Peace and Quiet.

Amber Riley, 1/14/07

Finally, some peace and quiet…Ashley thought plunking down into the café seat. Everywhere she went her kids, not yet old enough for school, demanded attention. Don’t get her wrong, she loved them more than life itself, but when she was attempting to write her novel, couldn’t they just take a nice long nap? At 21 years old, she was quickly regretting having her two-year-old twins so early. What if she had waited seven more years? Or even three? What if she was pregnant right now? And would any of those scenarios still have produced Tommy and Jade?

That was her problem. Her mind would reel, churning out scene after scene, and her pencil would have to work itself to death trying to keep up.

Still, the Barnes and Noble café section was obviously not a great favorite in this town, judging by the minimal customers. Ashley grinned, grabbed her coffee, and hunched over her paper. It was a relief to force her boyfriend to watch his own children for once.

Cynthia forced herself to snap back to reality as…

“Whatcha doing?” A female voice suddenly asked. Ashley looked up, disgusted, to meet the brown eyes of one of the employees. The young girl snapped her gum, and grinned.

“Writing my novel.” She responded, heaving as much weariness into that as she could. She did not want to have a conversation with this brown haired girl.

“That’s fantastic! What’s it about?”

Annoyed, but still not willing to be impolite or pass up an opportunity to talk about her writing, Ashley responded: “It’s about a girl with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who-”

“What’s her name?” The girl interrupted eagerly.

“Her name’s Cynthia. Now, as I was saying, she-”

“You should name her Frankie.”

“That’s not even a girl’s name.” Ashley contradicted.

“That’s my name.” The girl, recently revealed as Frankie, sounded quite hurt. “But it’s short for ‘Francesca’. So, what’s your book about again?”

“A girl named Cynthia with OCD, who has to work as a janitor to raise money-”

Frankie blurted out: “But why work as janitor? Wouldn’t the messiness drive her insane? It doesn’t even pay that much anyways. Why is she raising money?” Frankie blew a bubble and popped it loudly.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” The novelty of having someone care about her story had quickly worn out. No wonder no one was at this place if this was what the employees were like.

“Nope! I’m on my 20 minute break right now, so we can keep chatting.”

20 minutes? Ashley checked her watch. So far, they’d only slogged through two.

“Why’s she raising money?”

“Because her families in debt and might loose their house-”

“That’s so depressing! Do you always write books that gloomy?”

“Are you even going to let me finish one sentence about my story?”

Silence on Frankie’s end for a few moments. “Oh! I’m sorry. I was thinking about how to make your book more chipper. What did you say?”

Ashley looked gloomily at her watch again. I’ll never survive 15 more minutes of this. “Look, I’m really sorry, but I have to go.” She got up, closed her notebook, and shoved it and her pencils back into her purse. As she left, Frankie waved goodbye energetically. “Goodbye! Bye!” She shouted after Ashley.

Ashley ended up going home. Her hour of quiet was now deemed worthless, as she couldn’t return to her wonderful, productive, and inspiration-filled mode.

Besides, she was too busy contemplating what would become her new short story about a young girl named ‘Francesca.’