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Tweak says, "Waiting To Reach The Sky"

Luz Martin (4c) wrote in yegods,
@ 2012-02-03 15:06:00

Entry tags:

!log, maria de la luz martin, milo canonici

WHO Milo Canonici and Luz Martin
WHERE Sirico’s, Brooklyn
WHEN Feb. 3rd, about 4:30 pm
RATING PG
SUMMARYFontbonne Hall Academy’s Father/Daughter Dance
STATUS Complete

Carl had gotten out of work early, arrived home about ten minutes after Luz had, and still managed to be ready to go before she was. He wasn’t a fan of the monkey suit, but felt grateful to be a man. It was so much easier for him to get ready. He was putting on the cufflinks that had been his grandfather’s while his wife and daughter were still frantically running about, getting Luz into a dress, making sure her hair was dry, finding the right shoes, the right necklace, stocking without a tear in them. Both mother and daughter seemed equally stressed and excited about this, and Carl just stood by and watched the curly haired teen and pregnant woman walk up and down the hall, in and out of the bathroom and Luz’s room. Neither of them thought Luz was quite ready when it came time to go, but it was time to go, so Carl had forced Luz into the car, kissed his wife, and promised to be back before sunset. Before Luz turned into a pumpkin.

Everything Luz wore belonged to her mother, expect for the stockings and undergarments. Carl didn’t park in the handicap spot, as he would have been allowed, and on request performed a quick look over of Luz’s dress before they entered the banquet hall where the Academy was holding its dance. A few people were there already, as it was still early, and for a moment Carl and Luz stood in the doorway and looked up at the high ceilings, the gleaning white drapes, the shimmering chandeliers, the bamboo chairs, the large flower arrangements that lit up in places. A string quintet was setting up in one corner and beginning to play light atmospheric music.

“This is by far the classiest thing we’ve ever done,” Carl said, blinking slightly from all the shimmering.

Luz nodded. “Sorry about that.” She began to look around, getting up on her tip toes to see around centerpieces. “Anya said she and Mr. Canonici would come early,” she told him.

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risplendere
2012-02-06 12:57 am UTC (link)

All that's left to do is dance, it looks like. He turned his head to look at Anya and nodded to the dance floor. She shrugged and pushed back her chair. Together, they take to the dance floor without much gliding. It's more like an awkward shuffle. There's no real proper dancing between the fathers and daughters that he can see, it's all very much just hands on shoulders and swaying to the music, except most of them look pretty happy to be there. Anya still looked somewhere between bored and annoyed.

Milo has never been one to empathise with others. Even with all the effort in the world, he couldn't put himself in the headspace of a seventeen year old girl. Whatever she might be annoyed at him about is a mystery. His mouth pulled to the side as he considered. "You look very nice," he finally said, because it was true. She didn't have anyone else besides girlfriends and magazines to go on, but Milo thought she was beautiful. Granted, he still thought the dress made her look about twelve, but he figured she'd never really look grown up to him.

"Thank you," Anya said curtly, but her shoulders eased. It was nice to be told you looked nice, after all that effort. Even if it was a stupid father daughter dance. Or maybe it wasn't so stupid. Getting all dressed up even for lame speeches and being surrounded by yuppie dads was kind of fun. A nice break. "This is nice."

"It is," he agreed. It would be better when there was food, but Milo was always sort of hungry. All day grazing was his worst habit. "It's also the last one." He frowned. There would be no more father daughter dances after this.

Anya nodded. "Nope." She'd be graduated and moving out soon enough. With her own car. Totally a Fiat. She held her smile in, knowing how wishy-washy her father got about things like this. He was just clingy because he was lonely. "You'll be fine. You can hang out with Katsumi!"

The mention of Katsumi gave Milo pause. Especially after their book adventures, the constant high the boy was on made Milo a little restless. "Katsumi's not really-"

"He's really good for you!" she blurted, and turned a shade of pink to match your her dress. "I mean he's a good friend." Looking for a quick escape, she spied Carl and Luz a few feet to their right. "Hey dad, you should dance with Luz!" she said, loud enough for them to hear. "She doesn't really have a lot of time, you know?"

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4c
2012-02-06 01:29 am UTC (link)

"Eh?" Luz said, looking over at them when she heard her name and stopping still. Her eyes widened and she grabbed the inside of her bottom lip in between her teeth. Mostly she looked at Anya, but then glanced up at Mr. Canonici and bit down harder on her lip. Carl looked up at her, a little curious about the expression on his daughter's face, but... she'd had that look on her face a lot since they moved to NYC. Trusting her even when she made that face had been the greatest challenge in being her father. Carl just never knew what it meant.

So he looked over at Anya and Milo, gently ushered Luz closer and without a word from her extended her hand up toward Milo. "Be my guest," he said politely. Once his hand was free of Luz's, he held it out toward Anya. "Mademoiselle?"

Luz looked down once her father had let good of her hand, and then glared uneasily up at Mr. Canonici. He wasn't Simon. That both made sense and was weird. Because he had been Simon. When they had been little boys on a beach together. When she had reassured him (and made good) that she would not let him die. When she had promised to take care of him. She tried to smile, because she knew she was not making a nice facial expression. "Hello," she said, because she literally could not think of another thing to say to him.

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risplendere
2012-02-06 01:37 am UTC (link)

"Hello," he answered, still flustered and a bit infuriated with his daughter's meddling streak. He hadn't want to dance with Luz. He hadn't wanted to really be alone with Luz or speak to her or talk about Lord of the Flies while Lord of the Flies was the only thing they'd have to talk about and now they'd have to talk about Lord of the Flies.

