Chapter 24: The Stray Town (Missed Opportunity)
Daphne finished eating and stayed in her seat.
The restaurant had filled slightly since we arrived. Locals mostly, people with the unhurried movent of people who had nowhere urgent to be because everywhere they could be looked roughly the sa. She seed comfortable here in a way she hadn’t seed comfortable at Hogsby, the tension she carried in the school corridors, the careful voice, the professional smile, none of it was present in this room.
I was noting that when I noticed her eyes had fixed on sothing.
In the far corner of the restaurant, at the counter, an elderly man sat alone over a bowl he wasn’t eating. He had the look of soone who ca here regularly and ordered the sa thing and sat in the sa seat and nobody questioned it. Daphne hadn’t moved her eyes from him in two minutes.
"You know him?" I asked.
She ca back to the table like soone surfacing from water. "Sorry." A pause. "Yes. I know him." She picked up her purse. "I think we should go."
She didn’t offer more and I didn’t push. Whatever that man ant to her lived in a room she hadn’t opened the door to yet.
She produced a small bronze card from her purse and set it on the table. I didn’t catch what was written on it. She left it without explanation, either paynt or sothing else, and walked out. I followed.
Outside, the stray town moved around us at its own pace.
"This has to be your favorite place," I said.
"One of my favorite places," she corrected, which ant there were others and she had a whole geography of places that belonged to her in ways Hogsby didn’t.
We were halfway to the car when a woman passed us carrying a large box on her head, walking with the focused balance of soone who had done it many tis and was still working hard at it.
Daphne stopped. "Wait for , Abram."
She turned and caught up with the woman. I watched her say sothing, the woman hesitate, Daphne insist gently, and then Daphne took the box herself and fell into step beside her.
I leaned against the car and watched. The outside had taught
many things. How to move quietly. How to read the specific quality of different silences. How to eat quickly and sleep lightly and never stand with your back to an open space. What it had not taught
was that. The casual, unthinking impulse to stop and help a stranger carry sothing heavy.
My mother had it. Before the plain took everything she had left to give, she had it. I had watched it drain out of her slowly and assud it was just what the world did to people eventually.
Daphne still had it. A burn out, living in a town she hadn’t chosen, teaching students who didn’t respect her, and she still stopped for strangers with boxes.
They reached wherever the woman was going. Another person was waiting there. The three of them talked. Daphne raised her hand and waved across the distance at . I raised mine back, feeling slightly ridiculous and not minding it.
Hopeless people who seed happy, I thought, looking at the street around . The stray town had the specific texture of people who had built sothing out of nothing and made peace with the size of it. Street vendors. Hookers working the corner in the afternoon heat. An old man fixing sothing on a step. Community assembled from whatever the walls had left behind.
Daphne ca back smiling, walking freely, the Hogsby version of her temporarily sowhere else.
"Sorry for making you wait," she said.
"I could have waited considerably longer," I said. "What you just did was genuinely sothing."
She looked at
sideways. "You talk like soone who’s seen too much."
"I have," I said.
"And you’re still functional."
"That," I said, "is currently debatable."
She laughed and opened the car. We settled in and she reached for the key.
"Do you have friends?" she asked, then caught herself. "Did you have friends. Outside."
"Not really," I said. "The outside doesn’t build much friendship. Everyone’s moving too fast in too many directions."
"Family?"
"No." My voice ca out flatter than I intended. I adjusted it. "Had a mother. She died years back. Thirst, in the end."
Daphne was quiet for a mont.
"I’m so sorry, Abram."
"It’s okay, Daph."
She seed fine with the abbreviation. Filed it away and started the car. We pulled out and got approximately one hundred ters down the road before the engine coughed and died.
"Fuck." She said it before she’d decided to say it, the specific profanity of soone who had just rembered sothing they should have dealt with days ago. "I forgot to refill."
I looked at the dead dashboard. Cars outside the walls were not part of my operational experience. I had no contribution to make to this situation.
"What do we do?" I asked.
"I’ve got it," she said, with the confidence of soone who was going to try the key again regardless of the evidence.
She tried the key. The car started. She laughed, genuine and delighted, the laugh of soone who had just gotten away with sothing.
"Yes," she said, to no one in particular, and drove.
We found a fuel station two streets over. A girl, maybe eighteen, working the pump alone. On the wall behind her a poster: Gifted Person Needed. Security Position.
Even here. Even in the stray town. A gifted person was still a different category of human being. The life layer ran on ability, the walls ran on ability, the security of every street inside every wall ran on ability, and everyone from the restaurant waitress to the fuel station girl understood that in their bones without being told.
Daphne handed over the Burn out card. The girl read it and imdiately straightened.
"Thank you for your service, ma’am."
Not thank you for the paynt. Thank you for the service. For what you gave before the giving ran out.
Daphne thanked her back, easy and genuine, and we drove away. I looked at her while she drove.
She was attached to these people. The rhythm of her in this town that was completely different from her rhythm in the school. There was a story here she hadn’t told
and I wasn’t going to ask for it today.
What I knew was this. She deserved to level up. Whatever she had given, whatever the extraction cycle had taken from her, she deserved to have it back. And I was the only person who could give it to her.
Adding her to the list, I thought, is going to be one of the better decisions I’ve made since crossing the life layer.
Which, given the competition, was saying sothing.
[Daphne: Burn out. Two full charges per climax.]
[Missed Opportunity.]
On it, trust .
Reviews
All reviews (0)