kitchens | on holiday [regina]

this is the dawning of the rest of our lives
november 30, 2003

It had gotten progressively colder as the bus trawled back to Ilvermorny, but the kitchen was blissfully steaming. Adam shrugged out of both his jackets and searched for the source of the steam until he found his friend hovering by one of the stoves -- he said, loudly over the kitchen-y sounds, so she’d notice him, “Yo.”

Regina had taken an impressive amount of the kitchen island -- he kicked his balled-up jackets under one of the shelves and carefully pushed a cutting board to the side, clearing himself a couple of square feet. “I’m gonna use this spot,” he said -- if he asked nicely, he was doubtful she’d say yes. Past attempts at sharing the kitchen had taught them both that neither of them were good at it. He dropped his backpack on the floor with a thunk and pulled open a drawer to make sure it still had everything he’d stashed there.

Adam had kind of expected the kitchen to be deserted -- dinner had ended only a little ago and it’d all been very good. There had been pie. But he wasn’t in the mood for pie today. He wanted brownies. He’d promised to make some with his sister on Black Friday and then they’d both been recruited to wait tables instead, and when he’d asked if she still wanted to bake, she’d just wanted to go to bed.

He had to reach past Regina to get his favorite bowl: he glanced at what she was preparing. “You had a bad Thanksgiving, too?” he guessed. 

@Regina Basciano

Cooking was more than just a comfort these days; it was like a respite from the nonsense. All of her year mates were so preoccupied trying to figure out what they were going to do "after" Ilvermorny that Regina felt like they forgot about living right now. If another person asked her what she plans for after graduation was, she'd punch them in the face. Probably not really, but she'd give them a pretty foul look. Or, at the very least, completely ignore them and think judgemental things silently. She was so tired of the look she'd gotten from every relative when she described her half-assed plan. Going to California and working in the music industry didn't seem to impress them much, but she wasn't looking for their approval anyway.

Despite having to help with the Thanksgiving dinner, Regina still felt like cooking as soon as she got back to Ilvermorny. She liked to do it her way; she didn't like it when her Nonna told her what to do. Regina hated being bossed about. In the Ilvermorny kitchens, when she was making her food, Regina made the rules, which was a comfort. When she heard the door creak open, she frowned, but her expression changed quickly when she saw Adam. "Hey," She said with a nod in his direction, focussed on turning the dough over for the garlic knot she was working on.

Regina noticed him moving some of her mess out of the way so that he could claim a stove, and if it was anyone else, she might have protested, but instead, she shrugged. "Just keep your advice to yourself tonight," She said like it was some bargain, and then turned to face him with an apologetic smile, "Please?" Regina hadn't meant to snap at him, but his question was right on the money. "That obvious?" She sighed, half laughing, half shaking her head, and then returning to her floury dough. "It was pretty awful. My dreams aren't 'realistic' enough," Regina rolled her eyes as she made air quotes around the word realistic, the flour from her hand puffing around her like a cloud of smoke, and she shrugged.

"What happened at yours?"

Just keep your advice to yourself -- that was difficult for Adam, usually, when Regina’s standard of cleanliness would have gotten him clobbered if he’d used it at home or, fuck forbid, the restaurant, but he was inclined to be generous tonight: she was probably as sour as he was with unsolicited advice. They’d both just spent a week with their families. “Yeah,” he said, brushing shavings of parmesan cheese onto the floor. “Whatever.”

She was kneading dough like it was her worst enemy but she somehow was surprised that he’d picked up on her bad mood; he shrugged. Blame it on his incredible sense of perception. “Heard that,” he said, paging through a stained cookbook (he didn’t trust his memory for baking quantities.) “My whole life isn’t realistic enough, you think my family knows I go to goddamn magic school?”

This was his greatest grievance, but it was old hat by now. He couldn’t blame his aunts and uncles for not knowing about wizards -- that was sort of wizards’ fault -- but he could still blame them for being assholes to him.

She asked what had happened; Adam shrugged. “I dunno,” he said, “I think my dreams are too realistic. Or, I dunno, my lack of dreams. I was just going to go back home but --” he found the brownie recipe and broke himself off, busied himself for a moment setting the book up and getting measuring cups. “I dunno now, obviously, I almost went crazy being home for a week, much less the rest of my goddamn life.”

Adam bent over and located a bag of flour -- he thunked it onto the counter and pulled the top open. “So what’s your unrealistic dream?”

