71.

She rubbed her droopy eyes with her fist and sat up in bed. She looked out the window and then at the clock on her bedside table. It was twelve in the morning. Through the fog of sleep, she remembered what Dimitri promised to do.

She got out of bed, stretching the drowsiness out of her bones. The air was cold, so she draped her blanket around her as she squeezed herself into the bench beneath the window. 

Christmas lights were decorating the walls of every house and the stem of every tree in the street. As far as she could see. They had gone up the week b