What happened to Emilia Kállay?

Being thirteen is a horrendous age for a girl.

Or at least, that's what we thought when Emilia celebrated her birthday.

We knew the day was coming up, based on the intel we collected about her. We prepared our plan a week ahead so I could sleep over at Marvin's. We spared all the money we made from mowing lawn for this long range listening device that was advertised on Teleshop.

Our obsession started with boyish curiosity when Emilia's cousin, Odette stayed for a week two years ago. We learned her name by paying Marvin's sister with candy bars for befriending Rebecca, Emilia's sister, and feeding important intel for us.

We learned that Odette came every year around Emilia's birthday for a week from a far away city we didn't learn the name of. She came last year, too so we expected her to visit again.

Emilia's mother threw her a birthday party each year, but it appeared as it was more of a gathering of adult family members and her parents friends. Nothing like our birthday parties that were organized around the pool, daddy on the BBQ grilling hotdogs and mom serving iced lemonade all day. We were high on sugar and had a lot of fun.

But never Emilia. Her birthday was always sad. Blue as the July sky on the day she entered the world.

We prepared the binoculars and a telescope the day before in Marvin's room, from here we could see into almost every room in the Kállay's house. The listening device was set up later.

Our parents allowed me to sleep over at Marvin's for the whole week when Odette would stay, but we had to help with a tremendous amount of house chores in exchange.

We didn't mind. Everything was worth it for a glimpse of Odette's bare silhouette in the golden haze of the bathroom light.

She was two years older than Emilia, and already looked like a grown up woman. But lately Emilia started to look like one too. We noticed her breast slowly swelling up under her modest clothing.

Marvin thought Emilia was a woman forced to live in a child's body. I didn't quite grasp what he mean, but he was living in the house opposing the Kállay's and could peek into Emilia's and Rebecca's life every single day. He was my best friend but I secretly hated him for this.

We often wondered if Marvin's parents would adopt me if my parent would die, so we could watch the Kállay girls together every night.

But when Marvin explained what he meant, I had to admit he was right. Emilia came to school in every single day dressed up like a librarian in their sixties, but wearing awkward pigtails tied with pink bows. You probably would pass by her on the corridor without even noticing her or mistaken her for one of the odd teachers.

She marched straight into the girls toilet and came out with her down, looking like a mess. She changed her high bottomed brown shirts to t-shirts of bands we never heard of, her grandma skirts to tight jeans. We were going wild from that.

We suspected Lacey to supply her with the new clothing. They always went in together and came out arms locked, walking like supermodels.

At the end of school day, Emilia would return to the toilet and come out wearing the same modest outfit with the high pigtails her mother made for her in the morning.

She treated her like a child. I didn't witness what Marvin saw on weekdays, but he wrote down everything for me in a journal, so I could catch up on the weekends.

The more we watched the Kállay's house and Emilia's life in it, the more our obsession turned from Odette to her. And we saw everything a boy could dream of.

The tree house Marvin's father built for him, provided the perfect angle to peep into the bathroom of the Kállay house. Especially after sunset, when we could hide in the protection of the dark, and Emilia switched the amber lights on.

It was our movie night. Marvin's mother even made us popcorn, though I'm pretty sure she'd give us a beating if she knew what we were really watching.

Odette, as she was getting undressed for her shower, moving quick like it was a robotic experience.

And Emilia slowly peeling her librarian clothes off in front of the mirror, staring at her reflection for minutes from every side.

Then she'd remove one more piece of clothing. At times she lifted her arms, taking a look at the darkening fluffy hairs under her armpit.

She'd pull on the little feather like hairs on her shins and genitalia. She was standing there completely naked, not knowing that the neighbor boys were watching her.

We liked to think that she secretly knew it and she was giving us a show on purpose. From time to time, she looked out the bathroom window. She looked around and rested her gaze on the tree house a second longer that we were comfortable with.

Like she knew we were there, and she knew how her nakedness awakened a strange sensation in our loins. Something warm and vibrant that made us feel alive, like stealing liquor from our father's collection.

But then, she often did something that made us feel even more uncomfortable, and perhaps it was a sign that she didn't know of us watching.

She lifted her father's safety Gillette a removed the razor blade. Then she hovered it over her wrist, close enough to almost touch her translucent skin. Or that's how it looked like for us from far, through the lens of our binoculars.