While not everyone in Regina's family was magical, the witch still couldn't truly imagine what it must have been like to hide it from some members. She knew that most of Adam's family had no idea that the magical world even existed, let alone the things he was capable of, and in a way, that was kind of sad. Regina had always felt weird about hiding the magical world from the nomaj one. On the one hand, she absolutely understood the need for secrecy. History proved (on far too many occasions) that muggles preferred to attack groups of people they didn't understand versus trying to find common ground. It wasn't that far from where they were standing now that 'witches' were burned at stake not so long ago. And yet, it still felt wrong to keep it from them. Magic could help the rest of the world in so many ways, and she wouldn't mind being able to use electricity and her walkman at Ilvermorny either.

Still, Regina shrugged, turning to look at him with an apologetic smile as he gave her a little more information about his holiday. He looked tired, and she could relate. Spending time with family, even when it went well, was exhausting. Too many things to worry about. So many assumptions and requirements. "A whole week is a long time, though. I can tell you look exhausted," As they often were, Regina's words could have been taken as an insult, even though she meant them to sound understanding. Watching him lean over to find the flour, the Thunderbird took the opening to invade his space (because she had zero boundaries) and stole the rolling pin on his workspace. "Mind if I borrow this?" She asked, eying the utensil that was already in her hand and then bouncing back to her own countertop. "The drawer with the rest of them is like.. really far away," It was like seven steps, which was six too many.

"I dunno, I guess they don't think being a singer is a real job?" Keeping her hands busy, the teenager began rolling out her dough more violently than was required. It was sure to have way too many air bubbles now, her form was a complete mess, but the Italian couldn't be bothered. Cooking was comfort, but it was also something she was 'expected' to be good at. And just like keeping magic a secret, Regina had conflicting feelings right now. "But it's what I want to do, so it's not really up to them, right?" Regina turned toward him, asking the last bit of her question with the rolling pin held up like a weapon, but she hadn't meant it to sound quite so forceful.

“I always look exhausted,” muttered Adam, but Regina’s words made him smile anyway -- either because she had noticed, or because she seemed sympathetic. His smile dropped a moment later as she snatched the rolling pin from his area and ducked away: even though he wasn’t planning to use it, and had only gotten it (and most of the other baking utensils on his worktop) out to see if his favourite spatula was in the back of the drawer. “Okay, but you’re washing it,” he warned. He selected an inferior spatula -- it was less well-loved, with fewer scorch marks on the handle -- and swept the rest of his utensils back into the drawer and shut it again.

He had meant to bake rather the way that she was -- furiously and without pause, because he was in a bad mood -- but once his flour was in the bowl he leaned against the counter to watch his friend attack her bread dough. Adam didn’t think he’d ever heard her sing, or express any interest in singing for a living. “You sing?” he asked stupidly; he had the good sense to follow this with “Cool” rather than say he agreed with her family.

She held the rolling pin up threateningly enough that at first he was worried she’d read his mind or something; he said, “Course it’s not up to them. You’re seventeen. Eighteen?” He couldn’t say he thought he believed that of himself -- he might have been eighteen but that didn’t make his mother any less his mother, as he’d learned this week; the thought made him grumpy again. After a moment he knelt to find the sugar; with his head half-hidden in the cupboard he said, “What’s the plan, though, are you going to L.A. or New York or what?”

When he stood, she had returned to her cooking -- he leaned over his countertop to get a better look at it. “What are you making?”

"True," Regina responded, giving in to the little laugh that rose from her chest when Adam smiled. The frustration and anxiety she had come into the kitchen burdened with were slowly starting to dissipate, rolling out with the dough, and the smile was coming back to Regina's face. Not even Adam's demands that she cleans off a utensil she used (how rude!) could stop the process. Kneading the dough like it was a tense muscle, Regina went to work, throwing it around with skill (and luck) and only almost dropping it twice before it was ready to roll.

While she could have easily thrown a fit that Adam didn't know that she was a singer, Regina bit her tongue. Despite being a part of Ilvermorny's makeshift choir club, Regina supposed it wasn't common knowledge. It wasn't like she was one of those witches that broke out into broadway musicals in the hallway for attention. She liked to sing, but she wasn't crazy. Regina loved show tunes as much as the next glee kid, but she mostly kept it to herself.

