Windows, continued
Week 1, Winner
Sara squinted, shielding her eyes from the morning sunlight pushing past her half-closed curtains. It had to be late morning for the light to be landing right on her face like this, which meant Sara should feel a sense of urgency to climb out of bed and start the day. She paused, took a breath, and did an internal inventory, during which she found no such sense of urgency. All she wanted to do was curl up and go back to sleep.
A cacophony of thoughts filled her mind — not her own, but Jeffrey’s, projected from the kitchen downstairs. He was annoyed, and broadcasting that annoyance loud and clear.
There was no getting back to sleep now, not without blackout curtains and banishing Jeffrey from the house, neither of which she was going to accomplish this morning. So, up and at ‘em.
Sara pushed back layers of blankets — too many, but she hated waking up cold, so she’d rather wake up too warm and de-layer as needed — and rolled herself out of bed and onto her feet in one smooth movement. She grabbed her thick robe off a hook and walked to the stairs.
Jeffrey appeared at the bottom of the stairs, light from the kitchen windows creating a halo around him. “You can’t put on your robe while you’re walking down the stairs. You’re going to trip yourself.”
“Noted,” Sara said, while shoving her arms into the robe’s sleeves and dodging the dangling belt as it tried to entangle her ankles. One step at a time. His thoughts were still spilling into her head, a prickly mass of disappointment and disapproval, more distracting than the robe. Still, she managed to navigate the stairs unscathed.
“It’s late,” he said, watching her tie the belt firmly around her waist.
“I’m aware.”
“I’m going to have to report this, you know,” he said, his gaze scolding.
“And what good will come of that?” Sara looked him right in the eye, holding his gaze as she said it. Willing him to really consider the ridiculousness of their situation. “Someone at the agency will make another tick mark next to my name. The case manager will shake her head and cluck her tongue, and send me another message about how I’m not getting any closer to release at this rate. But since we all know they’re never going to release me, I can’t see why they think I’m going to care about that.”
Jeffery’s thoughts changed then, the paternalistic disapproval scattering into mild shock and discomfort. Sara wasn’t supposed to say it out loud. They were supposed to pretend that her “period of observation” was temporary, and for her own good, and only until she learned to “regulate” herself.
Then Jeffery’s eyes narrowed. “Sara, are you reading my thoughts right now?”
“I don’t know, Jeffrey, are you thinking thoughts?” She asked it in a sickly sweet tone, and smiled a simpering grin at him. “It’s so hard to tell the difference between your simplistic thoughts and the general background noise of the universe that I really couldn’t tell you.”
He frowned and opened his mouth to reply, but she beat him to it. “‘I’m going to have to report this, you know,’” Sara said, mimicking Jeffrey’s gruff, stern voice. “Yes, Jeffrey. I know.”
Jeffrey deflated a little. “Come on, Sara. I’m not your enemy. Why can’t we work together?”
“Are you serious?” Sara brushed past him and walked into the bright kitchen behind him as she spoke. “You’re my minder. My babysitter. You think you’re the boss of me. Why would we be on the same side?”
“Sara,” Jeffrey said, his thoughts now wounded. “I do not think I’m the boss of you. I don’t think anyone can truly be the boss of you. The whole point of this is to help you, not control you.”
Sara snorted. She reached for the coffee Jeffrey had brewed and poured herself a steaming mug. “Honestly, I’d have more respect for you if you didn’t feed me the company line all the time.” She edged past him again, into the tiny sun-filled breakfast nook off the kitchen. She sat in one of two chairs at the small table and looked out at the rolling green landscape that stretched for miles behind the house. In the distance, she could just see the edge of the coast, and a threatening cloudbank that looked like it would just miss them.
Jeffrey followed her and stood beside the other chair. “May I?”
“I can’t control you,” Sara said.
“So on that score we’re tied,” he said, taking a seat across from her. His thoughts were tangled now, hard to decipher, but there were notes of chagrin, of regret, and maybe an edge of self-recrimination.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, both gazing out at the tall grass and wildflowers that covered the hills behind the house. After a time, Jeffrey spoke: “This is a perfect location for you. How did you find this house?”
Sara saw what he was doing–redirecting her, defusing the conflict, bringing her back under his benevolent control. But she found she didn’t want to fight with him, not right now. She was tired, and a little sad, and she just wanted to drink her coffee and stare into the distance.
“I got lucky,” she said. “My friend Jani knew I was looking for an isolated house, far from people, although she didn’t know why. This was her grandmother’s place, but she couldn’t live alone anymore. They needed someone to buy the property so they could afford to move her into a nice assisted living community in the city.”
Jeffrey nodded. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you pay for it?”
“I do rather mind,” Sara said, but without much anger behind it. “I used my inheritance. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.”
Jeffrey nodded again, and was quiet.
“Are you going to tell the agency how cooperative I’m being now?” she asked.
He sighed, and shook his head. “It isn’t like that. I wish you’d believe me.” He turned to look at her, and she reflexively met his gaze. “If you can read my mind, why don’t you understand that I’m on your side?”
His eyes were a bright blue, like the icy depths of glacial waters. He usually avoided meeting her gaze, as if he thought that would give her a wider window into his soul. But this time he held it, and the earnest entreaty of both his eyes and his thoughts was magnetic. What does he see when he looks into my eyes? she wondered. A monster? A puzzle? An inconvenience?
At length, she looked away, back out to the verdant hills. “It’s not like that,” she said.
Jeffrey shook his head, confused. “What’s not like what?”
“I mean, I don’t really read your thoughts. I know that’s what the agency calls it, and that’s how everyone thinks of it, but that’s not what’s going on. I don’t hear the words you’re thinking. I just get a general sense. You’re annoyed with me. You pity me. You’re confused by me. That sort of thing.”
“Oh.” She could sense his surprise at that. Heh. He thought she’d been picking through his darkest secrets. She wouldn’t if she could. What could an agency stooge like Jeffrey possible have going on inside his head that she’d want to dwell on?
“So if I think words at you, you don’t hear them?” he said.
“Nope.”
“All this time …” he trailed off, before beginning again. “I thought you knew.”
“Thought I knew what?”
His thoughts changed, now guarded, closed. Hesitant. But also hopeful. What was that all about?
“Never mind, never mind,” he said. “Listen, can we talk this through? I really am on your side. I’d love to prove it to you. The agency has their ideas about the gifted, but they’re as confused as everyone else about what you do, and how you do it.”
Sara laughed. “You don’t say.” She was wary of looking straight at him again, scared of being caught in that gaze again, but out of the corner of her eye she saw him testing out a small smile. Had she ever seen him smile before?
“No one knows that better than you, I imagine,” he said, still smiling. “I can’t change the law, and I can’t make the agency leave you alone until they’re good and ready. But I’d like to be your ally.”
“Why?” Sara asked. She wanted to be suspicious, but every sense she was getting from him was earnest. He was hiding something, certainly, but she didn’t think he was lying about this.
He turned to look at her, but she kept her gaze firmly on the hills.
“I think we can help each other,” he said. “I can help you placate the agency, and meet the legal requirements so they will release you from observation. And you can help me … with a challenging situation.”
***
This is a second-stage story-start — if you’d like to see where the story goes, “clap” for it. My “winning” second-stage story-start (based on number of readers who clap for it) will be developed further and will become a full short story!
