Mia Darien - Good Things

Part One ends in a cliffhanger; however, to receive your FREE copy of part two, just send an e-mail to the address provided at the end of the story.

Gasping for air, Jaci threw off the cover with her hands, kicking the rest loose with her legs. Her feet hit the hardwood floor and she ran for the bathroom, propelled by instinct. Fire rushed through her chest, a hand tightening around her heart. She flipped the toilet seat up and leaned over it, balancing herself with her hands, and retched, the acid from her stomach abrading her throat. Water. Nothing but water. Good thing I couldn’t eat last night.

She closed the lid, washed her hands in the sink next to it, and reluctantly looked at her image in the medicine cabinet mirror, noting the dark circles underneath her dark brown eyes and a slight redness surrounding her pupils. I am entirely too young to look so old. She rummaged through one of the caddys surrounding her sink and grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste, then pulled her mouthwash from the linen closet behind her.

Frowning as she brushed her teeth and continued to look at herself in the mirror, she shoved her free hand into another caddy and felt for her facial cream, mentally sighing over her downward spiral in the housekeeping department. Jaci was so accustomed to the burning in her throat that she considered it commonplace. Always the same. Always the same nightmare.

“Well, one good thing about insomnia, the big boss loves me. I’m always early for work,” she said aloud, talking to her bedroom as she turned the light off in the bathroom.

She grabbed the remote from her chest-of-drawers and turned on the surround sound in her apartment to hear the early morning news while she got ready for work. Stooping over one of her moving boxes along the wall, Jaci removed a pile of mail and other random papers from the top of it, dropping the mess on the floor, and opened the box. The once heavy cardboard flap was so worn from being used as a permanent storage place, it felt soft and flimsy to her hands.

This was at least the fifth time she had moved in the last three years, and she’d barely bothered to unpack. Other than waving at her neighbors on the rare occasions they crossed paths, Jaci made no effort to be friendly or approachable. She never remained in the same place long enough for it to matter, and she could count the people on one hand who knew where she lived at any given time.

She reached into the closet and pulled out a pantsuit. Eenie meenie miney mo. Blue for Monday. It really didn’t matter which one. They were all the same, just different colors, all neutral, comfortable, and perfect for work. Best benefit of all, one less thing to have to think about.

After a quick shower, breakfast consisted of dark roasted espresso Romano, one of her few luxuries, and a slice of toast.

She shook her head from side to side to loosen her thick hair, then finger-combed the coils of her natural. She had spent hundreds of dollars trying a menagerie of “natural” hair products when she decided to return to her roots, but she had to admit that it paid off. In seconds, she was ready.

Jaci grabbed her briefcase from the bar, set the alarm, and checked the time on her car dashboard when she started the ignition. She had fought the incessant encroachment of electronic contact as long as she could, nearly ending up as one of the few people in the 21st Century without a cell phone, but duty called, and she eventually gave in. She still owned watches too, but somehow always managed to forget to wear any of them. Since the accident, time no longer seemed to matter, so she tried her best to forget about it.

Taking her usual route to work, the scenic one, she arrived exactly twenty minutes later. The interstate would have easily shaved fifteen minutes from her commute, but she hadn’t been able to handle going near the busy highways since her husband and two-year old daughter were killed.

Jaci parked her Nissan Rogue in her reserved spot, unlocked the steel door at the back of the three story building, turned off the alarm, and unlocked her mailbox in case the weekend skeleton crew had left something for her. Breathing in the elusive sound of complete silence, she took the stairs to the third floor and walked into her office at 5:43 a.m., nearly two hours early. As usual, the office was empty. No printers whirring, phones ringing, computers jingling, or whatever the many sounds computers made these days were called, and best of all, no people chattering or asking her inane questions. Just the way she liked it.

Despite wearing the title, Director of Social Services, Jaci had become quite antisocial over the past three years. Her office was directly next to the big boss, Director of Child and Family Services, or DCFS as most people called their little slice of state government.

She placed her three containers around her desk, “Urgent,” “Important – File,” and “Trash,” then thumbed through her mail, making the most of her quiet time until she got to a large brown envelope with the return address, “Federal Department of Corrections Outreach Initiative.”

A knee-jerk reaction took her by surprise. She leapt from her desk, covering her mouth with shaking hands. She had been waiting for a reply to her grant proposal for over six months, and the bureaucratic idiots had chosen to send it over the weekend.

It’s probably a rejection. “Shut up,” she told herself as she took a deep breath, reached for her chair, and sat down at the desk again. Placing her forearms squarely on the flat surface, she tried to compose herself. Until now, she hadn’t realized how desperately she wanted this. Despite a master’s degree in psychology and a doctorate in social work, she still wasn’t at all sure why, but she knew that if this was a rejection, she would plummet even deeper into the dark abyss she had just started to crawl out of.

“Okay, Jaci. Open the thing. Just open it.”

She took one more breath, pulled the small metal prongs apart, then removed her letter opener from her desk organizer, mumbling a series of nonsensical sounds under her breath the entire time she slid the letter opener under the top flap, breaking the seal. With the seal broken, she still had to sit a few moments longer before removing the contents of the envelope.

Dear Dr. Rothschild:

Your request for the Youthful Offender Parolee Outreach Program has been approved for a four-year term. Please review…

“Yesss!” Jaci pumped a fist straight into the air and ran around her desk doing a tribal-like happy dance, hopping and jumping with a sense of something she hadn’t known she was missing until that moment: hope.

Now, if only she had someone to share it with. Her parents were gone, murdered while she was away in college. Since their deaths, she’d made a point to avoid her extended family as much as possible – something about them had never seemed “right” to her, and the two people she called “friend” were both night owls.

Jaci chuckled to herself, thinking about Diana and Renee as she glanced at her wall clock. If she called and woke either of them before 6:30 a.m., they might not be friends anymore. She satisfied her need to celebrate by making a copy of the entire packet and tacking the award letter to the corkboard beside her desk.

Summer meant vacation time for most of the DCFS employees, so as the official new project manager for the “Outreach” program, she would have to work fast to confirm sponsors for her new clients. She spent the next few minutes of quiet time pouring over the program specifics.

Andreus stepped into the prison yard and looked around, always aware of every sound, every smell, and every movement. He took a moment to enjoy the warmth of the sun and watch the birds flying overhead. He envied their freedom, but his desire for autonomy warred with his fear of the unknown.