Light Through the Window

by Cassandra Morphy

  "Oh, so you have chemistry together."

  "Oh, ha ha. Can we go?"

  "You do know they're not going to start early just because we're early," Ellie said. Despite her words, she managed to pull herself out of her chair and towards the door. "It's not for another twenty minutes or so, and it only takes us five to get to the student union. Or, is this guy going to the meeting as well, and you're just wanting to see him beforehand?"

  "Well... He is going to the meeting, but that's not why... I just... I'm anxious. I've never really talked with anyone about my mom. At least, like, not in a group session or anything. It's come up from time to time, but..."

  "Yea, I get it. It's a sore subject at times. Come on."

  Ellie grabbed her purse before they headed out. Becky set a quick pace on their way across campus, and Ellie just went with it. She figured it would only make the hour go by faster. She hoped that it was something like the LGBT group, where they went around and discussed whatever they had on their mind. Once they went around the circle, they would all just leave. She wanted to be the first one out of the door when that happened. As long as she wasn't leaving Becky in their hands either.

  Along the way to the student union, Ellie noticed an increase of fliers posted around the walkway. There had always been a bunch of them posted. Advertising some group or another. Trying to sell off old furniture. Postings of people looking for roommates for off campus housing. There were even two competing people trying to sell herbal supplements from the same company. However, the new influx of fliers all seemed to be around campus safety, with a few of them advertising a Take Back the Night event that was set to happen the next weekend. This seemed odd to Ellie, as she hadn’t heard anything that would suggest the need for it. For a brief moment, as they headed into the student union building, she wondered if the abyssal eyed people had something to do with it. She wondered if someone, other than her, had noticed them and decided to do something. Maybe she had an ally in the struggle that she had found herself in.

  On the top floor of the student union building, there was a large multipurpose room. The room almost took up the entirety of the floor, and it was one of the larger buildings on campus. There was just a narrow hallway that framed the room, running around the perimeter of the building. And, yet, the entire room was packed with seats. Instead of them being in a circle like with the LGBT group, there were in rows, with just a small section in the front that had a table and a podium.

  The two of them walked into the room fifteen minutes early for the meeting, yet the place was already pretty busy. On the table were some snacks, mostly donuts and cookies, with many of the people congregating around that. The back few rows of seats were already occupied. Most of the people back there were keeping to themselves as they stared at the front of the room and the group there. Becky looked between the congregators and the sitters for a moment before joining with the latter. Ellie was only too happy about that fact. However, before Becky could make it to the crowd in the back, Ellie motioned that they should take a seat closer to the middle.

  Ellie didn't want anything to do with the group in the back, or the one near the front. From the moment she stepped into the room, her eyes traveled the entire place, locking on to each set of eyes that she could see. Each and every one of them had the abyssal stare that she had gotten way too familiar with. The fact that everyone there had them seemed to lend credibility to her earlier fear. These people were using the group to recruit. She silently promised herself again not to leave without knowing that Becky was safe.

  "So..." Ellie said, once they sat down in what she deemed was more or less the exact center of the right section of chairs. "Is your guy here?"

  "Uh, he's not my guy," Becky said, blushing a little. "But, no, he's not here yet. Do you mind... I mean, when he gets here--"

  "Sure, he can sit with us," Ellie said, finding it cute that she was so nervous about the date. "As long as he's not weird."

  "No, he's not weird." She laughed off the thought, as if she would never date someone who was weird. "He's cute and nice and funny and cute."

  "You already said cute."

  "Well, he's really cute."

  They both laughed a little at that as another group streamed in the front door to the room. They seemed to split into two, one going towards the refreshments at the front and the other towards the rows of seats. Ellie's heart fell as she noticed that almost all of this new group were similarly afflicted with the weird eyes. She did find it a bit heartening that three of them seemed to be free of it. Those three took seats in the middle of the room together, on the opposite side from Ellie and Becky. None of them seemed the least bit concerned with the growing numbers of strange eyed individuals. Ellie just figured that it was further proof that she was alone in seeing them.

  As the hour hit, someone from the group near the refreshments table headed over to the door, closing it tightly behind them. For a split second, Ellie panicked at the thought that she was suddenly trapped there in that room, surrounded by the abyssal eyed people. A low hum seemed to resonate around the room, vibrating in her very chair, though that might have just been her shaking in fear. She tried to steady herself, to steal herself, as she remembered that there were enough regular people in the room to prevent the abyssal eyed people from trying anything funny.

  At least, she hoped.

  The group that had been clustered around the refreshments table filed back into the seats, taking the ones closer to the front of the room. This left the few people that had normal eyes, which numbered less than twenty, sandwiched between two groups of abyssal eyed students. There didn't seem to be any pattern between the two groups, though the ones in the front seemed more chatty than the ones in the back. If she hadn't known better, if she hadn't seen the eyes they all sported, she wouldn't have thought anything of it besides the usual. The ones in the front were the extroverts and suck ups while the ones in the back were introverts and troublemakers.

  "There he is," Becky said, pointing towards the front door.

