Sample – Fiction (excerpt)

Copyright 2002 by Lynne Rhys-Jones. All Rights Reserved.

June faced the window of her twentieth-floor office, wondering for the thousandth time what it would feel like to jump out. Would she hear herself falling? Would she pretend to fly for those last few seconds? Would it hurt, or would it be too quick for her to notice?

Somehow the dark mahogany desk and credenza that cradled her like an abandoned baby had never been able to protect her from the stacks of briefs, transcripts, memos, and casebooks that surrounded her. Her clients expected so much, and she didn’t have the first idea of how to help them. Those stacks formed a garbage dump where her gilded cradle had been carefully placed. Where she had carefully placed it.

For June knew perfectly well that her problems were of her own making. Fourteen years of drug abuse, followed by seven years of shaky “white-knuckle” recovery, followed by three years of law school. And now, three years of misery at this law firm. She had stayed sober, but barely. She’d made more bad decisions since she stopped using than she ever did when she was high. She was deep in debt, broke most of the time, and scared to move in any direction except down.

June unlocked her left-hand drawer and pulled out the stack of rejection letters. She would need a new folder soon; this one was getting too full. It was beginning to look like she would die in this job.

This was not a scene that should be played out by someone who was such a good girl, such a smart girl. June was the kind of kid you wanted your kid to be friends with. When she was little, she was well-behaved and smart, even if she was sort of fat and quiet. In high school she played first-chair clarinet and was a National Merit semi-finalist. All A’s in college until she discovered alcohol and men. And when she got sober and graduated from law school, all her friends told her she’d be a millionaire by thirty-five. But now that June was thirty-six and sinking into the depths of depression, they just prayed she’d still be alive and sober at thirty-seven.

But as desperate as June’s existence was, her friends underestimated her strength. She knew that if she could just hold on a little longer, just stay clean a little longer, she could make it through this and come out the other side to something that had to be better. And now, with the tiny life growing inside her, she knew she had the incentive she’d need to pull it off. And so today, at least, she would stay safely inside. There would be no attempt to fly today.