She woke with a start, fingers jerking to save her cigarette. It wasn’t worth hanging on to, and she mashed it into the ashtray she left on her windowsill. Emmie sighed. She really needed to sleep better. A yawn and she heaved herself up out of her seat. Glancing across the way, she saw her neighbor was still busy in the window. The other girl had moved closer and seemed engrossed in her work. It made Emmie grin as she raked a hand through her raven tangle of hair. She was envious, in a way. Emmie couldn’t really recall being particularly passionate about anything. There had been her ballerina dreams, but they’d been so fleeting, and she’d been so unable to act upon them, it would have been patently false to claim she’d ever been passionate about the art. As if to make the point to herself, she twirled herself once. Unrefined and inelegant. She huffed. A laugh maybe.<br/><br/>Glancing back at the other girl, she found herself drawing nearer to the window, squinting at the painting half-obscured by the glare of the glass. Emmie did laugh then. She was quite certain her neighbor was painting her. Caught in repose, she thought the girl must be kind with her interpretation of Emmie’s nap. On a whim, Emmie settled quickly back into the same place she’d been sleeping, grabbing her mangled cigarette out of the tray to recreate her slumbering pose. She pretended to sleep whenever the girl glanced over, and watched her paint when she focused on the canvas. It was intriguing. In some sense, Emmie supposed it could have been invasive, but she found the whole thing seemed almost shockingly innocent. Like it was bizarre for anyone to assess her through such a kindly lens.<br/><br/>When the girl finished her work, sitting back and lighting her own cigarette, Emmie popped her feet back off the sill and sat forward to get a better look at the finished product. She didn’t really mind if the girl noticed. It seemed only fair if Emmie’s neighbor had been examining her finely enough to lay her in art. She propped her elbows on the half-open window and ducked her head down into the space. Outside, it was beginning to smell like rain. She supposed she’d never gotten a really good look at the other girl, thought their paths seems to intersect so frequently. She seemed soft, which was sweet, and Emmie found it even more ludicrous that this girl had taken any kind of interest in wild-haired, wild-eyed Emilia Hudson.<br/><br/>She shut the window smartly before the first raindrops fell. Emmie had to get her day started eventually, as engaging as it might have been to loiter at her window. Before she went to rummage for clothes, she took an old note card off her desk and scribbled on the back. She tucked it into the edge of the window frame so her loose and looping scrawl pressed against the glass.<i>Have a nice day.</i>