  She waved feverishly at a member of the last group to enter. This group was another mix, with half the group having normal looking eyes. Ellie crossed her finger, hoping that Becky's friend was one of them. As this new group split into individuals, five started heading down the main aisle towards them. Of these, three of them had normal eyes, while two didn't. When one of those two turned at their row, starting to make his way down towards them, Ellie's heart stopped.

  "Hey, Barry," Becky said, as the abyssal eyed guy slid into the seat next to her.

  Ellie only then realized that she hadn't really thought much about the appearance of these strange people. Obviously, for those that didn't see their fear inducing eyes, they'd look like ordinary people. Some of them were bound to be attractive. All Ellie ever saw were those eyes.

  Barry nodded towards Ellie, in the same way they all seemed to do to her, before turning to Becky. "Hey, there, cutie," he said, in a normal sounding voice.

  "Oh, do you two know each other?" Becky asked, seeming to have noticed the nod.

  "No," Ellie was quick to say, before turning towards the front of the room. She could see out of the corner of her eye when Becky turned a questioning look towards her. Fortunately, she was saved from having to answer anything by the meeting starting.

  "Hello, everyone," Sam said. Sure enough, it was him leading this meeting as well. "I see that we have several new faces here today. So, welcome all of you. This is the death survivors' group. If you're not looking for that, you're in the wrong place." He paused for a moment, giving people a chance to leave the room.

  A group of three from the front of the room, all stood up and made as if they were about to leave. They stopped in mid stride, turning around to the room at large. They stretched their heads around their necks, seeming like they were turning them around further than they normally should have been able to. All three of them had the abyssal eyes. They gave a weird smile-like look to the crowd, which caused many
of them, mostly those in the front group, to start laughing. Ellie didn't find it the least bit funny, though Barry let off a few snickers.

  "I don't get it," Becky said.

  "You're not alone in that," Ellie said. She looked behind them at the back group, only to see that most of them didn't find it funny either.

  After the laughter died down, the three of them went back to their seats in the front. Sam was just shaking his head in annoyance, as if he was somehow above the antics of the younger students. "Anyway, I know there are quite a few of us--"

  "And them," someone called out from the back of the room. Another round of laughter sprung up, this time from the back of the room.

  "So, we won't be able to let everyone get a chance to speak today. I'd like to focus on those that didn't get a chance to speak last week, including those new faces for today. I've seen a few of you around campus over the past couple of weeks--" He seemed to look directly at Ellie when he said that. "--And I invite anyone who'd like to speak to come up. Don't be shy. We're all friends here. We've all gone through similar experiences. This is a safe space, and I hope that everyone would help to keep it that way."

  He lifted his hands, motioning around the room in front of him. There weren't many takers at first, no one wanting to be the first one to speak. After the silence lasted for almost a minute, one of the girls in the front group got up and started to walk over to the podium. She was short, almost as short as Ellie was, and only an inch taller than the podium. Sam brought over a step stool that had been placed off to the side. This started up more laughter, but the girl just shook her head before grabbing the mic out of the holder. She held it close to her chest as she started to speak, leaning against the side of the podium rather than standing behind it.

  "Hi there," she said, giving a little wave with her left hand. "I'm Rebecca Anne."

  "Hi, Rebecca Anne," said a few members of the audience. There was a splattering of laughs that came after it, but they died off quickly.

  "Well, like many of you here, I lost a parent at a young age. I was almost ten, if you believe that."

  "Wow," someone muttered behind Ellie. When she looked over at Barry, he had an odd look of surprise on his face. Ellie had a feeling that there was some kind of knowledge that they all seemed to share, something that she just wasn't in on.

  "Yea, I know," Rebecca Anne said. "So, I got to spend more time with my mom than most of you had. Don't get me wrong, it was nice and all that. But I still missed out on a lot of things that most of us had. You know. I never got to talk to her about boys, and about... well, you know, that kind of stuff. My dad was completely useless in that category. He's one of the ones that just puts their hands over their ears and starts shouting just at the mere mention of it."

  More laughter came from the audience, but this was mostly from the girls. This was one topic that Ellie understood completely about. Fortunately for her, Dave was an intellectual who could at least point her in the right direction for the best reading materials on the subject. Plus, there was Alex, who had become her friend not long after that time in her life. Alex was able to sort of lend her own mom, who supplied certain experiences that the books just couldn't cover.

  "But, you know, I wouldn't trade those extra years for anything," Rebecca Anne said. "Well, except maybe more years with her. You know, on like a one for two ratio type of dealie. Instead of ten years with her, twenty. Yea, that's the big downside of... life, don't you know. People tend to have to leave you." Muffled agreements spread throughout the room from that statement. A few eyes, both normal and abyssal alike, started to tear up. "Anyway, that's all I got to say about that, don't you know."

  She gave a subtle little nod before putting the mic back in its place and heading back to her seat. After a few seconds, Sam came back to the podium, calling for more volunteers to come and speak. It went on like that for most of the hour, several people coming up and talking about losing their parents. There were a few of them that had lost more than one parent, with the record being four. This included step parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and a foster parent or two. Most of them had lost their parents when they were young, certainly younger than ten, much like Ellie had. The oldest any of them had been when it happened was seventeen, though that was from one of the normal eyed boys that had come in soon after Ellie and Becky had. Among the abyssal eyed people there, ten had been the record. Two others had lost their parents before they were three. Ellie thanked her lucky stars that she had any memories of her mom at all, after hearing their sob stories.

