But the question then becomes, where would they go?
The government gave them those areas at lower rates. And it's harder for Pixisos, male or female, to get hired or keep jobs, much less get hired for high-paying jobs. Most of the Pixisos she knows live in or around poverty. How could they afford housing outside their communities?
Even the Pixisos she knows who can afford to live outside of it don't, because it's hard to find neighborhoods or landlords who will accept them. It's just easier and better for everyone if they keep to their own kind.
Isn't it?
She doesn't know. When they clump together, it may feel safer, more comfortable. They can hang all that's left of their home world, whatever art and mementos they brought with them on their ship, on subsidized walls and comfort each other with tales from the old days. But how can Earth ever feel like home, ever become home, if they stay apart from the rest of the world? If they all just allow the distance—both the physical miles as well as the cultural differences—grow and separate them?
"Well, either way, you got my vote, right?" Dan grins and takes a small bow. "You're welcome."
Dona nods and watches him walk away. If she's honest with herself, she doesn't know what the answer is, isn't sure she understands the issue enough to decide on a solution. But, however much she doesn't know, people like Dan know even less. And he voted. In doing so, he now has more say in her life and the lives of her people than she does. And that doesn't sit well with her.
Dona looks at the clock on her computer. The polls would still be open after her shift ends. Maybe she should just pass by. Just to see.
Whether her vote makes a difference or not, does she really want to leave the fate of her people in other people's hands?
*~*~*
Walking out of the bank, Juli clutches her phone. She thinks about calling Kyle. But she knows that he won't understand. He'll get angry and afraid on her behalf. He'll pace and rage and want to talk it all out. She'll have to reassure and comfort him, when what she wants is to be reassured and comforted. And even when he gets around to it, it won't change a thing. She will still have to get up tomorrow and do this all over again.
She could call Dona. She's Pixiso too; she'll understand. But Dona handles it without complaint or issue. She doesn't need to call Juli, doesn't need to call anyone. She's strong enough to deal with it all, and Juli doesn't want to be one more thing she has to handle.
Juli shoves her phone to the bottom of her bag. With a huff, she turns up her collar, even though the movement thrusts a gust of her scent in her face. She feels a wave of infuriating nausea when it hits her nose.
Rubbing her temple, pain pounds her head. She should head home. But the idea of spending twenty bumpy minutes with this headache makes her stomach turn. So, screwing up her courage, she heads to the drugstore around the corner. Determination straightens her spine. You can do this, she tells herself. Just keep your head down. Plan to be quick. Get in. Get out. She psychs herself up and goes.
Except the minute she steps in the store, she sees a young Pixiso sweeping the floor. His head pops up at her entrance.
Feeling helpless rage roil inside her, she sees his nostrils flare and his eyes widen with desire. He's young, no more than maybe fifteen. Not a boy, but not quite a full-grown man, which can make the effect of her scent on him stronger. To make matters worse, he's too young to have immigrated. He was almost certainly born here. Raised here.
With worry wrapping like a fist around her throat, Juli wonders if he was raised with their people's values and customs or if his family had assimilated to their adopted planet.
Pausing, she clutches her purse to her chest like a pitiful shield. She should leave. Deal with the pain pounding at her temples and know that there are worse things. She takes a step back.
"Do you need help with something?" The boy's hold on the broom is tense, the bones in his knuckles looking brittle as they grip. "I can find someone to assist you." With almost military precision, he snaps around, spine straight, and hurries away.
Relief floods her body, making her feel tired and weak, while he stops and sends a human girl around his age Juli's way before pushing past an Employees Only door.
After letting the smiling girl ring her up—just aspirin and a soda—Juli hurries to leave. The boy had been kind, considerate, and she doesn't want to thank him by getting him in trouble with his manager for leaving the floor because of her.
Once back on the street, she opens both bottles, shaking out some pills, more than the recommended dosage—those guidelines are for humans anyway and part of her wants to rebelliously screw their suggestions today. She swallows them before sighing.
She sits down at the empty bus stop and relaxes. Counting back from ten, she slowly sips her soda and lets the day go. It hadn't been good, but it's done now. She can go home and hide underneath the bedcovers and pretend, for a few hours, that tomorrow won't come.
Except she remembers that she can't.
The vote.
She could just go home. Hers is just one vote. What's one vote when the whole world feels like it's against her?
But then she thinks about the Pixiso boy. And her partner. And her parents and friends. She thinks about her boyfriend. And she thinks about herself. About the life she wants for those around her. All these people are part of her life. She has to do her part by them.
When her bus comes, she heads to her polling place.
She sits in the back of the near empty bus, putting her purse and soda on the seat next to her. Closing her eyes, she shuts out the world. She lets the rumble of the bus rock her while it cruises down the highway.
Feeling the transit tempo change from freeway to residential, she opens her eyes and watches the trickle of people move on and off the bus. She enjoys that no one seems to notice or care about her. It's nice.
