The Window
“To the window, to the wall,” Rosa sang in a whisper, bobbing her head to the imagined beat as she drew a chalk square onto the dirty brick wall, a mouse skittering in the filth around the base of the metal trash cans beside her.
“Ugh!” Andrick moaned behind her. “Now, I have the image of Betty White dancing around a campfire stuck in my head, thanks to that dumb chick-flick you made me watch.”
She threw a grin over her shoulder at him, smacking her gum. His eyes rolled behind overlong bangs, the blue dye nearly faded out of his stick straight locks, making him look like one of those surly anime characters with a tragic backstory and layers™. She, however, was the hero of this adventure.
She’d get it back. And Andrick would never have to see that woman again. Rosa would make sure of that!
But first, she had to get in. She added a larger square around the first, one span of bricks between, and filling the gap with three runes on each side. She tucked the chalk into her hoodie pocket, brushing off her fingers on the threads of her overly distressed jeans. She lined her thumbs and pointer fingers up with opposing corners of the square, sort of like how people did when they were pretending to frame a picture, closing her eyes.
“Show me again,” she said. She needed to be sure of where she was going.
Andrick’s fingers slipped up through the back of her tangled black bob, sending goosebumps across her skin as they grew cold against her scalp.
A picture slowly brightened in her mind.
A bedroom, overcluttered with antique furniture, all dark wood and gaudy wallpaper, something out of one of those Victorian row houses down on West Ash street.
She latched on to it, pushing it down her neck, across her shoulder blades, through her arms and into the tiny bones in her fingers. It condensed, funneling out onto the bricks like liquid glass, smoothing into a dark window, wooden trim and all.
“You’re amazing,” Andrick whispered.
She glanced over her shoulder at him; his hand was still gently holding the back of her head. Had his eyes always been that bright amber? A shiver rippled through her—Chalk and char! Where did that come from?—and she quickly began an obnoxious, wiggly dance to hide it.
“Now there’s a window, in the wall,” she sang, wagging finger guns at her work.
“Shut up and open it,” he chuckled, slipping his hand free from her hair and pulling a small crystal box from his pocket. Rosa slid open the pane, taking the box and adding it carefully to her hoodie pocket.
“I’ll be in and out in four minutes,” she assured him, stepping into his hands for a boost.
Lightening cracked overhead, a fat drop darkening the shoulder of his tee shirt. He locked eyes with her. “Make it two. And Rosa, don’t let her—”
“Stop worrying,” she cut in, sweeping his bangs out of his eyes, her nerves hardening with determination. “I’m going to get it back.”
