"I really hate the way those blokes look at you," Elliott muttered, shooting a look over his shoulder as he and Ruthie left the drama room to work on their dialogue. It was cold outside, but the weather was fine, so they were okay.

"I know, me too," Ruthie agreed, putting a hand on his arm.

The "blokes" Elliott was referring to were of course Brett and Leroy. Since they'd come back from their suspension, they'd taken to staring at Ruthie, though Leroy only did it aggressively when Brett wasn't looking. Brett still went all alpha male about Ruthie, and had actually shoved another football player into a bunch of lockers for making some comment about Ruthie's appearance in his, Brett's, hearing. Ruthie had no idea what the comment was, but supposedly it was something nice, to the effect of how beautiful she looked on that particular day.

Since then Ruthie, who was considered "one of the hottest girls in the school," and would've been chased by every available guy who thought he had a shot, had been left conspicuously alone. Which was just fine with her. She had zero interest in all of them, and only had eyes for the skinny boy from England with the really good hair.

Speaking of alpha male, though, Elliott was looking furious about Brett and Leroy, even after they were outside and ready to run through their dialogue.

"El, they're just looking. I mean, at the risk of sounding like a stupid Republican, this is America, and it is a free country, you know?" Ruthie tugged on his arm.

"I don't care where we are," Elliott said, looking over his shoulder at the door to the drama room. "The way they look at you isn't right. It's disrespectful and demeaning."

"Listen to you, Lancelot, getting all protective of my honor and everything," Ruthie teased, trying to lighten his mood. "Let them look. It just underscores what they'll never have. Are they imagining me with no clothes? They'll never see me that way. Or that I'll be their girlfriend? Not gonna happen. Sex slave? Definitely not gonna happen," she finished with the laugh Elliott loved.

"How can you joke about this?" Elliott asked. "Doesn't it give you willys to see them like that?"

"Like I said, I don't love it, but it doesn't affect me," Ruthie tried to explain.

Her words were cut off when Ms. Piper stuck her head out the door. She looked at the different groups of kids who were scattered outside, and she gestured to Elliott and Ruthie when she saw them.

They went into the classroom with no idea of what she wanted, and followed her into her office.

"There's no easy way to tell you this, so I won't even try to soften the blow," she said. "You guys can't do your dialogue from Lolita, I'm sorry."

Elliott and Ruthie stared at her.

"But we've been working on it for nearly two months," Elliott protested finally.

"I know, and I should've known that there would be a problem, especially when we decided to do a public performance." Ms. Piper looked apologetic, which made Ruthie feel bad.

"It's not your fault, Ms. Piper," she told her teacher. "I've lived here my whole life, I had a feeling this would happen."

"But the dialogue's taken from near the end of the book, after Lolita's grown, after she's become Dolly, for fuck's sake," Elliott interjected. "Humbert Humbert's an old man, they're just talking, nothing happens!"

Ruthie found his passion admirable, not to mention hot as hell, but she knew the battle was lost.

"So we'll pick something new," she said, her voice brisk. "We're professionals, right?" She looked at Elliott. "I mean, I never asked, but I assume you're a member of Equity, or whatever the English version is?"

"Are you in Equity?" Ms. Piper asked Ruthie, blinking in surprise as Elliott, too, nodded his head.

Ruthie nodded. "I did a lot of children's theatre in San Francisco when I was young--younger," she amended when she saw the look on her teacher's face.

"So," she continued, turning to Elliott, who still looked upset, "what about the dialogue between Scout and Atticus when they're sitting on the porch? That's a really good one, and we practically have it done anyway."

But Elliott was shaking his head. "Scout's a child, Ruthie, you're too old."

"I'm an actor, that's the point," Ruthie replied. "It's a great scene, let's do it."

"No, I want to do a different one," Elliott said, turning from Ms. Piper to Ruthie. "I want to do a scene from The Diary of Anne Frank. They won't object to that, will they?"

"Which scene?" Ruthie asked, though she already knew.

"Act ii, scene 2, at the end, the one between Peter and Anne," Elliott said. "We're the right age, should be fine, right? No pedophiles, no murders, except the systematic extermination of six million human beings?"