She gets off the bus several blocks past her usual stop and walks to the church with the large "Vote Here" sign out front. She tries not to notice how all the houses surrounding the area have "Vote Yes on HB224" lawn signs. She doesn't look at the guy walking his dog and wonder which house is his. Doesn't look at the little boy scribbling on his driveway with rainbow-colored chalk next to a lawn sign and wonder what kind of man he'll grow up to be. She definitely doesn't think about the fact that his parents, his neighbors, are likely voting to push her and her kind further out into the margins.
She doesn't do any of that; it would only make walking into the church and falling into line that much harder.
She just gets in line. She does it even though she knows it's likely a pointless act anyway, since even the city council and school board members she's also voting for today are pro-HB224. And they're not the only ones. A hard, jaded part of her knows that, even if the bill fails today, those in charge will just write new ones.
Juli sees a group of mothers juggling children in front of her. They're chatting and laughing. Even with the babies, toddlers, and preschoolers scurrying around them, it all looks so effortless, so comfortably every day. Even when a small boy in overalls chases and pokes a little girl in floral print, one mother, without missing a beat in her conversation, just grabs him by the collar, slowing him enough to let the girl hide behind the other talking mother and stick out her tongue at him.
Juli stifles a laugh as the boy's arms and legs flail in a desperate reach for the girl.
Blinking sweetly, the little girl notices Juli and smiles. Reflexively, Juli smiles back; how could she not? The little girl is so adorable in braided pigtails and mismatched socks. Plus, Juli just can't help but love a girl who looks an insistent guy demanding her attention in the eye and makes a face.
The boy turns to see what caught the girl's attention. He looks at Juli then to the girl and back to Juli, confused. That's more than okay. On days like today, it's nice to be treated as nothing special.
The little girl peeks out from behind her mom and shyly weaves between the other children to make her way to Juli.
/> She stops in front of Juli with her hands folded behind her back. For a second, they both just stare at each other before she beams at Juli toothily. "You're pretty."
Juli laughs and thanks her. "You're pretty too. I like your hair."
The girl touches her pigtails and preens. "My daddy did it."
Juli nods, charmed. "He did a good job."
Her head bobs seriously. "That's why, when Charlie tried to tug ‘em, I told him to stop."
Juli tries not to laugh. She doesn't want the girl to think she's laughing at her. She's not, not really. Juli just wishes that life could be that simple. That no could mean no and stop was an unbreakable command. She wants to make the world that simple for the girl. For herself.
"I like your hair too." The girl sways, still clutching her hands behind her back. "Can I touch it?"
Juli grins at the question and nods before bending her knee, so the girl can reach. Her pudgy hand lifts, her fingers outstretched.
"Mallory!"
They both turn as if caught. Standing, Juli stumbles back when she suddenly finds one of the mothers standing between her and the girl. The woman's eyes, the exact shape and color of her daughter's, are wide and furious. Her arms are held out, holding the little girl back. "Don't touch."
Juli wonders if she's talking to the girl or her.
Both, most likely.
She wonders what the woman is so scared of. What does she think Juli would—what she could—do to her sweet child?
Mallory. Knowledge dawning, Juli looks into the mother's frightened blue eyes and reads all the tales her grandmother likely told her. Celtic tales of spritely fairy creatures abducting children, luring them to other worlds, never to be seen again. Juli sees those tales spin with her people's story, of seductive cycles and strange, sudden appearance, proving their universe—their world—is bigger than they once believed. Proving the untrue to be true. Juli recalls the tabloids and urban legends about communicable space diseases and impending interplanetary plagues. How could they know, for a certainty, what to believe and what not to? How could they not be afraid?
Fierce protectiveness strains the woman's body, making it shake with the need to strike. Looking up at the other mothers, Juli sees them stare with suspicion as they gather their children tightly around them. She turns to see the whole line hold still and tense with anxiety, waiting to see what will happen.
She can feel this moment loom like a storm swirling around her, dark and weighty, with her like a lightning rod in its eye.
Stepping back with her hands held out, Juli bows her head.
She hates the fear in the mother's eyes—in all their eyes. She can feel that fear fill the room, can practically smell it like smoke billowing out. Lord knows, she can certainly smell her own.
Juli's gaze meets the little girl's again. Mallory. Her wide eyes narrow from wonder to confusion. Terrified, Mallory clings to her mother's leg, and Juli's heart sinks. This will be the girl's—all these children's, and likely a few of the adult's—defining experience of the Pixisos. The very worst first impression. Far beyond the impact of a single vote, this imprint will color and shape how they see Juli and her people for the rest of their lives. Juli sees Mallory's tiny bottom lip waver as guilty tears start to form in her eyes, as if the pretty, pigtailed girl is sure she's done something wrong.
But she hasn't.
Yet nothing about this feels right.
Juli thinks about leaving. Leaving the line. The church. The area. Hell, seeing a spark of judgement like a seed taking root in Mallory's gaze, Juli dreams about somehow leaving the planet.
So she does. She gets the hell out of that church. Because what else can she do? Staying there when her presence is clearly not wanted won't help anyone and will only leave her feeling like the invading alien they want her to be.
The walk out of that line, passing scandalized face after face, is torture. She feels each gaze on her back like a weight as she exits the doors and makes her way out into the parking lot. At the bus stop, she wants nothing more than to collapse, exhausted, on the bench. But she stops when she sees the abandoned paper on the wood and the headline predicting the vote's projected results.
