Author's Note: This was written in response to the SimHaven February 2012 Challenge on El Jay.
June 13, 2054 11:23 pm: Tellerman Farm, Middlebourne, Pleasantview
There was a part of Angela that knew only shame would follow with the sunrise, but it did not matter now. Tellerman Farm at night was mysterious, fragrant, visceral. Every other aspect of her life bowed to the immediacy of this one moment.
A cricket landed next to her in the grass then leaped away as though it had been found intruding on her personal space. It was laughable to Angela, somehow. She was reclining with her back to the stars and her neural receptors effectively blocked against her creeping sense of self-loathing. For now, it did not matter that a force stronger than her concept of normal behavior brought her to the Tellerman boy's doorstep. It did not matter, even, that this was not the first time.
Troy Tellerman was Mayor Torrence's son, but he always treated the subject as though no one ever asked him if he wanted to be born. His mother was a Townsman, and for that reason the caste difference between him and Angela should have made them strangers. By consequence of birth, Troy was a forbidden thing. More than that, his birth made him a fundamentally undesirable thing. He occupied that bleak netherworld inhabited only by the illegitimate children of very wealthy men. He was not exactly a Townie, not exactly a Resident-- His status was a sort of quarantine, and Angela risked contamination by trespassing.
They met when he was hired to work in her mother's office as a summer intern to the company's chief tax specialist, Benito Schloss, about five years ago. Angela was twelve. She and her sister spent the entire summer sprawled out on the floor of the staff lounge, composing drawings on printer paper that had been scotch taped into carpet-obscuring proportions. The girls employed pens of every color, highlighters and white-out, any implement that they could get their hands on. Their compositions were as intricate as they were absurd, a great menagerie of mythical beasts and math teachers with rude captions. At the end of the day, they would fold their masterpiece into eighths and carefully transport it home.
Troy entered the staff lounge precisely twice a day, without fail, nearly down to the second. Lilith had been the first to notice this. He came to make his coffee at 9:45am, departing at exactly 9:55am and returning at 1:38pm to deposit his mug into the dishwasher. At 1:39pm, the door of the staff lounge would close behind him for the day. He never ate lunch, and was never off schedule.
Between themselves, the twins called him "Robo-Townie" and made a game of setting their watches to beep at his entrance times. Troy always strolled through the glass door within the space of four beeps, sending Angela and her sister into hysterics. He would scowl in silence while he made his coffee in the same mechanical way as he had the day before, and exit to yet another duet of adolescent laughter. But as they were to soon learn, Troy was not a robot, he was a person-- A person who had allowed the Pleasant twins a certain amount of leniency only because they were his boss's children.
Six weeks of this passed before the girls' collateral was spent. On July 26, 2049, Troy made his pot of coffee as usual by selecting the cleanest mug from the overhead cabinet while the water boiled. The girls tried and failed to contain their hilarity as he scrutinized the glazed surface of each mug. When the brewing process was complete, he lifted the pot out of the machine as usual but then made a highly unusual about-face.
His expression was void but the entire building seemed to quake with the force of his annoyance. He approached the girls with the pot in hand while they looked on, equal parts terrified and bewildered at this break in protocol. Staring Angela dead in the eye, Troy poured the steaming pot of coffee on the center of the girls' floor drawing. The liquid came down in a perfect, unwavering column just inches from Angela's nose. She felt singled out by him and confused as to why, but later learned that Lilith had the same feeling. When the pot was empty, he slammed it down on the table next to them and stormed out. It was 9:55am on the dot. Angela would never forget it.
Troy resigned that day. Years would pass before she found out that being bullied by little girls was only one of many ever-mounting complaints that Troy had with that internship. Until then, Angela had lived with the guilt of pushing some poor guy over the edge. The truth was that she and Lilith were only the final straw. It was not easy coming from where he came from and hoping to be taken seriously.
When Troy and Angela saw one another again, it was by chance. She was running to catch the subway and lost her ticket to the strong current of air that a tram leaving in the opposite direction had kicked up. Troy gave her his ticket to swipe in the turnstile. She thanked him and pretending not to recognize this imposing, well-manicured, pewter-blond and generally unmistakable ghost from her childhood, offered to buy him a coffee at their mutual stop. The critical error in her attempt at gratitude only occurred to her once the sentence left her mouth. Troy was both kind enough to play along, and cruel enough to accept the offer. Already, this was the lengthiest acquaintance that Angela had ever had with a Townie-born.
The coffee they had together was awkward, and the conversation was bloated with silence. He asked her how school was going. She asked him where he was working. They each tried not to think about their last shared experience with hot beverages, but their historical dynamic was not the only impediment looming overhead. Troy was so obviously Townie and Angela was so obviously not, that the couple drew stares from the other patrons. The longer they sat together, the more hostile the atmosphere became. Angela paid the tab, and they went their separate ways before the scene had the opportunity to fester.
Later, Angela was outraged when he kept in touch, outraged when he accepted a partnership at a small law firm less than two blocks from Dewilliker Prep (where she boarded), outraged when he ingratiated himself with the academy's staff, outraged beyond belief when he littered her walkway with white roses. More problematically, Angela could not deny that Troy was different from other people. Better, even. He made her uncomfortable but by the same token, he was fascinating to the extent that Angela no longer knew what she wanted. Being high was the only time that she could reconcile her hesitation over what he was with the way she thrilled at the sight of him.
