Coming Soon by Staci Stallings

Coming Soon

Dreams by Starlight

"Don't worry. I'll just take the bus," Camille said over her shoulder.

"The bus?" Jaylon asked, forcing his confused feet to turn and follow her down the sidewalk. "But I can take you home."

"No," she said without ever slowing her steps. "I'm fine, but thanks."

The air brakes of the bus exhaled at the curb as without even checking the bus number on the city map, she climbed aboard, leaving Jaylon standing on the curb, hands in the air, and confusion coursing through every brain cell.

Even after the bus had disappeared around the corner, he stood for another long moment before turning as he replayed their conversation in his head. She loved math. She hated drama, but she was willing to do something she hated to be able to do something she loved. It made sense in a way. He opened his car door, climbed behind the wheel, and sat, staring after the long gone bus before he reached down to start the car. It was then that he glanced into the passenger seat and saw the notebook. Her notebook.

As though it might explode if he even touched it, he picked it up and flipped on the interior light. Something told him he shouldn't open it, but his hand wasn't listening to his head. He turned the top page over.

"Fragile Glass"

It was the beginning of the rough draft of her analysis of Laura from "The Glass Menagerie."

"In a world of glass houses, it may take only one, small stone to bring a life down, to crumble it to the core, to shatter the hopes and the dreams of someone with only hopes and dreams to live on. It may be a simple laugh, hurled at someone at her most vulnerable moment. It may be a comment, a thoughtless aside, meant to be funny but actually so devastating that the object of it never really recovers. Or it could be a parent's expectations set so high that no mere mortal could ever reach them, and then hurled with every opportunity at the fragile glass the child has constructed. Whatever it is, the stone seldom matters to the person hurling it, but to the person on the receiving end, it could be all it takes to destroy a house, painstakingly constructed, and meant only to shelter a lost, hurting soul from a cold, cruel world of stone throwers."

With blurred vision, Jaylon looked up into the neon-lit street, and his eyes fell closed against her pain.

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