"Seventeen till February," Not that she was counting down the days or anything. Regina turned toward Adam, leaving the uneven log of dough behind as she scratched her head and got flour into her hair. "Guess I hadn't really considered it," The girl began, but made this decision as quickly as any other, "L.A., definitely, L.A. I'm from New York, so I gotta' try something different, y'know?" Regina knew there was a big music scene in NY, but the idea of flying off to California after graduation was entirely too magical to pass up. And since she'd made a choice all of thirty seconds ago, she was absolutely committed to it.

Turning back to the bread Regina used her wand to conjure some ingredients but collected the knife personally. The last time she'd accio'd a sharp object in the kitchen, Regina had ended up in the hospital wing. Returning to the counter, the Thunderbird began cutting little strips out of the log and then answered Adam's question. "Garlic knots, you know, comfort food. You can never ever have too much garlic," The Italian witch held the knife in Adam's direction like a warning and then flashed him another smile. "What do you have going on over there?"

“L.A.!” said Adam -- he was more familiar with Orange County than he was with Los Angeles L.A., but he nodded. “It’s nice down there,” he lied -- it was nice if you liked concrete and palm trees, maybe. Not that he had any ground to stand on living in San Jose. “You ever been before?”

She pointed her knife at him as though he’d personally threatened to take her garlic away; he held his hands up in surrender and turned back to his own stretch of counter. “Sounds good,” he said, “These’re brownies.” He was making them much the way the cookbook said to, but with different ratios of brown and cane sugar, so didn’t elaborate. He got out the sugar. “I’ll give you some if you give me some of that.”

The brown sugar had been sitting untouched for too long, and was something like a solid block; Adam picked it up distastefully and gave it a hard swing into the counter, breaking it up with a thwack, though he still couldn’t have matched Regina’s aggression if he’d tried. Even though he was stiff from the long bus ride back to school, and would probably regret this tomorrow, it felt better to be working, to keep his eyes on his bowl filling up with dry ingredients. He filled up a half-teaspoon with salt with about as much care as he’d have treated nitroglycerine and dumped it in.

Adam let the kitchen lapse into a comfortable wordless lull -- they were both working with too much vigor to lapse into a comfortable silence -- before he asked, “So do you wanna go like, solo? Or do you have, like, musician friends?” He had no idea how singers made it in the world, but surely she’d know more about this than he did.

"How would you know?" Regina asked him, turning to face Adam as he complimented L.A., and then she remembered he was from that side of the country. "Ooooh yeah, you're from California. Do they really call it Californ-I-A? Like the song?" Regina asked as she started bobbing her head to California Love, humming and swaying at her workstation. It didn't matter that there was no music playing, she could imagine.  "Never been, but I've seen all the music videos, so that's like the same thing, right?" Regina had begged her mom to hook up the cable just so that she could stay up late watching the countdowns on MTV.

Realizing she had basically threatened him, Regina giggled and gave him a shrug. "Love brownies, you've got a deal." She agreed with a small smile. The more they talked, the less she remembered all the things that had been bothering her. Regina lived for distractions; it was part of what she had loved so much about music all these years. When things got stressful, she just tuned it out and turned on the radio. Cooking helped too, and she fell into a nice rhythm as a small silence grew between them. It was comfortable, and for once, she didn't mind it, but that didn't mean she had stopped humming. "California knows how to partyyy~"; at this rate, Tupac would be serenading her headspace for a week.

"Man, I would love to be in a band, but right now, it's just me." That was the dream, right? Being around like-minded, musically inclined individuals. Spending all day sitting in the sun and dreaming up lyrics and riffs. To never have to get a day job and be creative all the time. Regina didn't have a grasp on what adult life was really like. Especially for a starving artist.

"Why, do you play?" She asked Adam with excited curiosity.

“No, nobody calls it that,” said Adam with amusement, but Regina was already singing the song, so he grinned and bobbed his head along, dusting flour off his hands. If her only understanding of California was from MTV, she was going to be disappointed. He glanced sidelong at his friend -- “Like, basically the same thing, but with way more homeless people.”

She’d gotten the song stuck in his head too, now, so as he used his spatula to break up the clumps, he kept bobbing his head, hummed along with her -- in the city of L.A.

