To Be an Outcast, Timandra Richardson [mystery books to read txt] 📗

Elise. It's about to rain. I'd like to get inside before the unfortunate happens." I tapped my feet slightly as the door slid open.

Mom was a bright blonde with pinkish skin and freckles. She had a white robe rapped around her and waited for me to step inside.

“Did you take your pills?” I asked, slowly walking inside.

She messed with her fingers nervously. “Yeah, of course…” she sighed. “Are you hungry?”

I shook my head.

Our relationship was far from a normal one. We were awkward. We didn’t smile with each other. And we exchanged the same words everyday:

“Did you take your pills?”

“Are you hungry?”

That was always our conversation.

 

So why not switch it up? My right brain whispered.

 

It wasn’t a bad idea—to just talk to her. “Mom?” I said setting my duffel bag down.

She’d already wandered towards the kitchen to take out some dinner for herself. “Yes?” she said, craning her neck to the side to get a glance from me.

 

Just do it! Righty yelled.

 

What’s happening? Am I malfunctioning? Leftie questioned.

 

“The boy next door has feelings for me,” I said while entangling my fingers together.

From all the way across the room, I could hear her blow out a puff of air as if she was actually exhausted. She didn’t work, she didn’t clean—she sat at home all day. Did my problems really bother her that much?

“Maybe his system has overridden,” she said nonchalantly. “It happens quite rarely. He should be put to rest.”

I controlled the urge to let my jaw drop—‘cause honestly, what the hell did that mean?

Unfortunately, she recognized my silence. “When I say ‘overridden’, I mean a single part of his brain must have taken over the part that should’ve been in control. After that, you’re considered ‘mentally ill’ and need to be put down.”

“Like an animal? Put down like an animal?” I said, trying to get a better understanding. “Like when a dog is too sick and you want to keep the thing from suffering? That kind of ‘put down’?”

She did a complete turn to look at me, put her plate down, and crossed her arms. “That is exactly what I mean—”

“Then shouldn’t you have been put down years ago, Mom? You’ve been sick for years. Why haven’t they put you down?”

She squinted with confusion. “Well, the difference between that boy and I is that medicine helps control my symptoms while with him, there is not a future for a cure. He’s done. He cannot contribute to this world any longer.”

She raised an eyebrow and shrugged, and I had no worthy response that wouldn’t be put down itself. “So what should I do?” I asked shakily. “Should I report this…to the authorities, or something?”

She nodded, picking up her plate and beginning to eat. “Yes.”

I nodded as my last response and made it to my room immediately, but then stopped just as I was going to close the door. “You won’t do it, right? I want to be the one that does it.”

“I’m not the one who witnessed it, dear. This is all up to you.” She took a large, solid bite of kale and spinach medley.

I bit down hard on my tongue and shut the door behind me. My room was dark, and the glass bed shone brightly the reflection of the moonlight coming from outside. I took off my dress jacket and dress slacks immediately. I looked a fool at school today, and I bet everyone else had been thinking it. What kind of young woman goes to her first day of junior college in slacks? Like a man?

I scoffed silently to the thought of it as I began taking off my button-down shirt. Then everything seemed to slow down, and I lifted my nose to the ceiling as if I was a wolf sensing its prey.

There was a repetitive noise coming from the above apartment, or, as I began listening closer, from the window.

My heart stopped, and I slowly buttoned up my shirt again.

 

Please don’t be Brandon, Right Brain pleaded.

 

I came closer to it and handled the nearly translucent shades that made the outside blurry. With a flick of my unsteady wrist, I opened it.

The apartment beside mine had had its window open, and in came the appearance of a familiar face.

“Are you Elise Boardman?” his deep English voice said softly.

I hovered over the window carefully. “We’ve met already.”

James Rodney had been entirely flushed in the face, unlike earlier in class with his rude “Spock” comment and upright, uptight confidence. “Not formally,” he said.

For a good couple of seconds, there was the most awkward silence I’d ever experienced—worse than my mother and I—and we’d been left to just stare at each other.

After what felt like a minute, my annoyed emotions decided to take over. “What, Rodney? What could you possibly want from me?”

He crossed his arms on the windowsill of Brandon Johnson’s house and stared at me, like he was a completely different person than who I’d met at school. “Someone’s been having a bad day…”

“If you’d excuse me,” I said, preparing to shut the window. “I think I’m going to go to—”

“Come over,” he said, opening the window even wider.

Righty: “Don’t freak out, don’t freak out. He wants to talk to you about Brandon—oh, no! Maybe he’s noticed that you have feelings for him! Oh—wait! Maybe this is all a trick…maybe he wants to put you down, like…Mom. Play a robot and pretend you’re not interested!”

Leftie: “*Beep* *Beep* Abrupt brain malfunction. Withdraw from existing situation immediately. Mandatory withdrawal. *Beep* *Beep*”

I rubbed my left temple, which was giving me an utter headache. “How?” I asked reluctantly.

An unexpected smile tilted a corner of his lips, and he pointed to the small space that separates our two buildings, except it wasn’t either of ours. It belonged to the government. The air we breathe, which included the small distance between the houses.

“You want me to climb over?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Brandon’s done it millions of time, or at least that’s what he’s told me.”

I bent the line a couple of times. “What if I fall?”