After her parents died, she found a rancid bottle of painkillers among their possessions, left over from her mother's hip surgery some five or six years prior. She pocketed them, telling herself that she needed to keep Lilith from abusing them. What made her conceal the bottle in a ball of socks, she couldn't say. The conscious impulse to use them never occurred to her, just as the impulse to flush them never did.
Angela thought Troy suspected why she started downing any mood-altering anything that she came across before they got together, always in secret now, sometimes to talk but mostly not to. She might have felt guilty for needing to chemically sterilize her prejudices before making love to her boyfriend if it were not for the fact that the boyfriend in question was Troy Roan Tellerman, a man so steeped in unavailability that even when she shared what she was using, it did nothing to change his output. Luckily, when the painkillers took effect, even Troy's emotional distance ceased to matter to Angela. Nothing mattered.
"Do you feel as good as I feel?" Angela was happy almost to the point of trembling, almost to the point of bliss. Her voice was heady with it. Troy ran his fingers over the exposed skin above her breast, where beads of sweat were collecting from the humidity.
"I don't know. I haven't felt you yet."
Summer wildfires left their mark on the lowlands. Cinders still hung in the air, mingled with the sweet scent of grass. Angela bent a stalk of thistle towards her face to get a better look at the lightning bug cushioned on its tip. When she turned away, she found that Troy was watching her. His glasses had fogged over. Angela dug her thumb into her sleeve and wiped his lenses with the cuff of her jacket. He did not move or protest. He only stared forward, unblinking. His eyes were black as ink at night, bottomless like the sky. She cupped his face in her hand.
"You're the most serious boy I ever knew." She rested her hand just below his neck, tracing his collar with her fingertips.
“Is that what you like about me?”
“Could be,” she said. “Or at least I like the challenge of it. I want to get to know the person inside that serious shell of yours. The real you or whatever.” Troy held her hand in his to stop her agitated movements along his collar.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Why?” Troy leaned upward and kissed her just lightly enough to be felt. Bullfrogs in the thicket were deep within the rhythm of their night-song.
“Because I’d never ask the same of you.” It was a funny feeling, knowing when something should have stung but it didn’t. In fact, it should have been painful on a variety of levels but Angela only knew the fading touch of his lips, the soft grass, the warm breeze against her cheek. Still, she could not help but ask what she had spent five years wondering.
“Dude, what’s your deal anyway?” Troy scoffed.
“My deal?”
“Yes, your deal. You’re so perfect! Everything you do is perfect, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Don’t you ever want to be surprised? Don’t you ever want to make mistakes? What makes you feel alive? You answer me that. What makes you feel anything? And if you say me, I’ll spit in your face.” Troy’s breathing slowed. He looked away from her, up at the sky. For a time, she thought that he did not intend to answer.
“Success makes me feel alive whether or not it surprises me, whether or not it’s a mistake. Class valedictorian six years in a row, national champion in women's track and field two years in a row, Miss Pleasantview 2053-- Don't try to pretend that you're different.” Troy ticked each of her accomplishments off on his fingers as he spoke. This was an honest response. She would give him that. But something lingered in the subtext. Angela lay down flat on her back.
"You forgot to mention that I'm rich and pretty and amazing in bed."
"I thought all of that went without saying."
"Grummel & Tate has been making some rather enticing overtures. There's a research position just waiting in the wings for me."
"Yes, I suspect that there is."
"Not bad for a teenage orphan. All of this, and I only just finished school." Silence. Troy knew where the conversation was going just as surely as she did. The painkillers were wearing off. Angela was suddenly very sleepy and very sad. "I'm in love with you. Desperately. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't."
"That's interesting coming someone who doesn't know me."
"Oh fuck you."
"You're just another success in the making for me. Is that what you want to hear me say? I don't care about you, I only care about what being with you can get me. Is that it?" Angela bit her lip. Even with the way that he framed this declaration, it still rang true to her. She wiped her eye with the heel of her hand.
"Please, Troy, just shut-up."
"I'll never be the conventional choice for you. And let's not forget that you, like me, only make conventional choices. I'm doomed to failure with you, Angela. I really am, and yet here we are. What does that say to you? Or are you still convinced that I'm using you to get into your family like you're using half a bottle of expired Simplex--"
"Shut-up!"
"--to get over how fucking disgusting--"
"Shut-up! I said shut-up!"
"--it is to have to touch me." Angela covered her mouth with her hand, driving her sobs back into her stomach. "Either be a deviant and own it, or move on. This isn't a healthy thing." A dog barked off in the distance. Angela wiped her eyes and pulled herself together. Her mouth was dry, and she felt dirty. Physically dirty, as though she had been swimming in the creek and the silt still clung.
"I'm not going to give you up," she said. Troy craned his neck to look at her, marginally more expressive than he had been a few minutes before. He looked defeated.
"Will you marry me?" He looked as though he were asking more to prove a point than hear an acceptance. Angela shook her head.
"No." Troy turned away then as though she was not there and had never been.
