{Flash Fiction}
Out my front window, I watch as three teen boys cross Main Street.
They have the swagger of new graduates about to jet off to New York or Los Angeles, spending their last few dollars on head shots. Or, maybe they're called by the ocean, dreaming of joining the Navy and picking up war brides in the South Pacific. Perhaps they just want to go as far as Cincinnati where they'll work in a bank and join the country club set.
I once had such visions.
Not anymore.
I am fixed behind glass, locked inside the cupboard of my hometown.
A fleeting glimpse of fame and fortune arrived when a casting crew showed up back before everyone had cable television and interviewed kids at Higgins' soda shop. The lady with red hair picked me as Lucy, Marian, and I sipped chocolate egg creams after school. Fourth grade, I think it was?
My parents turned the woman down. Daddy said there were no guarantees in show business, so here I sit, seventy years later.
I watch generations come and go as the sun rises and sets on my grand Victorian. It's the only house I've ever lived in, inherited from my parents and willed to my niece.
The twin maples out front are the last to turn each autumn, and, most townspeople say, the most glorious.
Ann