Green Light
The library is half-full. Not loud, but not silent either. Pages turning, the low hum of a computer monitor, someone’s pencil tapping.
Shauna gets there first. She takes the seat facing the window, opens her laptop, and doesn’t take off her jacket. The sun is catching on her hair in a way Jackie notices before she even sits down.
Jackie tosses her copy of The Great Gatsby on the table between them, the spine already cracked in places she didn’t mean to mark.
Shauna doesn’t look up. “You’re late.”
Jackie shrugs out of her coat. “You’re early.”
No response.
Jackie slides into the seat across from her. Opens her notebook. The sound of the spiral binding scratching the table echoes more than it should.
Shauna starts typing. Her fingers move fast, precise. She doesn’t rest her wrists on the keyboard.
Jackie watches her for a beat too long.
“Your nails are longer,” she says finally.
Shauna pauses. Blinks. Doesn’t look up.
“I stopped biting them,” she says.
Jackie nods. “Cool.”
She underlines a sentence in the book but doesn’t write anything down.
There’s a paper cup next to Shauna’s laptop—tea, half-drunk, sleeve from the cafe down the street. Not the one near the school. The one Jackie introduced her to.
Jackie taps her pencil against the edge of the table.
They work in silence. Or, they sit in silence while pretending to work.
Shauna highlights a passage.
Jackie leans forward, reading upside down. “You’re going with the American Dream angle?”
Shauna shrugs. “It’s basic. But it works.”
Jackie smirks. “You used to make fun of people who played it safe.”
“You used to pretend you weren’t playing at all.”
Shauna doesn’t say it with venom. Just fact.
Jackie exhales. She reaches for the book. Their fingers brush. Shauna moves hers away first.
Jackie holds the book open between them.
“We could say Gatsby’s dream was never really about Daisy,” she says. “Just about wanting something he couldn’t have.”
Shauna doesn’t answer right away.
She keeps typing.
Then, after a beat, “That’s not bad.”
Jackie smiles. Quiet, private. “Thanks.”
The clock on the wall ticks. A girl at the other table sneezes. Shauna’s tea goes cold.
Jackie closes the book.
“Same time tomorrow?”
Shauna nods.
She doesn’t look up.
Jackie watches her pack up her laptop. The sleeves of Shauna’s jacket are too long. Jackie recognizes it—it’s the one Lottie wore last week.
Shauna zips her bag. Her fingers hesitate for a half-second over the zipper.
Jackie says nothing.
Shauna walks out.
Jackie stays seated for a long time