This is an essay I wrote for my class in my writing class. The prompt was to write about a scene you observed that captures the essence of a neighborhood. In the case of this story, the neighborhood is one near the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore. The neighborhood, called Hampden, is known for its unconventionality. 

A girl walking by herself down the street, her hair bouncing in long blond waves. Along the street plain white walls are graced by yellow lights that read “Psychic Center: Open,” with a Ouija board resting on a table directly below. Next door, the Law Offices of Allan L. Billian sport a teal-painted bay window. There’s a red brick building too normal to belong, then a lime green building, an orange sherbet building, and, outside the next, a clothing rack from behind which a man pounces at the girl.

“Your glasses are awesome,” he says in a voice that rises and falls with each syllable. He is tall and wispy enough to sway in the breeze that rolls through The Avenue. He seems young enough that his choice of phosphorescent hair, with a thinness to match his figure, and adventurous taste in clothing could be attributed to youthful rebellion. He wears jeans with just enough holes, tears, and threads to let his skin breathe under all the tightness. The jeans lead to dark brown leather boots that he must have garnered from a construction worker. The boots perfectly contrast his silky blue vest worn over a white button-up shirt. On the vest is a nametag identifying him as a sales associate.

The girl takes him in with one bounce of the blond waves and her face opens into a smile. Her eyes twinkle behind her black horn-rimmed glasses, the wide frames reaching halfway past her cheek bones. Her gray jacket indicates she is a student at Johns Hopkins, her jeans and sneakers imply she is otherwise normal. It is the glasses, conspicuous and unconventional, that give the local Hampden man a reason to notice the girl.

“Thanks!” she responds brightly. The waves bounce from right to left as she looks through the shop’s windows. She considers the female mannequins, the one on the left wears a frilly white blouse with light pink polka dots, leaning forward with one hand on her hip, the other on her knee. The girl turns her head to the mannequin on the right, which wears a hot pink sleeveless shirt, looking as if she just slapped her knee after hearing a joke from the last passerby. The girl’s eyes peer at the sign above the shop. In rounded cursive is the name 9^th Life, and next to it is an image of a woman with a long tail and cat ears. Thoroughly intrigued, she steps over to the clothing rack and fingers through a palette of blouses, each one more vibrant than the one before. The man, putting less effort into being a sales associate than the clothing rack itself, stands, arms crossed, and watches. The girl stops and pulls out a hybrid of a dress and a men’s button-up dress shirt. It’s striped with light blue and white, and it has pockets and, as she holds it up in front of her reflection in the window, falls to mid-thigh.

“Good choice,” the man says with a small smile. The girl walks into the store after him to buy her souvenir—something to match her glasses.