Although I showed up on time and waited for Eddie for thirty minutes, he never showed, which wasn’t too surprising to me. A boy like him probably forgot about girls like me regularly. Still, I thought I would go ahead and sign up for auditions until I saw that it was for The Glass Menagerie. While I loved the play, it consisted of just five characters and the only one I could play would be Laura, the fragile, crippled owner of the glass menagerie.

I stood there hesitating, staring at the board for far too long. A young woman my age, sporting an eyebrow piercing, approached, looked me over and smiled, not at all warmly.

“Sign up. Audition. But it’s me who’ll be getting the part,” she said.

My eyes burned a hole into the back of her black leather jacket as she strutted away. I scrawled my name and information on the sheet, below hers and then did my own strut from the building.

For a change it wasn’t raining and the sun hovered uncertainly in the sky. I jammed my hands into the pockets of my red wool coat and decided to walk around town.

“Hey, Jennifer Lawrence,” a familiar voice yelled.

I turned to see Eddie swaggering toward me, an amused smile on his lips. His hands were in the pockets of his blue jeans that had a frayed tear in the knees. He wore a black leather jacket and a smirk.

“You don’t really look like Jennifer Lawrence,” he said.

“I know that,” I said sounding miffed.

He invaded my space. His warm fingers took a strand of my hair and slid it behind my ear, his eyes never leaving mine. The intensity of his gaze unnerved me.

“Wanna come back to mine?” he asked.

“No, thanks. I have plans.”

“Right. Plans.” He stroked my cheek and then grinned. “Wanna change your plans? I make a wicked cheese and marmite sarnie.”

“Hmm. I’ll pass.”

“You’re afraid of me?”

“No. Should I be?”

He shrugged, his gaze moved around the street before returning to me. “I thought we had a ‘thing’ last night. A connection.”

“Light of day and all that,” I said.

“Light of day. Meaning that I’m not good enough for you?”

I automatically gasped. “What? I didn’t say that.”

The smile was gone from his face and he looked everywhere but at me. When he finally glanced at me again, his gaze was ice cold. “You lot are rich. I know the type. You show up each term, flaunt your daddy’s money. But I thought you might be different,” he said. He turned, kicked a wadded up bit of trash, and walked away before I could even muster the ability to speak. Rich? Me? In my second-hand clothes?

I watched him walk along the street. He hadn’t gotten far when the woman with the piercings, shouted to him, and ran on her tiptoes toward him, throwing her body against his and holding on. He spun her slightly, said something to her that made her throw back her head and laugh. He looked up at me then. Our eyes met briefly before he turned with his arm around the woman’s waist, his cheek pressed against hers, and disappeared from view.

end 3/1/2017

S. Darlington

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