The Part of Me with You

Chapter 1: Libby

The world ended just after Christmas. At least that's what it felt like to Libby. Her last memories of normal life were wrapped up in red bows and smelled faintly of pine and cinnamon. All around her, people seemed to have shuffled along into spring and its bright colors easily, ready to smell the roses and start new things or whatever. Libby just wanted to dress in black and freeze time until the snow came back, was that too much to ask? What she especially didn't want was to get out of bed and deal with the parade of awkward that was coming her way downstairs.

The clock next to her bed blinked out a red 10:27 and at first, she thought that maybe her dread about today had been the thing to wake her up but more likely it was the sun streaming in through her open door. Which was odd...she never left the bedroom door open. Mind still lagging from sleep, Libby propped herself up on an elbow to find that she wasn't alone. There was a boy in her childhood room, or more accurately a young man. He stood at the bookshelf with his hands clasped behind his back, examining her extensive collection. She blinked a few times because surely, she must still be asleep, and this was some dream delusion where such a thing could happen to her. Unless she was awake, and it was a robbery of some kind. A normal person would probably scream, she thought, but for some reason she just found herself wondering which of the titles had caught his attention so thoroughly.

"Libby!" The commanding voice came from the direction of the stairs, followed by the threatening click of heels. She threw off the covers at the same moment that the startled intruder spun around, bumping backwards into the shelf. A snow globe shattered against the floor.

"Shit!" she said as her mother's steps continued to approach.

"I'm so sorry," he said, bending toward it.

"Well don't touch the broken glass," she snapped, pulling on a pair of knee-high socks from her dresser. "What are you even doing in here?" Admittedly, this was no longer her chief concern, given that she was almost half an hour late to the party, but she still wanted to know.

He straightened and turned his face away as she wriggled a velvet skirt up over her shorts. she was in too much of a hurry to be self-conscious.

"I came in here by mistake," he said, still averting his eyes.

Libby hurried over to see why her phone hadn't gone off and found it dead on the nightstand. "And you thought the appropriate thing to do would be to stay and have a look around?"

"I'm sorry," he said again, still pressed against the shelf like he was afraid to move.

She sighed. "It's the next door down, other side of the hall."

"What is?"

At that moment her mother appeared in the doorway, decked out in a lavender laced dress, brown curls sprayed into place with what smelled like half the bottle.

"Libby..." She stopped when she saw her daughter standing by the bed in disarray. "You're not even dressed? We've been looking for you, we need your help with the..." just then she spotted the young man and jumped, one hand fluttering to her chest. "What on earth is going on here?"

"He got lost on his way to the bathroom," Libby explained in an exasperated voice. "Now can everyone just get out of my room so I can get ready?"

Her mom stared from her daughter to the mysterious stranger, to the broken snow globe oozing across the floor. "Clean up that mess," she said finally. "We will be discussing this later."

Libby rolled her eyes as her mother clicked back down the hall and the young man followed, heading in the opposite direction toward the upstairs bathroom. She shut the door after them both and leaned against it.

Great, this was exactly what she needed on top of everything else. Now she had to convince her mother that she had not gone off and become someone who snuck guys into her room. Miles was the only one who'd ever even been up here, and he never had to sneak around. The thought had crossed her mind before she could stop it, but she didn't have time to be sad right now.

Quickly, she tucked a light sweater into the skirt and did her hair and makeup without the mirror. It wasn't easy, but she didn't want to look at reflection as her mind played out the possibility that Miles might never be in her room again. That she might never even see him again. She allowed herself one glance to make sure the right shapes and colors were in the right places, then stepped over the puddle to go find a towel.

For a couple of weeks, Libby had been fighting an uneasy feeling about coming home for Christmas. It was her second year of college, and thanks to a summer internship at a publishing company, she hadn't moved home for the summer. Her parents visited a couple times but the last time she came home was for spring break, and that was the longest she'd ever gone without seeing Miles in person in...her whole life. They'd talked on the phone and done video calls and everything, but there was something to be said for proximity. They were...drifting. It was the only way she could describe the feeling. Long distance friendships were fine, she'd kept many of them intact since graduation, so she couldn't understand why it wasn't working with Miles when he arguably the closest one she had.

Of course, he had attributed it to the new project he was working on, a novel with a "hell of a lot of worldbuilding, Lib" and that may have been the truth, or it may just have been him wanting to come up with an explanation. That was the kind of person he was.

So, she'd been anxious about the holidays, about seeing him and picking up where they'd left off. She'd wanted to hurry up and get here and remember that she missed this place, because lately, she hadn't been missing it quite so much and that was a little scary. But things had been good. The town had been snowy, the holidays had been glittery, and Miles had been Miles. All was well. Until he left for a ski trip with his parents, and then disappeared along with their truck, forcing them to come home alone. That had been two months ago. After that, it felt a lot like her uneasy feeling had been the right one all along.

But what was all that when there was a bridal shower to throw, right? That was how her mother had been acting all week. Libby mopped up the snow globe, trying not to breathe in the smell of the chemically tainted water. Then she put on her glasses and a fake smile, ready to join the party.