The Years Between Us
There are children who grow up believing the world is exactly what they see. She grew up believing the world was whatever she chose to see. The apartment she lived in stood on the fourth floor of a building that had long forgotten what it meant to be new. Its walls carried cracks that no one bothered to repair, the paint peeled away a little more every summer, and the staircase always smelled faintly of damp concrete after the rain. To anyone else, it was just another ordinary building. To her, it held a window. A small one. Just large enough for a little girl to rest her chin on the sill and watch a world that seemed kinder than the one behind her. Every morning, before putting on her school uniform, she would push that window open. The first thing she looked at was never the sky. She looked down. The road below glittered. Thousands of tiny silver and golden pieces caught the morning sun and shimmered as though someone had scattered treasure across the street. From...