Lonely bird

2

Maja's sister wanted to be someone she wasn't. She wanted to be the queen, the one people really saw. She didn't want to go unnoticed. Her parents wanted her to be someone she wasn't. Oh how proud they were of her, it was like she was all that had ever mattered to them. They'd adored her for being seen, for taking place, too blind to realize that as higher she climbed, the longer she reached, the further away she got from the rest of them.

They thought that all that'd ever mattered in the world was how other people saw on you, that it was the key to happiness.

Maja's blood began to boil. Red color spread across her face, under all of the dirt. She picked up a fork that laid on top of the small pile of junk and threw it with all her strength across the room that only barely fitted her mattress.

"So why did you leave me here? " she screamed in frustration. The knife bounced of her wall and fell down on the hard cement floor. Only silence was there to respond to her.

Maja leaned back against the hard wall in her small room. She wouldn't allow the tears that began to form in her eyes to fall, and quickly forced them back. She didn't want to waste more of her tears ever again.

After two hours it was time for her to move again. She rose up from her bed, looking around in her room until she found her knife. Maja had worked hard to be able to buy it, taken many risks. Though most people would say it looked cheap and that it was bad quality, it was the most beautiful thing she owned. Just in case, she reminded herself as she put it in her pocket

She climbed out of the window. Maja wasn't entirely sure what it was for some kind of room she'd taken over, but she suspected it was an abandoned broom closet. There was a door, of course, a locked one. Sometimes she could hear steps or voices coming from the floors above. Maybe there was someone living there, someone who went to their job every morning, eating dinner all alone just like Maja, never anyone who came to visit. Or maybe there was a family, two loving parents who cooked food to their children and sang them to sleep.

Maja forced away her thought. No matter what was on the other side of the door, she didn't want to open it. She didn't belong to that world anymore.

Her black hair, put in a ponytail, bounced against her back as she made her way down the alley, back to the street. The night life had woken up. Maja saw a group of older men walking towards a bar, from where she could hear music and the sound of clinking glass. In just a few hours, those men would be wobbling their way back home, singing old traditional songs as if nothing mattered anymore.

The wind played with her hair as she continued down the street. It was a chilly night, fall was creeping nearer, and Maja pulled her black jacked tighter around her small body. She passed more bars, more singing and drinking people who lived as if today was their last day.

A group of black dressed people stood in a corner of the street, whispering to one another. If it would've been any other night, she would've sneaked towards them, hidden in the shadows and listened to their conversation. Maja had always been more of a listener than a talker, finding that words could be more valuable then what others seemed to think. Even though the group were constantly looking around, nervous that someone might hear their conversation, no one noticed Maja as she walked past them in the dark street.

It didn't take her long to reach the river that ran through the city, splitting it in two parts. She left the big street before she could reach the bridge and walked down to the edge of the water. Her skin was itching from the dirt that covered her light brown skin. She stopped moving, stood still like a statue and listened. Her ears looked for something, shoes being dragged forwards across the street, someone breathing, but they found only silence.