I heard the footsteps and glanced at the clock again. Not even a minute had elapsed. Was this person that punctual?

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. She wasn’t yet a teenager, or if she was then she was a late bloomer, but she wasn’t wholly a ‘child’ either. ‘Tween’. My first thought was that she was as cute as a button, and not in the pink princess way.

She was black, her arms and legs long and skinny, her eyes large in proportion to her face. She was studying me with just as much or more intensity than I studied her, as we sized each other up.

She was dressed or had been dressed with an eye for modern fashion, fitting to her age. She wore a blue corduroy pinafore dress with metal studs forming a star shape at the leg. Her top was a t-shirt, with an image on it in sequins, the kind that had two different images, depending on the direction the sequins were swept. The image depicted a blue heart if brushed one way, a yellow star if swept the other; I knew because it was a jumbled mix of both.

The reason I thought that she might have been dressed by someone else was that she was so very precise about how she’d put her outfit together. It was freshly ironed or fresh off the rack, and it was color matched from her shoes to the pins and ties in her hair. The star theme too. Kinky black hair had been fixed into place at the side of her head with a star pin, and carefully arranged into two small, tight buns at the back. Glossy and taken care of, not a strand out of place. It would have taken me twenty or thirty minutes to do the same, and my straight hair would have been easier to manage, even being as long as it was.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I responded.

“Gosh, you’re pretty,” she said.

I was momentarily lost for words. Very direct.

“Thank you,” I said, glancing back at Mrs. Yamada, hoping for a cue. She was focusing on her notes. She briefly met my eye, but communicated nothing.

“I can tell you were a hero. You have that air about you,” the girl said.

“Thank you,” I said, a little caught off guard. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She smiled, her enthusiasm renewed, “It’s amazing to meet you. I’m really interested to hear what you have to say. I really want to be a hero, so I’m trying to learn all I can.”

“That could be good. It’s better than the alternative, at least.”

“Isn’t it? You were probably a good one, weren’t you? You give me that impression. You’re stylish, I really like your dress, and you have that posture, back straight, unyielding. Only the best and the true up-and-comers have that.”