Until I was twelve, I thought all girls were supposed to make jingling noises when they moved, and laugh with a sound like a flute. Like she did.

The first day I saw her, I remember, because it was the first day of first grade. My mother, proud, had used up three rolls of film on me, even though I looked the same as I had every other day- skinned knees, dirty cheeks, hair mussed, grinning cheekily. To be independent, I had forced my mother to let me walk all the way to the bus stop- the end of the driveway- alone.

And she was there. The day before, she hadn’t been, I was sure, and there had been no moving trucks, no loud noises, no things that go bump in the night. Now, she was very and irreversibly there. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn she had always been there, and I just hadn’t noticed, that she belonged in the house across the street, sitting on the stoop.

I don’t think I ever met her parents, and I never even knew if she had any. Even then, she looked older than she must have been, but then again, I never asked how old she was, or her name. She told me her name, but it always felt funny to say it, like I knew it wasn’t her real name, and she knew it too. She was never one to give up her secrets if she didn’t want to.

I called her Lizzie. No last name, no Elizabeth or any of its derivatives, just Lizzie. She was always small, and looked as if you could break her if you wished, pale and bony and thin, so thin that you feared she’d disappear if she turned to the side. There were a number of things that were- I don’t want to say wrong, but not quite right- about her. Lizzie definitely wasn’t normal.

There was, of course, her scent. She didn’t smell of exotic perfume, or, you know, sweat like anyone else in the town. In fact, she didn’t smell of anything. That scent- its absence- seemed to tease you, mock you, that you couldn’t find it, weren’t smart enough to beat your very own nose. And then, you know, there were her eyes.

They were unmistakably orange. That’s the simplest way I can think of to put it. Clementine orange, wide and wondering, like child’s eyes, but they had the wisdom of age a child’s lacked. Everyone stared at those eyes like they were objects of awe, those incredible eyes.

And that day, she blinked right into my eyes from the stoop across the road, her chin in her hands. Lizzie said nothing, just blinked those eyes, and I knew that whatever she wanted me to do, I’d do it.

I’d like to say Lizzie and I were best friends, but I wasn’t sure. I knew she was mine, she could listen, and she laughed dutifully at every single joke I told without making it seem like a chore. But the laugh never reached her eyes, and I never saw her smile.

You never asked Lizzie these questions, somehow. All the mysteries about her- you think I could have cleared them up by asking, but you didn’t know Lizzie like I did. She wouldn’t tell you. Oh, she might distract you so you wouldn’t remember, but it would be late that night, and you’d stare at the ceiling above your bed and wonder about the day, thinking there was one puzzle piece of your memory missing. Eventually, you’d realize that she’d never answered you.

I suppose Lizzie was almost fantastic, like a unicorn or a fairy. Lizzie was what people used to call ‘fey’. She didn’t belong here.

And one day, she asked. Just asked me, in that quiet way of hers, if I’d go on a walk.

I did. I don’t, to this day, know why I went, what compelled me. I had far more important and pressing things to do, but I ignored them.

She was like a breeze in those woods, navigating them easily, not making a sound. I blundered along behind her, crushing leaves and twigs, yet to her credit she never said a word about it.

“We’re here.”

Lizzie put some authority into her voice, and I knew, that wherever ‘here’ was, we were staying for awhile, just because she wished it.

What surprised me was that it was a house. And no ordinary house, no, it was huge, rambling, stuck in the middle of the woods. An anomaly, it didn’t seem to belong here, and, strangest of all, it seemed deserted.

I should have been scared, I know, I really should have- wandering through an empty house, all the furniture still there. That house must have been splendid once, and it seemed like it was waiting-waiting for its owner to return, reclaim it. I should have been surprised at the ease of which she navigated the house, climbing up hidden staircase after staircase, searching towards some climax, some secret I could only imagine. But instead, I was… excited. I wanted, for once, to know something about Lizzie- something, anything, in fact.

“Lizzie?” I called each time I lost her, and each time she was just beyond my reach, teasing me, like that scent of hers, like those eyes. Lizzie really was a rather teasing kind of person.

“Here,” Lizzie’d whisper back, quiet as always, and I had to strain to hear her. “Come on.”

I’d huff and puff, and catch up again, mumbling, “Don’t do that again, Lizzie.” And each time, she’d slip out of my grasp, always pulling me further and further, up to that which she wished to show me.

“Here.”

Finality, at last, and I saw where we were.

On the roof, and the trees lay beneath us, stretching out miles and miles, and I was sure that the woods had never been that big, the house so high, the stars so bright, the air so cold. It had been day when we went in, but now it was night, dark as the lashes around Lizzie’s clementine eyes.

I wouldn’t put it past that house to play such a dirty trick on us, yet I was surprised, and Lizzie, Lizzie was not. It seemed almost as if she belonged here, sitting on that bit of roof, staring off into the stars.

“Have you ever wondered what was out there?” Lizzie asked me, finally, waving an expansive arm over the sky, which seemed touchable tonight, as if you could reach out and it would be smooth as satin, thin and slippery, so fine it slid out of your grasp.

“No,” I told her truthfully, and she looked slightly disappointed, like she’d expected more out of me. I would have, at that moment, given anything to take that look away.

“Never? Not even now?” Lizzie asked, and this time, I seemed to give the right answer.

“Yes, now,” I returned, and she seemed pleased, though she didn’t smile, of course. Lizzie never smiled.

“What do you think you can do?” Lizzie prodded, giving me a curious look.

“Here? Anything,” I answered, and she did the strangest thing. Lizzie has, in her time, done many strange things.

“Then go,” Lizzie told me, and I stood up, on the edge of that roof, and jumped. And, as though I’d expected it, I wasn’t frightened when I felt the wings growing from my arms, lifting me up and letting me soar through the sky. I turned around to look at her.

I’ll never know why I said it, but I did. “Come be beautiful with me, Lizzie,” I asked, and she shook her head.

In the second that I turned away and slid off into that satin sky of night, I could have sworn I saw her smile.