The letter in Eliza’s hands felt like a weight. The paper, thin enough that she could see her hands through it, was the last thing (at least for a while) that she would say to her parents. Thank god.
She had written and rewritten it and she still didn’t think it was good enough. A projection. She knew that if push came to shove, she could always come back home but she didn’t want to have to; she didn’t want to prove her parents right, that she was nothing without them. That she never would be.
Pushing the toe of her boot against the duffel bag she’d stuffed to the max, she watched the window, looking for any sign that Charlie had made it. A bundle of nerves swirled in the pit of her stomach, burrowing its way through the soft flesh of her belly and out into the world -- some real Alien-type shit. The longer she sat there, the more anxious she got.
It wasn’t too late to turn back, right? To tell Charlie that she couldn’t do it, she never could do it, her parents were right, her parents were right, her parents were--
The quick knock on her window was all she needed to push her from the bed in a flurry of motion. She flung the glass open and looked at Charlie, at the way their skin shimmered in the light flowing from her room behind her.
“Hey, it’s the first time you aren’t late.” It was half insult half praise, a tenderness in the words saved just for them.
“This is important,” was their reply, a reassurance hidden in three words. She appreciated it. They threw their chin in the direction of Eliza’s duffel bag and the sleeping bag resting atop it and said, “C’mon, we’re on a schedule.”
“This is the most serious I’ve seen you in a minute,” she murmured as she rushed between them, handing them her bag. They slung it over their shoulder, grunting at the weight of it. Eliza took one last sweeping look at her room, wondering if it’d still be there when-- if-- she came back.
Charlie was already descending the fire escape, their sneakers quietly thudding against the warbled metal as Eliza tossed the letter onto the bed, swinging her leg over the window ledge and following Charlie into the night.
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