#i should do one for stephanie and jared too but ehhhhh

[panticwritten]

Pearl-Handled Shotgun: Chapter One

Yeah. I have no posting schedule for this haha. We’ll just see how it goes.

Prologue

Word count: 2978

TW:

Emotional warfare (of the controlling parent kind)

Hardcore dissociation

Reference to police brutality

Alyssa

“You’re lucky we could keep it out of the newspapers.”

Alyssa doesn’t look at her father, drumming her nails against the arm of the chair. Her mom watches from a chair behind him, her disapproval clear in the curve of her brow, the thin line of her mouth. The teen turns her head so she doesn’t have to see either of them.

“That man could have pressed charges. Do you think he would have gone after your little friends?” She bristles at the sneer in his voice, but she keeps her mouth shut. “You have a promising future ahead of you, I won’t stand by and watch you throw that away.”

She nods idly, the bare minimum of what he wants from her.

“I don’t know where this is coming from, your lashing out. Your brother never did anything like this.”

Ah, there it is. Calim, the perfect son. The good one. The easy one.

“He just never got caught,” she mutters.

“What was that?”

She looks up, at the familiar anger in her father’s eyes. He cocks an eyebrow up, expectant. She sighs and shakes her head. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

He stares at her, his gaze hard, before returning to pacing to and fro in front of the fireplace. “What else have you been doing behind our backs? It isn’t safe, and it certainly isn’t acceptable.”

“Last night was an accident,” Alyssa says before she can hold the words back. “We took a wrong turn.”

He stills, burning eyes back on her. “You shouldn’t have been out at all last night!”

“I already apologized for that.”

“You can’t really think a petty ‘sorry’ will make up for breaking our trust? For sneaking out, so you could—what? Run around the city with a group of delinquents?”

She straightens up, scrabbling to hold onto her unruffled air. “Delinquents?”

“They’re a bad influence.”

“They are not!” Shoulders squared, Alyssa’s practiced placidity ruptures at his ‘holier than thou’ stance. “Stephanie and Jared are good friends, and they don’t treat me like a glass doll or a- a- a piece of advertising!”

“Alyssa, dear, please don’t yell,” her mom warns, her voice soft. It diffuses the immediate tension in the air. Her father says nothing. The coolness in his eyes, however, tells her the damage has already been done. Alyssa clears her throat and continues with more restraint.

“I apologize, sincerely, for what happened. I should have been honest with you.” She pauses, heartened when her father jerks his head in a nod. “It wasn’t the first time I left without permission, and it was unfair of me keep you in the dark.”

“How many times?”

“What?”

“How many times have you snuck out?” he asks. His deceptively level voice spreads anxiety through her chest, thick and sticky in her throat. She swallows it down and makes a mental tally.

“Twelve?” She offers. It’s not counting the days she used shopping trips as cover for driving the roads on the eastern edges of Portland with her friends, but she doesn’t tell him that.

He considers this thoughtfully, as if deciding whether he’ll have honey or jam on his toast. Alyssa sees it in his eyes when he comes to a conclusion, one fist coming down on his open palm.

“Then we’ll discuss this again in twelve weeks.”

Her heart constricts in her chest, driving her to her feet. She manages to keep her mouth shut, but that’s not enough. It’s never enough. He raises a brow, unimpressed, and starts for the family room door.

“You won’t leave the manor unattended until then. You have ten minutes to tell your friends before I collect your devices.” He pauses at the door, looking back with a painfully detached expression. “Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” she says automatically, unable to suppress the reflex.

The door closes behind him, with hardly a whisper. She stares unseeing at the polished surface, almost wishing he had slammed it. She lowers herself back into the chair, wiping the back of a hand over her eyes before the pinch behind them can turn into tears.

If he can keep ahold of his temper, so can she.

“It could have been worse.” Alyssa jolts violently when her mom speaks. She had almost forgotten she was here.

“I know.” She doesn’t look over, dragging her phone out of her pocket. Steph and Jared will lose their minds if she just disappears for three months, especially after her father left them in jail for the night.

“You could have been killed,” she continues, voice low. Alyssa freezes, her fingers hovering over the screen. “ Just because we are who we are doesn’t mean it’s safe to get into trouble. An officer won’t think twice before they pull that trigger.”

Alyssa nods, looking up. Without her father here as a distraction, she now sees what she didn’t before in her mom’s furrowed brow, pressed lips. Fear, not disappointment. Regret pangs in her chest. “I know, mom. I swear we weren’t trying to do anything illegal.”

“That doesn’t matter.” She rises from her chair, full of grace as always, and offers her daughter a strained smile. “You need to be careful. Smarter. I’ll try to talk your father down, but I do agree that you need time to think about what happened last night.”

She nods again, and her mom starts for the door.

“I’m sorry for scaring you.”

She doesn’t answer, closing the door silently behind her. Alyssa sighs, sinking deeper into the back of the chair, and pulls up a group chat.

