My brain skips sideways.
Can ghosts text?I blink at the screen like the answer might appear there.No, probably not, right?But I’ve never really tested that theory.
Unknown:
Do you need to?
Yes, my inner protector screams.Yes, youdoneed to know who you’re talking to.The safe answer is always yes.I glance around my sparse apartment.The shadows are different now, they’re inching in, leaning closer.I feel foolish, reckless even.The logical part of me knows that a simple text conversation with a stranger is hardly a threat, but the emotional part, the part that's still frayed from leaving everything familiar behind, still adjusting to silence where laughter used to be, tightens with unease.
Everything in me says to stop.To close the thread and go to sleep.But something about the earlier streetlight, about the way that stranger looked at me like I was more than background, makes me press my lips together and let the rule bend.
I’ve never found myself in the position of texting a stranger.
Unknown:
I’m Cassius.
Cassius.It’s not a name I’ve ever heard before.I whisper it to hear the way it sounds, to taste it in my mouth.
That’s your name, but not who you are.
Unknown:
Do you not have a favorite book?Is that why you won’t answer?
These Is My Words by Nancy E.Turner.It’s not widely known but I read it at least once a year and have since I was young.
With a hesitant tap, I send a cautious reply, my mind a whirlwind of doubt and curiosity.I'm stepping into the unknown, one text at a time, even as I question if it's the right decision.The city outside doesn't care about my hesitations; it moves on, indifferent and vast.And here I am, trying to find my place within it, one text, one moment of panic, and one decision at a time.
Unknown:
I just ordered it.What’s your name?
Melinda.
I send my name back and hit send before his message sinks all the way in.He ordered my favorite book.Why?He must like to read, that has to be a good sign, right?Criminals read too, my brain taunts.
Unknown:
You wanna keep talking, Lindy girl?
Lindy girl.I stare at those two words, an unfamiliar flutter in my stomach.My mom has never let anyone give me a nickname.No one called me Mel or Linda or Lindy.Anyone who tried was immediately corrected by my mom.If I wanted her to be called that, I would’ve named her that, she’d say, her voice firm, leaving no room for argument.Her name is Melinda.Once I was old enough to understand, I followed suit, echoing her insistence with a polite firmness that brooked no argument.I would tell anyone who offered up a nickname to please, call me by my full name.
I type it out.Please call me Melinda.I delete it.
It’s Melinda.Delete again.
Lindy girl.For the first time in my life, my instinct isn’t to correct my name.I trace my finger over the text, a small smile playing at the corners of my mouth.I stare at it.At that name.Lindy.It feels like a whisper from a life less ordinary, a hint of someone I could be, someone less tethered to the expectations I've always lived by.It feels like a secret, a small thing, yet it's a deviation from the norm that brings an unexpected comfort, a warmth that blooms in the cold expanse of my new reality.Vegas is about being less afraid.Letting this stand counts.It’s only a nickname and somehow it isn’tonlyanything.
About books?
I type back, choosing for now not to comment on the nickname.A part of me wants to cling to this tiny rebellion, this minuscule slice of identity that’s solely mine, not dictated by my past or the expectations that have always surrounded me.It's a tentative step into the unknown, a silent acknowledgment of a self that might exist beyond the boundaries I've always known.
Unknown:
About anything.
What’s your favorite book?I’ll order it.