It was nice to cook in (relative) quiet. The restaurant was nothing like this -- there, it was impossible to do anything without raising his voice, and he wasn’t even allowed to do anything more advanced than stir things or shred lettuce -- and at home he didn’t really cook alone if he could help it. Then, even here, usually when he came down to cook, it was during the day when the elves were working.

But this was fine. This was reasonable. This was almost calming, which Adam rarely associated with cooking. Of course, once he was thinking it through, Regina spoke again. Adam raised his eyebrows, trying not to look or seem judgmental, and said “Oh, well, that’s fun.”

He snorted, then. “Played the violin for a few months in fourth grade but then the teacher was like, ‘okay, Adam, go do choir or something’, but I sucked at that too.”

"No, nobody calls it that," Adam had said, but of course, Regina had to ask again. "You sure about that?" The witch asked between beating the air out of her dough and humming a song she almost surely did not fully understand. "Oh, okay, yeah, that's cool," Regina said, nodding when he told her that California was a lot like how it MTv portrayed it, just with more homeless people.

She could handle that, she supposed; Brooklyn had plenty of homeless people too. She'd seen all the late-night music videos, and that was basically like a travel guide for people who weren't a hundred years old, so she was confident she could survive the big Californ-I-A (she was still going to call it that).

Hearing Adam humming along made Regina smile, and there was no way she would stop now. It was easy being around Adam, he was funny, and they were 1-for-1 on songs they both knew, so that was something.

Asking if he was musically inclined was like a big deal in Regina's world, and when he informed her that he was undoubtedly not, she laughed. "Well, it was worth a shot." Regina was still laughing as she covered her mouth, getting a bit of flour dust on the tip of her nose and cheek. "But! You can cook, and honestly, is anything else even remotely important?"

Regina was doubting his credentials as a Californian? “Are you?” Adam countered; he didn’t smile, but he couldn’t help narrowing his eyes. But it wasn’t, as some of their kitchen escapades had been (cheese did not belong on rice!), an argument. They just stood, and hummed, until Adam had run himself out of the part of the song he knew — there was definitely a bridge but fuck him if he could remember how it went — and had returned his full attentions to his brownie batter.

“Don’t say that,” he protested, although her admission (that he could cook, take that!) made him grin a little. “If all I do’s cook for the rest of my life I swear…” He wasn’t sure what to swear on, or what to swear to, so he just shrugged and dropped the smile, glancing back over at her. She had flour on her face, which gave him the powerful, stupid urge to laugh. Her dreams might not have been particularly realistic — his parents probably would have killed him if he’d had dreams half as unrealistic, in fact — but he was at once bitterly jealous that she, like, had them to start with. That she had drive and passion. For so long Adam’s main drive and passion had just been inherited from what his dad had never managed as a young man.

He poured in his usual amount of chocolate chips, then — at a second thought — added another handful.

“Good luck getting out to L.A.,” he said, at length. “Wish I could do that.”

"You could, though," Regina countered almost as soon as the words had left Adam's lipped. He wished he could go to L.A., and that immediately had Regina wondering what was stopping him? Sure, he had just explained a lot of it, and she was clever enough to assume the rest, parents and responsibilities and so on, but really what was stopping him? Regina loved her mother, and they typically got along. Still, it wasn't as if she encouraged her only daughter to throw away a hard-earned Ilvermorny diploma to chase a musical career. And Regina wouldn't have listened anyway; she had troubles listening.

"Like, it could be cool." She rubbed at her face, spreading the flour there until it tickled her nose, and she had to hold back a sneeze. That would not have been sanitary at all. Crisis avoided, the young witch piped up again, this time with even more momentum than before. Crossing the room — weaponless this time — Regina gave him a hopeful look.

"Think 'bout it, you can get your job as a chef or whatever after L.A., but we're only young once. You should come with me." Regina looked up at Adam energetically, noticing how much taller than her he was, but then again, most people were. It was a forward thing to ask, but it was also a very Regina thing to do. "You know it means city of angels, right?" Regina had slept through one year of Spanish, so she had no idea if that was correct, but it sounded right.

Adam opened his mouth to protest that, no, he couldn’t, but Regina was giving him a kind of fierce look, so he shut his mouth, stumped, and then said, “I mean,I guess I could, yeah.” It wasn’t even that he didn’t want to – just that he knew better. Starting again to feel like a moron, he redirected his energy to his brownie batter, tried to stir the chocolate chips in evenly, tried to ignore the warmth that had crept up the back of his neck.

