Snowflakes

It was an awfully cold February night. She shivered, flicked away the snowflake perched on the tip of her eyelash. As she waited in the snowfall for the bus that was always late, she caught her reflection in the water below her feet. Straggly brown hair, sunken blue eyes and a vacant stare was all she could see. Was that thereflection of the prom queen of 1998 she wondered.10 years and one failed marriage later all she had was 15 dollars in her purse and more veins on her leg then she could count.

She was 18 once, pretty and her only care in the world was what color her prom dress would be. With her curls and blue eyes, she was everyone’s darling. Especially her granddad’s . She was his “Jamie”. He was sure she would shoot to fame. “Success is just a stone throw away for you Jamie”, he would constantly say. She grew up believing that. She knew that once she was old enough to drive out of her small town, she would be lapped up by Hollywood. The day after her graduation ceremony she had caught a gray line out of Redville, Colorado She landed in Los Angeles full of dreams ,which started diminishing the minute she saw the first blond with body like Rachel Hunter’s waitressing at MacDonald’s. As she started making the rounds of the agencies, she always got the same answer. She was a natural beauty but there wasn’t much place in the current industry for that. Nowadays , she had to be a size zero with lips of Angelina Jolie to even attend most of the calls. She was so alone in this new world, where every one of her previous beauty marks was a flaw. Her hair was “Too curly”, Her eyes too big and her size 6 a little too fat. She made the first mistake when she allowed Jack , an agent tell her she was perfect. A year in Hollywood should have taught her that no one was considered perfect. When he took her life savings, he took her last hope of becoming the next Debra Winger.

She married a guy who promised her a part in his next movie. The only part he forgot to mention was that he probably was not going to make one for another 20 years . He was arraigned the day after their honeymoon for bank fraud. She started waitressing the day, she left the courtroom. The last 9 years she had gone from Hooters to Ric’s Diner on the corner of 22nd and 5th. Who would have thought the girl voted most likely to succeed, would be praying for a head waitressing job, so she could pay off her four thousand dollar credit card payment. She had incurred that paying for the bails bondsman , when her heel of a husband jumped bail and ran to Mexico. She knew she could never return home, to a place where she was once popular and beautiful.

But now she was waiting for the bus. Grandpa had passed away . There wasn’t much left . Just an old patch of land where his cabin stood. She was sure with the recession going on, she wouldn’t get more than 500 dollars for it. At least that would pay for this trip. As she watched the landscape change from the silver steel twining structures to the light yellows and browns of the corn fields, she wept a little. She straightened up as she walked to the little cabin. The funeral had taken place the week before, she had wanted to be there but her 15 year old supervisor refused to let her have some time off. As she sniffed and look at the mountain behind the cabin, a sense of calm settled over her. She could still hear her grandpa humming a Dean Martin tune, cooking the tuna casserole for dinner., That’s the only thing he knew how to make after grandma died.

She walked outside in her bare feet, feeling the cold pebbles and stones between her feet. Suddenly it started snowing. Flakes glinting in the cabin lights looked like crystals . She closed her eyes ,and it was the night of her prom again. She was again the prom queen , and the flakes transformed into the neon tube lights on the dance floor. As she swirled, listening to her granddad sing in her head, she tripped on a stone and fell flat into the snow. As laughter bubbled inside her , she look at the rock she tripped on. She took it in her hand and was about to throw it… “for you grandpa ,because you always said success was just a stone’s throw away”… as she swung her hand back, the stone glinted. She took it rubbed it and it shone. She felt like keeping it,maybe it was just granite but she wanted to check it out.

The next morning, Jamie took that stone to Mr.Horowitz , the town jeweler. To the jewelers and her mind blowing surprise , it was a beautiful 3.2 Carat diamond hidden in the stone. Grandpa had filled in a ditch in the front yard with the stones, which he had purchased of sailor of Ghana ship for five dollars on a trip to Sacramento. Jamie sold that stone and paid her bills. As she sat in the cabin looking at the snowflakes glinting off her twenty million dollar stones, she smiled., her grandpa had been right after all. “Success was a stones throw away”