iced coffee (sans editing, ending, and introduction)

I'm trying to weigh the value, $4.00 and the trouble of crossing main street--twice--but how do you put a value on getting to of the house (I should have stayed longer at the library), and confidence, and the first sip of iced coffee? I make my decision coming up the front steps of my house, paint flaking off onto the bottom of my sandals. The house closes around me like a hand around a coin, dark, greedy. My sister looks up at me from the couch with weepy, lethargic eyes. She probably hasn't moved all day. I ignore her wheedling requests, the attempts to make me stay so that she has someone to complain to. (The air, oppressive.)

"Tell mom I’m getting coffee."

"What?"

"I'm getting coffee!" I like my house; there's something cute about it, endearing, something charming about the clutter, but not when the sky looks like this, and it's this hot, and I can see tiger lilies through the open door--and the house just feels small, and then I'm gone.

The tiger lilies fence the road, cluster, lost, in yards, brilliant orange against dingy, flaking paints. They don't discriminate in their choice of homes--the new houses on my street, and old house, new houses that look old, old houses with new additions... (In my sweaty hands, the book I'm carrying starts to slip.) A fire truck passes me on main street, and the bits of siren and static-y conversation sound like they’re been through a fan blade, all chopped up, and garbled, with long paused where they don't belong. The pavement sparkles as I make mad dashes across intersections.

There are boys playing hackysack in the parking lot, shirts stripped off and beads of sweat glistening in their hair. I feel anachronistic, and they somehow give me back a sense of time.