One for the Dreamers

Writing prompts are fun.

With the VA writers group I’m part of, our moderator will often throw out a visual prompt, and you get to write a story about it. There are no right or wrong answers with the prompt and as long as you don’t start talking about getting lost in the snowstorm and eaten by Grizzley Bears, you’ll probably be okay.

Yesterday, Nate tossed this one out. We had about ten minutes to write a story about it.

When I saw it, my first thoughts were of my beautiful grand-daughter Alexia Marie Rodriguez out in NYC.

So Princess, this one is for you.

She didn’t have the crosswalk light. As she stood waiting, watching the parade of cabs, cars, buses, and people move past, her breath formed small clouds of vapor in the cold New York evening. As she watched, she hummed.

The humming tuned into a song.

“They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway,” she sang softly. “They say there’s always magic in the air.”

As she sang, most people ignored her. She was just one more pretty girl singing to herself in a city full of pretty girls who sang to themselves. But occasionally, someone made eye contact with her and smiled.

Some of those people knew about the dream.

The light changed, and she stepped out onto the street. It had rained a little, and the small amount of water caught the lights and smeared them into lines of red and green and white.

Nope, she thought. Too late for Christmas.

Even too late for New Year’s.

She went on humming, having forgotten most of the words. But the song was an anthem for her now. A song of perseverance.

She shifted the weight of the backpack she wore. It was new and didn’t fit her yet. It held her dreams in the form of dancing shoes and leotards.

One more audition, she thought.

She’d left work early. That was the nice thing about working at a restaurant in NYC. Almost everyone was an actor or a singer or a dancer looking for the big break.

All of them shared the dream. And all of them shared the split shifts, and the covering of the shifts. It was a common dream they all had. A communal dream shared by them all in their sleeping and walking hours.

Today, Margie covered for her. next week, she’d cover for Margie. They were dreamers who had each other’s back.

And that was true of all the dreamers.

They viewed it as if one of them got a part, they all got a part.

It was something else they all shared.

Hope.

“They say there’s always laughter in the air!” she continued to sing.

She walked another half a block and then stopped to check the address texted to her.

This was it.

She pulled the straps on the backpack tighter as if she were going into combat. Then she opened the door of the theater and walked in for the audition.

“Showtime,” she whispered to herself.