Excerpt: Legs or Wings

Then she appears, the girl I’ve seen here in the swirl of the last few mornings. Interested I watch the way she moves slouched over like her knees don’t belong to her, bundled up against the cold in her mother’s old coat and hat all frayed and wrinkled. Someone else that doesn’t believe in ironing out the creases; there’s more important ways to spend your time. Sit on a wall and judge other people you don’t know.
“Good morning,” I say, smiling inside to myself at the phrase, the kind of thing people said in the olden days to strangers in a spirit of politeness because it was the Done Thing. “Are you okay?”
She stopped and looked down at me, face pale against the whiteness of the sky. An unpunctual brown autumn leaf skittered by and some of her hair came loose. “Why do you ask?” she said.
I shrugged and leaned back. “You look upset,” I said. “You looked upset yesterday too. Not that there’s much I could likely do; I just thought I’d ask you.”
“Well, you’re the first person to,” she said, and I picked out her accent; northern, maybe Newcastle. Hesitation flickered around us for a few seconds. “Thanks,” she added.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s a horrible day. I understand.”
“It’s not that,” she assured me. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking about killing myself.”
“That’s one hell of a thing to think about,” I said. “What got you started?”
“I’m an English student,” she said.