And Silent Were The Stars

-10-

Slowly Rebecca turned the corner. The locker row was empty. She gave out a sigh of relief and a soft smile touched her lips as she heard Jen give out a high-pitched note, trying to imitate the female singer. But as she got closer to the locker that had her name on it, the smile vanished from her face. The door was slightly ajar. She could have sworn she had closed it. She always did. Hesitantly, her fingertips reached the door and touched it carefully as if afraid that it was burning-hot. She pulled it slowly open. Everything seemed to be as she'd left it, the clothes neatly folded on the upper shelve, the boots down on the locker floor.

Rebecca looked at the small mirror on the inside of the door of the locker. There she saw a woman in her thirties. Large green eyes stared at her from under slender eyebrows. She brushed away a wet curl that had fallen onto her tall forehead and took in a deep breath, staring her own reflection in the eyes.

The feeling that there was something missing took over Rebecca for a moment. She touched the corner of the mirror and then looked down at the floor under her feet. She crouched and found a semi-transparent plastic picture under the bench by the locker. Rebecca stood up and looked at the happy faces, her own and Tom's. Just a couple of minutes older than her, he looked so young, the illness and all the medication and therapy draining him, leaving his body frail but never able to crush his spirit. She remembered the day they took the selfie. It was more than ten years ago, the summer before the disease took him. Fourteen years, it felt like the longest and at the same instant the shortest time. A time given to them to fight the illness together. It still felt like he was still there, that he'd be there when she'd get back from the mission. Rebecca passed a finger across Tom's face and put the picture back where it belonged, its corner under the frame of the mirror.

She reached inside the locker and took the neatly folded clothes out. Rebecca pulled the dark-blue pants on, then the sports bra and a gray T-shirt with her name and number embroidered on it. Then she took the jacket off a small hook inside the locker and put it on. As she reached into the right pocket for the bracelet, her fingers touched something sticky. She took the hand out and looked at it. It was some sort of a clot of a brownish substance, snotty like, stretching between her fingertips. The fetid odor of the goo was slightly sweet. Rebecca look down at the side of the jacket and saw that a large part of the pocket from the outside was covered in the same gelatinous substance, some traces of it on the floor by the locker.