The overstuffed duffel bag landed with a thud as she dropped it to the floor inside of the telephone booth. Her black-gloved hand gingerly picked up the receiver and placed it to her ear while her other hand gently dialed the numbers she had spent all night memorizing. The quiet burr signaling that a phone was ringing somewhere else in the world sounded in her ear after the last digit was placed.

“Hello?”

It was the usual response for America. Sure, in Japan they said something like “Moshi Moshi,” and in England they said “Cheerio” and all that jazz, but this was America, Land of the Free, and pretty much everyone said “Hello” after picking up the phone. There were always those few that attempted to buck the system, but their new slangy phrases, such as “Yello” or the more demanding “Talk to me,” rarely ever caught the attention of a mass audience.

Silence. She paused as her voice caught in the back of her throat. It tickled, and she almost laughed.

“I can hear you breathing.”

The voice was male, low, and extremely groggy.

“Can you really?” she asked with such enthusiasm in her voice that she sounded like an eight year old girl going on a field trip to the local museum.

“Uh-huh.”

A brief period of silence swept over them as she playfully twirled the telephone cord around the index finger on her left hand. The cord became snagged on the huge diamond ring that decorated her finger, and she had a difficult time untangling herself from the cord’s hold.

“So,” said the man on the other end. “Am I allowed to ask who you are?”

“Well, you don’t know me yet. My name is Heather Montclair.” She reflexively bit her lip after saying her name.

“Uh, nice to meet you, I suppose,” he said, apprehensively.

“Do you really make picture frames, Mr. Vanderbilt?”

“That’s not my name.”

“Oh, I know that, but I bet that you wish it was.”

Silence once again fell between the strangers connected by the elaborate telephone wires. An impatient sigh escaped from the man’s lips, and Heather jumped at the dissatisfied noise. Using her teeth, she removed the black glove off of her right hand and let it drop to the floor. She was hoping that it would slowly float to the ground like a dying leaf, but instead it just fell like most other normal objects.

“So, are you going to tell me why you are calling me at the ripe time of five in the morning?” the man asked impatiently.

“I wanted to watch the sun rise this morning, and I needed somebody to watch it with.” She continued to chew on her lipstick covered bottom lip.

“Have you never seen the sun rise before?”

“No, that’s not it. In fact, I’ve never missed the sun rise. Even when I was a child, I used to watch it come up every morning.”

Her head began to itch, and she ran a hand through the top of the light brown mass of hair that hung all the way to the middle of her back. After chasing that annoyance away, both of her almond-shaped brown eyes began to burn, and she rubbed them vigorously to quell the irritation. It seemed as if her whole body would erupt in a breakout of dangerous boils next. This feeling usually crept into her system whenever she felt nervous and unsure, so she mentally tried to reassure herself that there was nothing to be panicky about.

“You mean you aren’t a child?”

“No, for your information, I’m a fabulous twenty-something, which is miles better than being a thirty-something. That will be most dreadful when I hit that age period.”

“I’m a thirty-something…”

“Well, I’m glad to see that you’re coping with your disability. It is truly a heartwarming story.”

“Did you say that your name was Heather Montclair?”

“Yes. From that name you would think that I was rich, wouldn‘t you?”

“I suppose.”

“Well then names are certainly most deceiving because I’ve never had any money my entire life.”

“Heather, you are a freak.”

“Well, that’s not very nice. Not very nice at all!”

“Please, don’t ever call me again. Please!”

A loud slam sounded on the other end, and then a lonely silence ascended into the cramped phone booth. Heather stared at the classically black phone before placing the receiver back on its hanger. Nudging her duffel bag with her black Mary Jane, she scooted it to the very corner of the booth to create enough room so she could sit down. She wasn’t worried about contracting some deadly disease from the nasty floor or dirtying up her favorite little black dress.

“I didn’t even get a chance to ask him his name,” she sighed, regretfully. “That would have been awfully useful.”

Her left hand fell to the floor next to the black duffel bag. With a loud scrape, the diamond ring made contact with the rough surface, and another scrape was added to the precious stone. Heather hardly seemed to notice the minor catastrophe because she had just caught the first glimpse of a beam of sunshine poking through a gap between two huge skyscrapers.

Her mouth dropped open in suspended gaze as more rays of light joined their solitary leader. Each ray poked through an unspeakably small space between the various diverse buildings that belonged to even more diverse companies. Maybe it was just her imagination, but it seemed that all of the beams of light were centered exactly on the tiny phone booth that she had imprisoned herself in. Carefully reaching our with her right hand, she pressed it to the warm glass and wished that the heat would spread to the rest of her cold body.

