Several years back--when Ivy had been five or six--she had been invited to that particular friend's birthday party, the name of whom she didn't even remember. But the sight of the house did bring back a fleeting glimpse of a rainy, dreary, cold day in November. The inside of the house had been warm and cheerful, with crepe paper strewn across the ceiling and brightly colored balloons scattered across the floor. All of the children, including Ivy, had been playing some game in the living room, when a scrawny girl with dirty blonde hair and torn jacket--possibly a runaway--appeared at the bay window. The cold November rain beat down on her stringy hair and had soaked through her thin jacket. The girl's wretched appearance had been something new to Ivy, and worth investigating, but it was the look in the stranger's grey eyes that had drawn Ivy to her.

They had a haunted, empty look about them, as if the spirit within those eyes had long since been battered and died. They were also fixed longingly--with a sorrow Ivy had not understood--upon the happily playing children, as well as the parents who chatted and laughed in the back of the warm, friendly room. The eyes watched with a fixed yearning, as the stranger stood outside and the cold November rain ran down her thin frame in rivulets.

Even at that early age, Ivy had felt troubled by the stranger's melacholy stare. She walked to the window and smiled at the stranger in a friendly, innocent way. The strange girl put both her hands on the glass and looked down at her. Ivy reached up with both her hands, as if trying to touch the stranger's, but she was halted by the hard coldness of the window. For a few moments they stood, seemingly touching, but still separated by the glass. Then, for a fleeting instant, the lost look left the stranger's eyes and she smiled back down at Ivy.

One of Ivy's friends called to her, and she looked over her shoulder. When she turned to the window again, the girl with the strange eyes had disappeared.

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