Anna stared out the window of her taxi, beholding the sky. The same sky she looked at as a small girl. She sighed, and looked outside, and stared numbly at the barren, windswept sidewalks. Winnipeg was a boring, dreary place: certainly not her hometown of Timmins. She sighed, and screwed her eyes into an expression that just made her cabbie look concerned through his rear view mirror.

"Are you okay, Miss?" he asked, in his thickly East Indian accented English. Anna snapped her eyes open, and gave him her best watery smile. "Yeah. I'm fine. Thanks," she sighed again.

She barely even had the strength to lie well anymore; she felt drained. Her dreams had led her to this.


"Are you sure, love?" her mother asked, face slewed away from her daughter.

"Yeah."

"But, how are you going to pay your way through life?"

Anna tried not to hear the burning question her mom all but asked. Who will I turn to when I'm old and needy, if you don't make any money? It insulted her and her dreams. She didn't want this crap- this wage slavery. Just because her mother was a slave to the system, didn't mean she should have to be. Didn't all parents want their kids to do better than they did? Then was this the truth, that her own mother, her closest confidante, her beloved friend, had only lied to her all these years? Heh, Slave to the System. Anna tried to think of her mother, strapped into a powered armour suit, then forgot it. Her mother would never do that. Her doting, dutiful, smiling, sad, mother.

Closing her eyes to shut out the oppressing need, no want. No hunger. She snapped her eyes open again, and felt the twisting knife of fate in her gut. A life of misery and helplessness beckoned to her, moaned for her. Death seemed to rule her thoughts lately, and she pondered that her mother was the primary cause.

"Mother."

"Yes dear?" the older woman turned her head to Anna, dulled forest green meeting teal fury.

"Momma," Anna inhaled deeply as she spoke, and silently let her fingers find her mother's hand.

"Momma," she repeated. "I promise I will find something to do with my life. I..." her eyes watered, and she looked up into the sky, silently blowing her own hopes a kiss.

Bowing her head, she followed the siren call of knowledge and destiny to her bedroom, where her algebra waited.


Again trapped in the assemblage of plastic and metal called a taxi, Anna silently forgave her mother. This is now my life, she thought. She exhaled through her nose, noting how her purse and portfolio were stacked neatly. Satisfactorily. Looking outside again, Anna noticed how unseemingly small it all was. Winnipeg was the place she would show herself to be more than the girl who dreamed, she decided. Just like this city wasn't what it looked like on a map.

That was when she spotted a tassel of platinum blonde hair ahead, on the sidewalk. She looks like the girl I used to dream about, she thought to herself. Feeling pleasure wax and wane through her belly, Anna Shackle felt vines of hope she hadn't felt since she had last thought about the girl, in college.

As the small car approached, Anna fingered a strand of her copper mane. The girl wore slightly weathered Reeboks, turning into black and aqua yoga pants, and a slate-grey ski vest, with steely arm stubs of a tshirt sticking out of the bottom and arms. A toque from a defunct hockey team adorned her head, completing her jogging garb. Anna could almost see her in one of those corny VISA commercials, jumping out of a plush couch and cheering at a hockey game, all the while trying to keep a slice of pizza off her face and in the hand of the large man next to her, who was engaged in a shouting cheer with her. Anna imagined her having a voice like the ringing of wind chimes, alto but musical, even yelling at a television set.

Allowing herself her first open-aired smile in a good few months, Anna rubber-necked as they passed the blonde, and met the girl's eyes for an instant. Breath caught in her throat, the redheaded young businesswoman in the taxi felt all time stop as her heart thudded slowly. The girl on the sidewalk,jogging towards the same direction her ride was going, was a stunning replica of the girl she had dreamed.