It's a high-rise building, taller than most which surround it, and you don't ever see anyone entering or leaving the building. They must all have access to an underground car park or something, and have a cafe inside because no one even leaves for lunch or a tea break.

It’s new, very sleek, and seemed to have been built faster than the usual building. Usually it takes months upon months to get a building up (especially one as tall as this one) in this lazy town, and yet this one was built in only a little over two months, which had caused quite a bit of talk in their town.

She looks too young to be working there, she's seen on the balconies sometimes (which are outside the kitchens and are apart of the fire escapes) but then again, anyone who's under 25 looks too young to be working in such a professional building.

No one even knows what the building is for. They don't know which company works there, or what they do, or anything at all really. Their town is small, yet no one knows a single person who works there, nor does anyone remember seeing advertisements for employment, or anything to do with it at all.

All they know is that it isn’t government, and that the owners of it don’t speak English as their first language.

He sees her though and he remembers it well, because it was almost 3am in the morning and no one could ever be working that late in a building, especially not a girl who looks not a day over 16. He remembers how he could see her clear enough to read her expression even though he was in a building over the road and down one lot and how there weren't any lights on behind her...and yet she was clear enough to see.

He remembers how he waved, because he didn't know what else to do now that he had realised she was staring straight at him, and at that movement she had raised an eyebrow, then turned and melted into the darkness.

He wasn't delusional enough to suspect she was a ghost straight away, and it didn't give him the shivers or freak him out...but she had remained on his mind for the rest of the night.

…

She slowly walked up to another window, on another side of the building and gazed out of it. She wore a black jacket lined with silver metal where the zips and clasps fell because it became cold in the building in the middle of the night.

She stood in silence, always in silence, and simply looked, always watching everything that went on beneath and around her. She watched car accidents, rapes, young lovers, drunks, car chases between friends or the police or both at the same time…

In her few years she had seen a lot, and yet she still didn’t speak one word. She didn’t need to, and there was no one around to hear her words anyway.

She wonders if she should have a kitten for company one of these days, but knows she would never be a good owner. She can’t even look after herself properly, and she sighs as she scratches the long scar down her right leg, and then finishes off a slice of mostly stale bread. She hates wholemeal, but there hadn’t been any white available the last time she had run out of food.

She witnesses the male leave the building across the road from her once she slinks back to her original window, and watches as he climbs into a car and drives off carefully, not hooning around like every other male his age was doing so at that time in the morning. That perplexes her. She’ll have to watch him more closely. Maybe he’s gay?

Although, she has witnessed quite a lot of gay guys in her time, and she knows not to stereotype. It’s more than likely this particular male is careful, considerate…that or over tired or drunk…

Still, she can’t wait now until the next night when he would return to the very same building. She wishes he would be more set on a time though because he usually disrupts her watchings of others, and she must always see and witness everything…but she couldn’t when two things were happening at once at different ends of the building.

She picks up a dog-eared book, the pages mouldy and stained where it must have been left out in the rain more than once, and sits in the very middle of the open space, turning the pages slowly as her eyes carefully scan each page. The unfamiliar words making a little more sense tonight rather than they had the night before, and she knows that she’ll understand even more the next night after she has read it again. She loves a challenge, and she isn’t about to give up yet, even if the words of Ken Kesley were slightly confusing as she didn’t understand a world of shock treatment or cruel nurses at all.

Not yet anyway.

She waits until the light hits the distance, right over the island, which is always visible over the ocean right outside the eastern side of the building, before she retires for the night. She remembers her time at that very island, even though she tries to keep it out of her mind. She lowers herself down to the ground carefully, wary of her broken arm which has been in the cast for weeks now. Her hair is going to need a wash tomorrow, although that’s just too much effort, something she doesn’t want to be bothered with right now.

She gazes up at the picture taped to the underside of the desk for a long moment, then touches it with the tips of her fingers softly, her broken and dirty fingernails making her frown.

Then she rolls over onto her side, broken arm resting against the ground comfortably, and she falls asleep.