There is nothing significant about this moment. Not at first.
Seattle’s old Industrial District is shrouded in the darkness of an early morning, edged by mist, as usual. A few stragglers and midnight party-goers rev their engines up the distant expressway while Seattle’s skyline looms on the horizon, rimmed with light, as usual.
And though it is simultaneously too late into the night and too early in the morning for her to be awake, Anita Abbernathi’s eyes lift open—as usual.
She blinks through the thick haze of sleep. Long, auburn hair is ruffled from the dip in her pillow, and a thin, pale arm tucks a mangy old teddy bear against her side. The more she blinks away the sleep, the more her bright, green eyes begin to register the shadows in her bedroom.
What, she asks herself, had awakened her this time?
Quite often it will be a sound—a creak within the old building’s walls, or a sudden gust of wind shaking her window loosely within its track. But sometimes it is nothing at all. Only a moment in the quiet dark that both her mind and her body must wish to steal for themselves, before the mayhem of another day arrives.
Despite her youthful features, the girl holds an air of begrudging acceptance: this is not the first time she has awakened in the middle of the night. It certainly will not be the last.
But as she sits up and takes in the small square of her bedroom, she is suddenly mindful of something different in the air. She can feel it, at first, deep within her chest, like something only the heart knows. She feels it in the back of her mind, like something unquestionable she learned long ago.
Then she hears it, muffled through her bedroom door: the sound of something shattering.
She squeezes the bear in the crook of her arm as her attention locks onto the wood. Wildly the thoughts race through her: is someone breaking in? Where are Mommy and Daddy? Should she call for help? Should she investigate?
No: light seeps under the door. The rest of the household is just as awake as she is—which is not as usual.
Her brow furrows as she swings her legs out of bed and plants her feet on the hardwood floor. A shiver courses through her, and she rubs her arms to ward away the early morning chill. She steps toward the door; voices lift beyond the coarse wood. She stops.
They are arguing again.
She is not too young to notice the change in recent weeks: the way they seem to stay up later each night, talking in hushed tones. The way they are silent at the breakfast table each morning after. The way they kiss her forehead and tell her not to worry, that everything is fine, but deep within her heart and in the back of her mind she knows they’re lying.
She stares through the wood as the voices beyond it start to rise. Through the darkness, she crosses to the door and puts an ear to it. Her eyes dance on some distant thought before her father’s voice cuts through:
“Damn it, Elena! Haven’t we been through this already?”
The harshness of her father’s tone hits her somewhere deep, and she stumbles backward, wrapping her arms around herself as the voices fall to a dull murmur on the other side.
She sits on the edge of her bed. Her gaze is still far away as she huddles in the dark. It wraps around her like a blanket, hiding her from their eyes—from all the half-answered questions, the uncertain exchanges of looks, and all the things left unsaid between them.
In the darkness, she can think. And on this night of no great significance, she thinks this is why I always wake up late, alone. Because it’s just easier that way. Everyone else in one room, with their problems and their secrets; her in the next, with the darkness and the silence. Thinking her thoughts without being bombarded with questions. Listening without having to hear all the things they’re not saying—to her or to each other. Always outside, looking in.
At first, she puts on a brave face, lifting her chin to stare defiantly at the opposite wall, as if she’ll wear her loneliness like armor if she must; as if nothing and no one can hurt her, now. But even a few seconds of pretending is too much for her, and she sighs, rising once more from the bed.
She turns to the window, to the desk resting beneath the closed shutters. Spread across its surface is an array of colored pencils and blank sheets of paper. Some have the beginnings of drawings: bright sunsets over the ocean, green forests, and snowy mountains. All cast aside halfway through, as if the artist knew she could never truly capture the images floating through her mind.
On one corner of the desk, wedged between a giant toy brachiosaurus and a model horse with a Band-Aid wrapped around its broken leg, are some books. They are the only items on the desk with any order to them. Some of the spines are thick, some are thin; most have clear signs of multiple readings running down them.
