The noise of the surrounding buyers blanketed the room with a loud echoing siren of different voices. I stared down at my English paper, my pencil danced at the edge of my fingers, and words wrapped the tip of my tongue. There was something missing, something that didn’t fit. Should I have Kyle bike down the street and some how run into his friend or should he just meet his friend at a certain time and place? And what should happen next? I tapped the pencil lightly on the table, ugh this paper was due Thursday, and all I had was one paragraph. All right Mrs. Dunway said that in order for the characters to seem real, you have to walk a mile in their shoes. But what does that mean? Do you literally have to walk in their brand of shoes or is it something else? This is so frustrating! Pushing back my chair I grasped my cup, slowly turning it in my hands. It was brown the usual color of cardboard, though the top was crystal white. Crystal? Was crystal really white? Wait what if I…no that wouldn’t make sense but what if I…I pushed myself forward. Writing never came easy to my fingers, but once motivated they submerged the paper in lead. The small hand on the hour clock circled its paper background counting the bolded letters that bordered it. Tension built in my knuckles slowly halting their ability to create words. Allowing the wooden stick to fall against the metal table and roll off the rounded edge, my eyes darted from one edge of my paper to the other. I elbowed the tabletop to catch my head, this is all wrong; crumbling the paper I swigged the last of my cup’s contents and placed the small ridged ball inside, then tosed the two materials through the trash bin’s smoky door.
“Are ya leaving,” The manager asked from behind the counter, not even looking up from his newspaper. I nodded, saluting him with my left hand. He saluted back waving his hand through the air in small oval shaped patterns. Pivoting on my heel I pushed myself out the door making sure that it slammed behind me. A wave of stout drops combed my hair as the night’s daily clouds zigzagged through the endless skyscrapers. The city was always the same, a personal vender at each corner, cars filling the city streets with noise and metal bulk, and at least one siren echoing off the many streetlights that lined the beaten sidewalks. Smoke filled the air and heaved my lungs as air filled my nose along with many other intriguing scents. Despite its dull gray look, the city possessed many interesting features, some which the average citizen usually ignored.
Take Chicago, for example, home to…what, maybe a couple million people or so. At first glance an outsider would think this concrete, dense place was too overridden with smoke, trash, and unheard of events or at least that’s how I saw it. But now my second year here I started to see character, lights flashing over every doorway filling the dull atmosphere with emotion and ecstasy. Most of these signs or outbreaks of personality go unnoticed day by day as citizens shoulder their way through the streets. Turning left, my backs reflect the light of the neon sign that belonged to its brick owner. My boots thumped against the cement. A scratched yellow-green taxi sped past; one of its splotched rubber tires dove into a small pool that clung to the side of the street, releasing a spray of iced autumn water into the air, splashing many in the shoulder including me. I didn’t mind much; it was a thing to get used to here. Taxis and other cars always seem to be drawn to water like birds to the sky. Next to me a fellow wanderer with her dog took most of the splash, the retriever leapt into the air freeing his master’s hands from the thick leather leash and sprinted down the street.
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