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Penny’s kindred spirit is a shark.For as long as she could remember she’d felt an itch beneath her skin. A voice in her ear saying go-go-go that wouldn’t be consoled with but I like here and just a little while longer.Can’t stop, it says.Stay still and you’ll drown, it says.It had been that voice in her ear that had her chasing her dreams to California. All she wanted to do since she was old enough to know better was to leave Omaha, Nebraska. It didn’t matter where – anywhere was better than where she was. Just so long as she kept moving.And for a while California was enough. The beaches and the ocean and her dreams of stardom were like a balm on her soul. The voice was quiet, for a while at least. But she could still feel it, itching beneath her skin like a constant stone in her shoe. And then the voice was back and all she had was the unbearable urge to be gone.We’ve been here too long, it says.It’s time to go, it says.But she forced it down. Played the role of happy-go-lucky girl like it was her dream part. Pretended to be contented, like she was supposed to be, even as she itched and burned to get away. She worked and she auditioned for roles she didn’t care about, and she laughed with her friends and her boyfriend like she had everything she wanted.All the while, a part of her was already pulling back – already making plans for her getaway. So when Kurt – unsurprisingly – cheated on her with the new waitress at work she didn’t hesitate. She packed her bags and walked out the door before Kurt could say anything that might tempt her to stay.Yes, it says. Now we go. She had no plan when she left the apartment she’d lived in with Kurt, but she was used to doing things on the fly.The first thing she did was sell her car and send everything she wouldn’t need in a package to Nebraska. Somehow she managed to fit all the important parts of her life into two bags. Then she stood on the side of the highway and stuck out her thumb.If anyone asked her where she was going, she just shrugged her shoulders and smiled prettily. “Wherever you’re going.”
Anywhere, but here.
She travelled around California from city to city that way for about two months, picking up odd jobs to stretch her meagre savings, but never stopping anywhere for too long. But eventually her funds ran out and she was faced with a hard decision: either find somewhere to settle down or go back to Nebraska.There was only one thing that Penny knew for sure. She was never going back to Nebraska.Not if she could help it.Luckily, she tended to fall on her feet.Just as she’d been giving up hope, she spotted a flyer in a coffee shop – an audition for a small touring company. If she’d still been with Kurt, she would never have considered the idea. But on her own and looking for any way to keep moving, it seemed kind of perfect.And as luck would have it, she got the part. She was no leading lady, but that was okay too. Her part as the scheming ex-lover was a lot more fun.The tour began in Southern California and made its way north to Orange County. And when it ended Penny used it as a springboard to get herself on another tour, this one heading East.She continued this pattern, joining one tour and then another, either when it came to its natural conclusion or when she got bored and knew she had to move on. She even enjoyed some modicum of success – better parts and even a few favourable write ups in the local paper.And then she joined a touring group heading South. The pay wasn’t as good, and the group wasn’t as well established as others she’d been involved with, but she liked the director and the cast, and she made one hell of a Gwendolen Fairfax – if she did say so herself.But her luck ran out somewhere outside of Houston. Oscar Wilde, it turns out, doesn’t go over so well in the bible belt. Between picketing, boycotts, and security issues, the touring company was broke. The manager scraped up just enough money to get everybody back home.Only . . . Penny didn’t have a home. She’d been on the road, moving forward, for so long that she had nowhere to go now that she’d finally been forced to stop.She was sitting in a local burger joint when the thought suddenly struck her mid-bite. As soon as it did she’d begun bawling her eyes out, completely unselfconscious of the mess she must look.“Are you okay, darlin’?” asked the waitress who had seated her earlier. She was tall and gorgeous – of course! – but sweet and sympathetic as Penny poured out her life story and bemoaned the course of events that had led her to being homeless and jobless in god-knows-where Texas.“Oh, darlin’,” said Missy – because of course she had a name like ‘Missy’, “sounds like you’re having a tough time. Y’know I have a couch you can stay on while you figure things out.“Galveston’s, not so bad,” she added, although she made a face like she was looking for the first exit out of there herself.And that’s how she got herself a place to stay and a job waiting tables at Fudruckers. It was like someone had taken her old life in Pasadena and just dumped the whole thing ready for her to find in Galveston. The only thing missing was the crappy boyfriend, and Missy assured her that there are plenty of crappy boyfriends available in Galveston if she only took the time to look.Yet somehow it felt different this time. There was a sense of anticipation, like something was coming and she needed to be there to see it.When the voice speaks it doesn’t urge haste or distance. It doesn’t beg for her to stop standing still.It simply says:
Wait for it
If Sheldon believed in kindred spirits or animal muses his would be a giant panda.An animal so fastidiously set in its ways as to threaten its own existences.There is a voice in his head, too, but right now it sounded a lot like Leonard.
You were impossible to live with.
What else could we do?
