Sparrow's Story - A Girl Defiant

Chapter 2

Sparrow knows that bailing on the party will only come back to bite her, but she doesn't feel she owes Dad a thing. He was the one who lied about why he was dragging her here. 

Sparrow's got her hand on the door and is about to join the boy when she sees Damon watching her halfway down the colonnade. She points at herself and the door. I’ll just be inside. Okay?

Her bodyguard nods, head cocked as if he’s been waiting for her to do it.

Sparrow walks in and the boy barely looks up. He's ten or eleven, and his brown hair is uncombed, and  when she gets closer he smells like her brothers after they wear the same clothes for a day or two. “You mind?” she says, pointing to a spot next to him. 

“Go ahead.”

She plops down, and threads her long legs under the heavy wood table, banging her knees against the hammered iron supports. Her skirt puffs out, and she shoves as much as she can under her thighs.

The shooter on the screen moves through the bombed out landscape. “Watch out for the church,” she said. “I always get killed there.” 

“That’s why I never go that way.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, I do this.” The boy takes the shooter down into a gulch and up a rock face until he’s behind the enemy. Seconds later he’s taken out the sniper and moved on.

“Whoa. Nice.” 

“You want to play?” the boy says.

“Sure.”

“I’ll get you a controller.” The boy pauses the game, then gets up and goes to a cabinet. 

Above the video screen hangs a huge family portrait. An eight-year-old Kimberly hugs her toddler brother while Mr. Johnson and Kimberly’s mom beam from either side. 

A montage of empty pill bottles, a sweat-soaked hospital bed, and a vomit bucket flood Sparrow’s brain. It’s been eight years since Scarpanol took Mom and practically every other woman Sparrow knew, but the pain still throws her down her sometimes. 

Sparrow grabs the foil bag and stuffs a couple cheese puffs in her mouth right as the door swings open, and the tall man with slicked back hair strides into the room, followed by Sparrow’s dad and the Asian man from the balcony. 

Dad’s face is almost incandescent with delight.  

“Miss Currie,” the man says, stretching out his hand, “I’m Jessop Hawkins.”

“I know,” she says, now recognizing him. His jacket is immaculately tailored, which of course, he can afford, being one of the last billionaires in the U.S. after the Scarpanol disaster. 

Sparrow’s dad motions to her to stand up now! But Sparrow isn’t about to get up or even shake the hand of the Paternalist Party’s pick for the next Governor of California. She wiggles her orange-stained fingers. “Sorry. Cheese puffs.”

Hawkins withdraws his hand and places it on his hip so casually, that no one would guess he’d been insulted. Meanwhile, the boy thumps down next to Sparrow, and drops a controller in her lap. “Thanks,” she tells him.

Jessop Hawkins’ smile is a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down at her feet. “Adam, I’d like a few minutes in private, if that’s acceptable to you, Miss Currie.”

“Yeah, it’s fine, just as long as--” She elbows the boy. “What’s your name?” 

“Stewart.”

“Yeah, just as long as Stewart stays.”

Stewart starts up the game again. Dad’s lips are pursed and his brow is so red, Sparrow thinks the pressure building behind his eyes could blow his head right off his body. She stifles a smile as Hawkins’ personal assistant steers Dad out the door.

Jessop Hawkins settles into the oversized chair to her right, his fingers picking at the elaborate fringe on its velvety armrest. When he looks her in the face, his grey eyes  seem to dissect her. 

“You’re a student at Masterson academy.”

“Yes, a junior.”

Bursts of gunfire and the sound of boots slapping the ground give her an excuse for looking at the screen instead of him. 

“What are your plans for next year?” he says.

Most of Masterson’s senior class is already Signed which is probably why Jessop Hawkins framed the question so vaguely, but Sparrow intends to be crystal clear. “I’m applying for a physics scholarship to MIT or Harvard Women’s.”

“What if that option was unavailable?”

His irises are grey and brittle-looking, and they remind Sparrow of supercooled steel. “Then I’d apply somewhere else.”

Hawkins taps the upholstery with his thumb, and in his silence Sparrow senses she’s missed something--that he isn’t asking what she’d do if she fails to be admitted to her dream schools, but if she isn’t allowed to go to college at all. 

Let Dad try and stop me.

“I assume you’ve guessed why I wanted to meet you.”

“You’re looking for a wife, because you plan to run for governor, and I’ve got the right look, education, and upbringing to be considered.” 

“I take it from your tone of voice that you are not interested.”

“I have zero desire to get Signed at seventeen.” Especially to a Paternalist.

“Your father led me to believe you did.”

“Dad’s in denial.” Sparrow twirls a cheese puff in front of her lips. Any second now Jessop Hawkins will admit defeat and leave. 

But Hawkins surprises her when he leans forward and says, “You’re classmates with a girl named Aveline Reveare.”

“Yes.”

“What is she like?”

Sparrow isn’t really friends with Avie, but she’s not about to push Avie in front of that bus. “She’s nice.”

“That’s it?” Hawkins says. “I thought scientists prided themselves on their powers of observation.”  

Sparrow crunches through the cheese puff, snapping it in two.  “Sorry, to disappoint you,” she says, and stuffs the second half in her mouth. 

Hawkins smiles, amused, and peels himself out of the chair. “It was interesting to meet you, Miss Currie.”   

“You, too, Mr. Hawkins.”

Sparrow positions her thumbs on the controller. As her shooter dashes through the rubble of collapsed buildings, Sparrow can’t shake the feeling that Hawkins’ question about going to college is more complex, more threatening than he let on. MIT and Harvard reopened to girls last year and she knows at least fifty other schools that would welcome her. Unless--and the thought makes her sick--the Paternalists are going to shut that option down, too. 

Readers: I think Tony Goldwyn from Scandal would play an amazing Hawkins. Who do you think should play Hawkins on the tv show?