The Sixth Window

This is the first time I’ve looked out of a window, instead of looking in.

It’s the only thought that crosses my mind as I stare out at the midnight road. Cold drafts, hard pavers, dark alleys. The three things I’ve had the most experience with. 

But let me backtrack. 

Every week, I make the same nighttime journey. Six windows to visit, six memories to relive. It makes sense, and even if it’s a waste, it’s an escape from the freezing streets I call home.

The first window is one of my favorites. Although it’s grown dirty over the past year, I can still see the racks of clothes, the mannequin with the windbreaker in the window.

The windbreaker is the first memory.

My tenth birthday. The house was all gold and silver streamers, and a hand-painted “Happy Birthday, Caleb!” sign obscured all but a few branches of the Christmas tree in the living room.

My older sister flashed a grin at the excitement in my eyes. “You like the sign?”

“Did you paint it yourself?”

Ana nodded. “You’re turning double digits! It had to be special.”

Three wrapped presents caught my eye on the coffee table. 

“What are these?” I demanded, rushing to them.

My father entered the room with a smile. “Your presents.”

“But—I thought—”

“We all pooled our money. I wish we could’ve gotten you more, but with Christmas coming up—”

I jumped into his arms, wrapping him in a hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

He laughed. “Aren’t you going to open them?”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Mom?”

My father hesitated, then nodded. “Of course. She’ll be in here any minute.”

I should’ve seen it then. His careful, walking-the-line tone when he talked about her. The way they never seemed to end up in the same room. It wouldn’t have changed anything, but at least I could have seen what was coming.

After what felt like an eternity, my mother showed up. She offered a tight-lipped smile as she avoided my father’s questioning eyes.

“Happy birthday, Caleb!”

Looking back, the words were so clearly forced, but I didn’t notice.

“Can I open my presents now?!”

My father smiled. “Go ahead.”

The first two presents, one from my mother and one from Ana, always manage to slip my mind. Socks, probably, or some toy I would never use. It used to bother me, my lack of recollection, but I’ve perfected the art of skimming through the memories. Glancing over the hard parts and the details I can’t remember, and basking in the warmth of the best things for as long as I can.

Like the third gift. My father’s.

The paper tore easily under my little fingers, and the air buzzed with energy as I opened the cardboard box.

A perfect hunter-green windbreaker, folded neatly on top of a bed of tissue paper. 

I carefully lifted it out, holding it up to my chest to get a glimpse of how it would look. “It’s perfect!”

My father laughed. “I’m glad you like it.” 

I wrapped my arms around him again, barely able to clasp my fingers around his torso. “Thank you.”

He ruffled my hair. “I wish I could have gotten you more, but—”

I shook my head. “This is the best present ever!”

I had no idea.

If someone were to ask me now what the best present was, I would say a family. A functional one, that cares enough about each other to never abandon anyone. 

To never leave one stranded on the outside, looking in.

The thoughts that it provokes makes this particular window a bittersweet one, but it’s one of the better parts of my route. I tear my eyes away from the windbreaker in the store window, tie my tattered hunter-green one tighter around my waist, and force my legs to carry me to the next window.

This one is a memory I’m not as fond of. Just an empty house, with one remaining window. A crack splits the filthy glass into two jagged sections, and I can’t see anything inside for the coat of dirt sticking to it.

What makes this one unique is that the significance lies in the cracked window itself, not on the other side. 

I have to force myself to visit this window, to relive this memory. I would never have thought that two jagged pieces of glass could trigger so much hurt. 

The first eleven minutes of the day were normal. My fifteen-year-old self was blissfully ignorant of the crying coming from two rooms over, too absorbed in imaginary conversations with my crush to notice Ana’s tear-streaked face as she cracked my bedroom door.

“Caleb?”

I stood. “What? Did Dad make pancakes?”

She shook her head slightly. “I think you should talk to Dad.”

My brow furrowed. “Why?”

“Just do it!” Ana snapped.

I took a step back. She’d never yelled at me before. “Jeez, I will. No need to get all grumpy about it.”

I pushed past her and made my way to my father’s room. He and my mother had been sleeping in different rooms, but that was normal.

“Dad?”

A sniff. “Come in.”

I opened the door and felt my muscles stiffen.

My father looked up from the sticky note he was holding, moisture in his eyes. “Caleb...I don’t know how to tell you this.”

I took a numb step toward the bed where he was sitting. “Who’s it from?” I whispered, eyes on the sticky note. I recognized that tall cursive.

