Chapter Text
In a way, no one really expected anything from Robert Reynolds: not his parents and certainly not the people at school.
Everyone on the so-called cursed Sarasota Springs—a city so mall you could fit the whole Avengers Towers two times—knew the deadbeat that was his father, everyone knew the poor lad that was his mother—everyone knew him, the child of two troubled, unhappy people. Everyone heard the screams and sniffles his mother ripped from her throat at night, the neighborhood oddly silent, everyone saw the bruises on her throat. On his eyes.
Everyone knew and yet, no one tried to help him. No one looked at Reynold's child, the poor, troubled and quiet child.
"Miss Zhao? C'mere, please."
At school, people often whispered about the quiet, strange kid that was recently seen sniffing white powder on the school men's bathroom stall. The boy with unruly dark brown curls often stood by himself at hallways, often skipped classes and there was rumors he started selling himself for drugs. She didn't believe them, no.
No one liked to look at him; but she did. She looked at him the same way you would look at a injured bird on the sidewalk, you stop and coo, feel bad about it for a few seconds and then walk away because you have better things to do than care for some bird with a injured wing. Better things to do than care for Robert Reynolds.
Still, she noticed him. Noticed the purple and green bruises that blooms eyes. Noticed the deep eyebags under his brown eyes, the lingering smell of nicotine whenever he walked by her with his slouched shoulders and long sleeves, how he would skip Math and sometimes come to Literature lectures.
It was, sort of, a habit. She liked to watch him from the corner of her eyes at classroom, to see him twiddling his thumb when he didn't understood or simply didn't care for a specific topic, never bothering to write anything down at his rundown notebook while her wrists burned from copying every damn thing the teacher said, her notes covered with post-its, highlithers and elegant handwriting.
She liked to watch him like one would watch a pale, pretty and lonesome bird; you watch it with curiosity until it flies away, leaving you with nothing but your interest at it.
At exams, specially math, she tossed him crumbled papers with the answers and he would grin bashfully at her, eyes wrinkling and glinting while she pretends nothing happened, pretending she doesn't look at him. Like everyone does.
At lunchtime, whenever she saw him not eating anything and only mumbling on a corner near the lockers, she would 'accidentally' stop near and give him half of her lunch. He would then try to deny it; and then she would force it on him until he grins shyly at her and accepts, sniffling his nose on his shoulders while she stared at him like he was a wild, exotic animal.
So, maybe she wasn't surprised to see she was the only one who noticed when he stopped coming to school. But that wasn't uncommon for him, so she didn't dwell on it.
Still, she looked at his desk every day, hoping to see that, maybe, he had come after all.
When his desk stayed empty for an entire two weeks period, her eyebrows furrowed.
She was concerned like you would be when your favorite stray dog suddenly stopped coming to your neighborhood; you don't care enough to search for it, but you still look over your shoulder to see if he already came back for some treat.
"Yes, Mr.Goldenheart?" Dusting her ironed pleated skirt, she waits while the aged, middle-aged man shuffles through the tests papers, his posture slouched on his desk. She doesn't fiddle with her thumb, she stays put and listen to him. Like a good teacher's pet.
The classroom was empty and chairs were scattered around, students leaving the moment the bell rang while she stayed to organize the mess they usually make when eager to go home or have fun with their friends.
'Maybe I should stop by the lake today.'
"Sweetie, you know you can call me Alan." He hummed, thick fingers and not-cared cuticules scratching his not-cared for beard. She didn't answer, only letting her eyes fall onto the blackboard behind him, it was filled with calculus and geometry. "You're buddies with that the Reynolds boy, aren't you?"
Her eyes twitch at that and her heart thumps a little loudly.
"No, sir, I'm not." And she's really not. She's not even acquaintances with him, barely seeing anything more than some stray she took pity upon; he was nothing but the mutt that was about be euthanized in a cold, damp cage.
But Goldenheart didn't seem to care, as he usually do, only huffing and rolling his eyes before handling her a sheet paper with a red marking of a 'C', Robert Reynolds messily written on top. "Well, I don't care either way, just deliver this to him for me, will ya? Can't be bothered to go lookin' for every student that start to miss my classes.."
And starts to grumbles and, like any good teacher's pet, she eases her face into a clipped smile and nods, hiding her clenched teeth through tight pressed lips while blinking a the older man. He doesn't look at her anymore, now too busy lightening his tobacco.
She blinks again, slowly and unsure, like trying to convey a silent argument to him that, maybe, it'll change his mind.
"I don't know where he lives, sir."
"Look, Miss Zhao, I really don't care." With his disheveleaded brown hair with strands of grey, he blows smoke at the window near his desk, now tattering the nicotine stick bud on the asher he kept closely. "Just, do this and I'll add a few points to your report card."
Keeping the urge to groan and scream at him at bay, she simply nods and brushes her fingertips agaisn't the scratchy paper, leaving the classroom with a clipped goodbye the man didn't care to return.
Knocking on the cranky, old wooden door, it hings under her fainty touch and the talking inside stops, the house getting oddly quiet while she waits outside.
