Beacon

15

"Alex! You dragged me here to show me a giant mess?"

    Ahead of me was a dimly candlelit room, filled with shelves but most of them empty. Their contents scattered around the floor. Hundreds of books and papers and maps were strewn out across the whole room.

"Just let me explain before you do that thing where yo-"

"I can't even believe you Alex. I thought you were actually going to do something nice for me for once. I don't know why I actu-"

"Will you please let me expla-"

"I should have taken what that girl said to heart and started avoiding you. God you really are immature aren'-"

"Elisabeth!"
    The forcefulness in her voice made me stumble back and I almost fell into a pile of books, when she caught me at the last second and steadied me.

"Will you please let me explain now?"

I nodded.

"I didn't bring you here to show you a giant mess okay? All of this stuff was my parents, I never had the heart to organize or even look at most of it. Call me a sissy or whatever but I tried and it just didn't make me feel good, but leaving it like this isn't either. Wesley told me you've been bored and I saw how well you cleaned up my room, I just figured maybe you know, you'd wanna-"

"Clean it up for you?"

"Yeah."

    She wouldn't look directly at me when she said it. Guilt coiled itself in my stomach and twisted. She lost people too. She sat down on the floor and I did too. Her shoulders were shaking just enough for me to notice. I reached out my hand to comfort her and placed it lightly on her back. She didn't pull away.

"What happened to them?"

"They're gone. That's all that matters they're gone and I'm not and I'm left here with all their shit that I destroyed and now I can't clean it up."

    I thought I saw a tear fall into her lap, but she turned away so fast that it's hard to tell.

"You know what I'm just gonna go alright. You don't have to clean up all this stuff, it's mostly trash anyway. Goodnight."
   

    I stayed up the whole night organizing books.