The Girl in the Window

Ellie Falco '29

. . . She jumped . . .

Looking out her window the girl was met with a night sky she had seen thousands of times, but tonight was different.

The girl in question was situated on the first floor of a very old, very expensive house. The room she sat in was lavish, but bare, it was as though she was a guest. 

But she wasn’t.

This had been her home for all her memory and now here she sat tear stained cheeks and wondering how it would feel if she just disappeared.

It felt as though her world had collapsed around her. But, if she was being honest she was just now seeing how terrible it really was.

This girl was meant to be strong, she was meant to be smart, she was meant to be a fighter. 

But she wasn’t.

In this moment sitting in her childhood bedroom, a room where she had felt nothing but pain and sadness. Contemplating the worst thoughts. It was as though she finally saw everything clearly.

Her thoughts spun round and round but one thing stood out, He’s gone whispered over and over and over again. And more tears slipped out of her eyes

The girl was no older than 12 years old and yet here she sat so utterly done.

She had gotten used to it happening. And yet it still felt new every time. The darkness of the room, and the pain, the pain she was sure would never stop. This time was longer than the others, days she sat in that dark musty room all alone with her pain, as though the world had forgotten her. And then it remembered her and she was let out into the bright world beyond that dungeon.

He let her out. And he gave her barely a glance; he couldn't even tell her himself. The man who raised her. Who claimed he loved her (though she knew that was untrue). Couldn't even tell her.

He couldn’t tell her her own best friend was dead.

A servant told her.

She was in her room blissfully unaware of the turmoil her country was in.

And a servant poked her head in, ada her mind supplied, and,

 I just wanted to say I'm so sorry. 

For what?

You don’t know?

The servant then looked at her with pity, the type of look she'd always resented.

Know what!?

For a second she looked conflicted

In a stuttery voice that would echo through her ears for years to come Ada choked out,

H-hes dead

Who? She responded breath short

Elias

N-no she choked out tears flowing from her eyes 

I'm so sorry Ada repeated before patting her shoulder and walking out of the room.

Her best friend was gone and no one had bothered to tell her. Her own grandfather hadn’t even told her.

When she went to see him before her classes the next day he saw her puffy eyes and all he said was I see you’ve  heard the news. 

That was all he said.

So here she sat all alone looking at a window at a landscape that she had always thought of as home. 

But how can one think of a place as home when your life there is built on lies. 

And so she was shackled to life by a duty to family and hope, hope for a future without this pain and these secrets. And above although unwillingness so, she opened a little book and wrote out the last page, it said

Goodbye

And then she signed a name she never wished to hear again. And then,

. . .She jumped. . .

She jumped out a window that she had looked out her entire life and when her feet touched the ground, she ran.