Price: A Breech in Decorum

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(Price: unedited)

Nine months ago, he had watched his father disintegrate.

It was a motion that would set itself on replay, scattering the destructive embers of lust and desire upon the futile ground of his family’s life. More than merely one moment of solace, of stolen time and whispered secrets, it was an emotion that would tear old wounds open, ripping through scar tissue with the mercilessness fury of a hurricane.

In time, his father would flee to California, chased out of town by his shame and insatiable appetite for a woman that did not belong to him. His mother would become a recluse, winding her days in a café kitchen, making enough Peanut Butter Pies to drown the flesh-eating monster inside of her. His sister would become mute, storing her childhood into the unanswered prayers in the back of her throat.

He would become this – a boy whom Ariel feared. A storm, a chaotic force that grasped the pieces of his father’s problems between both fists and flung them into the lives of the people he loved.

To think that it started in front of display case – much like the one he was staring into – made his stomach turn violently.

He couldn’t see past the smudged glass covering. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. What if he blinked, and suddenly, the contents of McGowan bakeries appeared before his eyes, an alluring spread of poison apples? What if he shifted, and the girl beside him vanished, dissipating into thin air? What if she became a number among the lost tally of people; all of whom had surrendered themselves to the cost of their sins?

But then, movements slow and indistinctly unsteady, she turned, brushing his shoulder with her own. The slight touch pulled him from his desolate thoughts. With a jerk, he realized that he had been staring into the case for far too long, and Ariel was standing, waiting, for him.

She was alive. She was breathing. She would not be another casualty. Not a Katrina, or a Lily, or a Viv. An Ariel – beautifully flawed and endearingly uncertain.

“Price.” She jiggled her bare tray. The dull plastic shone at him, devoid of contents, defying the pale, hungry look imprinted in her eyes. “Coming?”

He paused. Tried to think of a way to remind her that he knew, and that he wasn’t letting her off the hook. “No food?”

She held up one hand, slim white fingers wrapped around an apple, enticing as Eve herself. “Fruit counts, right?”

“Only to you.” He tried to make his tone brusque as he moved around, defensive of the tightening in his chest whenever he looked at her. It was a barrage of foreign emotions that had been slowly growing, engulfing him. Sometimes he felt like he was drowning. Flailing.

Katrina knew – she had watched him fumble around Ariel, cheeks flushed. He had seen the sardonic grin on her face, one that she had pulled behind a mask of innocent inquiry when she asked for green jello.

But maybe he had imagined the flush that crept to Ariel’s cheeks as she had ducked around him, hunting for the elusive spoon. Perhaps the panic in her eyes had been exhaustion, and her jerky, nervous motions due to the newfound sharpness of her body.

Then again, maybe not. A very slim maybe, but a maybe nonetheless.

They filed through the cafeteria line in silence, sandwiched between a mauve-haired nurse in Tinkerbell scrubs and a hollow-eyed father who was inhaling his paper cup of instant coffee. For one brief, undefined moment, in limbo between advancement and immobility, Price wondered how this situation would be different if he and Ariel were strangers.

Would they still bump shoulders, practiced causality hiding strained smiles? Would he still understand the emptiness in her eyes; view her tiny, hunched figure as painful rather than tempting?

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