The Last Week

- Chapter 2 -

“What may I get you today, ma'am,” asks the middle aged barista. I am at the local coffee shop in town. It was Saturday so there was no school, and I still had no idea what to write. So I took up Shelby’s advice and headed to town.

   “Can I just get Black today.”

   As the barista walks away and makes my coffee, I notice Calub sitting on a stool in front of the window with a book in his hand. Calub is what you would call the quiet student of the class. He would never ask any questions or disturb and get in trouble. But he always had that mystery to him that I saw the other students in our class want to know. At least everyone else, but me. He and I go way back to the time when we were still those young naive kids. At that time he was always being loud and wanting to do dangerous recluse stuff that we would never do now. But ever since that...day. He had shut down and became someone you would call an empty soul. And since then, we had never talked or breathed in the same area.

   But that would end now. Today I would go up to him and see how he was doing. You got this Autumn, it’s just one chat. Nothing more and nothing less.

   I go, grab my coffee, and sit next to him.
   “Hi Calub, what are you reading?” I ask looking up at him. He swivels his head to look at me. Me and then down to my coffee.
  
“Black, huh, wouldn't have thought you to be the type,” he says to me, still not answering my question. But that was like Calub, he would never fully give you an answer. You had to always strangle it out of his big tall form.

   “Well I am the Black coffee type, so you’ll just have to deal with it.” I say, matter of factually. All I get in return is a once over glance and then he is back at reading his blasted book. As I sipe my coffee, the empty silence that’s not been filled in the last 5 minutes, is too unbearable for me to stand. It looks like this conversation was over.

   “Sooooo...I’m going to leave. Nice seeing you!”

   I hop out of my chair and exit the coffee shop. Why did he have to be so unbearable? It wasn't like that when we were kids. But I guess that changed after.

   I close my eyes and blow out a big breath of air and push that memory to the back of my brain. I didn’t need him ruining the rest of my day.

_______________________________

   The day that I was supposed to look for inspiration turned out to be a day in the bookstore and a very dry bank account at the end of it. Way to be productive Autumn.

   When I get home, I say hi to my mom and dad and head to my room to get some reading time. I had got a book full of tiny stories and was very excited to read them. Not only were some fantasy, they were also realistic fiction as well. The strange thing about this book though was that it had no life lesson stories and there were no endings. No meaning and endings to the stories meant no meaning for the book, people said. But I didn't look at it that way. I looked at it like a book to uncover and find what made the author make it like that. I was here to uncover the mystery, and that for me was the meaning of this book.  

   The book is called, “The life of others”.