could—"
"I said I was fine," Val repeated, her voice pitched louder than she'd intended. She thought of her mother. Had she thrown herself at Tom like that? Had he turned away from her at first?
Ravus was still turned toward the window when she lifted an entire bottle of Never and put it in her backpack.