I shouldn’t have asked.

“Your mother,” he managed, confirming my fears.

I could barely bring myself to voice the next question through the lump in my throat. 

“What does it say?”

My father clenched his eyes and crumpled the note. “She left.”

She left.

But she couldn’t have. 

She loved me.

Or so I thought.

I never stay at the broken window long enough to remember what happened next. It was a blur, and the anger and tears and questions merged together into a messy lump in my head long ago. I don’t care anymore—my own mother left me. That’s really all the answer I need.

Faded yellow catches my eye as I turn away from the glass. A pencil. I hold it up to the moonlight.

Considering it came from this crumbling house, it seems to be in good condition, minus the chipping paint. The eraser is long gone, probably trampled underfoot on an obscure sidewalk, and the lead is broken, but I pocket it anyways. I’ll use it before the night is over.

The third window is an eclectic little store, the kind run by old men who spend their lives collecting tabs from soda cans. I slip around to the back and scan the windows for the item I’m looking for. 

It stares at me from behind the farthest one, two painted eyes on wood. A nesting doll.

When I turned sixteen, I received one that was almost identical. The eyes were a little mismatched and the hand-painted lines shaky, but it meant more to me than the one in the window ever will. 

Ana showed it to me the second I came into the kitchen for breakfast.

“What’s this?” I asked, already walking past her. I wasn’t interested. I hadn’t been since my mother left. 

“Caleb.” 

“I’m hungry.”

“Caleb, listen to me.”

I plopped onto a stool and spun to face her, putting on my recently-perfected bored expression. “What?”

Ana sighed and laid the doll on the counter. “You’re sixteen. I wanted to give you something meaningful, and considering...you know.”

She swept a hand around our dusty, deteriorating house.

“Considering our situation, I couldn’t really buy much. So I made you this.”

I took the nesting doll and turned it over, studying the details.

“Looks familiar,” I finally noted.

“The big one is Dad. But look inside.”

I opened it. 

The second doll, Ana told me, was her, and there was one more. 

The littlest one was me, with a smile and dimples under curly blond hair. 

“I haven’t seen that smile in so long,” Ana said quietly. “I wanted to remind you that that little boy is still in there.”

Even though I would never tell her, Ana, from that day forward, was my angel. She kept me safe and off the streets for a while, until her engineering job called her out of country. 

And that was when she stopped being my angel.

She was the last one I had, and she abandoned me just like everyone else. I was under the impression that families aren’t supposed to do that, and I’m still convinced of that, even as I stare at the perfect little doll in the shop window.

I don’t know where Ana’s doll went, but it’s times like now, as the wind whips my curls and the torn windbreaker isn’t enough to keep me warm, that I miss it. 

The lights inside the shop go dark and I start towards the fourth window.

I’m over halfway through my route, and the next window is almost as bad as the broken one. Every time, I come so close to skipping it altogether, but it’s a part of the story I can’t bring myself to forget. 

This is another old and abandoned house, but it’s not crumbling like the previous one. A thin layer of dust coats the window and cobwebs rest in three of four corners, but I ignore them. Just on the other side of the window, I can make out an unmade bed in the center of the bleak room. A streak of moonlight cuts through the dust on the window, illuminating the floating particles and filth in the unfurnished bedroom.

I can almost see my father, deathly pale, laying in the bed, with me and my sister by his side. 

I clutched Ana’s hand, not caring how hard I squeezed it as a tear slipped down my cheek.

Ana squeezed back.

“Please,” I whispered, eyes fixed on my father’s frail figure. “Please don’t go.”

That’s as far as I ever get in this memory. It’s not one I like to relive, and the only reason I can’t seem to omit it from my weekly pilgrimage is because of the domino effect it had. I went to live with my sister, which led me to where I am now. 

Alone and abandoned on the streets. And freezing.

I slide the windbreaker on, but it doesn’t do much. Wind penetrates through the countless holes and I shiver.

Two more windows to go. I’m almost done.

The fifth window is strange, even to me. It’s a laundromat. Something about the idea of washing clothes makes me think of a blank slate, of an old life being washed away like a stain on a t-shirt. Maybe that’s why this is the one I chose for my first night on the streets.

I mostly remember the cold. It was raining—cliche, but fitting—and all I had was the windbreaker wrapped around my shivering body and the backpack on the pavement next to me. I’d found a relatively hidden alley, but I still felt exposed. Vulnerable. And afraid.

