The Girl by the Window
1374 Words
Rain tapped softly against Lea’s bedroom window while the rest of the house slowly unraveled downstairs.
Again.
She sat cross-legged on her bed with her sketchbook resting against her knees, pencil moving lazily across unfinished lines. The desk lamp beside her cast a dim yellow glow across the room, leaving the corners hidden in shadow.
Downstairs, voices drifted upward through the thin walls.
Her mother and uncle arguing again.
Not loudly this time.
No plates breaking.
No shouting sharp enough to shake the house.
Just exhausted voices carrying years of disappointment neither of them knew how to let go of.
“You can’t keep living like this.”
“I’m trying.”
“Trying isn’t enough anymore.”
Silence.
Then quieter voices again.
Tired voices.
Voices that sounded worn down by life itself.
Lea reached for her headphones and pressed them tightly over her ears without turning any music on.
The silence inside the headphones felt safer somehow.
She didn’t want to hear the actual words anymore.
Only the feeling behind them.
Hopeless.
Heavy.
Empty.
Her pencil slowed across the page.
Sometimes Lea wondered if sadness could become inherited.
Passed down quietly from parent to child like old furniture nobody wanted anymore but still kept inside the house because throwing it away felt impossible.
Maybe that was why sadness felt so familiar to her.
Like she had been born into it.
Thunder flashed brightly outside, briefly illuminating her room in cold white light.
For one second, Lea’s reflection appeared clearly in the dark window glass.
She paused.
Slowly, she looked up at herself.
At fourteen years old, she still looked soft in some ways.
Round cheeks.
Large dark eyes.
Small hands resting carefully against the sketchbook paper.
From far away, she probably looked normal.
Maybe even gentle.
But the sadness inside her felt much older than fourteen.
Older than middle school.
Older than childhood.
Sometimes it felt ancient.
Like she had spent her whole life carrying emotions too large for someone her age.
Lea stared at her reflection longer.
She wondered if other people could see it too.
The sadness.
The exhaustion.
The loneliness sitting quietly behind her eyes.
Or maybe she simply looked invisible to everyone else.
That thought hurt more than she wanted to admit.
Downstairs, another wave of muffled arguing drifted upward.
Her mother’s voice cracked this time.
Her uncle sighed heavily in response.
Lea lowered her gaze back toward the unfinished drawing on her lap.
It was another sketch of a house.
She always drew houses.
Broken houses.
Empty houses.
Cold houses.
Sometimes she thought maybe she kept trying to draw a version of home that finally made sense to her.
But none of them ever did.
Outside, rain continued falling steadily against the windows.
Lea eventually closed the sketchbook and lay back against her pillow, headphones still covering her ears while the house breathed sadness beneath her bedroom floorboards.
The next morning, the rain hadn’t stopped.
Gray clouds covered the entire sky, turning everything outside dull and colorless.
Lea sat near the classroom window during history class while raindrops slid slowly down the glass beside her. The room smelled faintly like wet uniforms and old textbooks.
The teacher spoke continuously at the front of the class, writing dates and notes across the whiteboard.
But the words blurred together inside Lea’s mind.
Nothing stayed long enough to understand.
Her eyes drifted toward the cloudy sky outside instead.
Rain always made the world feel quieter.
Softer somehow.
Like even the city became tired.
“Lea.”
She startled slightly.
The teacher frowned at her from the front of the room.
“Were you listening?”
Heat crawled instantly up her neck.
Several students turned toward her.
“…Sorry,” she whispered quickly.
A few classmates giggled softly beneath their breath.
Not cruelly.
Not loudly.
But enough.
Enough to remind her that invisible people only got noticed when they did something wrong.
Lea lowered her gaze immediately toward her notebook.
The teacher sighed before continuing the lesson.
Conversations resumed.
Pens scratched across paper.
And just like that, the moment passed for everyone else.
But Lea still felt it sitting heavily inside her chest.
Embarrassment always stayed longer than it should have.
Especially when you already spent your whole life trying not to take up space.
After class ended, students flooded noisily into the hallway.
Lea moved quietly through the crowd with her bag hanging loosely from one shoulder, keeping her head lowered while people brushed past her.
“Lea.”
She looked up slightly.
Nara stood nearby holding two juice boxes in one hand like usual.
Something about seeing her instantly softened the tightness inside Lea’s chest.
“You disappear a lot lately,” Nara said gently while falling into step beside her.
Lea forced a small smile automatically. “I’m right here.”
Nara glanced toward her carefully.
“No,” she replied softly. “Not really.”
The words hit harder than Lea expected.
Not really.
Lea didn’t know why the sentence stayed with her so painfully afterward.
Maybe because it was true.
Lately, she felt disconnected from everything around her.
School.
Home.
People.
Even herself sometimes.
Like she moved through life physically present while some deeper part of her remained somewhere far away.
They walked quietly together down the hallway.
Students laughed loudly around them while teachers called reminders from classroom doors.
Normal sounds.
Normal lives.
Nara suddenly handed her one of the juice boxes.
“You’ve been thinking too much again.”
Lea blinked slightly. “How do you know?”
“You get quieter.”
Lea looked down at the drink in her hands.
The scary thing was that Nara noticed small things nobody else ever did.
Not even her mother.
That thought created guilt immediately afterward.
Because part of Lea wanted to be understood.
And another part was terrified of what would happen if someone finally understood too much.
The walk home that evening felt longer than usual.
Rainwater gathered along the sidewalks while dark clouds swallowed most of the sunlight before sunset even arrived.
Lea walked slowly with her hands buried inside her jacket pockets.
Nara’s words still echoed quietly inside her mind.
Not really.
By the time she reached home, the sky had already begun turning dark.
The house looked the same as always.
Still.
Silent.
Tired.
Her mother sat in the living room folding laundry while the television played quietly in the background.
Neither of them spoke much during dinner.
They rarely did anymore.
After washing her plate, Lea returned upstairs to her bedroom and automatically walked toward the window again.
It had become a habit lately.
Watching the outside world instead of living inside her own.
One by one, streetlights flickered on across the neighborhood.
Warm yellow lights glowing softly through rainy darkness.
Across the street, a family laughed loudly around their dinner table visible through open curtains.
The sound drifted faintly through the rain.
Lea stared at them quietly.
Someone accidentally spilled something because laughter suddenly became louder afterward.
Not angry laughter.
Real laughter.
Easy laughter.
The kind that belonged inside safe homes.
Lea closed her eyes briefly.
She tried imagining what warmth sounded like from inside instead of outside.
But she couldn’t.
Not anymore.
Maybe she once understood it when she was younger.
Before silence became normal.
Before carefulness became survival.
Before every conversation inside this house started feeling like walking across broken glass barefoot.
A soft breeze slipped through the slightly open window beside her, carrying the smell of rain, wet pavement, and distant cigarette smoke from somewhere down the street.
Lea hugged her knees tighter against her chest while sitting on the windowsill.
The room behind her felt dark.
The world outside kept moving forward.
Cars passed.
People laughed.
Dogs barked somewhere nearby.
Life continued so easily for everyone else.
And suddenly, the loneliness inside her became unbearable.
Quietly, almost too softly to hear even herself, Lea whispered into the darkness:
“I don’t think anybody would notice if I disappeared.”
The sentence lingered in the room afterward.
Small.
Fragile.
Honest.
But the room gave no answer.
Only silence returned to her.
And outside her window, the endless world continued moving forward without noticing her at all.
- Writer
