It was a night like this that she realized what she had to do.

Her mother, in the next room, stitched away at the towel she embroidered. Her brother had gone to some seedy bar Uptown. Her father worked the late shift. She sat in the kitchen, staring at the table.

She could hear the traffic rushing by. She could feel the hardness of the cracked yellow vinyl chair under her ass. She could smell the garbage piled up in the alley outside the open screen door. She could taste the pizza she'd had for dinner.

But all she could see in the dimly-lit kitchen was the table.

She looked at the wood grain, as it swirled and danced on its pressed-board home. It looked like a fingerprint. What kind of a being makes a fingerprint like that? She put her hand in front of her face and looked at her own fingerprints. What kind of a being am I?

She looked out the door, at the next house but at nothing. A breeze flowed in from somewhere and touched her face. Her face. She touched her face and felt the dry, pale skin that begged for the sun.

A black car drove by down the alley through the artificial light. She caught a glimpse of the driver: he wore sunglasses and a black shirt, his short blond hair went where it pleased. His face looked like her face: unsmiling, unmoving, appearing sad but not.

He drove by again, this time in her mind. He drove by again. And again, slower. She looked closer. She saw the eyes behind the sunglasses, eyes that didn't belong in the body they were in; eyes that had somewhere to go, trapped in a body that didn't want to go there.

Her eyes were like that. She could feel it, sense it. She knew he saw it in her... she wanted to believe that he could. She wanted to believe that he drove by because he felt her soul aching for more than she had.

She wanted to believe, but didn't.

The high wood fence across the alley that rose to the middle of the next house stopped just under a lit window. There was nothing in that window, nothing but light. She stared at the light for some time, for what felt like hours but was only minutes.

She could hear her father tell her she had nowhere to go. She could hear her mother tell her to stay put. She could hear her brother tell her she didn't belong anywhere.

She could hear it, but didn't believe.

The open screen door smacked against the house in the breeze. Somebody forgot to close it; she knew it wasn't on purpose. She could feel people walking out the door, but she couldn't go with... she believed she could see those people, and she believed she didn't have the strength to follow.

She wanted to believe, but didn't.

It was a night like this.