Sophie Littlefield - Banished

I took the only empty chair and waited. Gram expected me to make small talk, but that didn’t mean I had to come up with sparkling conversation.

“Nice shirt,” Dun said. “Ain’t that a purty shirt, Rattler?”

I felt myself blush; my shirt was nothing special, a plain green scoop-neck top I’d bought secondhand for fifty cents, but it was old and getting a little tight across my chest.

After that, Dun asked me about school and my grades and what I was watching on TV these days. He didn’t seem to mind that I gave him the shortest possible answers. Now and then he asked Rattler what he thought, but mostly he seemed content to do all the talking and drink his beer, popping the top off a fresh bottle when he finished one.

After what seemed like ages, Gram came clumping back up the stairs. She had two brown paper bags clutched in her hands, their tops folded down. She set them on the table in front of Dun, and the mood in the room changed.

No one was looking at me anymore. Everyone’s eyes were on the bags as Dun unrolled the paper and peered inside. After a second he reached in and pulled out the plastic bottles. He examined the labels, squinting. He looked like he wanted to eat them, plastic caps and all. When he was done checking the bottles, he stuffed them in a big flap pocket of his plaid shirt. He crumpled the brown bags and tossed them toward the trash can in the corner, where they bounced off the edge and landed on the floor.

I waited what I thought was a safe amount of time, and then got up and slid my chair in. “Well, good night,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

As I passed by Dun, he reached out and grabbed the waistband of my jeans.

“Off to bed already, sweetheart?” he drawled, and I caught a whiff of his tobacco-stinking breath. “You need some company?”

“Aw, Dun,” Gram cackled, and slapped him playfully on the shoulder. “Don’t be pestering the child.”

“She ain’t no child no more,” Dun said, winking at Rattler. “Ain’t that right.”

“You know she’s got to get her schooling.” Gram sounded serious now, her voice scolding.

“Looks to me like she’s got herself plenty of schooling. On, on how to be smokin’ hot.” Dun cracked up at his own stupid joke, not even trying to hide the fact that he was staring right at my chest.

I jerked away from him, hard. Gram laughed along with him as I raced to my room and slammed the door.

I T WAS THEIR ANNIVERSARY. An entire year since their first official date .

That was why she was going through his things. Other women did that, didn’t they? Snooped around their boyfriends’ apartments to find the velvet boxes containing bracelets and earrings, glittering tokens of love?

It was so hard to know what normal was, even though she worked at it all the time. She shopped where other women shopped, dressed as well as any of them. She got her hair cut at a salon where they brought you champagne while you waited. Why not? She had plenty of money now .

That hadn’t always been the case. It took six years to put herself through college, working full-time and weekends too, six years of living in a sleep-deprived, caffeine-fueled haze before she finally graduated .

Six more years of research jobs after that, in labs all over the city, taking classes whenever she could to supplement what she learned on the job. Full-time graduate school was out of the question when she was still paying off her debts-the lab jobs didn’t pay enough for her to save much money, even though she kept her expenses down by living in a tiny apartment in a bad part of town .

Those were lonely years. Even if she had time to date, the memory of her first love stayed in her mind every waking moment. Her heart did not heal. Yes, it scabbed over; the agony dulled to a low ache that was as much a part of her as breathing. But she never forgot .

She wanted to atone. Her life became an effort to make up for that early mistake. If she could just find a way to use her gift to help people-but the scientific community was not interested in the work she wanted to do .

Until the day she met him. Of course, he was only her boss for the first couple of years. He’d heard about her-heard about her reputation for hard work and reliable results, but more important, he’d heard about the research she conducted on her own after hours… and the thing she could do that science could not yet explain. She had told almost no one about that part, and still-somehow-he found out. And offered to pay her three times her salary to come work for him .

And now, in his laboratory, she worked the longest hours of all, but that didn’t matter, did it? Because they were together, and they shared a vision, a dream. They were going to change the world .

That was what she told herself every morning as she steeled herself to go through the doors of the building where the lab was located. It was unmarked, with no sign out front, nothing to indicate the expensive equipment inside, the experts he had hired from around the world. But he was disciplined that way-he didn’t flaunt it, but he insisted on the best .

And he said she was the best. Without her, he often reminded her, their work would be in vain. He said that studying her was a privilege. So why had it become so hard to return his affection, his touch, lately?

It was her fault, because relationships were so much harder for her than for other women. She tried to push the thought away as she finished looking in the drawers of his dresser and considered the sleek ebony desk in the study of his beautiful penthouse apartment with its view of Lake Michigan. Because of what had happened to her all those years ago… maybe it was inevitable that it would take her so long to love again .

And she did love him, she reminded herself as she shifted objects around on the desk, careful not to disturb the placement of the papers and pens and sticky notes and binder clips. The desk was the only messy thing in his life, this private work space in his home. The rest of it-the sterile lab, the gleaming kitchen with its stainless steel appliances, the pressed shirts and suits hanging in the closets-was so neat and orderly, it was as though no real human lived there .

She suppressed a little shiver. That was not the way she ought to be thinking about her beloved. Especially since there was a chance-he’d hinted around enough, hadn’t he? -more than a chance, a likelihood that he was going to propose tonight. That somewhere in this apartment was the ring he would slip on her finger, a beautiful ring, because he insisted on the best of everything, and then they would be united in marriage in addition to their passion for their work, and she would be the happiest woman in the world .

So why was she feeling sick inside?

Nerves-that was all it was, she chastised herself, quieting the resistant voice inside. She just had to see the ring. Because seeing it would confirm what she suspected, and if she confirmed that suspicion, she could prepare for it. When he got down on one knee later tonight, she’d be ready with the proper display of delight and surprise, and he’d never know that inside her a gnawing fear was growing, a certainty that something was wrong, wrong, wrong .

She had to master that fear, to hide it away where no one would ever see it, if she ever wanted to live normally. To marry, to have children, perhaps. She would never find anyone more accomplished than her boyfriend. He was wealthy and intelligent and powerful, and he had chosen her. This was real love, mature love, and if she found herself thinking about that other love it was only because of the terrible way it had ended. She’d fallen hard the very first time, but what had felt like love had probably just been infatuation .