Sophie Littlefield: Banished

Real love was what she had now, the product of shared interests and a cautious escalation of intimacy over time. Her beloved had been patient as their working relationship slowly grew into something more .

So she would not allow the doubts in, not today. Today was special. The day every woman dreamed of, right? As she opened the file drawers next to the desk, she forced the nagging fears back to the far corners of her mind. So he had recently made a few errors that weren’t like him. Everyone-even the most brilliant people-got distracted. The inconsistencies in the lab reports she’d mistakenly read, the test models and control populations that didn’t look anything like what they had discussed, even the files that contained references to funding sources she’d never heard about-all of that could easily be explained. She had only a bachelor’s degree, after all; everyone else in the lab-all the unfriendly staff who showed up without introduction and dove into the work without ever sharing any personal information-they were so far ahead of her that she barely understood what they were doing .

She riffled through the files in the last drawer. Suddenly, she stopped, her heart skipping as she read, and then read again, the file’s label, written neatly in his handwriting .

Her name .

Her real name .

The one no one had used in years .

Behind her she heard the door open, and the click of her boyfriend’s Italian shoes on the polished wood floors .

She didn’t move . Couldn’t move. She held the file in her hands, a file thick with papers, and stared at the name she’d thought she buried forever .

“ Ah.” His deep, cultured voice came from behind her. He didn’t sound angry so much as amused. “Looking through my private files, are you, my darling? ”

The germ of doubt inside her grew, and she began to shake. But still she held on to the file, as she slowly turned to face him. He offered his hand. Without thinking, she took it and allowed herself to be guided to the leather sofa, where they sat together, knees touching. His hands were warm, and even though the voice in her mind screamed in horror and fear, the part of herself that she had trained so carefully to be like everyone else, like normal women, did not pull away .

“ We have a lot to talk about,” he said. “In a way, your timing is excellent. See, I recently made some discoveries about you. Yes, you. Don’t look so surprised, darling! You know I have always found you fascinating. Who could blame me for wanting to find out everything I possibly could about the woman I love? And now I can share it all with you, oh yes, because I found out something that you don’t even know about yourself, something wonderful, I think. Something exciting, that will mean great things for both of us and for our work. ”

And then he called her by her real name, and the careful shell she’d built up through the years shattered into a million jagged shards, and she realized that she didn’t really know this man at all .

I DIDN’T SLEEP WELL that night, and it took longer than usual to get ready in the morning because someone had spilled a beer on the kitchen floor. I didn’t want Chub sitting in it, so I scrubbed the floor clean. Before I left, I fixed him toast and dressed him in a cute pair of overalls, then got him set up with his stacking blocks. I fed Rascal and put him out in the yard for the day.

Maybe it was because I was so tired, but I didn’t see the car across the street until the bus pulled up. It was cold for April, and I was squinting against the morning sun and blowing clouds of breath on the chilly air when I heard the bus coming and looked up. Ten yards down the road on the opposite side was a dark gray sedan with tinted windows. Our house was the only one on this stretch of road between Gypsum and Trashtown, and anyone who came to see us just drove into the yard. No one ever parked on the road like that.

I boarded the bus, then slid in next to Coby Poindexter, leaning across him so I could look out at the sedan. The driver’s-side window was cracked a few inches, but I couldn’t see inside. As the bus pulled back into the street, I twisted around and tried to see the license plate, but all I could make out was a Lexus emblem.

Could it be the cops? Undercover, watching our house because of Gram’s dealing? But cops wouldn’t drive a Lexus, would they?

“Hey,” Coby said, “how’s things in white-trash land?”

I ignored him. Today, for some reason, I felt something inside me slipping. It wasn’t that I was feeling any braver. Almost the opposite-like I was falling apart at the edges. The way Dun had treated me the night before, the mess in the kitchen this morning, the strange car across from our house: it was all too much. It didn’t leave me enough energy to keep up the mask of indifference I worked so hard at.

“Shut up, Coby,” I muttered.

It wasn’t much of a comeback, but he seemed surprised. I could sense him staring at me the rest of the way to school, but I didn’t pay any attention. When we pulled up in front of the school I bolted out the door before anyone else could talk to me, and went looking for Milla.

She wasn’t hard to find. She was standing near the second-floor water fountain with two other Morrie girls who could have been sisters, their blond hair in greasy clumps around hollow-cheeked faces with sharp, jutting chins. I thought one was named Jean-she’d been in a few of my classes over the years.

“Excuse me,” I said, louder than I intended. I was nervous. I wanted to talk to Milla about what happened, but the other girls closed ranks in front of her as though they’d practiced the move. She would have escaped down the hall except she tripped over her backpack and dropped the book she was holding. It fell to the floor, pages fluttering open.

I reached down to pick up the book just as she did and bumped my forehead against her shoulder. She yanked herself away from me with such force that I left the book on the floor.

Ever since my first week of school, when I sought them out at recess and lunch, I had found myself drawn to the Morries. Maybe it was just that we were equally pathetic, all of us badly dressed and ragged and friendless, but it felt like something more. I felt-and maybe this was no more than an orphaned child’s longing for family-like we were related somehow. Like I was one of them.

I’d asked Gram about it long ago and she’d burst out in one of her breath-rattling laughs, spittle forming at the corners of her mouth.

“You ain’t no Morrie,” she said. “You’re way better’n any Morrie girl. Don’t you forget it, now.”

I must have looked unconvinced, because she reached out her nicotine-stained thumb and forefinger and pinched the tender skin on the inside of my arm. She could pinch surprisingly hard, making hot tears jump to my eyes, but I didn’t make a sound.

“Those Morrie boys , now, they’re a whole nother matter,” she added. “But that’s for later, and don’t you pay them no mind. I’ll let you know when, that’s what.”

There were no boys around now. I looked into Milla’s watery eyes and edged closer, almost enjoying the way she shrank from me.

“What happened yesterday?” I demanded.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were unconscious. I saw… I felt it.” I didn’t say that her hands, her forehead beneath my fingers, felt worse than unconscious, they felt… wrong. Empty. Dangerous, broken, hurt.

“Didn’t you come to my house once?” I asked in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “Last year. With that guy. You know. The one with the tattoos.”