Amanda was by the window with her chin in her hand, observing the children running and laughing on the street. Their voices soared through the compound, high and loose, and she couldn't join them. Not today.
Inside, she felt hollow, as if there were something else she was carrying that no one else could see. In school, her peers sometimes teased her as "too quiet." They didn't know that her silence was a noisy place, filled with thoughts: memories she didn't even own but nevertheless carried.
Her grandmother's voice haunted her, even when no one was speaking. "We survived, but survival leaves its scars." Grandma never explained much. She would tell a little, and then stop, as if her heart were too weary to recall the whole.
Amanda wished she