When he looked up again, Regina was rubbing still more flour onto her nose – he cracked another grin at her, not just at her profession that running off to L.A., doubtless a family-ruining, gossip-mongering, idiotic move, would be cool. “Totally,” he muttered, paying a little more attention now to the flour on her nose.

He was dolloping batter into a dish when she spoke again, so seriously that he looked back up and caught her eye again, nose wrinkling with concentration. She said: we’re only young once. She said: you should come with me.

“Huh,” said Adam, trying to wrap his head around it. Regina Basciano, infamous singer; Adam Nguyen, her friend that had come along for whatever reason. It wasn’t so bad, he decided – besides, he liked Regina a lot more than most of the people he’d met at Ilvermorny. He tilted his head to the side, like a pigeon. Said, “Huh,” again, and then said, “Like, for real?”

City of Angels. “Nah, man, I think it means ‘The Angels’,” he said, but he grinned like a Cheshire cat and said, “Huh! How you getting there – yo, I can drive us there, now!” He had his license, at least – he’d have had it earlier, but he’d failed the test the first time for speeding.

Regina had meant it when she had asked Adam to join her on this adventure, and right then, the teenager was reasonably confident she had never meant anything more in her entire life. All seventeen years of it, anyway. “Yes, really, yes,” She replied and repeated, nodding fervently and mirroring the smile that began to grown on his face as he corrected her. “The same thing,” Regina dismissed as she waved a hand and laughed. City of Angels, the Angels, whatever, it was still better than whatever Shackamaxon probably meant.

And then Adam played just about the very best card he could, and Regina bounced excitedly and clapped her flour-covered hands together, and the coughed quietly as the puff of flour in the air around her. “No, shit, really?” This whole thing was coming together, and it made her more enthusiastic than usual. “Wait, do you have a car?” Coming from New York City, Regina knew maybe three people who owned a car, and she certainly was not one of them.

Regina headed back to the baking experiment. (Anything that had been kneaded as much as Regina had handled that lump of dough was nothing short of a science experiment now). She tossed it haphazardly onto a pan and danced her way over to the oven. “This could work, like, seriously Adam.... this could work….” She was thinking a mile a minute, but none of her thoughts were about the legitimate logistics of the trip. Gas money, mileage, and where they were going to sleep were the responsible things to plan out, and responsible thoughts went the way of the dodo in Regina’s mind

Instead, Regina was already dreaming about driving across the country with Adam, about lazy days rollerblading by the beach, and partying at night in Los Angeles (but calling it Networking when she called her mom). What a dream.

“Sure!” said Adam, though it wasn’t the same thing – he had just enough of his dignity preserved not to frolic, as she was doing, but he leaned back against the counter and enjoyed the vastly improved atmosphere of the kitchen; it was like Thanksgiving hadn’t happened, like they hadn’t both come here to beat their stress into batter, like there was nothing in front of them but the road to L.A.

And he had a way to get there – “Yeah!” he said. “I mean – it’s my dad’s shitty old car, and it’s still in San Jose, but there gotta be ways to get a car out here, right? Maybe I get it teleported after I graduate, that’s a thing, right?” Maybe it wasn’t – he sure wouldn’t know – but these were just semantics, logistics, all the things that mattered so much less than the initial dream.

Right?

Regina dumped her dough into a dish and slammed it into the oven; Adam glanced at his own oven and realised that he hadn’t preheated it; with a snort of mild disgust (it would have been bitter disgust were he in any less of a good mood) he spun the dial to 350° and returned to his position at the counter.

A watched pot never boiled (a watched toaster never popped; a watched oven never dinged) so he looked back at Regina, who was in what looked like a daze of daydreaming. Adam half-closed his eyes as well and tried to do the same; all he could think about was what Regina would say when she saw his shitty, shitty car. Hopefully she’d think its shittiness was cute; she was a New Yorker and a lot of New Yorkers, in his experience, had a weird fondness for things that objectively sucked.

He’d never been on a road trip, not properly – his family only took trips less than a day’s drive from home, down to Fresno or O.C. – but he knew how it worked in theory; he’d watched movies. “We gotta make a list of everything we wanna see,” he vowed; of course if Regina was going to become a musician, she had the rest of her life to see everything she wanted to, but if he was going back home after, he did not, so he had to make some quick choices here. He started with – “Like, the Grand Canyon.”