Excerpt:
Veronica froze.
Lazlo began walking the very same path she had walked minutes earlier, although he looked much more graceful than she must have looked. His gate was long and easy. His eyes were down, staring at the track as he walked. Veronica sat as still as she could, terrified that he might see her, equally terrified that he wouldn’t.
As he came to the spot where she was sitting, he didn’t look up. He walked right past her, as if he hadn’t seen her. Veronica felt a stab in her heart. Before she could stop herself, she called out.
“Aren’t you Lazlo Fox?”
He turned quickly.
“That’s me,” he said, and a grin lit up his face.
Now that he was here, Veronica realized that she hadn’t planned what she would say if she saw him. For a second, she considered saying that the draft office needed more information about him, but she realized that was both stupid and an obvious lie.
“I have an extra biscuit, if you’re hungry,” was what she managed to squeak out.”
She had hoped to be able to speak with him for a just a moment. She knew that it would be dangerous for him to even be seen with her, but as he walked toward her, she held the biscuit out for him. She knew that he would have to climb up to her to get it, and despite the danger, this is what she wanted.
Instead of scrambling up the broken concrete, as she had done, he gracefully jumped from one to the next, balancing on the ball of one foot as he landed on each one. In less than a minute he was standing on the rock next to her. She expected him to take the biscuit and leave, but she wanted him to stay… how badly she wanted him to stay.
Lazlo smiled and took the proffered biscuit bag gently from her, but his eyes were on her face, not on the bag. For a moment, he paused, and then he sat down next to her. He wasn’t so close that she might accidentally touch him but his feet dangling over the edge of the rock next to hers felt weirdly intimate. He opened the bag and pulled out the biscuit. Veronica looked down at her biscuit and took a tiny bite, pretending to be engrossed in eating but her heart was racing so hard, she almost choked on the bread.
“Lazlo, that’s an unusual name, is it a family name or something?” she asked.
Lazlo turned and smiled at her. She was suddenly afraid that she had said something wrong or stupid, although she couldn’t for the life of her think what it was.
Lazlo’s eyes suddenly got wide.
“Well, my mama named me that cause she’s a witch,” he said quickly, and then winced and shook his head.
“That sounded awful,” he said quickly. “I’m not talking bad about my mama. She’s actually a witch, so she thinks like attracts like. And if she gives me a rich-sounding name that will draw money to me.”
Lazlo then laughed and shook his head.
“I can’t believe I just told you that,” he said. “I never told anyone that before. Probably because—”
Then he stopped.
Veronica’s heart felt like it had grown to take up the whole of her chest. She was frightened of what Lazlo would see if she looked at him, so she took another bite of her biscuit. When she did look up, he was looking at her with eyes that were hopeful and wary in equal measure.
“It sounds like your mother really cares about you,” was what she finally said. And that was all.
Looking at Lazlo’s guarded yet hopeful eyes, Veronica desperately wanted to tell him that none of this stuff mattered. She wanted to say that they could be friends, or even more. Inside, her crazy heart said that they could just run away together. She longed to say this out loud, but she knew it wasn’t true. Neither of them could outrun their class or caste. Lazlo was a colored man.
She was the poor white daughter of a single mother. If he was an untouchable, she was barely one step above that. Her brain told her that, even if her heart argued otherwise.
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