"Oh, Elliott, please, save your sarcasm," Ms. Piper responded, arms folded. "You're too young and kind, you don't do it well. It's very ugly on you, and you're too handsome for that.

"Anyway," she continued before either Ruthie or Elliott could respond to her astonishing words, "I'll make Diary of Anne Frank work, okay? And I'll let the fact that it's a play already slide, even though part of the assignment was to turn text into dialogue. I know you both know how to do that."

She made a scooting motion. "Okay, out, go get to work. I give you permission to use your phones for the text, for today only, until you get paper copies."

So the two of them went back outside, though there wasn't much time left to work.

"I know that play, and I know what scene that is," Ruthie practically hissed when they got back to their spot under the tree.

Elliott smirked at her. "So fucking what? Piper said it's okay, so there's no issue, right?"

"You picked the scene where they kiss at the end," Ruthie accused. "You know how much mess that's going to stir up, and you picked it on purpose!"

Elliott shrugged. "Piper approved it, and look, there goes Lara to the library to print the programs, so I guess it's official." He smiled at Ruthie. "Now you'd better get your arse over here and kiss me, because we have less than three weeks to practice, yeah?"

🌧☔️🌧☔️🌧☔️🌧☔️🌧

"How did you make this happen?" Ruthie asked, taking an extra, huffing breath and exhaling it into the drizzly evening to enjoy watching it turn into condensation in front of her.

Elliott tightened his arm around Ruthie and made sure she was all the way under the umbrella he held. He'd offered to come in the car, and her parents had offered to drive her, but she'd nixed both those ideas, saying she preferred to walk in the rain.

She was invited to Elliott's house for dinner.

"You didn't have to come, you know," she added. "I'm perfectly capable of walking what, three blocks?"

"Please, I'm a gentleman," Elliott said gallantly, proving his point by taking her hand and practically lifting her over a puddle. This made her laugh, as he'd hoped it would.

"But seriously, are alarms going to go off when I enter the house of purity and white people?" Ruthie asked.

"You can be such a bitch sometimes," Elliott said, squeezing her again.

"I know," Ruthie said comfortably. She sniffed, turning her head this way and that. "Can you smell that, Elliot? That wonderful smell of rain after everything's been so dry and desiccated for so many months and months? You know what that's called?"

"Wet cement?" Elliott answered.

"No, dingbat," Ruthie replied, giving his tummy a gentle smack. "Petrichor, it's called petrichor. Petri is the root for rocks, and ichor is like liquid stuff, though it can mean other things. And it's not like you can use that word every time it rains, either," she informed him, turning opal eyes to his. "It's a word that's reserved especially for this smell, for the wonderful fragrance you smell after the first rain of the season only."

She stopped walking suddenly, surprising Elliott, who walked a few more paces before realizing and going back. She took a deep breath and let it out, giving her head a vigorous shake after, scattering tiny drops of rain from her hair, which was even curlier than usual because of the humidity from the rain.

She laughed with pleasure as the water flew everywhere, including Elliott's shirt.

"Isn't it beautiful?" she asked.

"I love you, Ruthie," Elliott said suddenly, lowering the umbrella and stepping close to her. He brushed some wet hair out of her face so he could see her clearly.

"You are beautiful, and I love you," he repeated.

Ruthie took a deep breath, as if she were about to say something, then let it out, nodding a little. Again, opal eyes looked up at him, a tiny smile making her lips tilt upward.

"I know you do," she said, and he could hear music in her voice, even though she wasn't close to laughing.

She went up on tiptoe and kissed him, her lips warm in the wet evening.

"And you know I love you too, right?" she asked, nodding the little nod, uptilted lips making his heart feel like it had risen to a new, higher place in his chest.

"You do?" he asked, smiling back at her, touching the tiny cleft in her chin with his thumb.

She nodded.

"You're beautiful, too, and I love you," she repeated, kissing the tip of his thumb.

"Now let's get this dinner out of the way, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Elliott agreed.

He folded the umbrella and tucked it under his arm, putting his other arm around the girl he loved. Her crazy hair tickled his chin, and made him smile in the cool, damp evening, and he knew he'd never forget the fragrance in the air at that moment, the wonderful petrichor that rose all around him.