Prelude to kisses

Chapter 5

Life goes on. 

Even when hers was at a standstill the earth was still spinning around the sun, the stars still came out at night and died in the morning, the moon shone brightly and hid behind the clouds the next day. The clouds still gathered up in the sky and floated rather beautifully. People got up to work and shops opened, cars passed by every day, it didn't matter if she could barely open her eyes or couldn't eat. Nothing about the world around her changed. Just like this morning, Angie's alarm goes off and she gets up to go to work, shuffling things and moving around the room. Jackie doesn't open her eyes, willing herself to go back to sleep. Angie closes the door softly behind her and all that's left is the emptiness and bleakness of the room.

Giving up on going back to sleep, Jackie walks to the front of the house, still wrapped in a blanket she sits on the chair, looking ahead at the road. A group of high school students in blue and white uniform pass by, laughing and talking loudly. She imagines being back there, being one of them and the thought leaves a distaste in her mouth. She had been terribly bullied at school. Was very quiet and isolated as a child she had never fit in. She always found herself the last one to be picked for a group project, was a terrible dancer and often times found her name on the list of ugly girls in school bathrooms.

"Did you do your homework?" the girl holding books in her hands asks. The other two say yes and the boy walking with them doesn't bother to answer.

She scowls up at him before saying something Jackie couldn't make out from where she sat. Jackie watched them until they were out of sight before her eyes landed on a woman in a black pencil skirt, a dark blue top and white blazer thrown neatly over her shoulders. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. That's about four years from now, Jackie thought longingly. Did she have it all figured out? Jackie wondered. What kind of life did she lead, was she happy, in a relationship with a great and amazing job she couldn't wait to go to every morning? Jackie wondered all these things as she watched the woman disappear down the road.

She stood up and disappeared back into the house, cleaning and dusting off the windows and mopping the floor. Doing laundry and grocery shopping later in the day. Angie didn't have time this weekend because she was going over to her boyfriend's house. She'd be all alone for the next two days and helping out her boss clean and pack the shelves at work. She had almost declined until he said he'd pay her double for coming in during the weekend.