“I doubt you’re dumb enough to be able to fall,” he said, running his hand over the length of his neck.

I was afraid to have to say it, but the question was burning through my skull and I might just die from anxiousness. My eyes must’ve gone around in my head millions of times. I took a deep breath. “You better not be a rapist, James Rodney.”

He gave a warningly intense look as I swung my leg over the windowsill, and blushed hard. “If you don’t want to get raped by at least anyone, I suggest you put on a pair of pants, Miss Boardman.”

Immediately I withdrew my leg. What was I thinking? It was Leftie, not having any sense of embarrassment. But somehow, that emotion was written all over his face, James. I suddenly felt a little bit less ashamed.

“Here,” he vouched for me, throwing a pair of gym shorts for me, and it hung barely on the edge of my windowsill. I reached to grab it before it fell. “Slip them on and hurry up before someone sees you.”

I did, and they smelt like old sweaty socks, but disregarded it, because I wouldn’t form an opinion about all this. I was already going for it, and I wouldn’t risk looking like an idiot by suddenly backing out.

“I apologize for causing you that discomfort,” I grunted as I made it over the window.

“Don’t,” he said.

I slowly climbed to the other side, putting one foot out on the sill, and crab-walking until I could touch the other side. James reached a hand out for me, and I took it. Human contact was very rare, and this was the first I’ve ever had of it. You never touch anyone other than your own blood. And now I was touching a complete stranger.

He pulled me up as I tried leaping over on my own.

Being in another person’s house was like entering another galaxy—it was alien, uncomfortable, and estranged.

I pulled onto my taut ponytail and attempted to loosen it, to calm myself down, but it was to no use.

“I wanted to apologize for my behavior, Elise,” James said suddenly. “Heroin can be one hell of a drug.”

Pretend you never heard that, Righty and Leftie said in unison.

“So…where’s Brandon?” I commanded instantaneously.

“He’s making dinner…for himself and I. But you can take mine—”

“Why are you here, James?” I interrupted, realizing how strange it was that he was even here in the first place.

“Me and Brandon—we’re brothers. I just don’t get around a lot. For instance, I’ve been here my whole life yet have never seen you before.”

His green eyes flickered over to my breasts, and he stared, with no shame. Just as I was getting ready to say something, he had suddenly brushed the area just beneath my collarbone.

“You’re wearing a necklace?” he said, picking it up off my chest.

My breath began to heave as I snatched the necklace right back from him. “What are you going to do about it?”

“No—nothing,” he said. “It’s just very curious.”

Bloody English people… “And what does that mean to you?” I said, trying to get a better understanding without seeming naïve.

“It’s just unexpected,” he clarified. “Lately, no one in this generation has expressed a taste of their own fashion sense—that’s a fact.”

“It was a sixteenth birthday gift from a grandmother. I wear it to honor her. It’s been a hand-me-down since forever,” I explained. “Don’t you…”

Make conversation! Righty was annoyingly screaming throughout every word in my speech.

“…have any hand-me-downs?”

But exactly, at that moment, the door busted open, saving me from this awful awkwardness.

Brandon stood in between the doorframe with something unfamiliar in his hands…in round, plastic plates. He looked at me for a split second before turning over to James. “What…is, um, going on?”

Brandon was minimally attractive. He was average height for this generation, and had wind-swept blond hair and was relatively, just, average. I couldn’t even fully explain how these stomach-fluttering emotions for him had gathered. Just the other day he told me he liked me, and suddenly I decided to return the favor by liking him back. Was that even the right emotion?

“Hi, Brandon,” I breathed shakily.

He politely smiled. “We should talk…” he nodded. “Pizza?” He waved his mysterious food item in the air as an offer.

“She doesn’t know what that is, Brandon,” James said. “Are you that oblivious? She’s scared.”

I wasn’t going to repudiate that. I was absolutely terrified.

“You must not be used to this,” Brandon agreed.

Maybe this had been a bad idea. Maybe you shouldn’t have come over at all. I had nothing to say, nothing to tell him, and I wasn’t going to explain to him that I had no experience with these feelings at all. So I let my left brain take over for me.

“Brandon, I only agreed to come over to tell you that your behavior is severely inappropriate. Those who are victims of these kinds of feelings are immediately diagnosed as mentally ill and should be put down. I’m here to warn you to discontinue your actions before I have to. For you.”

I looked at the ground to avoid contact with him. “Elise…”

“And I should add that your disease is infectious, so be pleased that I am risking myself by standing in your bedroom.”

“I’ve had sex before,” James said out of the blue. “Actual sex, and more than once.”

This created the worst silence I’ve ever come to experience, and I found that Brandon and myself just ended up watching him, this random male telling us something completely illegal and insignificant.

 But he had his arms crossed and happened to be completely serious. “Once it was with a girl I liked. Another time was with a prostitute who needed money.”

“James,” Brandon interrupted, shaking his head quickly.

“I did it with a hotel maid,” and James smiled as if reminiscing. “I’ve been this way since birth. Having ‘feelings’, Elise. I’ve gone to normal schools, have had normal jobs. Yet, the people that I worked with, the kids that I’ve gone to school with—they’re all still robots. I never infected them. I’ve come to realize recently that I’m only human. They’re just