Speak easy

I needed to know how the story would end, so I gathered my wits about me and went to meet the man in the yellow scarf.

I'd been trying to find her for months. Always the free spirit, my sister never saw the sense in tradition. She mixed with dangerous people, people with thoughts and ambitions that dazzled in the light of electric street lamps but fizzled under the canopy of an open, starry sky.

She knew a fella once. He wore a white suit and used university words poorly. In his pocket he carried a tattered notebook bound in water-stained leather where he scrawled the words he said would be his ticket out. Stories about greed and love and champagne. I supposed he fancied himself an American in Paris, not a farmer's son with dusty cuffs.

He'd come to our porch when mama was out visiting, even though he knew he shouldn't. People would get the wrong idea and then Agnes would be lost. Whispers already followed her. A girl of her spirit would always draw the eye and rattle the tongue. Eye contact with her was a powerful thing and her tinkling laugh more powerful still. 

Clarence knew what he was about. One day I passed by the front window. It was open, the warm current rustling the aging sheers, mama's one concession to the life she led long ago. The breeze brought with it the smell of dried grasses mixed with something floral, and words. Hushed tones that bespoke a connection that tugged at my heart as much as it caused it to drop.

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

Of course they weren't his, those words. He's stolen them from Wilde and kept them in his pocket for moments like these. A young thing like Agnes could get caught up in words like those. I sighed and took a step back, cursing my own sentimentality. Those words aren't for girls like us. They aren't real.

The next day she was gone.