A<-- Hey.

A<-- I am SO sorry about my father, I can’t believe he just left you there.

A<-- I hope you both are okay. At the very least, that you’re home safe.

A<-- I can’t leave the house on my own for a few months, and he’ll be back for my phone any minute now.

She watches the screen with bated breath. After a moment, both of their icons appear beside the messages. Before she can register her relief, Steph responds.

S--> hey!

S--> i was starting to rly worry

S--> mom picked us up right after u left

A<-- Oh, thank god.

J--> a few months

J--> what the hell

J--> my dad took my keys but like

J--> just for a two weeks

S--> im grounded for a month :(

A<-- We’ve talked about my parents before. Are you really surprised?

J--> nah i guess not

J--> but thats hella rough

J--> someone needs to take some parenting classes

S--> im sorry aly

J--> how to be a good dad and not alienate your children or whatever

J--> oh shit yeah we kinda did get you in trouble huh

A<-- It’s not your fault. My mom said she’ll try to change his mind, but I doubt that will do much good.

A<-- Besides, you both got in trouble, too. It’s as much my fault as it is yours.

J--> no man dont say that

J--> youd never been camping thats a fucking crime

J--> i mean shooting at teenagers for pitching a damn tent should be a crime but thats a whole other thing

S--> jj

S--> not funny

A<-- He’s right, though.

J--> hell yeah drinking down this validation

J--> glug glug motherfucker

S--> stop

S--> ur ok tho?

S--> like should we worry?

Her phone slips through her fingers, pulled away by nimble hands, before she can answer. She hadn’t noticed her father come back in, and he leaves again without otherwise acknowledging her. She watches him go without a word.

Arguing more would make it worse. She’s lucky to have gotten ten minutes.

Now that she’s alone with nothing to do, she hefts herself upright. She stares at the embers glowing in the fireplace, considering what to do for the rest of the day. She has schoolwork due on Monday. She needs to decide within the month between Oxford—her father’s alma mater—or the local university her friends already enrolled in.

PSU sounds more fun. She wouldn’t like to think of the repercussions that may come out of that decision, though. Her parents don’t even know she applied.

She shakes her head and strides out of the room. Her feet take her along the familiar path upstairs to her study while she broods about three months without the promise of a night out on the town or a day flying along back roads in Jared’s convertible. By the time the bars are lifted, she’ll have graduated.

And she’ll have a month with them before her inevitable shipment off to Oxford.

She slams the door much harder than intended at the thought. She’s visited the campus a few times, walked through the city, and something about it leaves her uneasy. It’s beautiful, certainly, but it feels wrong.

She leans back against the door with a sigh, peering at the stack of books on her desk. The last thing she needs is for her grades to slip. She’s on thin ice as it is.

Her gaze drifts to the shelves lining the back of the room. They hold the books she’s sequestered from the library, or those that have been gifted to her.

She crosses to the closest shelf, running a finger along the books’ spines. Many of them, she still hasn’t read. She hasn’t had time to read since her parents began taking her to functions and benefits.

She dips a finger over the lip of the first in a series of old tomes wrapped in leather, one of her mom’s gifts to her this past Christmas, and drags it out. The first seems more weathered than the rest, the cover dull and rough rather than polished. She skimmed the first few pages when she first got the books, and she know there must have been effort put into it. The whole series is handwritten.

It’s as good as anything else.

She takes the book to her desk, promising herself that she’ll only read for a while. She has to get some work done before dinner, after all.

*****

“Alyssa? Are you in there?”

Alyssa jumps at the crackle of the intercom, heart racing and unseeing eyes leaving the yellowed pages of the book. It takes a few seconds to orient herself, remembering where she is. When she does, she recoils at the headache pounding behind her eyes, the roiling tension in her stomach.

She glances back down at the book to find it open near the middle. She can’t remember reading more than the first few pages—it was written as a personal diary of a slave girl named Brietta. She wrote in a neat script about mundane chores and city life, but she can’t remember the details of the anecdotes. She closes her eyes to try and remember.

Her stomach turns over when she catches a wisp of it, but it doesn’t stay long enough for her to grasp the memory itself.

“Alyssa!”

She jolts again, her eyes flying open. She rushes from her seat to the intercom and presses the flashing button for the dining room.

“Yes, mom, I’m here. What is it?”

“Come down for dinner, dear. I hope you haven’t been working too hard.”

She hesitates before answering, looking back to the book. It must have been hours since she holed myself up in there. She doesn’t remember any of it. She shakes her head and taps the button again.

“I’m fine. I’ll be down in a minute.”

She returns to the desk, ignoring her mother’s confirmation, and turns back to the first couple pages of the book. She finds the mention of ‘afternoons near the cold river after tending to mother’s sickness,’ jams one of many bookmarks upon the desk between the pages, and snaps the book shut.

