Today's writing

Staci’s allergic to small talk. On planes she jacks into headphones, stares out the window. Open, friendly faces make her cringe, pull back into a human raisin, crumpled and wrinkled.

Today she turned to someone and said hello. Why?

She’d noticed this girl at the airport, standing in the check-in line, sitting on the floor reading a book before boarding. She looked different. She looked like she had something to say. That’s rare, you know, someone actually worth listening to.

Not that Staci’s a cynic. You can’t call her that, no. She believes in things like flowers and the Bible. She pets strange dogs on the street. At night she closes her eyes and for a second makes a wish for a better world, like a single falling star.

But there’s that people thing. Staci doesn’t do people, communication, social gatherings. If she could spend her life in a room adjacent to the rest of the world, curled on some cushions with a Michael Crichton book, she would.