Lily Matthews liked to come home from school every day, where she witnessed the workings of an average teenager's brain, to watch the streets from the windowsill of her parents' apartment. There, she could witness the workings of an average New Yorker's brain, but she didn't have to hear what they said about anyone. Because that dampened her optimism, and without it, Lily couldn't evaluate things properly.

It was a cold November day this time, and the clouds were covering the sky. Any tourist would have felt a bit underwhelmed because, if you weren't used to it, New York could look a bit gloomy on darker days. Lily cocked her head, then pulled a small notebook out of her coat pocket. Opening it, she flipped past the worn, note-filled pages that she and her mom had thumbed through so many times, turning to the first blank page. Random thought of the day: If you aren't used to dark days, they might look gloomy until you find the light.

In the streets below Lily's window, businessmen, students, artists, tourists, and all the people Lily couldn't categorize walked to and fro, all but oblivious to the people around them. The woman handing out flyers in front of McDonald's went unnoticed. Hardly anyone stopped to help the homeless man on the corner. They all had their own worlds and their own problems to attend to, and they didn't have time to meddle in anyone else's. Lily understood. Life was a strange, complicated thing, and building another, simpler reality was easier than dealing with the whole mass of it.

The tourists usually interested Lily the most. While natives moved about with the streets they traveled memorized and placed in their very back thoughts, tourists looked about with wonder, pointing here and there and watching how the people acted around them.

Lily's attention ended up landing on a dark-haired young man with a notebook and pen in his hands. He stood leaning against the brick wall of one of the buildings that lined the streets, staring at the sidewalk beneath his feet. Every now and then people would pass by, talking among themselves, and he would still almost to the point of being a statue, concentrating.

Lily had learned to recognize many of the different ethnic groups she saw every day, identifying the difference between the features and styles of the British and French, German and Norwegian, Japanese and Korean. The man against the building scribbled something down as this Russian (maybe Ukrainian) group passed, pausing for a moment to tap his head thoughtfully with the back of his pen before lowering it to the paper again. He was a linguist, Lily realized. Not a professional who worked for newspapers or survey companies, but more of a hobbyist. Maybe a college student, majoring in one thing but still keeping up with another. Lily decided she liked him.

She saw one of the girls from her school-Olivia-walking down the sidewalk on the street that ran past Lily's apartment building. Olivia was looking at her phone, scrolling through some sort of social media outlet. She laughed to herself about something she saw.

Lily sat up quickly when she saw that Olivia was about to cross at an intersection that still had traffic flying through it. Lily called out to her classmate, tapping on the glass helplessly.

Olivia's expression changed from a smile to a slack look of surprise as a businessman waiting to cross glanced over from where he was talking on his phone and quickly stuck his arm out block her. Lily exhaled in relief. Olivia, suddenly realizing what had almost happened, turned to the man with a look of terror on her face. Lily was surprised when the man spoke briefly into his phone and then lowered it to his side.

The man put his hand on Olivia's shoulder, leaning around to look her in the face. He was talking to her, his expression of concern making it instantly clear that he had at least one daughter of his own that he cared very much about. Lily watched as he reached down and pressed the power button on Olivia's phone, turning it face down in her hands as the screen turned off. He continued to speak to her; Lily could almost hear him imploring Olivia to wait until she got home to look at her phone.

The crosswalk sign switched to display a walking figure, and the man lifted his phone back to his ear as everyone began to cross. Even so, he stayed next to Olivia as she hurried to the other side, watching her as he spoke. Lily had never seen that before. She drew a line under her last notebook-worthy thought and began to write down what she'd seen.

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Lily wasn't in any hurry as she walked home from school the next day. Like the linguist she had seen before, she listened quietly to the people near her. Some didn't speak; they simply walked along in the direction of whatever place they needed to be next. Some people spoke irritably to coworkers or customers on the phone, others made plans with their group members on where they would go to get coffee, and still others just talked and laughed about whatever came to mind.

Lily was paying so much attention to a conversation in a language she didn't recognize that she didn't have time to notice the hurried footsteps behind her. Suddenly someone knocked shoulders with her, hitting her with so much force that she lost her balance and stumbled to the ground. She heard a choked gasp above her as the offending person tripped over her foot, also falling down and sending a stack of books sprawling across the sidewalk.

Half-complete apologies escaped Lily's mouth as she pushed herself into a sitting position and found herself turning to a girl about her age with dark, windswept hair. The girl was still gasping, her shoulders shaking, and Lily realized that she was crying.

Lily scooted closer to the girl, reaching to pick up the book closest to herself. Lily gathered her thoughts and apologized again, for not paying attention and for causing such a mess. People continued to pass on either side of the two girls, most not even sparing them a glance. Lily pulled her foot closer, not wanting to get her ankle stepped on. She tried to ask if the girl was okay, but she thought maybe she didn't sound sincere enough.

The girl looked up at Lily briefly, her face red and stained with tears, then choked out another sob and began to snatch all her books back into her arms. She took the one Lily was holding, scrambled to her feet, and ran off crying even harder as she shouldered her way through the crowd.

Lily jumped up, taking a step forward and called out, but a moment later she slowly closed her mouth. She sighed and turned her head back down to the pavement. A glint of pale blue underneath a building scaffold next to her caught her eye. Tilting her head, Lily crouched next to the scaffold, her fingers hovering hesitantly over the blue object, before she pulled it out. It was a small book covered in fabric. A journal.

Lily jumped up again, her eyes searching the crowd that the girl had run in to. She didn't see her. Lily looked down at the book in her hand, then up at the crowd, and then down again.

She pushed her way into the crowd, weaving and ducking as she ran as fast as the pedestrian traffic jam would allow. She called out to the girl once more, her shouts of a forgotten journal lost in the noise of the city.

The crowd became more tightly packed as she moved, and Lily had to push people aside to get through. She came to a sudden halt after making it past the last person, stepping back as a bus rushed by right in front of her. The wind snapped her hair back from her face and ruffled the pages of the book in her hand. The girl was nowhere to be found.

Lily narrowed her eyes against her hair, pushing it back from where the cars around her were tossing it into her face. Looking down at the book, she opened the front cover and checked the inside of it.

Odyssey Collins
31 18th St.
Brooklyn

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Lily didn't hesitate to show the book to her mom once she got home from work. She explained the whole story, how the girl-Odyssey-had run into her and dropped all her books. She told her mom about Odyssey's tears, about how she gathered her books and ran, and how the journal had slid under the scaffold and gone unnoticed. She showed her mom the address and asked her what she should do. When her dad got home, they all discussed it during dinner. Her dad suggested that they mail the journal back to Odyssey in the morning. Everyone agreed that this would be the best plan, but if Lily was honest with herself, she was disappointed that she wouldn't be able to see Odyssey again and find out what was wrong.

That night, sleep decided not to come easily. Lily got out of bed and crept into the dark living room where her window was, a rim of pale yellow glowing around the curtain. Pulling the curtain back, she was greeted by the bright lights of New York City, shining almost as clearly as daylight. Even in the middle of the night, when the world should have been at rest, the place that Lily called home was nothing less than wide awake.

Lily climbed up into the wide windowsill and pulled the curtain back across it, leaning her forehead against the cool glass pane. As she looked down at the glimmering streets below her, she wondered if Odyssey had a nest of her own to sit in.