He would have preferred that they followed through on the plan to lure him outside and leave him to freeze to death. Sure, he might not have reached his dream of winning the Nobel Prize, but at least then people would have mourned the loss of his brilliance. He could have died a respected physicist cut down at the height of his career, instead of being the laughing stock of the scientific community.Now he had nothing.His career was over. Even if he decided to continue his line of research, they’d always be second guessing his work. He had lost all standing in the world of physics. He had as much hope of winning the Nobel Prize as his unemployed cousin who got arrested for shooting bottle rockets at a police car.There was nothing else for it.His career was in shambles. His dreams were in ruins.His life had imploded overnight.He might as well go to Texas. His mother had been happy to see him at first. But after a week of his moping and barely leaving his bedroom in daylight hours, she’d had enough.“We are having a family dinner tonight, and you will be there, Sheldon Lee Cooper,” she told him, her tone of voice leaving no room for argument. “I don’t care if I have to drag you out kickin’ and screamin’, you will be at dinner, Sheldon.”It was understood from previous instances that any requests formulated in this manner were non-optional social conventions. He had no choice but to attend, but he would do so with marked protest and without the usual care in his presentation.He would brush each quadrant of his hair only five times, rather than his usual ten. And he would wear his Thursday t-shirt and khaki pants instead of his special occasion pants and t-shirt. His mother would surely notice these acts of defiance, but he would not be cowed into changing his attire.She ‘tsked’ when he eventually came downstairs, a clear rebuke of his unpolished state. A part of him almost bolted back up the stairs to change and finish brushing his hair, but for the most part he was unmotivated to do anything more. He only flinched for a moment, and then turned on the television and found a documentary on large construction projects to divert his attention.He’d always hated family dinner at the best of times. Between his mother’s religious sermons, Junior’s none-too-subtle mocking, and Missy’s inane gossip, the dinner would be nothing short of torture. He thought there was nothing that could make him endure another of these dinners, but when you have no place else to go, your choices become rather limited.He’d barely made himself comfortable on the couch (none of the seats were ever as comfortable as his spot in Los Robles) when a knock sounded on the front door.His mother hollered at him from the kitchen. “Get the door, Shelly.”Frowning, he muted the television. “My siblings are perfectly capable of opening the door for themselves,” he replied snootily. Though even as he said it he was rising from the couch. It was one thing to imply non-compliance with his mother’s edicts, it was another not to comply.“Oh, Shelly you funny bean,” she replied in a tone so familiar that he could picture his mother’s amused expression and the way she would shake her head and look ‘to the heavens’. “That’ll be Missy’s friend bein’ polite,” she continued. “Go let her in.”“Missy’s friend?” he practically sneered in response, affronted by this blatant betrayal of his trust. As he worked himself up into a state, he could hear the Texas catching on the occasional word. “You said this was a family dinner. If that includes bein’ in the comp’ny of one of the vacuous troglodytes that Missy cares to associate with, then I will be retirin’ to my room momentarily.”“Shelly, don’t go makin’ me repeat myself,” his mother responded ominously, putting the fear of god into him without leaving the kitchen. “It’s not polite to keep a guest waitin’.”He sighed but acquiesced, as he’d always known he would. Unlike his former roommate and best friend, his mother very rarely kowtowed to his superiority.Reluctantly, he opened a door to an aesthetically pleasing blonde woman. She was dressed in typical East Texas attire – jean shorts and a t-shirt, although this one did not bare her mid-drift so he supposed it could be considered formal attire.“Hi, I’m Penny,” she said brightly, her words not encumbered by the Texas that always dogged his own words. She stuck out her hand – which he ignored – and continued. “You must be one of Missy’s brothers.”He nodded to acknowledge her correct, albeit obvious supposition, and folded his hands behind his back to avoid any further attempts at physical contact. “You may call me Doctor Cooper.”“You can call him ‘Sheldon’,” Missy said, joining them at the door.“The rocket scientist?” Penny asked, glancing at Missy for confirmation.He glared ferociously at his twin sister, wishing all those science fiction movies about twins with psychic abilities were true so that he could convey to her how much her flippancy displeased him.“Missy, I have told you repeatedly not to call me that and this continued breach will incur a strike,” he told her severely. “I am a disgraced theoretical physicist, not a rocket scientist. Though at this point it hardly matters.”Missy rolled her eyes. “Shelly, it’s hotter’n a blister bug in a pepper patch out here. Can you let us in already?”He stepped aside, although not without reluctance.“So you’re one of those beautiful mind genius types,” Penny asked as she moved past him, stepping closer than he felt entirely necessary to get by. The tone in her voice was inscrutable to Sheldon, but the low tone and the way she tilted her head must have meant something to Missy. He heard his sister let out an undignified snort beside him.He returned Penny’s gaze and answered her statement with a drawn out, “Yeah.” “Weren’t you leavin’?” asked Missy, her eyes narrowed when he turned in her direction. Her hearing was nearly as acute as his own, though he doubted she would appreciate him comparing it to a race of aliens form Star Trek. He mirrored her expression.