“I’m so cold,” she said, drawing her hand back and staring at her open palm.

Suddenly, a loud knock sounded on the side of the phone booth, shaking both the structure and Heather’s state of mind. She sharply turned her head to look up to see who was intruding on her sunrise. A man stood with arms crossed tightly and an uninviting scowl decorating his otherwise boring face. His eyes were small, beady, and forgettable along with the rest of his pale features. Heather thought that he resembled a living skeleton.

“Hey, I need to use the phone!” he yelled, his voice screeching impatiently.

She stared with a blank look in her dark brown eyes. Her lips sought to form words to defend her position in the phone booth, but nothing rationale emerged in her vocabulary. How could she rationalize her feelings about the sun to this interpretation of the walking dead.

“Would you get out of there? I have to make an important call!” His foot stamped the ground hard enough to cause Heather to jump slightly.

“Is it more important than the sunrise?” she asked, her voice small and uncertain.

“What?” he stopped his semi-raid and stared in utter disbelief.

“Is it more important than the sunrise?”

The stupid look on his face remained and showed no sign of leaving.

“Of course it is!” he yelled, coming back to his senses.

“Well, why didn’t you just say so,” she whispered, picking herself up off of the floor.

Brushing the bits of dirt and other random nasty materials off of her dress, she stood to her full height and opened the door of the phone booth. A wave of uncomfortable heat entered her cold world as she inhaled a breath of polluted city air and stepped out of the booth. The man hardly waited for her to get both feet on the sidewalk before he rushed into the small structure and was hastily dialing numbers.

“Hold on a second,” Heather said knocking on the door just seconds after he had closed it.

“What do you want?” the man mouthed in between bits of conversation on the phone.

“My bag,” she said while pointing at the black duffel bag that she accidentally left on the floor.

With a strange expression on his face, he looked towards the floor and noticed her little bag. He opened the door and kicked the bag out with his foot. Heather hastily bent down and collected her belongings before the man could inflict any other harm on them. Standing back up, she noticed that the man continued to look at her with the same expression of confusion and utter disbelief.

“Why don’t you just get a cardboard box like a normal person?” he questioned before the shutting the door and returning to his important conversation.

Heather stood motionless for a few seconds before she quickly turned on her heel and proceeded to walk down the empty sidewalk.

“I don’t need a box,” she muttered to herself, dissatisfied with her treatment by the skeleton. “I may be cold, lost, and alone, but I’m not homeless. Not yet anyways.”

The last words fluttered out of her mouth quietly, and she continued to repeat the sentence until she felt that she had sufficiently chased the mournful thoughts out of her head. Continuing her walk down the sidewalk, she stopped in front of a small flower shop with brilliant displays of brightly colored daisies and mums gathered together in four equally-sized groups.

“Not yet anyways!” she yelled at the innocent flowers who failed to respond in any noticeable way. The shopkeepers did, however, notice her outburst and stared in suspended silence as Heather swiftly sprinted on down the sidewalk.

Upon running out of breath, she stopped on the corner of a busy intersection and stood with her back perfectly straight against the brick wall of a dilapidated building. Bits of her long light brown hair stuck to the rough surface of the brick, and an annoying pain entered her head when she attempted to pull away from its grip. With her one ungloved hand, she attempted to fix the few tangles and frizzes but could not feel confident about her appearance without the aid of a mirror. After accepting defeat, she stared at her ungloved hand as cars continued to noisily rush by her.

“I left my glove in the phone booth,” she realized. “It’s probably still lying on the ground in there. I bet that man even stepped on it.”

She turned her gaze back up the street to where she had unwittingly left her glove and shook her head.

“I can’t go back there,” she decided. “It’s a loss that I must accept.”

Without paying attention to the oncoming traffic, Heather stepped out into the street and proceeded to cross to the other side. Screeching brakes and blaring horns could be heard for a few blocks over, but they all fell onto deaf ears as Heather ignored them. Luckily, she safely reached the other side in one piece and smiled all the way and never turned back.

“I will call him again tomorrow,” she said, continuing on her path. “Yes, I will call him again tomorrow, and maybe my glove will be there, too!”

---

A/N: This is definitely one of the weirdest ideas I've ever had. Maybe it will be effective, who knows? Hopefully, I can fully figure out where this is going because right now, I really don't have much of a solid direction...