Fettered

Our Giant Slingshot

By that Wednesday, Persephone still couldn't believe she'd had to skip Monday and Tuesday to look after Terry, whose drug taking was getting out of hand. Now she and Lucas barely had any time to get their project done. Mrs. Tompkin seemed to have picked up on this and approached them during class.

"You two aren't gonna get your project done in time if you don't hurry," she said sternly. "I want you two ta start workin' on your project even when you're not in class. Most of the other students have been visitin' each other at home — I suggest you start doin' the same."

When Mrs. Tompkin walked away, Persephone sighed. She propped her elbows up onto the table and talked a lot with her hands. "Look, dude, I gotta get a good grade here or my dad's gonna flip shit. I'll let you do whatever the hell you want in your notebook for the rest of class if we go to your place and figure this out on Friday — soonest I can give you. Deal?"
He took so long to respond she was about to repeat herself (in a very irritated manner), but he replied before she could. "Deal."


After a particularly nasty time keeping Terry out of trouble, Persephone managed to make it through the rest of the week. She got on the bus with Lucas that Friday afternoon. Halfway down was an empty seat and he took the window side. She already heard the rumors spreading around in harsh whispers; "she's still alive?", "who'd even wanna be seen with Crazy Lucas?", "goin' ta his house? She's so fucked".

Persephone joked, "Wow, you're a real celebrity around here."
"So," said a voice from the seat behind them. "It's true. You do got'cherself a cute li'l girlfriend."
"Fuck you." Lucas pulled out his phone and put his earbuds in their jack.
"Relation?" Persephone questioned.
She smiled at Persephone, her hair brown, short, and messy in her face. Then she held out her hand. "Name's Zoe and I'm this knucklehead's sister."
She shook Zoe's outstretched hand — a firm shake from both their ends. "Persephone. Only child, thankfully."
Zoe chuckled. "Haven't seen you on the bus since you started at Dulvey."
"I don't normally take the bus, but Lucas and I really need to make headway on this project." She nudged him but he was listening to music on his earbuds.
"Aww," Zoe said, "how cute."
Lucas still seemed to be able to hear them, though, as he flipped Zoe off over his shoulder.
"He's a real sweetheart, ain't he?" Zoe asked.
"Oh, go back t' chattin' with Judith," Lucas spat.
Zoe rolled her eyes, smirking. "If he gives you any trouble, you just lemme know — I'll set 'im straight." She tossed Persephone a wink.
"Noted."

Persephone and Lucas sat in silence during most of the bus ride. She found it hard to start up a conversation due to his earbuds, which left her to her thoughts. What exactly was in store for her? The bus drove through an unfamiliar area; residential, with some bland single homes. As she looked over him out the window at all the plain, boring houses, she wanted to sigh, imagining him in a plain, boring house. That would be so unbecoming. He was far too interesting to live in some normal house.

For the rest of the ride, Persephone made various comments on horror games she'd played recently, unsure if Lucas was actually listening or not. But she was going to rant about the goriest ones she could think of if he wasn't going to stop her (Dead Space was a fun staple). Still, he kept to himself the whole way there, only glancing at her now and again. Whatever his glances were supposed to indicate, she couldn't figure out. Intrigue? Listening? Annoyance? Who knows.

When the bus slowed and stopped, Lucas got up and Persephone did the same.

"Ya ain't gettin' off here?" He asked Zoe.
"Nah, going to Judith's place for the weekend. Give Momma n' Daddy a kiss for me."

Persephone followed Lucas off the bus, glancing around as she walked down the aisle. People snickered at them behind their hands. She didn't care much, though — let them talk.

"'S 'bout a mile walk t' the house," Lucas said as they stepped onto the ground.

The neighborhood turned from pavement to dirt fairly quickly, thus leaving behind the woodsy homes in favor of spacious marshland. Lucas walked with his hands deep in his pockets, hood up, slouching. For a while, they hiked in silence, letting her enjoy the mid-afternoon sun and fresh air after being cooped up on that bus.

"Y'all ain't gonna let it get t' ya, are ya?"
"What, you mean our classmates being assholes? I don't care what they think. I'm more interested to know what your mom and dad think."
He glanced at her from under his hood and, from what little she could see of his furrowed brow, he was giving her a quizzical look. "'Bout what?"
Persephone felt her cheeks flush and tried to will the warmth away. "You know... About me."
"What d'you care?"

She was just as perplexed as him. What started out as forced interaction turned to intrigue then to something else entirely. Why indeed did she feel nervous now, of all times? She'd always heard about needing to make a good impression but that advice never stuck with her until she realized she'd be meeting Lucas's parents. She looked toward the sky, taking a deep breath and trying to think about something else.

