Through Glass(20)

I looked toward the window, wishing Cohen had answers—a way out—but knowing that he was just as trapped as I was. He stood there on the other side of the glass with his hand pressed against the pane as he looked at me; his own tears streaming down his face.

My sobs stopped in my chest as I saw him there, my heart clunking at watching him. At having to say good-bye.

I crawled on top of my desk as I plastered myself against the glass, my hand pressing against it. There was nothing more than glass and air between myself and the last human contact I would ever have.

He looked at me with those dark eyes, his face sad, and I knew at once what the pain behind his eyes meant. His attempt to come to me had failed, leaving him trapped alone in his house just as I was trapped in mine.

“Cohen?” I said, my jaw clenching, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me.

He looked at me, his dark eyes boring into me before he stepped away; the lack of light in his room swallowing him up and leaving me alone. I raised myself onto my knees as I tried to meld myself into the glass to see where he had gone. I waited, fighting tears, only to have him return a moment later, a bright red, dry erase marker in his hands.

“Are you alone?” He wrote the words on the glass, his writing slow as he scribbled the letters backwards so I could read them easier.

I looked at the words, my heart aching to see them.

I turned from the window, dropping my body to search through the contents of my dresser that were scattered on the floor only to produce my own marker, this one bright green. When I turned back to him, he had written something else; more words placed amongst the others.

“You are not alone.”

I looked at his words and wanted to scream at him. I wanted to cry and hit and fight. My temper bubbled over at seeing those words, at the false promise they held.

“I am alone,” I wrote back, my hands shaking as I wrote the words, as I accepted the heart wrenching loss I was still trying to ignore.

“No,” he wrote, his eyes pleading.

My face screwed up as I tried to keep the sob from breaking out of my chest, as I tried to keep the sound restrained. I was alone. They were all gone. My mother with all the boys, dancing among the black ribbons before the monsters turned them to piles of ash. My father working on that skyscraper downtown, the remains of him glittering down to the street below. Cohen couldn’t even come the ten feet to be with me. I was alone.

There was no one else.

No more battles and fights in the house. No more pancakes in the morning. No more talks with my mom.

“I AM ALONE,” I wrote again, my hand shaking as I wrote the words, not caring if they were backwards to him.

“No,” he wrote again before he bowed his head, his shoulders sagging. I watched him with his head bent low, waiting for him to look back up to me, yet knowing he wouldn’t until he was ready. I wanted to pound against the window. I wanted to yell at him, but I hesitated. Although I wasn’t even sure why.

Slowly, he moved to look back toward me, his hand wiping away what he had written only to place his pen against the glass once more. His hand moved as he drew, as the swoops that he had sketched on my wrist only hours before replicated themselves before my eyes. The face of a girl materialized before me; the hair, the eyes and the slight dimple on her cheek. This time I could see what had not been apparent on the small sketch on my skin. I looked between the two, my shock at the realization stronger than the pain for a moment.

The girl was me.

“We have each other,” he wrote below the picture, his writing small as he pleaded with me. “I will always be here, and soon, we will be together again. I promise.”

I just stared at him, wishing I could rebut, wishing I could say it was useless. It wasn’t, though, not really. So much of what he said was right. This may be the new reality, but it would not be forever.

It couldn’t be.

I could find light. I could find hope. They would let us go. This couldn’t be the rest.

Cohen smiled sadly at me before wiping off his words below the picture he had drawn, his hand moving fast to replace them.

“I won’t give up, Lex. Stay alive. For me.”

I looked away from the girl he had drawn against the window to him, his eyes pleading with tears running down his cheeks. Cohen lifted his hand and placed it against the glass, the palm flat as he pleaded with me and called me to him.

He was right. I couldn’t give up. I had him.

I wasn’t alone.

I pressed my hand against the glass in a movement which mirrored his, wishing it was his skin; wishing that there was no ten foot gap.

Wishing he had never gone home before the sky went black.





If I focused hard enough I could almost feel the breeze against my skin as well as the warmth of the sun. I could maybe even hear the beautiful twitter of birds as they sang to the clouds. Clouds. I could almost remember the way they looked in the sky. I could get lost in the memories that filtered through some long forgotten piece of my mind. I could smell lilac in the air, I could feel grass on my fingertips.

But I couldn’t.

Not really.

It had been so long since I had seen those things that my memories were broken and exactly how sunlight felt had become a mystery.

Although I could remember the last day I saw them, the last day my window was open. The last day I wasn’t alone.

Everyone could. It was the memory they held closest to them. At least that is what I liked to believe. I liked to trust that there were hundreds of others out there. I liked to pretend I wasn’t alone. For the first year that we had been trapped, I had looked through the window at Cohen day after day while those who were left in the houses around us were turned to ash; our ears full of their screams as they left us. Until, a year after it had all began, the screams had stopped. Until Cohen and I were the last one’s left. We couldn’t be the last ones, though, there had to be others out there.