In my panic, a voice suddenly called out, “Hey! Be careful, young lady!”
The voice barely faded when a middle-aged woman hurried over to me.
“Let me get that for you. It’s tough for you to manage on your own. If you fall, your mom’s going to be so worried.”
I scoffed silently.
My mom?
She wouldn’t be worried about me.
The kind-hearted woman took the key from my hand and opened the mailbox, pulling out a thick stack of letters and handing them to me.
“Here you go. Is this everything?”
I thanked her, but she waved it off with a laugh.
“No need to thank me. It was nothing!”
The woman glanced at the concert tickets I had just opened, her face lighting up with surprise.
“Is this… Jameson Hall’s concert ticket?”
I was startled. “You know Jameson Hall?”
Jameson was a pop singer-songwriter, but I never expected he’d gotten so popular that even the old people knew about him.
“Of course! My daughter just about lost her mind when she got these tickets the other day!”
Her expression was one of playful disdain, but there was a trace of affection in her voice.
In the end, she gave me a long series of reminders, like a mother would.
My nose tingled, and I felt an unexpected urge to cry.
I nodded to everything she said.
After declining her offer to help further, I controlled my wheelchair and left on my own.
Just as I turned the corner at the entrance of the neighborhood, a black van pulled in.
6
Back at home, I sifted through the stack of envelopes in my hands.
Every letter was addressed the same way: “To my dearest Leslie.”
I opened each letter carefully, taking great care with them.
Inside were tickets to every concert Jameson had ever held since he became famous.
There was always an empty seat at his concerts.
It was a VIP seat in the front row.
And all the tickets in my hands had that same seat number, without a single one missing.
Jameson’s concert tickets sold out fast.
Back before he became famous, there were only a handful of people at his very first concert.
Those few people had only come because I, sitting in my wheelchair, had handed out flyers on the street, begging them to come to a free show.
I still remember clearly: that day, he wore a slightly stained white t-shirt and a pair of jeans with frayed hems.
The sun blazed down mercilessly on that sweltering summer day.
His hair, damp with sweat, clung to his forehead, but it couldn’t hide the hope shining in his eyes.