Free Time and Trouble by Gillian Roberts

company, precocious for a high-school kid. Now she acted like such an infant he felt like he ’ d kidnapped her.
    She expected the world to stop for her, make her the sun the planets circled. Which naturally infuriated everybody else. He felt caught between his housemates and this changeling he ’ d somehow adopted. He didn ’ t want to hurt Penny. He ’ d thought of himself as her protector, and she needed one.
    But he didn ’ t want to lose his friends or this sanctuary. He was the newest tenant, the least tested, and, if this kept up, they were going to ask him to leave. He could feel it building to that, soon, because everything was cracking and fissuring under her pressure. And then where would he go, where he could afford the rent and they ’ d accept his falcon and dead mice? Where nobody shouted at him from out on the street, nobody stared into his windows, followed him, knew the address or phone number?
    Introducing Penny to this house had been as deadly as introducing poison into a well.
    And she ’ d only been there three days.
    A perfect example was right now. He ’ d been watching the little drama with the back door. Because nobody had said, “ Penny, please join us for this grubby and completely informal moment around the kitchen table, ” she sulked and acted as if they ’ d banished her to a foreign land.
    And she was insanely, irrationally jealous, acting as if he were cheating on her — as if Kathryn and he were having a secret tryst.
    As if Penny and he were. Although he dreaded the tantrum he was sure it would provoke, he was also going to have to tell her that so that she finally heard. What he felt — or had felt — was more affection than sex. A few kisses and hugs. A closeness, a caring, that was all. They ’ d talked so much about everything; she ’ d seemed older than her years then, before she moved in.
    A kiss or two would have been as far as it went if she hadn ’ t — He ’ d thought she would sleep on the sofa downstairs, but she hadn ’ t. She wouldn ’ t, so there ’ d been that time, the first night, when she came into his bed. His fault, too, sure, but afterward he ’ d said it had to stop, couldn ’ t happen again. They weren ’ t to be that way. He ’ d been kind about it, but the more he said, the more she cried and the more determined she became to make them be the way she ’ d decided they were.
    He hadn ’ t meant to be cruel. He ’ d wanted to help her out of a jam, offer her friendship. He wanted to honor his own ideals, not to make this girl his life partner, or whatever she imagined.
    He realized that since her outburst, nobody had said anything. Alicia was pushing chip crumbs around the table, forming them into little o ’ s and lines. Gary had gone back to reading his book, and Toto looked ceilingward, whistling “ Somewhere Over the Rainbow, ” a nervous habit that had given him his nickname. Kathryn had gotten up to turn on lights. It had grown dark without their noticing it. But what they were all saying, silently and in their way, was that he ’ d better do something about the situation.
    The silence was broken by Penny, who leaned forward, reached out and put her hand on his arm. “ Listen, ” she said. “ I ’ m sorry. The thing is, there ’ s no point acting like this heart was something special, except to me — like it ’ s an object that could identify somebody. The police would laugh at us. ”
    He pulled his arm away from her “ us. ” He didn ’ t want people to think of them as a couple.
    “ There are a zillion charms like this. It ’ s not even solid gold, it ’ s plate. You can see where some is worn off, see? ” She pulled the chain and charm off her neck and offered it out. Kathryn was the first to accept it.
    “ I mean girls got them as favors at dances, as bridesmaids, or as Sweet Sixteen gifts. ”
    “ How do you know all this? ” he asked. Where had this fund of knowledge come from?
    “ One — no, two —