Clouds were rolling in, it seemed. The greenery grew denser all around her, too, making it relatively dark. Thick vines and tree leaves lined the path. Ronald would go berserk if so much as a single leaf fell upon his walkways. Here, though, with wildlife along that road — rabbits, a small flock of deer, and all the bugs singing around them — it was hard to imagine the Baker family would care about the colorful assortment of leaves. The breath-taking walk halted at a large metal gate that encircled the front of Lucas's house.

Holy shit.

It was huge, like two houses put together, with a barn on the far left. The main house was two stories tall, old but well-kept. She'd never been in a house so enormous before, nor had she ever seen one up close. Cities didn't often have big houses and she'd only ever grown up in townhomes or duplexes her whole life.

Lucas unlocked the main gate, let her pass through, then shut and locked it behind them. He took her up the walkway to the porch, which seemed to wrap around the right side of the house. The well-furnished porch had a swinging bench and lush potted plants. There was so much to take in that she was sure she'd been staring, open-mouthed, like a complete idiot. She barely noticed the stairs up the porch until she almost tripped over them. Up the few steps had her facing the front door. Lucas picked another key on his ring, unlocked the door, and pushed it open, allowing her entry.

"Shoes," he said. "Take 'em off, put 'em t' the side there."

Persephone complied quickly, shoving her shoes on the rack to going back to gaping at her surroundings. On her right was a tall archway, and through the opened double-doors (double-fucking-doors) was a large room with a balcony at the top of the stairs — two sets of stairs, it seemed, on either side. Well, she'd been right that a plain old boring house could never have been as Lucas as something like this.

"Ma!" Lucas called (scaring her a bit with how it jarred her from her thoughts). He kicked his shoes off. "I'm home!"
"I'm in the kitchen!" A muffled voice called from down the hallway.
Lucas looked to Persephone, jerking his head toward the hall. "C'mon, let's go."

She walked behind him, observing rustic wooden end tables along the side of the hall that held framed pictures of the family. One of Lucas looking directly at the camera, smiling, caught her attention. Had she ever seen him smile before? Now that she thought about it, she hadn't. And oddly enough, she made a mental note of making him smile, at least once.

They rounded the corner, which led down another hall lined with open windows on their right. Outside of them lay a sprawling backyard, with a trailer sitting right in the middle of the swampy ground and a few huge trees scattered about. They passed an open closet on the other side and she couldn't help but stare as she went; normal stuff like jackets, a hamper, boxes of things, and bags of gloves and scarves and random assortments (it could've been empty and she probably would've stared all the same).

Finally, around the last corner, she saw two open doors on the left and a staircase on the right. They walked in through the first door where a middle-aged woman stirred a large pot of food on the stove. Persephone could smell it — sausages and tomato sauce, possibly jambalaya, though she was not well-versed in southern cooking.

"Hey Momma," Lucas said.
The woman turned to him and smiled brightly, her dark hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. "Afternoon, hon." When her eyes met Persephone's, she cocked her head a bit. "And who might this be?"
"Ma, this is Persephone. My classmate. She needed t' come over so we could work on that project I told you n' Dad about."
The woman dried her hands on a dish towel then approached with her hand held out. "Nice to meet you, dear. My name's Marguerite."
Persephone took her hand firmly and shook it. "Nice to meet you, ma'am. I hope I'm not imposing by just showing up. Thought he would tell you I was coming." She nudged Lucas, receiving only an eye-roll in response.
Marguerite laughed politely. "Oh, not at all, dear, I'm glad to see Lucas found a nice lady friend."
"Classmate," Lucas corrected.
Marguerite pursed her lips slyly, winking at Persephone. "Who just happens to be a lady friend."
"Yeah, yeah, she's a girl," Lucas dismissed. "I'll be down fer dinner. Me n' Persephone are gonna study up in my old room."
"All right, dear, just keep your door open."
"Jesus, Ma," Lucas responded as they walked away. "Would ya like t' make it anymore embarrassin'?"

Persephone subdued a giggle and followed her skinny classmate up the stairs, round several twisting corners, before they reached their destination — the house was absolutely massive. They entered the door on their right which contained a room essentially split in half. The right side looked girlier with barren lavender walls, while the left side seemed a bedroom fit for a young boy; his childhood had been plastered all over the pale green walls and atop shelves in the forms of golden trophies, medals, and ribbons. She didn't bother asking permission to pick some up and take a closer look.

"Nosy type, I see," said Lucas.
"Sure am. But if I wasn't, how would I have found out you're so good with technology?" She read the trophy's engraving — 2nd Place in Junior Engineering; another said 1st place; then another said he'd won 1st in Advanced Engineering. "If not for our AP class together, I would never've thought you were so smart."
"Thanks," he said tersely, dropping his backpack to the ground and retrieving his Physics book. "We doin' this 'r not?"
"Sorry," she apologized with a bit of a titter, getting her own book. "That didn't come out right."

