Will was sure that if he ever had the chance to speak to the girl in the window, he would be too afraid to. Besides, he felt certain he would never have that chance. She stayed in her window, far above him; he stayed on the street, far below her. And that was how things were.
But every night for the past year since he had first seen her heart-shaped face floating there in the middle of that light, and no matter how many times he had scolded himself or tried to go in the opposite direction or sworn that he would stay away from Highland Avenue no matter what, his feet had seemed to circle him back toward that same stretch of sidewalk just below her window.
The truth was this: Will was lonely. During the day he studied with the alchemist, who was seventy-four years old and smelled like sour milk. At night he carried out the alchemist’s errands in the darkest, loneliest, most barren corners of the city. Before discovering the girl in the window, he had sometimes gone whole weeks without seeing a single living person besides the alchemist and the strange, bent, crooked, desperate people who wheeled and dealed with him in the middle of the night. Before her, he was used to moving in darkness and silence so thick it felt like a cloak, suffocating him.
The nights were cold, and damp. He could never get the chill out of his bones, no matter how long he sat by the fire when he returned to the alchemist’s house.
And then one night he had turned the corner of Highland Avenue and seen, at the very top of an enormous white house, all decorated with balconies and curlicues and designs that looked like frosting on a cake, a single warm light burning in a single tiny window like a single candle, and a girl’s face in it, and the face and the light had warmed him right to the very core. Since then he had seen her every night.
But for the past three nights the window had been dark.
Will shifted the box from his left arm to his right. He had been standing on the sidewalk a long time, and the box had grown heavy. He did not know what to do. That was the problem. Above all he feared that something bad had happened to the girl, and he felt—strangely, since he had never met her or spoken a word to her in his life—that he would not forgive himself if that were the case.
He stared at the stone porch and the double doors that loomed behind the iron gate at 31 Highland Avenue. He thought about going through the gate and up the stairs and knocking with that heavy iron knocker.
“Hello,” he would say. “I’m wondering about the girl in the attic.”
Useless, the alchemist would say.
“Hello,” he would say. “During my nightly walks I could not help but notice the girl who lives upstairs. Pretty, with a heart-shaped face. I haven’t seen her in several days and just wanted to see if everything is okay? You can tell her Will was asking for her.”
Pathetic, the alchemist would say. Worse than useless. As ridiculous and deluded as a frog trying to turn into a flower petal. . . .
Just as the alchemist’s remembered lecture was gaining steam in Will’s overtired and indecisive mind, the miraculous happened.
The attic light went on, and against its small, soft glow Liesl’s head suddenly appeared. As always, her face was tilted downward, as though she was working on something, and for a moment Will had fantasies (as he always did) that she was writing him a letter.
Dear Will, it would say. Thank you for standing outside my window every night. Even though we’ve never spoken, I can’t tell you how useful you have been to me. . . .
And even though Will knew that this was absurd because (1) the girl in the window didn’t know his name, and (2) she almost certainly couldn’t see him standing in the pitch-black from a well-lit window, just seeing the girl and imagining the letter made him incredibly, immensely happy—so happy he didn’t have a word for it, so happy it didn’t feel like other kinds of happiness he knew, like getting to eat a meal when he was hungry, or (occasionally) sleep when he was very tired. It didn’t even feel like watching the clouds or running as fast as he could when no one was looking. This feeling was even lighter than that, and also more satisfying somehow.