Flicker
The sidewalk on South Robinson had more cracks than concrete, and Sarah knew every one of them by heart. She could have walked this stretch blindfolded—past the shuttered laundromat with its faded OPEN sign still hanging crooked in the window, past the chain-link fence tangled with morning glory vines that nobody had the heart to kill, past the house on the corner where a dog barked itself hoarse behind a gate nobody ever opened. Her feet knew the way even when her mind wandered somewhere else entirely, which it did most nights, somewhere between the diner and home, in that narrow stretch of road where she allowed herself to think.
Her shoes were the kind that squeaked on linoleum, the soles worn thin from eight-hour shifts at Pete's Diner, where the coffee was burnt by ten a.m. and the regulars tipped in nickels and apologies. Her feet ached with a dull, familiar throb that had settled into her bones years ago and never quite left. She shifted the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder and counted the bills in her mind before she even reached into her pocket to check them—forty-three dollars, maybe forty-four if she'd miscounted the quarters. Rent was due Friday. James's…
