The Untethered
The Untethered
S.W. Southwick
Roble Arrow Publishing Ink
RobleArrowInk@gmail.com
First printing, February 2017.
Copyright © 2017 by S.W. Southwick
ISBN: 978-0-9986391-0-9
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead; business establishments; events; or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Jet Black Eyes Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Part 2: Supersonic Dreams Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Part 3: The Untethered Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Epilogue
Part 1:
Jet Black Eyes
Chapter 1
“The density times the material derivative is equal to…” Roble Santos mouthed as he read the book slumped across his lap.
A newspaper across the aisle stole his attention and he glanced up.
Two large hands held the paper amid a row of US Airmen. Half the uniformed men and women looked asleep; the other half dazed from the constant droning inside the windowless aircraft.
What is that? Roble leaned forward, pushing against his shoulder restraints, peering at the photo of a jet on the newspaper. Its shape is so… He frowned. It’s probably just concept art from a movie or something.
He sat back, dropping his eyes to his coverless textbook, feeling the airplane vibrate his calloused hands. He tried to concentrate on the Navier-Stokes equation, but it was impossible with that jet’s image prostituting itself across the aisle.
Closing the book and wedging it between his seat and his neighbor’s, he unhooked his restraints and dropped to his knees. At eye level with the paper, he pushed back his hair and studied the image.
The jet’s gloss-black fuselage splayed across the page in front of him. Its slender nosecone began a gracious line that followed under a long neck. The line continued back until it met two sensually curved air intakes that stretched into lengthy engine encasements. The jet’s tail arched subtly upward then thrust vertically into a soaring fin with horizontal winglets. Its swept-back wings flared thick and muscled at their bases but tapered out into dainty tips. Along its top, a sleek, clear canopy extended almost from nose to tailfin, revealing just a hint of the cockpit inside.
Roble’s chest expanded. That’s the sexiest jet I’ve ever seen.
The image sank toward the aircraft’s floor. He followed it down.
“Can I help you, Airman?” a hard voice said in his ear.
Roble looked up, surprised to be kneeling on the floor and even more so to be staring at the sergeant holding the paper. Several airmen seated nearby laughed.
The sergeant shook his head, frowning.
“May I read your paper when you’re finished?” Roble asked.
He dropped it on Roble. “Put your damn restraints back on.”
Paper in hand, Roble sat back in his seat, fastened his restraints, and read the headline below the picture: Supersonic, but at what cost? His eyes returned to the image.
“That Alexa Patra, she’s hot.” A young airman sitting next to Roble jabbed his finger into the side of the newspaper, his chapped lips cracking a smile.
Roble ignored the comment, focusing on the photo of the jet.
“Did you catch her wearing that swimsuit in Sportsman Quarterly’s charity edition?” the airman asked. “Now that’s how you raise money for a good cause. I even read the article, at least the highlighted parts.”
Why haven’t I seen this jet before? Roble began to read the editorial.
His talkative neighbor slapped his shoulder. “Can you believe she’s in charge of saving Nevada’s homeless kids? Plus, she’s like the commander of her own charity. And get this—they want her to run for governor. Look at her,” he said, gawking at the newspaper. “That’s the complete package—uh, what’s your name?”
“Roble.”
“That’s the complete package, Ronald. I don’t care if she’s thirty-five; I’m looking her up when we land.”
Roble folded down the top of the paper and gazed at Ms. Patra’s picture. Alexandria Patra Taking Nevada’s Public/Private Partnership National splashed across the page above her. He stared at her smiling lips and frowning eyes. She was unusual. And what a day that had been. How long ago was that? He rubbed his chin.
Almost six years ago…
State truancy officers had captured him a few days after running away from the Sands family. Taken to Ms. Patra’s state office building, Roble sat in a chair leaning against her secretary’s desk, passing the time by watching a truancy officer munch potato chips and sip a soda the size of his head. The building smelled like the last middle school he’d been forced to attend—the scent of fresh vomit covered with janitorial cat litter. Luckily, they’d expelled him.
“She’s ready for you,” the secretary said. The truancy officer gestured at Ms. Patra’s door with his soda. Roble rose, took one final glance at the potato chip shrapnel littering the floor, and entered the office.
Alexa Patra stood behind her desk, poised like an Egyptian queen. She wore a crisp white blouse and long black skirt, a silver wrist cuff her only adornment. Her toughness looked honest, and he liked the thought of trusting an adult for the first time.
