Sparrow's Story - A Girl Defiant

Chapter 12

Monday morning, Sparrow lies awake, wondering why Imran didn’t respond to her message. She sent it at four am, seven his time, and he’s always up early. 

 The weekend passed both too fast and too slow, and now she’s glad it’s over. When she thought about her auction, the hours hurtled by, but if she thought about Imran, they slowed to stasis.

Daylight filters through the shades, and catches on the cheap microscope propped on her bookcase. Sparrow remembers tearing off the wrapping paper and tossing it on the floor by Mom’s bed, and the two of them making slides of a drop of spit, a downy feather from Mom’s pillow, and a crumbled pain pill.

The memory rushes her to the morning not long after when she looked up from her desk and the papery scrap of lizard skin she’d collected, and Dad was standing in her classroom door. “Mom would like you to come home.”

Sparrow gets out of bed, because she can’t, she won’t relive the rest of the memories of that day.  She shuts the microscope in her dresser drawer, then picks up her brush and pulls it through her tangled hair.

Her hands are shaking, but she doesn’t have time for this. She has to think about tomorrow and New York. 

New clothes overflow the suitcase lying in the corner of her bedroom. The stylist Dad hired was aghast when he saw her wardrobe was mostly school uniforms and athletic gear. 

She cringes at the pile of dresses and expensive shoes. Her new wardrobe is basically a sham, but she’s not the guilty one here. 

Sparrow tosses her workout pants on top. She can’t miss a day even if she’s traveling. She needs to keep her edge in case Imran doesn’t show. 

I hope I ‘m not fooling myself, believing his story that his family’s rich and he’ll bid on me. 

She stuffs the laces into her running shoes. Guys lie. She wishes she didn’t believe it, but her brothers do it all the time, even when they don’t have to. 

The radio by her bed turns on, which means it’s already seven. Imran, I’ve been waiting three hours. Where are you?

She dresses and crams the last of her homework in her backpack. Her phone hums and she grabs it. A message floats on the screen. 

 The prototype is working, it says. 

Her heart surges. 

 He’s coming!

Imran is coming to New York!

Her stomach fills with those stupid butterflies people talk about, and even though she feels girly and predictable, she loves the rush. Her cheeks feel hot and when she checks the mirror, they’re bright pink. 

I’m a cliche, but I don’t care. 

Now she knows she made the right decision not to set up her Extract for New York. She debated all weekend, and felt like an idiot when it got too late to ask Father Gabriel to arrange it. 

Her cell pings a news blast on a restricted  topic she’s following. 

She glances at the screen, assuming it’s nothing, but the headline smacks her in the chest: ROWLEY’S LAWYER ASSASSINATED! 

Sparrow drops down on her bed, her knees knocked out from under her, and she clicks on the video. Henry Forester exits the Supreme Court, his head up high as if he knows his arguments before the court went well. Sparrow holds her breath, waiting for a gunshot, but Forester pushes through the crowd of reporters and cops and protestors, and climbs into a limo. For a second, Sparrow’s sure the reporters got it wrong, and then boom! 

She tries to pull air in, but she can’t. Forester didn’t deserve to die. 

All he was doing was defending a girl’s right not to be forced into marriage. The one guy with the guts to stand up for us, and they got him. 

Sparrow hears her brothers’ alarms go off and even though she wants to call Imran and rail about the Paternalists, she can’t take a chance on getting caught. 

No one can tell me the Paternalists didn’t do this, those bastards. Maybe they didn’t plant the bomb, but they hired whoever did. 

Tears burn her cheeks. Rowley’s all alone now, she thinks. No lawyer in his right mind’s going to step in to defend her. Or the rest of us. No one’s going to save us.

“Sparrow?” Her bodyguard, Damon, taps her bedroom door. His knock is wary--like he’s handling C-4. 

“Coming,” she snaps.

 She grabs a tissue and wipes her face.  

I can’t wait to get out of the US. I’m going to Europe or India, and I’m never coming back. I’m going to change my allegiance like Black Widow. 

What choice do you have when your country turns on you?  None!  

Sparrow puts on her sunglasses and throws her backpack over her shoulder. Land of the Free. What a lie!