Her first instinct was to push away. Her second was to cling as hard as she could. So she found the medium yet again, and was still and silent, letting herself be guided away from the pavement. Was her skin supposed to crawl now?, she wondered, or was it her heart that was supposed to jump? It didn't much matter, as both were happening.
Penelope realized, with yet another fissure in the well-cracked organ that felt like her heart these days, that pretending to be the happy, care-free girl she had the freedom to be with Charles was done. He may not have known the listless directionlessness of her life, but she always felt he would take it in stride. He never made judgments about the mad girl who threw herself at him in a closet, after all. To him, she wasn't poor, fragile Penelope who was scared to venture outside her house for months, lest the man she passed on the corner, or hovering inside the doorway, or vending in the alley wanted to take her away. Who people needed to tiptoe around for fear of saying the wrong thing and believing her to be hurt. Who worried every night she spent away from the rest of her family that something might happen to them, too. Who was too paralyzed by this fear of anything, of life, to wrestle her future under control instead of letting it drift on into uncertain eternity. No, to him, she was just a girl. And it surprised her how much she liked being that.
"I can't—" she sighed and shook her head. But no longer, Penelope reminded herself, as she idly traced a pattern along his shirtfront. She made no move to escape his hands, but instead asked, "Do you think I'm a whore?" almost clinically, eyes intent on her finger's progress.
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