Yet the longer he stared, the gentler and more accepting her pose became. At first, he thought her hair appeared straight but he was mistaken—it coiled into supple black curls. Her eyes looked like impenetrable black onyx, but they softened as he approached. Her kind veneer forced him to raise his guard, knowing from experience it must hold an unknown danger. Even so, her appearance intrigued him.
Ms. Patra sat down and motioned for Roble to follow her example.
He obeyed, before bolting back up, frowning at his response to her command.
She watched him without speaking.
Roble paced the room, its single window unable to off
set the harsh fluorescent lighting. Awards from politicians, CEOs, and private foundations covered three walls, along with dozens of photos that displayed Ms. Patra standing among groups of smiling children.
Two framed posters hung on the wall opposite the desk. Roble stopped before them.
One pictured a group of people, their arms interlocked at the elbows, staring down into the center of a circle. Their smiling faces appeared convinced and complacent. The word Unity was written at the center. The other poster displayed a barren mountain peak with the word Sacrifice printed below.
Roble gazed back and forth between the two posters, then at Ms. Patra. Uh-huh.
“Hey.” The chapped-lipped airman snapped his fingers, laughing.
Roble looked up from Ms. Patra’s picture in the paper.
“Don’t stare too long or you’ll go blind. Plus, I already called dibs.”
Roble felt the aircraft climbing, the engines vibrating his hands.
“Ever been to Vegas?” the airman grinned.
“Born…and raised,” Roble said, glancing back at Ms. Patra’s grainy picture.
Alexa Patra, balancing on high heels, took a step down the boarding ramp in line with the prospective passengers. “Hello, Preton,” she said, the phone to her ear.
“Where are you?” Preton Moore asked, his voice exuberant.
“Still in Vegas, at McCarran.”
“Well congratulations, my dear. I’m sorry I was out of town, but you pulled off quite a launch.”
“Thank you, but it’s not my victory.” She switched the phone to her other ear. “It’s the children’s.”
“Simply remarkable. Have you looked online? The president and six governors have already endorsed your partnership.”
Alexa exhaled. “Please don’t try to flatter me. When—” Alexa lowered the phone and held it against her tailored suit as a young girl with red hair whirled by. She turned cartwheels down the ramp, her untied shoelaces whipping like tassels in front of embarking passengers. Alexa glimpsed a smile as she spun away.
A bony-shouldered woman with thick blue eyeliner ran after and caught the young acrobat by the arm. She dragged the girl back up the pathway, offering apologetic looks to everyone she passed. Beneath the captured girl’s freckled scowl shined an unmistakable spark of satisfaction.
Alexa turned away from the girl’s gaze, feeling an unwanted sense of loss which tightened her empty stomach. She waited a moment before peeking up the ramp. The bobbing red hair disappeared into the crowd.
Hearing the distant squawking of Nevada’s lieutenant governor, Alexa raised the phone to her ear. “Preton, my flight is leaving. I’ll call you from DC.”
Jet fumes and cheery-faced attendants greeted Alexa as she queued into the hissing aluminum tube. Slipping between passengers, she plopped into her seat by the window. She felt relieved and a bit guilty to be tucked away out of the limelight.
A flight attendant reached out, lowered Alexa’s food tray, and set down a newspaper and a plastic flute with champagne. “Congratulations, Ms. Patra,” she said.
Alexa pressed her lips into a smile. Is this what success feels like? The numerous congratulations she’d heard today blared like car horns in her mind. It must be. She yanked the newspaper from the tray, hiding it in her lap. I’m doing all the right things.
Lifting the champagne to her lips, she sank the liquid in one smooth swallow, then closed her eyes, trying to feel some semblance of happiness. The cartwheeling girl’s smiling face spun across her mind, and she cringed.
“We are sorry for the inconvenience,” the loudspeaker said, “but this flight is delayed due to inclement weather at our destination. We hope to have an update within half an hour.”
Alexa moaned, rubbing her forehead. I don’t have time for this. She thought about all the traveling she would be doing. There has to be a more efficient way to travel.
Two hours later, she peered out the oval window at the distant vein of a passing canyon.
The newspaper crunched under her elbow, reminding her she hadn’t read the article—her article. She picked it up and studied the smiling image below her name, bemused to see herself looking happy. The thought of others seeing her appear happy gave an odd sense of peace, reaching so deep, she shivered. She pulled the blanket higher over her lap.
As long as I’m in charge, no child shall lose her dream.
Her eyes zeroed in on her own quotation sandwiched somewhere within the article, but looked away. She didn’t know why she’d misspoken; she’d never said that phrase before. “No child will be lost from the arms of society,” had been her quick correction to the reporter, but he obviously hadn’t used it.