As her fingers trace their spines, she quietly recites the books from memory. There’s The Wizard of Oz, and The Velveteen Rabbit. There’s the large picture-book of Treasure Island her dad had since he was a kid, and the newest book in the collection: a pristine paperback copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
She removes the book from its place and flips to the title page. Though her eyes have adjusted to the darkness, it is still impossible to make out the elegant lettering scrawled beneath the title. But she doesn’t need to see it to know it’s in her mother’s hand, and she doesn’t need to see it to know the words:
13th August
To our beautiful daughter on her seventh (!) birthday.
Never stop dreaming big dreams.
Love, Mom and Dad
She repeats the words to herself, having read them a thousand times before. Never stop dreaming. It seems so easy to do when it’s just words on a page. But when the voices behind the door start to rise again, it’s difficult to think of anything other than cold, hard reality.
“No, Bill. What I expect is a little help, here. We’ve been living paycheck to paycheck for three months, now. We have a child to think of.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
Their words taper off, once more hiding behind the closed door. Anita’s hand falls from the books, and her head dips in defeat. She doesn’t understand why it’s so hard to just be.
Her eyes lock onto the white shutters over her desk. Through the rough, wooden slits, the orange glow of the rusty streetlamp on the corner is plastered to the pane, dappled with still droplets left from the night’s rain. From this angle, it looks like a spider’s web covered with dew and sunshine.
She eases herself onto the desk, careful to keep her balance as it tilts on that one short leg. Eagerly, she stretches to reach the latch. Once on her tiptoes, straining to gain a bit more distance, her fingertips flick at the handles, and both shutters fall open. The shadow flies across her face as the right shutter swings wide: it nudges the lamp on the corner of her desk. Anita sees it tilt on its axis, watches as it rolls around its base and falls out of sight over the edge.
The old, ceramic body hits the wood floor, and the pieces fly apart.
The apartment falls silent.
A brief pause; footsteps. Heavy, echoing—coming down the hallway to her door.
She can’t be on the furniture. She can’t be up this late; she can’t be so careless with lamps.
She jumps from the desk and falls to her knees, searching the floor for the scattered pieces. She retrieves the few within reach, gingerly lifting each shard and laying them in her palm, remembering past words of caution from her mother whenever a glass broke.
Maybe if she’s careful, if she cleans it up okay, they’ll get back to their argument and leave her alone.
The door swings open, and there’s light. It hits her full in the face, and they can see her—the whole world can see her, pale and hunched on the floor.
The huge, dark silhouette of her father fills the doorway, and his head sweeps between her and the shards spread across the room.
“What have you done, Anita?” He takes a step forward.
She throws a hand up, letting the collected pieces of lamp fall back to the floor. He has never hit her before. She has never even seen him violent. But they’ve never fought so much before, either. Perhaps everything has changed. Perhaps this is the start.
Her stomach begins to churn, and she feels light-headed, like she’s about to be sick. Her eyes fill with tears.
“Bill!” Her mother, from the kitchen. “Bill, get back here!”
Her father lingers in the doorway. His face is a dark mask, but his eyes are on her. She can feel the weight of them press on her cheekbones and her bare arms and even the palm of her hand, still raised between them.
“Bill!”
He steps back; the mask turns away. The door slams shut behind him, and all the shadows fall back into place. Footsteps echo down the hallway.
Anita stares at the dark space where the doorway was, and her arm lowers. He didn’t hit her. She wants to sigh in relief, but she still feels sick, waiting for the shouting to start again, or for him to come back.
The apartment remains silent. As the seconds tick by, the churn in her stomach recedes, leaving behind a dull, empty ache.
She begins to cry.
And there is nothing significant about this moment. Anita feels as if she has cried for days—even years—but when she finally lifts her head from her knees, nothing has changed. In silence, she rises from the floor and crawls across her desk. Her fingers curl over the border of the windowpane and she lifts it carefully. In silence, she pokes her head into the night and takes it in.
