Eve rattled off all the possible trajectories she believed her ratty softball had gone, half expecting him to stop her and half expecting him to ignore her if she managed to finish her train of thought.
However, the boy who had just fallen out of the window turned those wide eyes and their dark gaze around to the unexplored space between the houses. Eve followed him as he walked over to the tall parts of the grass toward the back corners and bent over slightly.
By the time she realized he was searching for the ball, he had found it.
Darius presented the surrogate golf ball to Eve without comment.
Eve was grinning ear to ear as she took it.
“This is going to be so much fun!”
The next few minutes she explained her rules, gave Darius some tips and challenged the boy to a new game. And that’s what they did for next hour or so. Chatted and played. Eve didn’t ask why he had been trying to leave, and Darius didn’t ask why no one seemed to notice that Eve had already been gone.
It was only when Eve yawned out big that she decided her bed was calling her name.
“Do you need me to help you climb back in?” Darius asked, pointing to her bedroom window.
Eve shook her head.
“I can just go through the front door,” she said. “No one will notice.”
Eve nodded to the window across from hers.
“Want me to help you climb?”
Darius seemed tall enough to be able to do it himself now that he wasn’t going backward.
“I can pull myself back in,” he said.
Eve was so excited that the boy had chosen not to complete his plan of running away that she threw her arms around him in a quick hug. He stiffened in her embrace and still looked uncomfortable after she let go.
But Eve didn’t care. She finally had someone to talk to.
She tossed the bat and ball into the grass and pointed once again to her window.
“I’ll open my curtain when I get inside so you can see me!”
And that’s just what she did. After running through her house, slowing slightly at her mother’s door, and then bounding into her bedroom, Eve flung open her bedroom curtain and looked out.
Darius sure was impressive. He was already back inside his room. His window was still open. Eve was impatient as she opened hers too.
“Do you want to play tomorrow?” she asked, trying not to be too loud.
“I’m grounded for the weekend,” he called back. “I can’t leave the house.”
Nothing was going to—or could—stop the excitement that Darius’s sudden existence had unlocked in her. Not even his parents.
“Don’t worry,” Eve yell-whispered. “I’ll come to you.”
The next night that’s exactly what she did. When his parents went to their bedroom, Darius unlocked his window to find a green-eyed girl staring up at him. He pulled her and the bag of toys up the wall and over the windowsill with relative ease.
After that, it became a routine. Darius kept his window unlocked, and whether it was daytime or not, there was always an Eve who eventually crawled on through. Sometimes they would play, sometimes they would just talk. As they got older, the foot of his bed became their dedicated homework-and-study spot. When things at their respective homes became difficult, the time spent in his room became longer.
Then, one night, Eve hadn’t left.
A storm had made her empty house seem terrifying for once, and Darius had done what he did best and knew what she needed without asking. He’d given her his bed and made a pallet for himself on the floor next to it. Eve had fallen asleep to the sound of his voice while the storm raged on outside.
That was how Eve realized there was only one thing in her life that was certain, and that one thing was Darius Williams.