Of course children were lost from her state foster care—becoming runaways, locked up in juvenile detention, or worse. That’s why she cofounded the nationally acclaimed charity Children for Universal Hope, known as the CUH. It promoted group activities that encouraged children to feel comfortable belonging to something greater than themselves, thereby discouraging dangerous antisocial behavior.
With the guidance of Preton Moore, she’d designed the new public/private partnership between Nevada state foster care and the CUH to address finally and fully all the accepted risk factors causing children to fall through the cracks of both programs. She had announced the partnership’s launch to great fanfare this morning in downtown Las Vegas.
Alexa sighed, knowing that even if the public/private partnership became highly successful, some good kids would still be lost without explanation. She hated that reality. At least the children labeled as high risk could be explained.
Running a finger around the rim of her champagne flute, she tried to relax, but she knew not every kid could be easily cataloged by the state’s accepted risk categories, even though nobody she knew would admit it. She didn’t like to admit it herself, but she had the proof. Those painful, unexplained losses sat stuffed inside the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in her state office.
That drawer haunted her.
She’d heard people retroactively try to diagnose those lost kids with sophisticated-sounding names, but she’d met most of them, and those labels hadn’t explained anything. According to the state child-welfare manuals, that type of uncharacterized kid shouldn’t even exist.
At the rear of that drawer, one dense file, pale blue with red Delinquency stamps emblazoned on it in the shape of a launching rocket, troubled her the most. She thought about it often. How long has it been? Reading the date on the newspaper, she realized almost six years had passed.
Roble Santos had entered her office wearing a grease-stained jacket plastered with motorcycle and skateboard patches. His straight black hair hung over his ears and forehead, drawing attention to his scarred, ruddy-tanned chin. His body looked thin and wiry, like that of a starving street kid, except his steps held a controlled energy that reminded her of a long-shot racehorse walking to a starting gate.
“Roble,” she began with a smile, after he sat down on his second attempt, “it’s nice to meet you.”
Maintaining eye contact, Roble slid down in his seat, leaning his head against the back of the chair.
“If you would tell me what is going on, I can help.”
Roble watched her without blinking. She stared back.
After a moment, he jerked his thumb at the door. “That hungry dude and another guy, who doesn’t use deodorant, dragged me from my home.”
“You were living in a pirate ship in front of a casino.” She lifted her palms.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“No?”
He sat up. “I was living in the HMS Dauntless. The pirate ship sits too close to the tourists and its captain’s quarters are actually a pump house.”
She locked her fingers together. “What about before you ran away? Would you like to tell me what happened?”
Roble shook
his head.
Opening his file, Alexa glanced at the first page. “You’ve been through a lot of foster families for a twelve-year-old.”
He shrugged.
“My office had hoped the Sands family would click with you. Donald is a well-respected, faith-based youth counselor and he’s known as a supportive, athletic-type of father. They have a boy, Danny, your age…and even motorcycles, I hear.” She looked at Roble’s jacket. “They’ve hosted many foster children without any issues.” Tapping the file, she asked, “So why did you run away?”
Roble lowered his face, bangs shielding his eyes. “You really want to know?”
Alexa’s eyes narrowed. She’d heard coworkers describing Roble as an inexplicably hopeless case ever since he was five. She glanced at the bottom filing cabinet drawer. “Roble, I really would like to know.”
“I don’t like what happened to me today.” He brushed the hair from his eyes. “So I might sound mean. Everyone always says I’m mean.” He rubbed his nose. “And this building stinks.”
She caressed the worn cardstock of his file. “Go on. I’m listening.”
“The Sands weren’t the usual family taking me for the state’s money. With that kind, all you gotta do is cost less than they get and they’re happy. I figured out how to give all of them a big loss so they’d kick me out. I’ll pay you back someday, if that’s what you want.”
Alexa opened her mouth to speak, but Roble continued without pause. “The Sands also weren’t the kind who talked all nice and stuff, trying to bribe me into doing things. With that kind, all you gotta do is what they say and they’re happy. I never did, so those all kicked me out.”
She leaned forward, surprised at the contrast between his gentle voice and his rebellious words.
“But Donald Sands? He was a real true-believing, hands-on type of guy.” Roble touched his scarred chin. “He taught me the same lessons as all the blabbers, only he was better at it. I took it for a while, but it got boring.” He dropped his hand to his lap. “He wouldn’t kick me out like everyone else—so I left.”
Oh no. Alexa stared at his scar and stiffened. This might explain his behavior. “Roble, are you saying you were abused?” She opened a drawer and pulled out a multi-layered form. Clicking the back of a pen, she looked up.