She didn’t know the girl, she was sure of it now. In the walk from the department store she had rifled through her memory, cross referencing facial features, hair style, voice, clothes, posture, gait; and found nothing. Now, she felt more anxiety, even more than she’d felt when she heard the comment as she marched through the cosmetics department. But now she questioned: had she heard it –  would a stranger be so rude? Was it just her imagination running away with something she could not  be sure of? Again the rifling started, the Rolodex shuffle; maybe she knew the girl, maybe…

She caught her reflection in a store window. She hated the way she looked when she was submerged in obsessive thought – her eyes looked smaller and her face longer, her chin tended to jut out. She thought she looked like a brooding old spinster at best, at worst: an angry man about to rampage through the streets. Not the desired presentation for a woman of twenty years who woke up this morning vowing to shine like the rising sun.

Alas, the morning clouded over quickly…

-Danny Grosso