Cage

There was annoyance in Claire’s pale green eyes as they ran over the whiteness of the house. It was. So. White. Painful to look at, even.

The doors were her savior — big, dark oak, straight out of the picture she had painted inside her head. They looked so out of place amidst the pure white walls around it and the flowery drapes hanging in the front windows. But they were perfect.

“It is quite picturesque,” her mother was saying. She half-smiled and moved her hand as if a maid would come running at her whim. She turned swiftly, with all the poise and elegance she possessed, and projected this hand at the boy driver. He stood by the propped open door of the car, pulling out the last suitcases. There were at least five on the pebbled ground around him. “If you could take those inside, please.” Mrs. Clemett added the “please” only for necessity’s sake and let no hint of a question appear in her words.

But the boy complied, chewing on the straw in his mouth as he picked up several suitcases. He had no clear expression, but Claire knew he hated his work.

“It’s too white,” she said, crumpling her black gloves into a ball in her hand and steeping carefully but smoothly forward in her low high heels. “If you stare at it long enough you’ll go blind.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Clemett, turning her head to admire the house again. “The white looks stunning. If only the door weren’t so brown and...prominent.” Her voice hinted at disgust.

“That’s the part I like.” Claire laughed and walked up the steps past her mother, whose common look of displeasure was melting into her face. The boy walked back outside just then, nodding to Claire in acknowledgement as she went through the wide open doors.

Her eyes paused momentarily on him. He had nice features — light tan skin that might have been soft if he weren’t exposed to sun and dust all day; sky blue, mischievous eyes; and short brown, scraggly, curly hair beneath his grey wool cap. He seemed around her age of eighteen, give or take a few years.

But he was a commoner, probably one of the factory workers. So Claire made no outward recognition of his presence. He must have seen her looking at him, though.

She walked purposefully through the coat room into a long, fairly wide hallway. There she paused, noting a small oval mirror to her left above a shelf with china figurines. Her reflection stared back at her. Green eyes and long lashes; pale, clear skin, light pink by the cheekbones; a small nose and dainty, slightly pursed lips; and ringlets of light brown hair falling out below her purple silk, feathered hat from Paris.

They were the face and features of a wealthy, privileged girl of British descent.

But, though subtle, there was fluster and annoyance hidden beneath Claire’s porcelain complexion. Her cage.

She didn’t want to be here.