Or would they? Except, he couldn't think of any topics that didn't relate to her outside of the book. He already knew how classes were going from Anya, right down to who was a skank this week and who wasn't. His daughter didn't have much of a gossip filter, unfortunately. "You-" Are no longer an English boy named Ralph. "You look nice," he said finally, his tone lifting upwards to sound more like a question than an answer. "Having fun?"

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4c
2012-02-06 01:50 am UTC (link)

She did relax a little when he told her she looked nice, even if neither of them were sure if he had meant it or not. Luz was not complicated sometimes, sometimes she did just wanted to be told she looked nice. By someone other than her parents. So she relaxed a bit and tried not to step on Mr. Canonici's toes. Her dad had much smaller feet, Mr. Canonici's were dangerously large in comparison, and therefore more likely to be stepped on. Maybe social dance next trimester was a good idea.

"Thank you," she said. "And I think I preferred the getting ready than the being here." She looked up from his feet to him. And... yeah, damn, they had nothing to talk about aside from Lord of the Flies and her liking ladies. Neither were good for dancing in public. She looked briefly behind her to see what her dad and Anya might be talking about, but she couldn't hear them, just see her dad smiling.

"Will you watch the Super Bowl?" she asked instead.

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risplendere
2012-02-06 01:58 am UTC (link)

He shook his head. "No, I don't think so." The follow up, cutting comment and about himself and sports went unsaid. Public places, devout nuns, and teenaged girls. Right. Some things just shouldn't be said in these kinds of situations. "I don't really care who wins. It'll noisy and riotous either way."

Milo cleared his throat. What else could there be? "This is the last one of these you'll have to come to." Certainly a new sort of low had been reached if he was really just recycling all of his conversation with Anya. "You ready to be graduated?" He realised he had no idea what she was going to do after high school. Keep working for Lydia? That didn't seem very fun, but he'd stay mum on the subject. Chances were Lydia had already predicted he would think that.

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4c
2012-02-06 02:09 am UTC (link)

Luz agreed with his judgment of the Super Bowl and nodded. She did not like sports. She only liked Super Bowl time of year because it meant she was cool, because she knew what so many people were itching to find out. So many people cared so much, and Luz was cool enough to be a step ahead of all of them.

"Oh, well they didn't have this at my old school, so this is my first and last," she explained. Her old school in Philly had not been nearly so posh. It had cracks in the ceilings and the nuns had been older. Some girls had tattoos, even. ...And more non-white girls, not she thought about it. That was weird... She looked up at Mr. Canonici, wondering if he'd forgotten she was the new girl.

"I am so ready," she nearly scoffed. "I've already put in a year more than anyone else, I should already be in college," she told him. "And moved out, and cool, with, like, my own cat." She enjoyed musing about this subject. "I've already been accepted to a few small and boring schools. Waiting to hear back on others."

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risplendere
2012-02-06 02:21 am UTC (link)

Her readiness to be gone and visions of what life should already be like wasn't all that far from Anya's heated speeches about what she'd do after school. He snorted and laughed. They were still young enough that it was cute they thought so. "Maybe it'll work out like that. We'll see." He bit back all the 'how little you know's building in his brain because he had a teenager of his own. They hated to hear that kind of stuff, but they loved to argue about it. Heatedly. "Good luck with the schools."

And, just like that, he couldn't think of where to take the conversation again. The dancing had to be dying down soon. It was just a matter of killing time. Or being agreeable in silence. But what subject would make her agreeable to silence? "How's the lovelife?" Yeah, that worked.

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4c
2012-02-06 02:30 am UTC (link)

Luz actually felt her throat close up, and if her body continued to dance it had absolutely noting to do with her. She thought it had been decided anything about her love life was not to be discussed at school. Either the part of her that... might sorta like girls... or the part of her that pretended to have gotten mono and the entire school was now convinced she had a hot older boyfriend.

It seemed sort of surreal to have to answer that one. She gave a lot of thought, a lot, to checking her watch and saying it was time for her to go.

But sometimes her mind gave as good as it got when panicked. "Went to a burlesque club the other day. How's yours?"

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risplendere
2012-02-06 02:45 am UTC (link)

He head jerked backwards, visibly taken aback by the response. That was unexpected. He stared at her for a moment, unsure what to think. Was she even old enough to be in burlesque club? But then again, she was a year older than all the other girls. She'd be almost nineteen. Legal, but he could hardly imagine Carl or Pilar giving their blessing to something like that. He glanced around for the top of Carl's head. No, he wouldn't tell him, but he wanted to make sure no one had heard her.

"Good for you," he said dryly, not sure if he meant it or not. But no, he wasn't going to talk about his love life to an eighteen year old maybe-lesbian. "How much longer do you have before you have to go? Wouldn't want to hog all your time with Carl."

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4c
2012-02-06 02:54 am UTC (link)

That was mildly satisfying, and Luz was pretty sure if anyone had heard her they would have assumed she was being sarcastic. But she wasn't, and that was awesome. And no, she hadn't mentioned the burlesque club to her parents. She'd said paintball and a movie marathon. She'd even come up with which movies, and made sure they were ones she'd already seen in case her parents asked.

And she really didn't want to know about his love life anyway. At all. No.

But Luz did look at her watch. She had, eh, well. She looked back over at her dad, who was still smiling with Anya, and then back at Mr. Canonici and shrugged. And then the song ended and Carl lead Anya back over to them anyway.

"May I have the last dance?" Carl asked. Luz looked away from the nosy Mr. Canonici and nodded at her dad and took his hand.

At least her dad was sensible.

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