Then she'd make a sliding move, like she was slowly making a cut lengthwise, slitting her purple veins open. Like posing a quiet question: What if?

Other days she'd pretend to violently cut her own throat, while she was locking eyes with her reflection. I didn't know what to make of this at the beginning.

But Marvin did. He was wiser than me because of his older brother poured his advanced knowledge inside of him. And he had much more intel on Emilia's life than I did, even with his notes.

He was keeping some parts of Emilia for himself, in a private collection.

Marvin was convinced Emilia was rehearsing her suicide for when she is ready to get away.

To get away from what?

Her prison.

Her life.

Her life that was her prison. I didn't thread the pieces together just yet, but this day, on her thirteenth birthday I understood what Marvin meant.

Odette didn't show up despite of our highest excitement.

This year there were no girls sitting on the hot roof with slices of cakes they smuggled out of the kitchen.

Odette wasn't bringing blush, shiny lipstick, shimmering nail polish in pastel colors and fake pearl necklaces to Emilia.

No one was heavily making out with the life-sized faces of Nick Carter and Brendan Fraser they just stuck on the wall.

We sent Marvin's sister over to spy, but when she came back hours later, fattened on tiramisu, she couldn't tell us why Odette didn't come.

We watched Emilia for hours, quietly sitting at the dinner table, like a ghost starving for attention but damned to silently eat her mother's tiramisu.

It was covered with so much cacao powder that made her cough. Like the chalk powder she had to clean out of the classroom sponge every Monday morning.

Who even makes tiramisu for a birthday? There was no birthday cake this time.

Emilia didn't join the children playing in Rebecca's room. So there she sat with the adults who didn't include her. We imagined she was too much of a child for them to join the conversation, but too grown up to play with the kids.

We tuned in with the listening device, but it was worth just as much as the money we paid for it.

All we heard was crackling noise, and some words came through as mumbling. Most of what we understood was boring adult talk about taxes, gossips and someone asking Emilia how it felt to be thirteen years old.

We knew her answer before she gave it, because it was our answer to the same dumb question.

"It feels like yesterday."

We understood when her dad scolded her for being rude, but in our eyes she was nothing but honest.

We felt the pain of the imprisonment of being a teenage girl in the Kállay's house.

Through that filter, I came to understand what Marvin meant when he said Emilia was rehearsing her escape.

I would do the same if I'd be forced to sit in a tight ponytail, in that ugly green dress her mother sew for her with large shoulder padding that made her appear like a Russian wrestler on steroids.

Her lacey socks made her legs itchy. We were watching her as she tried to scratch one feed with the other under the table. Every time she reached down with her hand, her father would push her back in her chair as she was in his way.

The Emilia we became obsessed with was barely present in that house. She was a mere empty shell of a body.

The only time she came alive was when she could transform herself in the school bathroom, and when she was behind the safety of locked doors in this house and in the presence of Odette.

Emilia's life at home consisted of nothing but rules and commandments. Marvin decoded a few of these in his notes.

Waking at 7am, even on weekends by the mother violently opening the shutters and pulling her blanket off of her, throwing it far enough so she can't reach it to crawl back under it.

Playing with her annoying sister and having to borrow her everything she wanted, which she gave back broken if she didn't lose it. Rebecca was annoying even through the binoculars.

We couldn't imagine how Marvin's sister managed to stand her. She must be addicted to those candy bars.

Emilia wasn't allowed to leave the house except when she was visiting her grandmother or went for afternoon classes. No friends ever came over. Not even Lacey.

A lot of things were probably prohibited because Emilia kept perfume, lip gloss, jewelry and knickknacks in a shoe-box she stored under her bed.

Her diary was hidden behind a drawer. Shirtless pictures of Brendan Fraser were glued on the inside of her wardrobe door, that she often let open when her parents weren't around.

Bedtime was at 8pm every night. We knew it from Marvin's sister that it was because of the little brat, Rebecca. She preferred to go to bed early because she knew Emilia wanted to stay up later.

Outside of her room, it seemed like she was only tolerated when she was quiet and basically transparent. As if she wasn't even there, like a burglar in hiding.

There was no way out of it but through her clouded thinking and living a secret life. We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a life as such. The longing for a closed door, or the relief that might come from an opened vein.

