This and That

"For I am With You"

The light from the restaurant behind her falls onto her phone. She waits for a reply, typing on the screen so as to appear busy and on top of things. After five more minutes, she tries calling.

"Hello, you've reached..."

But the voice doesn't get any farther before the girl slams the red symbol with her thumb, and jams the phone into her coat pocket. Sighing heavily, she starts down the sidewalk towards the main road. Why didn't she reply, or even answer the phone? Surely, Bleu consoles herself, she must have fallen asleep, or perhaps is in the bathroom?

"Or," she mutters to herself, "and more likely, she's currently telling the oddball for the last time that he needs to go to bed." Bleu forces a smile, but that only welcomes the tears that have been threatening to overtake her for the past hour.

"No, not tonight, dear." She scrutinizes nearby bushes for the evil, strange men her mother is always warning her about. Are they prowling around tonight, waiting for the girl without fearless eyes? "Don't you dare cry. Don't you dare, or I'll kill you. I swear I will."

The onslaught of cars finally slows to a lull, and at the first opportunity she darts across the white line dividing the street from the middle of the intersection. She watches left as she runs, nearly losing herself in the calmingly bright lights of the approaching Toyota.

Her feet touch cement, and she is on the sidewalk again. Several dogs bark at this stupid girl roaming the neighborhood at 10:00 p.m., and every bush stares mischievously at her as she plods on. Now a safe distance from the restaurant, her tears try to pour out of her battered soul and down her freckled cheeks, but she stands her ground.

"'Yea, though I walk'," she mutters through gritted teeth. But her voice cannot stumble past those few words.

She grits her teeth harder, eyes narrowed at any mysterious-looking trees.

"Don't you dare, child. Don't you dare."

The moon has the night off, and so the lake to her right and left is beautifully dark and cold. Look at those stars. What did I call them, 'blistering balls of light'? Bleu chokes out a laugh, but the shrubbery is not convinced, and neither are those blistering balls. Her throat is pounding, aching and swelling with the onerous presence of the rebuked tears. A few do escape, and she wants to scream at them.

"'Yea. Though. I walk. Through," she pounds out each word, a beat keeping time with her racing mind. This is fatigue, only fatigue. This is an outpour from a shallow source, and all will be well and silly in the morning. You'll see, and then you'll laugh at yourself for this temporary insanity. You always do, dear.

Oh, but it has been such a long day, and tomorrow shall be exactly the same. Too high, she decides. Too high a price for such a sensitive heart.

Her phone dings in her pocket just as an achingly familiar Honda Odyssey pulls up beside the curb. Swiping at the stray tears, the only loose stones in her wall, she puts on an easygoing smile and prepares for her final act.