Linksshifter II

A Path Between The Waves - ~

Sonali rolled her eyes. "No, I'm still just going by myself. I've been having a row with my parents just the now; the library's open for another hour, and then it's the time riding back, so I don't have to be back home, inside, till nearly ten, and I'm not doing nothing that baba could yell at me for like I was hanging about on the streets." She shifted her bags, and knelt to unlock her bike from the radiator pipe.

Sarah nodded slowly. "I know; I understand. I know you got to feel like you've got nothing your own, and it's your parents stopping you from everything, but you got to take care. Soon enough, you're going to be grown and out on your own, and maybe you'll think different of them then – even if you still don't agree that they were doing everything for the best, maybe you'll see how they might've thought that." She paused for a second. "Don't do nothing, or say nothing, that you can't take back – you don't have your parents forever, and if you don't make up with them before that, it's gonna hurt and there won't be nothing you can do."

Sonali stopped at the door, bracing it open with her foot, both hands on the handlebars of her bike, not looking back. "I don't know – I don't think I have. But he took me out of the club – like my life's been cut off at the ankles, aye?" Whenever Naresh came back, it always ended up with words on both sides that nobody was going to take back – that's why he was in Azerbaijan now instead of out on the rigs in the Forties. "It's all on them – if they want me around, they'll take me as I am. I won't let them hammer and trim me till I fit their Good Daughter box. And if not – I'll figure something out. I'll get out, as soon as I can, any way I have to." She pushed the bike out, feeling the door press against the back wheel, still not turning around. "Night; see you round Wednesday I guess." Sonali stepped over the bike, pushing down on the pedals and out into the long summer twilight.

Her nights generally ended like this, but that didn't make it any less annoying when the library buzzer sounded, the snarl like a fire alarm forcing everyone still inside – if there was still anyone else in here – to pay attention: five minutes until closing. Time to leave, to check out whatever you'd been dithering about on, realize in a panic that you wouldn't finish whatever paper you were working on in time, or to go out and confront whatever you'd been hiding from in the stacks. Sonali sighed, closing the heavy old volume of The Fair Jilt, and stood up, lifting her bag. She set the ancient book on a shelving cart as she walked over to the stairs down; she wasn't done with it, not nearly, with the weird old spellings and the words she had to keep looking up on her phone to make sure she got the right meanings, but it wasn't like anyone else was going to check it out. It would be here, back on the shelf in the same place again, when she came back tomorrow. And she certainly couldn't take it out; nobody looked twice at an Asian teenager reading an old book in the library, but if she took it home someone would see it, and look inside, and then baba would yell at her about reading immoral old filth and cut up her library card, another bit of herself cut away.

The sun still wasn't down yet, creeping across the horizon to the northwest in a long low arc; not being able to be out after dark was a pain in the winter, but in the summer, it was freedom itself: this far into June, some days, depending on the weather, it was like the sun didn't set at all. Today, it looked like it'd be going down, but not for a while yet, and Sonali could take the long way home, out along the coast.

Normally, the way home was inland, on the main roads, watching out for trucks coming out of the big industrial estates on the way, but when she had time and enough light, Sonali always took the small old road right on the coast, looking out over the cliffside meadows at the birds peeling and turning over the water, feeling the salt wind through her hair – feeling like she'd gotten outside of everything and was free, like the road was going to pull her on forever, down to Stonehaven, Montrose, Arbroath, Dundee and the firth and then Edinburgh and London and the whole rest of the world. No matter what happened, no matter what she had to do to get there, she was going to get out and see as much of it for herself as she could, but right now, for now, the little road and the scrub grass and the wind made her feel like she was already out – much more than the granite tombs in the city center that it seemed like everyone else at school decided meant freedom and independence and all good things. You could go eyelash-flutter your way into a student night at a club, and get a kebab on your own after and watch a fight in the taxi rank – or you could ride out to the edge of all things, and think about what it'd be like to go off into that water, into the sky, slipping free from those rusty chains of earth.