“My presence this evening is non-optional,” he replied stonily. “Now if you could please keep your jibber jabbering to a minimum, I was in the middle of a program when you arrived.” His sister, clearly done with him, made her way to join their mother in the kitchen. Penny, however, lingered, hovering midway between the couch and the hallway. Even as he unmuted the television and resumed his position on the couch he was acutely aware of her presence.Eventually she made a decision.“Mind if I join you?” she asked, waving vaguely towards the television.“It’s is – as they say – a free country.”She took this to mean she was free to join him, taking a seat on the couch cushion beside his even though there were three other adequate seating options available. That said, the spot she had chosen was the second best seat in the room – his own being the first – so he could not fault her on this choice.It seemed, at least for the first few minutes, as though her presence would not be minded. She was quiet and fidgeted no more than Raj or Leonard would. And when an attractive architect from New South Wales appeared on screen she did not attempt to make an unelicited innuendo about taking the woman ‘down under’.But then, not five minutes in to this not unpleasant tableau, she began to speak.“So . . . disgraced theoretical physicist?” she asked. “What happened there?”He wanted to tell her to ‘stop her jibber jabbering’, or ‘none of your business’, or ‘I don’t want to talk about it’. Instead he said, “I thought I had proven String Theory but it turns out I was mistaken.” He spoke in a low, almost whisper of a voice. As he said it he felt the anguish all over again, going from such heights of elation to rock-bottom in milliseconds.Penny was quiet beside him for a long moment, seeming to process what he said. Then she asked, curiously, “What made you think you’d proven the string thing-y.”“String Theory,” he corrected. “I was the subject of a prank, which involved using an electric can opener to mimic the readings I was looking to prove the existence of magnetic monopoles and therefore verify String Theory.”Penny made a noise that he understood to be displeasure. “That doesn’t sound like a prank, sweetie,” she said in a tone that was unexpectedly gentle. “That sounds like someone messed with your readings and let you tell everyone you’d proven string theory so you’d look like an idiot,” she said succinctly.“Leonard is my best friend. He wouldn’t do that to me,” he said automatically, but the words sounded hollow even to him.He felt Penny shrug beside him. “If my friend did that to me I’d go all Nebraska on their ass,” she said, sounding positively menacing.He frowned. “How does a person go the state of Nebraska on another’s person?” he asked bewildered.She laughed, the sound trilling and musical. “It’s a figure of speech, sweetie. It just means I’d pay them back for what they’d done.”There was another laugh from Penny, and then nothing more. The program continued without further comment from either party, except from his own complaints about the misrepresentation of the concept of leverage.But then, just when he thought that the topic had been dropped for good, she leaned over to him.“You can’t let them win,” she spoke in a whisper quiet voice.No, he thought to himself. It’s too late for that.But that didn’t mean he had to lose.
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On Monday Missy confronted Penny at work. It wasn’t aggressive or threatening, or at least it wasn’t supposed to be. It was just that with Missy being nearly six foot herself and Penny a diminutive 5’7”, any approach couldn’t help but come off as confronting even if she didn’t mean it to.“Y’know when I said that I had a brother if you’re looking for a crappy boyfriend, I was talking about the big stupid one with the pickup truck,” she said in a flippant tone, not looking up from the glasses she was drying with forced nonchalance.Penny froze mid-action, clearly getting the subtext. She looked up from her own task, wiping down tables, and blinked her wide green eyes in confusion. “What now?”Missy reminded herself that Penny Miller was an actress by trade, and so she shouldn’t be drawn in by her protests of innocence, no matter how convincing. She gave Penny a sharp, pointed look that said she wasn’t fooled in the slightest.(Okay, so she might have intended it come off as a little intimidating)“All we did was talk,” Penny blurted out as the silence got too much.Missy raised an eyebrow. Like she hadn’t used that excuse a million times herself.“Well whatever you said to him,” Missy said, giving extra emphasis to the word said in a way that really meant ‘did’, “it lit a fire under his ass. Moma’s been singin’ your praises all weekend, and she wants you to come to church on Sunday so she can introduce you to the congregation.”“I didn’t do anything,” Penny insisted, looking a little bit pleased in spite of her protest. But then her expression changed, turning distraught, as she tried to explain what had happened. “I just . . . he said it was a prank – I think they told him it was a prank and he just believed him,” she said.Missy’s heart broke all over again for her brother who was too smart for his own good and assumed honesty and integrity for others because he couldn’t understand the motivation for acting otherwise. And she found a whole new source for her total disgust in his so-called friends, especially Leonard, who manipulated him and used him in the worst ways.“Oh, Shelly,” she said, more to herself than to Penny. “I can’t believe he didn’t say anything. He shoulda. . .”“I think he’s embarrassed,” Penny offered with a brittle smile and a shrug of her shoulders. “And he just needed someone to tell him it wasn’t his fault.”“I guess Moma’s praise wasn’t unwarranted,” Missy mused, feeling a little overwhelmed by the gratitude she felt towards Penny in that moment. Then she shook her head, letting out a snort of laughter that broke the sombre mood that had come over them. “To think I was gonna tell you to keep your Nebraskan man-hands offa my baby brother.”“I thought you were twins,” Penny said, looking genuinely confused this time.“I am twenty-one minutes and seventeen seconds older, and you better not forget it.”