The hours passed by, and every minute felt painfully slow for us, as if our tooth was being pulled. Nothing happened.

The adults were talking and drinking more. One bottle emptied after the other. Emilia's job was to make herself useful by bringing them the next. Their attention lowering with every sip.

Emilia escaped from the table like a cunning fox, after handling them a bottle of red wine, and carefully placing another at arms length from the table.

She ran upstairs and threw herself on her bed. We turned the listening device in her direction, but all we heard was muffled moaning. Still, it was clear she was crying.

The whole week we stayed alert on what was going on with Emilia. Despite Odette's absence, I still slept over for the week. We couldn't name it, but we certainly felt that something broke that day Emilia turned thirteen.

And we felt obligated for her surveillance.

So we sat there by Marvin's window, wasting our summer days by watching Emilia fight with her parents and cry ten hours a day, if not more. Even the stormy night that cooled down the air for two days didn't bring relief in this family war.

The listening device turned out to be useless when people are talking in a foreign language, so we couldn't figure what the yelling was about. We could only speculate based on what we saw.

Emilia's father found her Brendan Fraser pictures and ripped them off of the wardrobe door. But he didn't bother about her after that.

Her mother threw out all of her clothes from the closet, she was searching for something like a rabid dog. When she didn't find it, we gathered she ordered Emilia to clean the mess up.

Rebecca was standing by the door, picking her nose and smiling like a cat that just ate the canary.

The days grew hotter by the minute, as if the world was coming undone.

Slowly, Emilia cleared her room up and threw away everything we thought her parents didn't approve of.

We climbed out the window in the middle of the night to collect these items from the trash.

We recovered the box she hid under her bed, but we didn't want the shirtless Brendon pictures. They were wet already from the rotten fruit craps in the bin.

So was the box, but the stinking didn't stop us. It was a promise of hidden treasure.

It made us feel close to the center of our universe. Emilia.

When did she become more interesting than Odette with her perky breasts?

The week passed by, and Emilia was living as a nun in celibacy. No TV, no phone calls, not even the cassette player was allowed for her.

She had to watch Rebecca stuffing her fat face with dessert after dinner, which she did with great satisfaction. Rebecca made sure she spooned every bite in her mouth in slow motion.

After the week-long sleepover my parents ordered me home.

Marvin and his family left for their annual vacation at their elder's. I had nothing to do and no means of spying on the Kállay's alone without being too obvious.

I took my bike out a twice a day and passed in front of their house a couple of times.

The cicadas screamed like alarms that day, but no one else seemed to be bothered by them.

I caught a glimpse of Emilia sitting in her window, staring at the clouds with empty eyes, as if she wasn't even there.

Truth is she was never there.

The next day Martin came home from their family vacation I found him sitting on the stairs of their porch, with his face buried in his palms.

I knew the cicadas alarm was for a reason.

He looked at me as never before, or ever since. With tears in his eyes.

"They left."

Who left? What was he talking about?

I sat beside him, patting him on the shoulder and raised my gaze up on the Kállay's house.

A new family was moving in with their two sons who were already playing ball in the garden.

When did this happen? I was here every day. They were here yesterday!

Anger rushed through my body with the force of a volcano that doesn't give notice before erupting.

"Ms. Hathaway told mom that they left in a rush in the middle of the night."

Apparently, so they did and nobody knew why. We didn't even know they were selling the house until it was long sold, then the Kállay's moved out as they came into our lives.

Unnoticed. Unannounced.

The hot summer days turned into long weeks, and we had nothing to do but living off of crumbles of gossips dropped in our way by our parents about the Kállay's sudden disappearance.

Some neighbors said they moved to the capital where they stashed Emilia in a mental institute.

Others said they saw an ambulance on the night when they left, or the night before or before. They happened to know that Emilia eventually placed that razor blade close enough to her soft wrist and made a cut to let her wild, untamable spirit slip away from this world that tried to domesticate her.

We didn't know what was the real truth. Or which one we wanted to believe in.

All we knew was that she was never really there, but she never really left either.

She was still lingering around in the folds of the curtain as it gets moved by the summer breeze.

She was there in the shadows playing on the bathroom wall, whispering in our ears as we pass by the house on our bikes:

Being thirteen is a horrendous age for a girl.