The silence sings. After all, the human ear is a fragile instrument. Attend just one rock concert, and just happen to be within twenty miles of the amplifier, and you’ve damaged yours for life. High-decibel sound waves, created by the vibrating speaker in the amp, pulsate through the air and are only amplified by the fleshy outer ear. Before you can rock out to that hard E-Minor chord, it rocked your eardrum and vibrated three tiny little bones in your head, which hammered on a sack of fluids that’s covered in tiny little hairs that connect directly to the brain. They act like switches, these hairs; more than likely, several of these infinitesimal hairs got stuck in the “On” position because that E-Minor chord rocked it just a little too hard. Repeat the process several thousand times over the next three hours, then fast-forward a fortnight later, and thousands of tiny hair-switches are stuck in their respective On positions, bombarding your brain with gentle, yet incessant and demanding ringing. This is the phenomenon I’m experiencing now. I don’t know how I expect myself to get any sleep in this dump—for one thing, it’s too hot. I used to have no problem stripping in a time like this, especially if it means I can get some sleep, but the window in my new room is in plain view of the entire neighborhood. Too many creepy old men with binoculars who I’m sure already know exactly where to find the windows of insomniac 20-year-old co-eds. I opened my eyes. Wow, no wonder I can’t sleep! A sickly yellow glow bathes my room in a perpetual twilight. A quick glance to the door to check for vampires stalking me—no dice—and sitting up I find my own reflection staring back across the room at me. The streetlights are so powerful I can make out nearly every detail; Shoulder-length, straight black hair frames a round, full face that some people tell me resembles Bettie Page. I think “some people” are silly. One detail that wasn’t fleshing itself out in the mirror was me emerald green eyes. Sometimes, when I’m angsting or wallowing in depression they fade to a pale blue. My guess is they’re doing that now. Turning to the window, I begin to take in the third-story view. I could never see any of the college campus from my window, as it sits on the other side of the building, but I wish this one wasn’t so… bland. Ok, it isn’t really that bad, but it’s a suburb. There are maybe three distinct houses in the whole complex, and they’re all repeated about a hundred times. Talk about cookie-cutter. The neighborhood bakes in the same false dawn that fuels my insomnia. There is no variation here! Desperate for some variety, I try the details. The nearest house is brown; white trim decorates the edges. Delicate rose bushes decorate the small garden in front; the longer I look at them, the more I realize they’re dying. Right, school starts tomorrow. Hardly rose season, any more. The lawn is perfect; the residents of this particular house must slave constantly to keep that grass in spectacular condition. The underground sprinkler system, which must have cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars to install, probably poured several hundred gallons of water onto that grass. I’m pretty sure I read something about a ban on sprinklers with the drought going on around here… but these people still manage to keep their lawn green—or, at this time of night, yellow-greenish. It amazes me. Trees on the property line tower over shrubs and hedging, which separate this house’s lawn from the next. Other distinctions are non-existent. The same color grass carpets their neighbor’s lawn, with the same brand of rose bush decaying in the flowerbed. The only difference seems to be that this family keeps their shrubbery a bit neater. Or perhaps they simply trimmed theirs today. In any case, this house oozed with beige paint and what looked like green trim. My feminine fashion sense was tingling at this monstrosity. I started to imagine what kind of people lived in these houses, living in a sort of horticultural cold war to see who could keep the best lawn. The driveways were empty; I wished I could have seen inside the garages, because their cars would have told me a lot. The brown house probably has some sort of monster truck, maybe a tricked out F-350. These speculations are completely unfair, but the beige one probably has some foreign sports car. I could imagine the keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ struggle, as I sit there on my bed watching the motionless neighborhood. On the left hand side, I guess it’s the east side, or border of the neighborhood is the main road. A brick wall separated he harsh asphalt from carefully tended back lawn. The wall is tall enough to serve as a fence, but only just so the dogs don’t jump in to the fifty mile per hour parkway. Beyond that, it does little of its intended task as a sound barrier. College kids driving their turbo-charged V6 engines several thousand RPMs higher than is necessary tend to keep people up at night, I’d imagine. Very much of the light that fills this neighborhood also leaks into the parkway. Instead of dancing with the shadows on my ceiling, they prance across the parkway, mixing with a softer, more pure white glow. Upon adjusting my view, moving further down the foot of my bed, a parking lot comes in to view. Walgreens keeps dominion, bright red signs mercifully extinguished. The lights above this parking lot seem much taller. They cast a welcoming glow upon the cars of late-night shoppers and college students who are fortunate—or brave—enough to have a job. Straining the limits of my vision, I could see the girl behind the counter. She wore a contemporary outfit beneath the customary blue apron. Her pale complexion, well-lit in the drug store lobby, matched her bored disposition. She was closing the swing shift on a Sunday night. I felt sorry for her! With a quick bounce, I was on my feet searching my bags for a pair of binoculars. Finding them, I pressed my eyes against the lenses and gazed back to Walgreens. The first thing I picked up was a name tag: Jane. Panning up, I found she possessed the tightest curls in her hair I had ever seen. And they were a vivid red, contrasting sharply with large, bright blue eyes. The tiny little nose above her perfectly maintained lips did so much—combined with her compulsory smile—to light up my binoculars. With a new subject to scrutinize, I sat on my heals, elbows propping me up on the sill, staring at Jane as she stood. Occasionally, a customer would come in, desperately seeking a replacement ink cartridge or pack of cigarettes. Jane would assist these few customers in checking out, smile, and tell them to have a nice evening. But mostly she stood. I almost felt dirty, eavesdropping on this fellow student’s—fellow woman’s, even—life like this, but I couldn’t stop. Jane’s mannerisms were intoxicating. Her simple beauty—the virtue of her simple presence, a sign of life in this dull neighborhood—had roped me around the eyeballs. When I was finally able to peel my pupils from the binoculars, they landed on the devious alarm clock. In its infinite cunning, while I was watching Jane, it ticked onward and now read 1:30 AM. I had been watching Jane for an hour! It was also beginning to get very cold, so I closed the window and before I knew it I had returned to my binoculars. For a while, Jane continued to stand. I began to survey the parking lot… the cars shone with a serene beauty in the soft white lights. It made me wonder: Why can’t they use those lights in the neighborhood, instead of those ugly, sickly orange things? Looking back towards the counter, my heart sank. Jane was no longer standing there. I put my binoculars down and gazed listlessly across the distance; the parking lot lights were much more pleasant to look at than the harsh yellow that streaked across my ceiling and walls. If I hadn’t discovered Jane, I probably would have stared at these lights, as I much prefer them to those above the neighborhood. When I saw movement in the store yet again, it was Jane walking out the front door. She walked quickly, bundled up in her jacket, and wasted no time getting into her car. She had decals on the back window—great, I thought. She goes to this school. I’ll probably see her in class tomorrow and be too nervous to say anything like, “Oh hi, Jane? Yeah… I’m that girl that watched you at work for an hour and a half last night because I couldn’t sleep.” And with that thought, all the lights in the parking lot went out. All that was left was the dreary yellow glow that invaded my room since dusk. I lay back down and pulled the blanket over my head, and patiently waited for dawn.