He cleared a dresser — by literally brushing everything off the side with his arm — and pulled it over to the bed, using it as a rather tall desk. She took the vanity chair from the girly side of the room and moved it across from him. The dresser gave them barely enough room to have their textbooks open and make notes at the same time.

"So we're supposed to have something physical to show," she said.
"I don' give a shit what it is."
"Good, me being the leader here will probably make this easier."
He rolled his eyes, something he seemed well-versed in.

After some one-sided brainstorming, Lucas returned to being uninvolved and doodling in his notebook. She observed him for a moment as he added onto the electronic she'd seen the first day they'd met. He kept referring back to a weapon of some kind — an automated slingshot, for whatever reason. When he flipped back to it, she quickly interjected.

"That," she said, finger in his book, "is our project."
He looked up at her, gazes mingling before he replied, "I like that idea."
"Sweet." She wrote it down on a clean sheet of paper. "So, automated slingshot it is."

That's when ideas really got rolling. He was responsive and talkative afterward. They discussed the logistics of their project — how big it would be, what it would launch, and tinier details like pulleys and circuitry they'd need to make its activation timed. Of course, they decided it would need to be huge.

"Maybe we can make it launch a fifty-five-gallon drum," said Lucas.
"We'd need a damn truck bed as a base for that."
"Dad's got an old truck we could re-purpose. Still drives, too. We'd probably need a lotta metal for the handle n' some'in' stretchy fer the band."
Persephone wrote all of this down. "Mom's got some nylon tights. Those bitches are strong, I'll pick up a whole bunch."

Details were hammered out for a while before there a knock on the door interrupted them. Marguerite stood at the threshold with an affable grin and two cups of lemonade.

"How's the project comin'?"
"Good," Lucas said, all his excitement gone in just a few moments. "Thanks fer the lemonade."
"Not a problem." She handed them the cups.
"Thank you so much, Mrs. Baker."
Marguerite put a friendly hand on Persephone's shoulder. "Oh, you can just call me Marguerite."
"You got it."

Marguerite moved closer to the dresser, looking at the notes Persephone had taken who then filled her in on the important details.

Marguerite said, "I'll see if I can get Jack to lend you two the truck."
"Thank you, ma'am. And this lemonade is delicious."
Lucas was distracted by his phone, sipping his drink. "When's dinner?"
"Soon, hon, don't worry. Should only be a half hour. Oh, I can't wait for you to meet my husband, Persephone. He'll be so pleased."
"Momma," Lucas groaned.

She smiled at Persephone then excused herself from the room.

"Your mother's very nice."
"Yeah, yeah," he dismissed, putting his phone away. "So about this project."

And just like that, his excitement returned. She could relate. Whenever Terry came around, she was never too happy about it, either. She briefly pondered whether or not that was a teenager thing, then returned to listening to Lucas's rather impassioned talk over the project, mingling the unmistakable sound of rain beating against the house.

Half an hour later, they were both called down to eat.

"Don't worry, I won't stay for dinner," she told him as they left the room, garage doors opening loudly in the background.

Lucas remained quiet as he walked her into the dining room, through the second door beside the kitchen (yet another ridiculously cool double-door). Through the serving window, she spotted Marguerite in the kitchen gathering up dishes. Lucas headed inside to put their empty cups in the sink and then help her make the table.

"Will you be joining us for dinner, dear?" Marguerite asked as she placed dishes down.
"Oh, no ma'am, I don't think I should..."
Heavy footsteps came up from the garage across the way and a deep male voice sounded. "Boy, does that smell good."

From around the corner, she saw a balding man with a thick, grey beard walk into view. He kicked his boots off at the top of the stairs.

"Jambalaya, can't wait," he said pleasantly, then his eyes darted to her. "And who's this?"
"Dad, this is Persephone," Lucas said, putting down the last bit of dinnerware. "My project partner."
"Nice to meet you, sir." She put her hand out to him and he took it. His hand had to be twice the size of hers.
"Good to meet'cha. Jack Baker."

They released each other and Marguerite set the pot of jambalaya on the table.

"You should've heard 'em, Jack," she said. "Lucas sounded so excited when they were talkin' about their project."
Lucas groaned again and put his hood on.
"That so?" Jack put a hand on Persephone's shoulder. "Polite, smart, an' my boy seems ta like ya. You'll be staying for dinner, won'chu?"
"I really don't wanna be a bother."
"It's no bother," Jack said, looking down his glasses at her. "You're very welcome at our table."

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