Everyday around three o’clock I would walk home from school. I walk home because my mom didn’t have a car. It wasn’t because she couldn’t drive. Oh no, it was nothing like that. My mother use to drive until the fatal crash that killed my father. That was the day my mother’s whole demeanor changed. She became this overbearing parent that worried about everything. She had three emotional breakdowns in the first month of my dad being gone. She was never like that, when dad was alive. Back then, I had the freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted. If I was late getting home from school my mom politely asked me where I had been. Now if I’m a few seconds late she scolds me like I’m a five year old. I think the accident scarred her emotionally and she’s scared that it’s going to happen again. Now that I’m turning sixteen I would like to have a car, but asking my mom for a car is out of the question. After I get home from school, I do my homework, and walk over to my neighbors for some quality time with my girlfriend.

Scarlet and I have been dating for about six months now. We would like to take our relationship to the next level, but my mom has forbidden me to get married until I’m twenty one. That and I can’t leave my mom alone for long periods of time. The last time I left she was rushed to the ER for trying to kill herself. I was only gone for two days. Then the other thing is that Scarlet’s dad doesn’t like me. He just sits there puffing his cigar and watching me like a hawk. Never says a word to me just stares. It makes me kind of nervous but I endure it for my girlfriend. I believe she is worth every bit of misery I have to go through to be with her. Between my mother and her dad that’s a lot of misery. My mom is psychotic and her dad is just mean. Every time I go over to her house, her mother is sporting a new bruise, or gash. This is strange because her dad isn’t an alcoholic. Therefore I don’t know what makes him want to beat up on women. My guess is he enjoys it.

Well that was my life until I met a strange girl at school. Her name is Nikita and she claims to be from a world beyond the broken window. Well after a couple days of bumping into her. I decide to follow her one day after school knowing that my mom would scold me for being late. She walks about three blocks down and turns toward the street I live on. That’s when I see her go into the old abandoned house at the end of my street. That can’t be where she lives, nobody could live in that house. All the windows are broken and it’s falling apart. Frankly I’m surprised the city hasn’t condemned it yet. I walk up to the yard of the abandoned house stopping at the gate. I shake my head and walk away. I get home, but my mom doesn’t say a word to me, which is odd. I get to thinking about what Nikita said about being from another world. A world beyond the broken window that is separate from our own reality. That's when I thought, man what an imagination that girl has. According to modern science, there is no possible way a world like that could exist. That world beyond the broken window must be a figment of Nikita's imagination.