Jillian Chantal

I’m back with Tuesday Tales. Life and work have been crazy so I haven’t been able to dedicate the time I like to my writing. But I’m back this week. I hope it lasts. 🙂

This week’s word is fussy. I am still working on my train story.

Be sure to check out the other tales here.

We walked—well, I staggered—through the glass door and back to our regular car.

Anita didn’t let go of me and led me toward her normal seat, pulling me down beside her as she sat.

She furrowed her brows. “What were you doing with that unsavory looking character? What’s happened to you? You used to sit quietly and were sweet to everyone without going off with strangers or inviting them to sit with you. You’ve gone rogue all of a sudden. Are there problems at home?”

Good grief, would she ever stop with the questions long enough for me to respond? I tuned her out while she nattered on. Until she elbowed me. “What?”

“Aren’t you going to say anything? I asked you a question.”

“I think you asked me about a dozen without taking a breath. Which one do you want me to answer?”

Anita recoiled and her eyes widened. “See? This is what I mean. You’ve changed. You’d have never called anyone out like that two weeks ago.” She patted the hand I had clenched in a fist around the strap of my messenger bag.

The look on her face was almost comical. A mixture of concern and aghast. I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. She was acting as if I’d suddenly become a serial killer.

I noticed the others looking at me in the same way. Had I really been such a doormat that when I chose to take a small stand and question why she was interrogating me it was a big deal? She was as fussy as the old homeless woman I’d come across once downtown who was trying to arrange her worldly goods in her shopping cart with the wind blowing some of her belongings around. Anita could’ve been her daughter—minus the homelessness and shopping cart—of course.

“There’s nothing wrong at home. Nothing wrong at work. Nothing wrong with my brain. You think you know me, but you don’t really. We see each other five days a week, two times a day. That means you don’t know how I am other than on this train.”

“Jane, that’s not fair. Anita’s just trying to help,” Jonathan said. “We may not hang out in our time off, but we’ve all been riding this train together for years. I thought we considered ourselves friends.”

He was right. I probably wasn’t being fair, but darn it, I’m a grown woman and I can talk to whoever I want. Who were they to stop me?