An Open Sky

Chapter Seventeen ~Aidan~

I walked through the door to her room. There was a piece of paper taped to it that read:

Alexa’s room

Seriously, stay out

                I smiled, hearing her say the words in my mind. I was beginning to admit that she was more like Layla than I thought. I pushed the door open and stepped in. I took it in; all of it, the multi-colored carpet, her teal bed sheets, the tan curtains, the pictures that covered her dressers, the books that were spread out over her floor, the boxes in the corner, and the notebook on her bedside table. I walked over to her dressers to examine the pictures.

                There were a few crazy pictures with a few girls that looked a little older than she was. I assumed they were friends from her old home. Melrose. I picked up a school yearbook. It was from last year. I opened it and flipped through the pages covered with cheerleaders in skimpy uniforms and crazy pictures from dances until I found her. It was the same one from downstairs. I flipped to the next page to find her caught in the middle of a crazy dance with two other girls I didn’t recognize. Her hair was in the air and her arms were flailing above her head. She looked happy.

                I set the book down and picked up the picture frame that was sitting next to it. I noticed it was a black and white photo. In this picture, she didn’t look so happy. She had her hands folded underneath her chin and she was looking up into the camera, emotionless. She wore heavy eye makeup and had her hair all pulled to one side of her neck. Her eyebrows were pulled together, giving off a very angry impression. Half of her face was shadowed.

                After looking at several other pictures that were similar to the latter, I went over to her bed. I was careful to only sit on the corner, so I could easily straighten the covers out later. I glanced over at another picture. This one wasn’t angry or depressing; it was happy, just like the first one. It was a family picture, of her and what I assumed to be her mother and father. Her parents didn’t look like mine at all. They looked happy, too. Her mother had her arm on her shoulder; she looked like she loved her, and Alexa looked like she loved her mother too. Her father gave me the same impression. They were just one happy family, a family that I could only imagine from movies and other people’s stories. They were normal.

                I bent over and picked up one of the books on the floor. Insomnia by Stephen King. I didn’t think she’d read books like that. Then again, she didn’t seem so angry and depressed either. She didn’t seem so…like me.       

                I hesitated before picking up the notebook. I was nervous about what I would find. My curiosity won over and I flipped open the cover. A newspaper clipping fell out onto the floor. I read what was written on the first page of the notebook before I picked it up. It was a quote, from a song I think.

“I think I finally understand what it means to be lost…”

                 I bent over and picked up the newspaper clipping. Half and ad to a pizza place was on the back. I flipped it over and found that it was an obituary. I recognized the picture immediately. To verify the ceasing of my heartbeats, I held it up to the family picture on her dresser. It was her mother. 

The quoted song is the video to the right...check it out! :)