She leaves it on the desk for later investigation, hurrying out to join her family in the dining room. Maybe some food will ease her lingering nausea.

By the time she enters the dining room on the ground floor, both of her parents are already perched in their seats at the far end of the table. Her mom greets her with a warm smile, her father with a nod from the end chair.

She apologizes for being late and takes a seat across from her mom. The air lays heavy upon the room, increasing the pressure behind her eyes. Even the light viola drifting from the wall speakers can’t break the tension growing with each overdone slice of a knife her father grinds on his plate through the steak.

She struggles to keep from screwing her eyes shut against it, forcing her hands into measured strokes. One bite at a time, then this will be over.

“So.”

It’s her mom that breaks the silence. All sounds of eating pause for only a moment, the rhythm of the meal changing, before continuing as though it never stopped.

“It’s gotten warm awfully fast this year, hasn’t it? Just last week it was freezing.”

“And now we’re in the upper seventies,” her father agrees.

Alyssa manages hold back a physical sigh of relief, bringing a stalk of asparagus to her lips. Her parents chat about the weather, and she keeps her head down—metaphorically speaking.

“How was your afternoon, Alyssa?” her mom asks, bright eyes on her. She lowers a slice of steak back to her plate and clears her throat with a brief glance at her father.

“Uneventful. How was yours, mother?”

She inclines her head, a conspiratorial smile playing on her lips. “Absolutely boring. My husband and daughter were hidden away in their studies all day.”

She laughs before Alyssa can feel guilty. She reaches across the table and brushes her fingers over the back of Alyssa’s hand, forgiveness promised in her eyes.

“Hidden away?” her father remarks. His words flow warmly, a rare grin directed at his wife. “My door is always open to you, Carmen.”

“And watch you approve paperwork all day? No thank you, sir!”

Alyssa can’t help but smile at the exchange.

“And you? You were upstairs for quite a while.”

The sharp change in her father’s tone straightens her spine, and her my expression morphs back into one of bland interest as she turns to meet his eyes. The sudden movement jolts her headache, and she isn’t able to hide all of her wince behind her clenched jaw.

“I was catching up on some reading for class,” she lies smoothly.

“I see.” He nods and leans forward in his chair. “You don’t look well.”

She hesitates, unwilling to admit the truth. She can’t imagine her father’s reaction to her losing several hours of time would be good, so she waits for the jammed cogs in her brain to churn out a suitable response.

“It’s just a headache,” she promises after a long pause, ignoring the way her stomach somersaults as she speaks. “Eye-strain, maybe. I was reading for several hours.”

“You shouldn’t work so hard.” Her mom’s serene interjection prompts her father to return his attention to his plate.

“I lost track of time.” Alyssa offers her a smile. She mirrors it, then turns back to her husband to discuss their upcoming trip to the capital.

Alyssa wastes no more time clearing her plate and asking to be excused. Her mom tells her to take an ibuprofen from her purse in the front hall, which she does on her way back upstairs.

Back on the third floor, she pauses at the door to her study. Just a few steps down the hall, her bedroom waits. Her bed waits, and the pounding behind her eyes feels like reason enough to take an early night.

With a sigh, still, she jerk the door open. She left the lights on, and the glare shining from the glossy cover of a textbook almost turns her back around. She stubbornly crosses the room and takes a seat at her desk.

The leather book waits for her, and she nearly flips it back open on impulse. She glances over at the stack of texts to her right, the slip of paper poking out of the first with a list of tasks.

She lifts the book, the rough cover feeling familiar under her fingertips. The cover doesn’t bear a title or an author, just the letters B.O.F. embossed across the front. She runs a finger over the initials, then the edge of the cover.

The trailing string on the bookmark knocks a pen from the desk, and she straightens up. Within moments, the book is hidden away in the desk drawer. She can read it later, when she’s gotten some work done.

Her work is much harder to get through than she may have hoped. Her headache slowly fades, but she can’t concentrate. Her thoughts keep circling back to Oxford, her friends, and the look on her mother’s face when they spoke in the family room.

That woman has been through enough.

She drops her pen on the desk and groans, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. She’s been reading the same line over and over for the past—she can’t even see how long it’s been because she doesn’t have her phone!

You don’t need to know the time when you’re working. You’re done when the work is done.

She shakes her head in her hands, banishing her father’s words into the ether. He’s taken enough energy from her today.

It’s not fair.

She rises from the chair, every movement sticky and slow. Flicking the desk lamp off, she pads to the door, covering a yawn with the back of a hand. She only made it through two of the six readings due, and she still hasn’t touched the worksheets, but she has all of Sunday to get them done.

She barely registers the walk down the hall to her room. She doesn’t bother turning the lights on, merely kicking her shoes off on the way to the bed and falling face first onto the pillow. Her father will likely have words with her if he catches her sleeping in her clothes, but she doesn’t care.