Mom said we didn't live in a house. She said that we could only call it a house if it had a roof and four walls, with doors and windows throughout those walls.

"We live in a wall, Becca," she said one day as she swept the floor. I have no idea why she invested so much time into sweeping the floors when they constantly looked dirty. I had the dirty feet to prove that. "It's just the way the world is now." I could see the pain in her eyes, even though they weren't on me. It made me wonder what her life was like before everyone had to live in the massive walls of a cliff.

"I like where we live," said Debbie from the dinner table, and that brought a smile to Mom's face.

You could hear everything living in the walls, and Debbie and I became accustomed to it before we had enough good sense to know otherwise. There were always arguments; the sound of glass breaking against a cement wall was normal. The screams and wails of a child who knew something was wrong with their living environment...before they had enough good sense to know otherwise. The “lovemaking," as Mom would say, an aspect I was familiar with but completely lost on.

You could always see the people who lived all around you, and all you had to do was stick your head out the window. Mr. and Mrs. Beetermen lived to our left. They were pretty quiet, and I always wondered if they were fine with their living conditions because they were so old, because they could hardly hear the conversation between themselves. Two brothers, Dale and Parker, lived to our right; the sounds of lovemaking came from their windows whenever they had company over. Always late into the night, and always loud. A family of three lived above us, with kids the same age as myself and Debbie. Another married couple that constantly fought lived below us. None of them had my attention; no one on our cliffside did, besides the girl with brown hair and green eyes.

She lived three floors down, and two windows over to the left. She was the most beautiful girl on our side of the cliff, and she was probably the most beautiful girl that I'd ever seen. I only saw her head and the top of her shoulders, and I only saw her when she leaned out the window. I had a feeling she felt the same way about me because one night she looked up at me and smiled. Maybe it was all in my head, but I could see the twinkle in her eyes from the moonlight, even from three floors up. I didn't see her often. I'd go weeks without seeing her, but she was the only reason I looked out the window. Not out into the world of potential like Mom did, but because of her.

"Are you ever going to talk to her, or just stare at her, Rebecca?" Debbie asked one night when Mom was off at work.

I gritted my teeth and almost collapsed to the floor, out of the girl with green eyes and brown hair's line of sight. Did she hear what Debbie said? Could she hear from three stories down? Debbie was the loudest little sister in the world...she probably heard right?

"Shut up!" I hissed. Spittle raining onto Debbie's forehead.

Debbie swatted the saliva from her forehead and grimaced. "You love her! Even Mom knows." Then she scurried off to her room like the vermin that she was.

I closed my eyes, my nerves running on the fritz, to the point where the tips of my fingers buzzed. I took a deep breath and poked my head out the window. She was gone, back into the confines of her home, and who knew when I'd see her again. I waited, for probably a bit too long, hoping she'd pop her head out the window, but she didn't. I was about to turn around, and that's when I heard the scream.

The scream happened in one of those rare times when the wall was silent. No arguing, no shattering glass, no shrieks of a child, no lovemaking. The scream was high-pitched; it was scared. It came from three floors down and two windows to the left; I was sure of it. I spun around on my heels, nearly toppling over and out the window, my eyes locked onto her window. The sounds from the wall came back, as though her scream was the passing wind.

The girl with the green eyes and brown hair was in trouble. My legs wanted to run for the door and down the endless hallway for the flight of stairs, but that would take too long. She was in trouble now, and she could be dead by the time I reached the flight of stairs. My skin shuttered at the thought of her being dead, and I cursed myself for even thinking of the idea.

I peered out the window. I could try to get to her house from the windows. I could lower myself and vault myself to the Beetermen's window, and lower myself down two flights before finally jumping to hers. There were kids my age who did this all the time. But they did it with confidence and grace, two things that I didn't have. It dawned on me that I was wasting time. In the time that I had taken to dwindle on jumping from window to window, I could have made it down the hallway.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and climbed out the window before my mind could resist before my muscles froze up. I dangled from the window, wind blowing from left to right, causing my blonde hair to slash across my gaze. My arms burned to my shoulder blades as I hung from the window. The gap between our window and the Beetermen's seemed like an impossible number of miles away.

Her life was in danger. That's what was important.

I closed my eyes...

And jumped.