  Becky had gone up at one point, a few minutes before the end of the hour. That was a tense time for Ellie. She worried whether their little corner would be remote enough from the rest of the group that Barry might try... whatever it was that the abyssal eyed people wanted to try with her. She barely heard what Becky was saying, though what little she did hear didn't sound like anything new to her. Barry, however, paid apt attention to Becky. He seemed to focus on her every word and didn't spare Ellie even a sideways glance the entire time she was gone. As Becky was coming back to her seat, Ellie was feeling quite stupid about the entire thing. Of course, Barry wouldn't try something. Not with the entire group there. Not with Becky looking towards the two of them half the time she was up front. She silently kicked herself for not paying more attention to her newfound friend.

  When Becky came back to her seat, Barry stood up and hugged her tightly to him. She let out a few tears that she had apparently been holding in while she had been up front. The applause that had followed each speaking seemed to spur up once more from this reaction, as if her tears were noticed by all there. They obviously had found it something to congratulate, that she would be able to feel such raw emotions. As Ellie noticed that the renewed applause came more from the abyssal eyed groups than the normals, she thought that they were more applauding the mixing of the two groups. Perhaps there was some pushing to mingle between. Ellie had the unsettling feeling that it had to do with spreading whatever it was that made their eyes look like that. She suddenly had a flash of Becky coming back to their room, with eyes like those that had been causing her nightmares since she first saw them. When the hug broke and Becky sat back into her seat, her eyes looked the same as they always did. Ellie let out her breath, not having realized that she had been holding it.

  After Becky had spoken, two more people went up, both from the abyssal eyed groups. Then two others came up as a pair, one having abyssal eyes and the other having normal eyes. They mentioned that they were brothers, with the normal eyed boy being the older one. Ellie didn’t notice any family resemblance, but that might have been from being distracted by those eyes. The elder boy had been twelve when their mother passed, with the younger being almost ten.

  When those two returned to their seat, Sam came back to the mic. He stood there, waiting for the applause to die down. Someone in the center group got up to speak, but Sam waved him back down. "I'm afraid our time is almost up, and I was told that we're not to linger long in the room. There's another group coming in after us. I'd just like to thank everyone that has spoken tonight. I noticed a few of you were still a little apprehensive to participate." He looked directly at Ellie again, making it clear that he was talking about her. She found it odd that he was singling her out, considering there was still about half the room that hadn't spoken. "But we're going to be back here again next Friday. I hope more people will have a chance to speak then. In the meantime, I'd just like to remind everyone that this is a safe space. Please be as considerate of others as you would want them to be for you."

  More applause sprung up, with some people even standing up to give standing ovations. Ellie wasn't sure if they were applauding Sam, who seemed to be the ringleader of that group, or those that had spoken. Her own applause was muted and short lived. Becky, too, wasn't clapping much. She seemed to still be fighting back a few loose tears that sprang up since she returned to her seat. The two of them waited patiently while the applause died down and p
eople started to move towards the exit.

  "So, are you glad you came?" Ellie asked.

  "Yea," Becky said. "I am. Thanks for coming with me to this."

  "Sure. Of course, you have your... friend here as well." She gestured towards Barry, hoping that he hadn't noticed her pause. She was hoping that he hadn't noticed her at all, but she knew that wasn't going to be the case. Ever.

  "Yea, these things are great," Barry said. "I've come to a lot of these since... well. I mean, I had a group like this in my hometown. Did you, Ellie?"

  Ellie wasn't sure what he was really asking. Did they have a support group for people who had lost a parent? No. Did she know a lot of people who had lost a parent? No. Did she know why so many of the people there seemed to have weird, abyss like eyes? No. All she said, though, was a single, "No." She hoped that would suffice.

  "Well, I hope you come to these more," Barry said, pointedly. "You could learn a lot from them. I think there's even a get together afterwards, where some of us go out to dinner."

  "I was just coming by to invite her to it," came a voice from behind Barry. Ellie hadn't noticed it when Miranda, the girl from the study group, had come over to them. When she saw her, saw her eyes, it was like a fresh punch to the gut. It was bad enough having Barry there without adding more undue stress to her day. "We're all going out to IHOP. Wanna come?"

  "Oh, that sounds like fun," Becky said. She looked towards Barry, seeming unsure of what his plans had been. Ellie wasn't even sure if they had planned to go out after the meeting, or if the plan was just to meet there for it. However, it was clear from both Barry and Miranda's faces that her coming was quite out of the question.

  "I'm sorry, were you invited?" Miranda asked. She seemed to turn her nose up at Becky, as if she was something that she had stepped in.

  "Oh, well, if she can't come," Ellie said, jumping on the first excuse not to come besides the whiny I don't wanna. "We're kind of a package deal." Becky smiled at that, coming over to stand right next to Ellie and put her arm around her shoulders, which was awkward in the narrow row of chairs.