Her window is on the second floor, level with the old streetlight. As she breathes in the cool air, the mist begins to shift around the empty street below, throwing a new haze across the light’s faded glimmer. It flickers once, twice, then several blinks in quick succession before it winks out completely.
All the lights in the neighborhood go dark.
For the first time in as long as she can remember, Anita sees the night sky from her window. Little by little, the grey mists part like a curtain overhead, and the bright points of stars break through. The Milky Way is a sparkling river in the dark, too powerful out here for the lights from the distant city-scape. A sliver of moonlight touches the earth, as bright as the early morning sun: the faraway figure of Mount Rainier towers above the black silhouettes of power lines, the abandoned train tracks, and the murky swirl of the river as it cuts along the Industrial District.
A cool breeze pushes through the window to caress her face, freezing her tears with the stale wind of an early spring. She edges onto the windowsill and sits, unconcerned as her legs dangle a full story above the cracked pavement below.
The street beneath her echoes with the flutter of trash and fallen leaves, and the last stray sniffles as she wipes away her tears. On the wind is the sharp scent of a forest after rainfall. She turns into it and sniffs the air, casting her eyes over the mountains across a field of clear, starry sky.
What, she asks herself, is out there?
More than this, the answer comes from somewhere deep within her. The thought fills her heart to the point it swells with joy and hope: there’s something out there, waiting. Waiting just for her. Adventure and freedom, beyond that dark horizon. Everything she has ever read about. Everything she has ever dreamed of.
A place where she will no longer be outside looking in. A place where she can belong.
“I wish,” she says suddenly, as if the words fall from her lips of their own accord; her hands press together in prayer. “I wish someone would take me away from here. I wish I could be free.”
Silence drops over the street. She holds her breath, waiting for the apartments and mobile homes to disappear. After another moment of waiting, of nothing, one last sob slips through her lips, and she leans to rest her heavy head against the window frame. Deep inside, the churning in her stomach makes one final lurch, and then a sudden stop. The heartbeat that pulsed hopefully along her skin withdraws to the hollows of her chest, and on her next inhale, the weight within it grows hard and heavy.
Mechanically, one hand drifts to her cheek to wipe the last lingering tear stain from existence. She turns from the street, set on retreating to the warmth of her room and closing the window forever.
Then the streetlights flicker back on.
The one outside her window takes an extra moment, a brief spark through the haze, before bursting back to life with more strength than it has had in years.
A man stands within the circle of light below her.
He leans against the pole, staring up at her window. Bright, golden eyes, like the eyes of a panther in the dark, latch onto her face. A cry catches in her throat, and she stares, frozen, back at him. Neither of them move. She wants to duck into her room, but he’ll still be out there, and all night she’ll know it. She feels it in her bones.
He’s tall. He’s not an old man, but he’s not young, either—closer to her parents’ ages than to hers. He wears an outfit like something she has seen in a movie: a black jacket reaching as far as his knees, with big, silver buttons down one side. It flutters open to reveal a white dress shirt and dark pants, tucked into a pair of worn leather boots. His long, straight hair is tied back, but a few loose strands fall past his shoulders in lines of silver—true, shining silver, like metal. The orange beam casts a halo over his head as he leans against the light.
A sword hangs from his belt: a bright hilt formed by intricate swirls of steel. The blade is hidden under a dark leather sheath.
But the eyes. They not only glow with their own source of light: something within them is much older than the face. They stare like they’ve seen ages pass and castles fall and fire rain from the sky. Though he looks at her, his mind seems far away, like she’s just a piece in a bigger puzzle he’s trying to figure out. For a moment, nothing else exists—only the small expanse between them.
Then he blinks, and his full attention is on her. He smiles; one golden eye winks.
The smile isn’t kind. It’s the type of smile someone gives you when they know something you don’t, and it’s something important.
She frowns at him, and he looks amused by her annoyance.
Then his eyes turn skyward. She follows his gaze, in time to catch the tail of a shooting star as it flees into the early morning. She stares after it, sitting soundlessly on the windowsill in the chill air. Once the last stretch of light disappears across space, her eyes go back to the street.
The man is gone.
