to pretend that I was where ever we had been last. The stars were always
the same, no matter where we were. Maybe there were more or less in
one spot than another, but the ones that were there were always in
the same spots. The stableness of them calmed me. I liked to lay on the
roof, for hours on end." Angela and I were laying in her treehouse, staring
up at the stars that peaked through the branches to shine at us. She smiled
and kept staring up at them. Eventually, she turned over onto her belly and
looked down at the forest floor beneath us. "I like to think about the fact
that chances are, no person's been in this area for years...but animals, on the
other hand, pass through here every day. If a person walked through here,
they would see this treehouse, probably wonder about it. But the animals
just see it, and if they do acknowledge it as different from the rest of their
surroundings, it doesn't effect them. They just keep on walking." I grinned
and stared down at the little footprints her eyes were set on. "Just keep on
walking," I agreed, nodding. She smiled at me and turned back onto her back,
staring at the stars again. But I just kept looking at those footprints, thinking
about moving forward. Something that my family and I had done for years,
just kept moving... when really we were getting nowhere at all. But now, here,
with Angela... staying in this one spot, I was finally getting somewhere.
Tyler came with me to work the day after Sadie called him. His spirits
were down a bit, but whenever I smiled at him, he smiled back. I though maybe
I was just being overly confident, but Kelly leaned over and whispered to me,
"I swear, you walk out of the room, and that boy's shoulders slump. You come
back in, and his posture's good as that of a chair." I laughed and shook my head
at her, and she winked at me. "I swear, some of these titles miff me. I mean, 'Be
Bold With Bananas'? What is that about?" Tyler asked in disbelief as he stared
at a book in his hands. I laughed and replied, "Well, you seem to have a talent for
finding the bizarre within the ordinary." Tyler chuckled and nodded in agreement.
The bell over the door rang and a guy in a Northface jacket, dark jeans, and an
ironic-looking pair of Ray Benz sunglasses walked in. He was losing his grip
on a huge, heavy-looking box as he pushed the door open with his back and flicked
his dirty blond hair, which looked exceedingly oily, out of his face. He stumbled
over to the front desk and slammed the box down onto the uneven surface. A pile
of books on one side of the desk made the box sit lopsidedly. "The extra delivery
you ordered," he informed me, flicking his hair out of his face again. "Of course,"
I nodded, "Let me get Stephen." I smiled and turned, pulling open the door to the
back room. Stephen was typing relentlessly on his ancient computer. I informed
him of the package, and he stepped around his desk and me, walking into the store.
Curious, I stepped around his desk and looked at his computer screen. A Microsoft
Word document was open. Stephen had been writing. I leaned closer and read the
most recent sentence he had written. "And so the destroyed couple both had made
it to the places in the world which they had always dreamed of reaching- she on
Broadway, he on Wall Street. The physical location which they had achieved,
however, was exactly parallel to what they had dreamed." I smiled and stepped
back around the desk, into the little store.
© 2010
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