DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Me and Sara

Sara is the girl that has just moved into the apartment next to mine, the second apartment I have rented in Lakeview.  She has short blonde hair, blue eyes and wide cheekbones.  We had only talked once while waiting for the elevator.  I tell her my name is Andrea, I’m twenty-one years old, and I work for the Tribune as an editor.  She tells me her name is Sara, she is twenty-two, and she is still looking for a job, since she has just moved here from Colorado.  “My parents are visiting from Denver this summer,” she tells me while looking through her olive leather purse. “I don’t have any family, but recently I adopted a tabby cat, from the shelter on California,” I say as a couple walks off of the elevator.  I had only talked to her once but my intuition told me that I would see and talk to her again.

 One Friday evening, she knocks on my door and asks me if I want to go for a walk, and I say sure.  I don’t know her intentions, but I take the chance, thinking that maybe I’ll make a new friend.  We take the elevator down to the first floor, walk through the front lobby and are out of the door.  The wind from the lake breezes past us while two seagulls fly over the apartment awning.  She starts to talk, and I listen attentively.  I squint at the fading sun as a flock of geese flies over us.  “So, do you have your own car?” she asks.  The question strikes me as random.  I figure that it is just her way of breaking the ice.  I say, “No, I use public transportation.” 

We find the path by the lake to ourselves, and I feel an odd sense of intimacy with the situation, almost to the point of discomfort, like we could be sisters who are having an argument.  I have never had a sister, so it pleases me that I am even able to feel this.  She folds her arms across her chest and looks toward the lake, where the waves are crashing higher than yesterday.  A silence walks between us.  I tell her I think that the headlights of the fleeting cars seem to glow with the fading light of day.  “I agree,” she says, “Sometimes I stand over the highway on the bridge on Berwyn and watch the combination of white and red lights of cars that find their way past me.  It is getting dark.  We aren’t speaking, but I finally feel at ease.  We arrive at the beach.  The white crests of the waves fade when they meet the shore.  She takes my arm, almost like a mother would to her child when crossing a street, and she laughs, an extroverted expression that doesn’t match her demeanor until this moment.  She looks up to the clouds and smiles, so that her cheeks become rounder and her freckles seem to explode under her enchanted eyes, like the stars over us.  

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.