Work Text:
Hazel was 13 the first time she fell in love.
It was with Sammy, of course it was with Sammy, Sammy who watched her ride Piper McLean's horses and then made her cake and made her laugh. She loved him until he was silent and sullen, until he moved away.
She moved on.
Hazel was 15 the second time she fell in love.
She met Frank in an extra-curricular Russian class at school. The lessons were Tuesday and Friday, after school from 4-5. The teacher wasn’t one of the regular school teachers; she came in especially as a volunteer and talked to them in English and Russian and any other language they happened to speak. No one had ever dared ask her how may languages she spoke, possibly out of fear that she wouldn’t answer that she spoke all of them. Until she fond out that there were over seven thousand languages, hazel thought that their teacher would probably speak all o them. The woman had long grey hair that was red at the ends and everyone called her Miss Lear. She spoke French and Navajo and three different kinds of Spanish and Yoruba and Chinese.
Frank was the person she spoke Chinese to. At first she’d tried to talk to him in French bu the’d quickly apologised and said that he wasn’t from a French speaking part of Canada and had never learned it.
Hazel had seen him around school a few times before the Russian classes- it was hard not to have done, given how big he was. She hadn’t realised he was Canadian, though, but Miss Lear had clearly picked up on the accent.
The Russian lessons continued for about a month. Miss Lear would talk to them in Russian for a bit and then they’d do some reading and some writing. Nearly everyone in the class- there were about ten of them- found this extremely difficult, which Miss Lear said was normal so they persevered. Frank got the hang of it faster than the rest of them, saying that it was easier than learning Chinese characters, but then one day Miss Lear opened an email on her compute and made a strange noise.
“Is everything alright miss?” Hazel asked her.
“How would you all feel about just doing spoken Russian?” Miss Lear asked the class.
They all nodded their agreement.
“Out of curiosity, why are we stopping with reading and writing?” Jason asked.
“Because you are all dyslexic and I imagine that you have a hard enough time with the letters they make you stare at all day as school doing normal subjects. If none of you are enjoying doing the reading and the writing here, I won’t make you carry on doing it, not it you don’t want to.” Miss Lear clapped her hands together. “If you want, with the extra time, as so may of you are bilingual, you could take it in turns to teach us all a little bit of the languages that you each speak. Frank, why don’t you start us off next week?”
-
On Saturday morning, Hazel suddenly found herself watching Frank walking up the front path of her house. When he knocked on the door, she ran to get there first but lost to her step-mother Persephone who she would far rather have opened the door than her father or her siblings any day.
“Hello!”
“Hi, is Hazel in?”
“I'm right here.” hazel said when she got to the bottom of the stairs. “Hi Frank.”
“Come in.” Persephone said. “You must be a friend of Hazel’s, come into the living room. I’ll get you some juice.” She ushered Frank into the living room and onto a sofa and left him there with Hazel while she went into the kitchen.
“Is she your mom?” Frank asked.
“Step-mom.”
“She seems really nice.”
“She likes everyone.” Hazel smiled. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s about the Chinese thing I have to do at school on Tuesday.” Frank said, bowing his head sheepishly. “I hope you don’t mind but I would like someone to practice with before I make a fool of myself and I didn’t know where any of the others lived. I only knew you lived here because I saw you coming in when I was walking past the other day, I haven’t been following you or anything.” he said hastily. “And I don’t have any friends here yet and you seem like the nicest person in the class, so.”
“Thank you.” Hazel said quietly. “But I’m afraid I don’t speak Chinese, so I don’t know how I can help you practice.”
“I just need someone to practice teaching to.” Frank said.
“Oh! Ok.”
Persephone walked in with a huge tray of food and drink, which she set on the coffee table. “Have you got any allergies?”
“I’m lactose intolerant.” Frank said.
“Just avoid the cheese in the salad.” Persephone said. “It’s cow’s milk feta because the stupid grocery store only stoke fake feta. The cakes are made with oil instead of butter or milk. Do you know each other from school?”
They nodded.
“Is this for a school thing?”
Hazel nodded. “He’s in my Russian class. I’m going to help him with a presentation.”
“Lovely! Let me know if you run out of food.” Persephone left.
Frank stared at the tray. “That’s a lot of food.”
“She’s Greek. She likes feeding people.” Hazel said. “Do you wanna start with the Chinese?”
“Yeah!”
Frank taught hazel Chinese and his presentation was fine.
Hazel taught Frank Creole and her presentation was fine.
They practiced their languages together every weekend and Frank got taller and Hazel grew in confidence. They spent the summer riding horses at the stables Hazel worked at and doing archery in the backyard of Frank’s grandmother’s house.
“Can I kiss you?” Frank asked Hazel one night as they stared at the fireflies in the wood at the end of his garden.
“Ask me in Creole.”
He asked her, so she stood on a tree stump and kissed him.