Waiting For Jamie

• Ebony Hargrave, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2014

Sunlight poured the window, bouncing off the phone sitting motionless on the table. But five years changed a lot of things, including the weather; it had been raining.
Coffee arrived. Sebastian looked up from the dark screen resting on the wooden table-top, smiled at the waitress, and then pushed the cup across the empty space to the opposite side of the table.
He could almost see her grinning crookedly at him with those brown eyes. The smile fell away.
People talked quietly around him. Keys jangled, voices rose and quietened, chairs squeaked, the smell of coffee and cider met his nose. The table was rough to touch, the water in his glass icy cold, and the breeze warm on his face.
But he never saw that. Sebastian saw the shadows and creases of a face that burned behind his eyes. He saw the firelight reflected in the fathomless depths of brown pools that contrasted so readily with the alabaster skin and ebony hair.
“Jamie.” He murmured.
Sunlight shone through the large window next to him and illuminated the empty space where she sat.
A surge of wind ruffled his hair as more people entered the pub. He shuddered at the frozen air.
Was it supposed to be cold?
Jamie was gone. He looked around wildly. For her face, her hair, her big eyes that always seemed to say the same thing: What are you doing? Sebastian often wondered that as well.
“I need you.” Was his whispered response, although he didn’t know why he’d said it exactly? Moving his hand across the table instinctively, brushing over his phone. He suddenly realised the phone was out for a reason.
Just like five years earlier.
Why was the phone out? Maybe he could have remembered once upon a time, but now he only knew that he had to remember something…
The door opened again, letting in a blast of fresh, cold air. His phone buzzed as he shivered suddenly in the change of temperature.
A flash of dark hair vanished out the door, and Sebastian grabbed his phone and the newspaper under it, heading after the familiar figure on the spur of the moment.
It’s her. He thought with a rush of anticipation. It must be her!
He pushed the door to open, and then saw the PULL sign. Half laughing at his stupidity, he continued outside.
But the laugh died in his throat the moment the rain and cold hit his face. No-one was there.
His phone buzzed again, and this time he looked: We’re visiting Jamie tomorrow, honey. Would you like to come?
And it struck him. Slowly, like water freezing over. She wasn’t coming. She would never come.
Dropping the phone and newspaper simultaneously, he sat down and buried his head in his hands. The light from the screen shone on the text of the five year old newspaper, highlighting a paragraph.
"Jamie Campbell was hit by a car on Thursday night after a power blackout hit the southern area..."