It was a lazy Sunday and, while she usually would at home on her pajamas studying, her dog lazily sleeping on her lap and her mother away for work, now she stands outside the Reynolds residance, a paper sheet securely held on her hands.
They didn't answer; Zoey doesn't even know if they are home, she only knows the patriarchy of the family is usually drinking at her Uncle's bar at night, whining until he gets kicked out. Again.
Joshua Reynolds, a respectable man that works on a construction site and gives good morning to everyone that passes by, his eyes wrinkles when he smiles. Everyone knows that when he gets too drunk, he gets aggresive—picking fights at bar at late night and puking at somebody's table.
Everyone seems to brush past that, anyway, always talking about the great and respectable men he is—they rather be ignorant.
The girl with tied silk black hair knocks again—more firmly this time—and she hears quiet, hurried footsteps clickling agaisn't wooden and before she could step away from the door and spend her Sunday with chemistry books, the door is suddenly open.
"Sorry, sorry! I didn't hear it and I—oh." Meeting round, deep chocolate eyes, Zoey blinks her own slanted eyes slowly, like trying to process him after two weeks of not seeing the boy suddenly made every detail on him more appealing, his large, plain grey t-shirt was smudged and he was using socks with sandals. "It's, uh, It's you."
She arches her eyebrow at that. "Yeah, me." Looking over his slouched shoulder, she's wary of the quiet behind him. "You weren't coming to school." And a small part of her hiss at herself because she doesn't care if Robert Reynolds comes or not comes to school because, like everyone on this city, she pretends to not see him.
Like everyone, she pretends to not see the bruise on his cheek nor his chapped, weirdly pale lips.
Robert, with his messy hair he forgets to cut and his loose hold on the door frame, seems to halt at that, eyes widening like a frigid rabbit. He clears his throat and looks over her shoulder, like expecting something. "I'm surprised you noticed, but, well, things were rough at...home."
She didn't try to probe—everyone knew what happened at the Reynolds househood. Everyone looked away.
"Right." They stare at each other for a few moments, each one asserting the other with a intent; Zoey watches him like he's a male peacock with no colors, a weird, exotic thing different from the rest and Robert watches her like she's a dog with three heads read to snap and bite. Both are half-way correct.
He leans on the door frame, tries to look cool and stumbles on himself, cheeks quickly getting red by each second she stares at him, bemused. "You...needed anything?"
Zoey Zhao have nothing in common with Robert Reynolds; he's a nobody, a misplaced thing on her path to achieve her—her mother—dreams, whenever he tries to talk with her at school, she pretends she doesn't know him—like everyone do. To be associated with someone like Robert is to be associated with something below her level. Below her mother's level.
Yet, she stays under his lonely, melhancolic and warm gaze like moth's to a flame; it's, in it's own way, addiction. There's something about him that dissociates him from everything else, a tender and sick look on his that keeps her on her tiptoes. Like he's dangerous.
She sighs before handling him the sheet paper, fingers brushing resulting in her recolling like he spread some sort of sickess to her. Or maybe just the eletricity that flickered on her was enough to startle her. "Your math exam, Mr.Goldenheart asked me to deliver it to you since you haven't been coming and, well, congratulations. For your C."
The words bubbled from her throat like a volcano in eruption—she clears it and looks away from his shocked expression and unruly curls, eyes steady on the road to her right.
"Oh, um, thanks! I mean, I only got that mark because of you, anyway, so, thanks in double." Her organs seemed to buzz in delight at that, each one squeezing painfully on her chest before she sighs, being thanked for something bringing shivers to her skin.
"It's nothing."
He doesn't close the door and she doesn't step away.
"I, uh, do you want to—"
"Are you coming to school tomorrow?"
He blinks, slowly, two times before answering her question like he hadn't thought about if before. "Are you?"
"Of course."
"Then I'll...too, yeah. School."
The awkwardness is palpable, a stench in the air that doesn't go away until she breaks eye contact again, now stepping back with squared shoulders.
"Good, there's a chemistry exam tomorrow and you shouldn't lose it." He nods at her, mouth slight apart like he's trying to form words. He looks stupid to her. "I'll see you tomorrow. Bye."
He clamps his mouth shut before opening again, like a fish out of water that didn't learn quite well how to express himself. "I, yes! Until tomorrow." He waves slowly, like he's still trying to caught up with everything. "Bye."
Like everyone on this town, she darts her eyes away from the quiet, weird and bruised kid. Like everyone else at school, she pretends to not notice him.
Unlike everyone on this town, she actually looked at Robert, whether she like it or not; and this is enough to have him smilling at himself knowing someone missed him. That someone remembered him. Enough to keep that darkness at bay for a few minutes.
Robert Reynolds doesn't have a lot in common with Zoey Zhao; Sarasota Springs Highschool golden student, a girl graceful like a angel with slanted eyes that always bored on his skull, she seemed to hold the answers from everything in the palm of her hand like a missionary from God himself.
Next day, she nodded at him at the hallway and her friends looked strangely at her. He beamed back, shoulders slight less slouched.