All I could think about that night were the what-if’s. 

What if Mom hadn’t left?

What if Dad was still here?

What if Ana had taken me with her?

And the answer to all of them was the same.

Then I wouldn’t be here right now.

But they were just hypotheticals. Make-believe fantasies. I grew out of those quickly, as I learned how to survive on the streets. 

I found the six windows over the next month, between my growling stomach and the freezing drafts in the alley at night, and they’ve become the only consistency in the cold and volatile life I now lead. 

If I think about it, warmth hasn’t been in the picture for years. Not since my tenth birthday, when I was ignorant of the painful ways of the world. 

It’s not the physical warmth, the fires and heaters and blankets, that I’m talking about. It’s the other kind, the kind that makes you smile on the coldest winter day, the kind that brightens a room whether the lights are on or off.

Love. 

That’s the kind of warmth I’m talking about.

But I’ve grown painfully aware that for me, love is a lost cause. 

I’m confined to the world of the outsiders. The streets are my prison, and the windows my chance to look back and wonder what might have been. 

Especially the sixth window. The last window on my journey, and my favorite. I’ve been saving my pencil for this one.

A small house, yellow light glowing through the windows, stands in front of me. I have to be careful here—this is the one window that gives me a glimpse of people on the other side.

I make my way to the other side of the house, to the window that I know leads to the living room. The TV is on, although from my angle I can’t see the screen, and I can barely make out a woman in the kitchen, smiling.

A man and a younger girl, about my age, sit on the couch directly in front of me, smiling and laughing like they always do. The sight triggers an ache in my heart every time, but it’s worth it. 

These three, despite the fact that I’ve never spoken to them, are like the family that I lost.

The girl, grinning ear-to-ear. Like Ana.

The man, a soft and warm smile on his face. Like my father.

The woman, bringing plates loaded with food to the others. Like my mother. 

I can imagine myself sitting on the couch, saying “thank you” as the woman hands me a plate, laughing with the girl. In my imagination, I’m a part of their family.

I set the pencil on the windowsill. A thank-you token, one of many, for being there when nobody else was.

I turn to leave. Back to my little alley, where I’ve gotten used to the freezing nights, where I have a meager portion of dinner ready for me to eat cold. 

Back to the utter lack of warmth.

A latch clicks behind me and I spin around.

“Hello?” a voice calls.

A man’s voice. Deep, with a slight rasp.

It’s the man from the house, calling out from the window. 

I freeze. 

The man’s eyes dart around, finally resting on where I’m halfway into the nearby foliage. He offers a small smile.

“You can come out. I know you’re there.”

I tentatively step forward, towards the sixth window.

“I think you left something.” The man holds up the chipped pencil.

I shake my head. “I left it for you.” 

I swallow, throat suddenly dry. The window is supposed to be what seperates two worlds, the warm and the cold. The window isn’t supposed to be open, and the worlds aren’t supposed to mix.

I’m supposed to be out here, and the man is supposed to be in there. In with the warm yellow lights and smiles and laughter. He shouldn’t be talking to me, and I shouldn’t be talking to him.

“So you’re the one leaving all the little trinkets for us,” he says. “You know, I’ve been wanting to meet you for a while now.”

I take a step back. “It’s nothing. I should—I should go.”

But I don’t want to go.

Not when the father from my fantasies is standing right there, in the window.

“Wait!” he calls as I turn to leave.

I do.

“You should come inside. My wife made enough for a guest, and we have a spare room if you need a place to spend the night. I have a daughter who looks about your age, but judging from this-”

He holds up the pencil.

“-you already knew that.”

I nod.

“Come on, then.”

My numb legs carry me to the door, where the man meets me. He scans me up and down—torn windbreaker, tattered shoes, untamed blond curls.

“Sorry,” I mumble. 

I shouldn’t be here. I belong on the outside. 

But I want to be here.

The man shakes his head. “Nothing to be sorry for. You look like you could use a good meal. Name’s Bram, by the way.”

“Caleb,” I say quietly.

“Nice to finally meet you, Caleb.” He holds out a hand, which I hesitantly shake. “My family’s waiting in the living room, and I’ll fix you a plate. You can stay with us as long as you want.”

I glance up at him in surprise, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

And that’s how I found myself looking out a window for the first time in years, remembering the chill of the windy alley nights. I won’t have to feel that ever again.

The sixth window was always my favorite, and always will be.