Wanting to shut out the world, Juli closes her eyes. It's the only way to hold back the hot tears she feels build like a flood behind her eyes.
Giving in, she takes out her phone.
"Hey, what's up?"
Hiccupping, she wants to sob at the sound of her partner's voice. "Can you come pick me up?"
Juli can hear a million questions in Dona's pause. But her partner only asks one: "Where are you?"
LIVING THE DREAM
"Hey, where are you?"
Kyle didn't even get a chance to say hello. His brows wrinkle at the urgency in Dona's voice. "At home." Taking groceries out of his trunk for dinner, he shrugs. "Why?"
She pauses. "Can you come to my place?"
Uh. "Why?"
Then he hears it. Juli crying in the background.
Fuck.
He picks up the bags of food he just took out and shoves them back in his trunk. "I'm on my way."
Gripping the wheel, he drives irritatingly cautiously. He hates that it seems to take forever to get from his house to Little Pixis, but he won't get there faster, if he gets pulled over for being reckless.
He pulls into Dona's apartment parking lot in front of her first-floor apartment. Seeing her neighbors, the Ventures, he waves politely. He tries not to feel bad when they don't wave back. They know him. That doesn't mean they like him.
Not bothering with the building's main door, Kyle heads straight through the fenced-off patio in front of Dona's unit, knocking on the glass door.
Dona peeks out into the patio before sliding open the door and welcoming him in. "Hey."
He pushes past the curtain of her blinds and walks into the living room. "What happened?"
She just shakes her head. "Bad day." She shrugs. "She just couldn't be…" She gestures behind him toward the now sun-shielded door. "Out there, you know."
He does.
It infuriates him that there are days their home doesn't feel safe for his girlfriend. That someone or something can take her home away from her. Kyle's fists clench, his knuckles cracking and his nails digging deep into his palm.
He shakes them out.
She doesn't need his anger. He needs to be better than that. Be what she needs right now.
He sees her on the couch, wiping her eyes. "I'm sorry."
He goes to sit by her, but smelling that damned intoxicating scent taunting and tormenting him, he stops. Before it overtakes him, he sits on the floor at her feet. He grabs a throw pillow and lays it over his lap; he doesn't need his dick distracting either of them from her need with his own.
Kyle's both jealous and relieved when Dona, who isn't affected by Juli's cycle, casually comes back into the room to sit and settle behind Juli, wrapping herself fully around the fragile woman. He's so glad that they both have someone in their lives who can do that in this moment, but he hates that it can't be him. From the floor, he looks up at them. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Juli pauses before looking at Dona, who just shrugs at her. There's an entire coded conversation in that look. One that clearly says they don't think he'll understand. He wishes he could disagree. But there's this entire set of experiences that, because of who they are and the world they live in, they share that he, because of who he is and the world he lives in that too often looks completely different, can't. And no amount of listening or trying to empathize can change that.
He frowns. "What can I do?" His furrow deepens. That didn't sound right. It doesn't seem fair to leave this up to her. To make her come up with the seemingly impossible solution to her own problems. But he doesn't know what else to do. So, sighing, he looks up at her. "What do you need?"
She bites her lip and blinks down at him. When she reaches a hand down to him, he reaches up. Twining his fingers with hers, he squeezes tight.
> "It sounds so whiny."
He rubs the back of her hand with his thumb. "If it bothers you, if you need to talk about it, it won't to me." She never cries over nothing. He may not understand. He may not make sense of it. But he knows, whatever it is, it's not whiny.
So he listens when she talks. Keeping his face set in soft, concerned lines while she tells him about her day, he does his best to pay attention. When his thoughts drift to how Dona holds and strokes Juli in her arms, he focuses back on Juli's words. When anger builds and balls his fists at her story, he forces himself to concentrate on her. He wants to scream that this—none of it—is her fault. That, if he can control himself—with his girlfriend, with grocery store clerks, with everyone around him—then so can everyone else. He wants to go find these people and tell them to stop using her to justify their own bad behavior. But this isn't about him and what he wants. This is all about her.
She sighs shakily. "I don't know. Maybe they're right. Maybe there isn't a place for us here. Maybe instead of trying to fit in here, we should be working harder to find a way home."
Kyle wants to ask what about him. About the home they've built together. If she and her partner and her people left, what would happen to him?
Instead, he wordlessly frowns and holds her hand, feeling like a failure. "I'm sorry." That he couldn't be there. That he can't fix things. That he can't change people. That he can't make their home safe. "I'm so sorry." That he can't be enough. His head hangs low, and he feels the weight of the world on his back.
But then she's there on the floor with him. Kneeling beside him, she touches his face and kisses him. He breathes her in, tastes her on his lips, and his world rights itself again.
He wants to bury himself in that feeling, in her embrace. But something stops him.
Kissing her one more time, he pushes her back. He looks into her eyes and really studies her endless gaze. He can see love there in her usually unreadable eyes. Can feel her need to comfort him, to make him feel better, in her every touch. God, he loves her for that. And for so much more.
Open Season Page 7