Adult Non-Fiction - First Place

I was raised to give a guy a second chance. Everybody screws up from time to time.
Lord knows I have. So I say to myself, "He's a sensitive guy. He's been through so
much. You've got to make allowances." I'm patting my left arm gingerly. It's got that
'turning blue' feeling that a quick glance I can't resist confirms. I can see four sausage shaped welts beginning to gain colour just above my elbow, like a bloated music staff,
waves…'or bars on a cell window', flashes through my mind. But I push that thought
away with a shiver. "No!"

I'm walking, or rather, trudging back up the main village road I had so defiantly
marched down only—what?—an hour ago? But now my throat is seared with the
swallowed tears I will not cry on this dusty, blazing hillside where so many eyes are
probably watching quietly from behind drawn shutters and pleated sheers.

Every step is leaden; my furious will has drained from me. My legs float, move without
my knowledge or help. I'm far away, deep inside, wandering in a murky fog. I can't
think. I can't say why I couldn't get on the bus I'd decided to take to Corinth. Why I
couldn't open my mouth and say, "Yes, I am getting on. Please tell him to let go of
me." Couldn't get those words out of my mouth.

I had stood paralyzed beside the heat-waved, cicada-loud hiway, the bus door open,
the driver leaning forward with his hand on the door lever staring impassively at the
small, intense drama playing out on the edge of his bus steps. He'd seen it often
enough, maybe even played a part himself once.

The young man straddling the white Vespa confidently, a lit cigarette almost falling from
the corner of his mouth, a look of indulgent exasperation on his face, as if to say,
'naughty girl! what will she get up to next?' and his hand gripping, gripping her arm, his
knuckles white around it, his tricep bulging slightly through his shirt sleeve with the
effort of holding her back but appearing not to.

"Are you getting on?" the driver had asked in a flat voice.

"No, she's not. Sorry. Wrong bus," the young man had replied lightly, apologetically.
And the driver had shrugged, his face carefully blank, slowly shut the door and slowly
pulled away, grinding back up through the gears, a cloud of black diesel puffing out the
back with each shift. He glanced once into his rearview mirror, more out of curiosity
than anything, to see if the scene he'd recognized, clear and frozen in his open
doorway had moved on in any way.

But no, the young man continued to stand legs planted in an 'A' over the Vespa. The
young woman, clearly a foreigner, continued to stand unmoving, facing the hiway her arm gripped tightly, growing smaller and smaller. Then he rounded the curve and they
were gone from sight.

"You can't go out alone. Now go back home," he orders once the bus has
disappeared and only the heat, the buzzing cicadas and the two of them remain.
He looks down as he speaks while he maneuvers the Vespa; HER Vespa, into the
opposite direction, rocking it back and forth. "I'll be home later. Go to my mother's if
you want." His brow is furrowed and his voice stern yet sympathetic. He squints at her
as he speaks through cigarette smoke in the glaring light. The cigarette bobs up and
down.

"He's a cartoon—like Popeye," she thinks as he talks. The soft voice doesn't fool her
anymore. "I hate him. How dare he order me around like this. I got half way around
the world on my own. He can't tell me what to do!" she rails in her head, shooting
venemous looks his way, which he utterly ignores. But she does not open her mouth
or move at all till he has sped away without a look back or a goodbye, confident that
his command will be obeyed, that his meal ticket remains safely under his control.

Once he is gone, she continues to stand there by the hiway unmoving. Her mind works
furiously but cannot put together even a decision to move an arm or leg. She feels light and transparent and utterly alone. The pulsing whine of cicadas seems to grow louder,
floods her head like the heart beat of a mutant sports car screaming past the red line
inside her. She stands there consumed by the sound. Her body evaporates in the heat.
She stands there. Then from somewhere comes the possiblity of moving her legs. She
takes a step and then another.

It does not occur to her to just stay where she is and take the next bus to Corinth, due
along past this very spot within an hour. It does not occur to her that she could. She
begins to climb the gravel road which leaves the highway and winds up the barren
hillside through the village she now calls home.