Today I woke up early; my brother was thrashing around and talking in his sleep again. I had to get out so I padded my way towards the door, carefully creaked it open and slipped out only to trip on a loose spool of thread on my way out. Gauge didn't even notice.
Outside's getting a lot cooler now, soon they'll pull us all off the lines to start sewing fleece onto those new peacekeeper jackets. I love it when they do that, since all the material for their uniforms is white there's no dying to work be done and I can let my battered hands rest for a few days. All there is to sewing linings is running the sewing machines and making sure you go in a straight line. It's mind numbing work but I love when that first new batch of fleece comes in and rolls down the work line. It looks so soft and white and thick, I feel warm just thinking about it!
My coat's threadbare and will barely keep me dry this winter if it's as wet as the last one. I wonder if maybe we could save up for a new second hand one. So long as I don't end up wearing my brothers hand me down one again. The arms on all his clothes stretch out far past my hands and everyone knows that that went out of fashion years ago! I don't want to look like I'm fashion missing, like I'm poor, not if I'm going to walk through the square. Especially not if I'm going to walk past the carpenters.
A week or so ago, when mother was sick I ran to fetch some tea since a certain brother of mine had his girlfriend over and they took up about half the box making pot after pot and trying to "keep warm". Gross.
Anyways I was running late since there's a new kid in the dying room and she didn't know where to put away the dyes so of course I had o help her and I'm walking fast, trying to get there and back before it gets too dark since the peacekeepers question anyone out by themselves at night, especially if that person happens to be a girl. I got stuck behind this old truck full of upholstery ends.
Everyone's crowding around and pushing to see what's in the back since those kinds of things don't happen often and you can sometimes get a great deal. Since I'm small for my age, I have a hard time pushing through the swarming people. I look up, trying to see over this sea of bobbing heads and I see a boy in the brightly lit carpenter's window. His head is tilted back in laughter and I can see stark white teeth and brown hair shaking into his eyes, eyes that are staring right at me. For that brief moment it felt as though I was a needle, drawn towards him like a magnet. The crowd all but disappeared as I glided towards his chuckling figure... That is until I got shoved from behind by a big bald man and toppled head over foot. My leggings were ripped and as I brushed myself off and stood, I saw that he was gone. My heart fell, though it had no reason to and I made it through the crowd got the tea and came home.
I don't know why I'm so fixated on him or why I was so disheartened when I lost him. It was probably a combination of exhaustion, cold and some kind of illness. Still, I've avoided the store since then, taking the long way through the square to and from the factory. I wonder who he is though.