wild wild west [regina]

boston | june 2004

At Ilvermorny it had been pretty easy to cultivate a reputation as a hooligan. He looked, acted, and spoke differently than some ninety percent of his peers, and he had decided early on that it was worth more to him to stick with his own upbringing and his own origin than to try and assimilate. Once or twice he’d talked about this with his roommate Joaquim, who was sort of the same way, but without the extra layer of being a Magbob – neither of them had been able to decide if they’d rejected conformity out of principle or because it had just been so hard to fit in.

Easy or not, Adam had worked hard for it – he’d done his best for seven years to seem unapproachable and to discourage friendship. Most people bought into it. He’d only had to drop like one anecdote about a childhood friend getting knifed in the park to intimidate the bejesus out his roommates. This reputation was all but gone now; his parents had tracked him down before graduation and his mom had scrubbed his face with a wet wipe.

Graduation had taken, like, ages, but his parents were en route to San Jose (via Texas) now, and Adam was en route to Boston (via the I-90). Regina had left even earlier, and had promised to let him know where she was to come and pick her up. Boston, somewhere – they were going to find that big-ass bell and then book it before either of them felt obligated to disparage the Red Sox.

He got within five minutes of the city and pulled over to check his phone (he’d Apparated out of Shackamaxon to buy it, three weeks ago.) She’d texted him; he called her back – “Yo, where are you?”

@Regina Basciano

“Duuude,” Regina answered her cell on the third ring; it’d taken her the first two rings to decide whether she’d let him go to voicemail (just for the hell of it). Ever since the invention of text messaging, Regina had nearly refused to speak to anyone on the phone. It seemed antiquated now, and she wondered if she’d ever go back to talking to people, let alone sending them slow-ass owl mail. Back at Ilvermorny, she’d had to dodge owl poop and risk being bitten just to send a letter; the worst her cell phone did was die when she forgot to plug it in – which was always.

“Remember when I said text me?” She asked him, but she let it go and answered his question anyway. “I’m on Harrison and… shit, one second, oh, that’s cute,” Regina pressed the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she moved past one of the stands at the SoWa Open Market and looked for a cross street sign. She’d apparated as close as she could to Boston and gotten distracted by the artsy boutique that used to be nothing but warehouses.

“Harrison and Berkley, Adam, you gotta’ see some of this shit,” She said to the phone, picking up some handmade jewelry and nearly getting distracted enough to walk away with it. “Look for the SoWa sign,” The last time Regina had been in Boston, this whole block had been abandoned and unsafe, but now it was a bustling art community, and she loved it.

She took forever to answer her phone every time; he thought she was screwing with him at this point. And she had the nerve to ‘Duuude’ him, like it didn’t take him like three hundred button presses to text ‘WHERE R U’ with his fat fingers, and two seconds to just call. “Bro, I’m driving!” he said (inaccurate; he was pulled over with his hazards on.) “Fine.” He would just have to hope that he’d know SoWa sign when he saw it.

His map of the United States was not detailed enough to locate the corner of Harrison and Berkley; he asked an irritable newsstand vendor for directions and made it finally to a busy street of artsy cutesy storefronts. He found parking (with difficulty) and paid for parking (with difficulty; he hoped Regina really thought this place was worth being here for forty-five minutes because they were not leaving before he’d spent that money) and called her again, from directly under the sign, before he heard her ringtone going off a few feet away and wove through a gaggle of velvet-tracksuited girls to find her looking at… jewelry.

“This is what I gotta see?” he said. “You know I’m a boy?” But he picked up the ugliest bracelet he could see on display and held it up as though judging it, and snickered. “Look, it’s got little duckies on it.” He put the bracelet back down – “You got bags or whatever to put in the trunk? I’m parked out over –” he waved vaguely out the door.

Regina sighed as her ringtone went off again, and even though she didn't want phone calls, she didn't hate her ringtone yet. Probably because it was a new one she'd only recorded off the radio (legally-ish) two nights ago. Two days from now, she'd likely find the song to be one of the most annoying ever made. That was just how these things went. Not bothering to set what she was looking at down into its display, Regina reached for her phone and saw Adam's name on the screen. It went dead before she could answer, and then she heard him and spun around.

"Yeah," She said first, followed by, "Yeah?" What did it matter if he was a boy? Not that she diverted her eyes, but Regina was confident that if she looked around, she'd see at least four puka-shell necklaces and half as many wallet chains. "Boys wear jewelry too, Adam. It's not unheard of."

He picked up a bracelet and pointed out the ducks, and she laughed, and then Adam hit her with another question. "Yeah, this is all I've got," She pivoted at the waist, half spinning to show off the backpack she'd stuffed just a little past full of clothes and things. And while it might have looked like she packed practically, light even, that wasn't exactly true. Regina needed plenty of things for their trip, and despite the boys' jeans clinging to her hips and the beanie on her head, she liked make-up and accessories as much as the next witch.

It wasn't that Regina didn't need plenty of things for their road trip; it was more that she was underprepared for everything. She packed last minute (shocker) and likely forgot half of what she could not live without. It was too late to go back now, though, and there was something recklessly exciting about the idea.

"I'm ready to go," she said, not considering he might want a minute to check out the stands. Regina set down the jewelry she was still holding on to, and the suspicious vendor who had been watching them took a breath. "Have you got a phone charger?"

“Well, not this crap,” retorted Adam, poking through the display, ignoring the vendor giving him a real stink-eye. He glanced around the neighboring tables – he always got a kick out of white people selling Buddhist stuff, and this seemed like that kind of place – and then back at Regina as she spun to show him her backpack. It was admittedly close to bursting, but Adam frowned anyway – he’d been able to fill two duffels and two backpacks with supplies, and his mother had pressed a paper grocery bag of extra food on him at the airport.

“You didn’t bring any food, did you?” he said.

At least it would fit into the trunk without any problems at all, and he wasn’t going to have to carry anything. Regina said cheerfully that she was ready to go. “Yeah, for my phone,” said Adam. “You might have to get your own. We can see if there’s a gas station near here, I still have like forty minutes of parking.” It’d cost him seventy-five cents and they were going to use it; besides, he sort of wanted to get a soda for the road.

If she was done with this place, though, he wasn’t going to argue – there had to be less kitschy boutiques to nose around. Adam edged past the velvet tracksuit girls to get the door for Regina (it made a loud, clanging-bell sound as long as it was open, God this vendor must be sick of them.) “You don’t wanna look around any of these other shops?” he said. “My sister made me promise to get her souvenirs,” and he was fairly sure this was the most willing he’d ever be to fulfill that request – surely they would run out of money before they hit California.