Persephone Incarnate [Wattpad Prize 2014] | ✔️

{11} Alexander

Alexander looked at the three girls who stood in front of him. “And here you are again,” he said good-humoredly. “My friends won’t believe me when I tell them three girls came to my house twice in one day,”

Abby, Ava, and Anna stood in front of him again. This time, they didn’t try to sneak up on him. They came right up to his doorstep and rang the doorbell. He had been pacing the entranceway for an hour now, worried about what he was going to do. He was sick with worry about Sophie, and his first instinct was to do whatever these girls told him to do, as long as he could guarantee that Sophie was safe and he could hear her laugh and play music again. But a tiny nagging voice in the back of his mind kept on reminding him, Sophie’s happiness, Sophie’s happiness, if you love something, let it go, Sophie’s happiness, Sophie’s happiness – and on and on and on. It was like having a parrot in his mind, and he didn’t appreciate the mantra. It reminded him of words he had never said and brought forth feelings he never thought he had for another girl.

He had spent the last few hours thinking everything over, and just reflecting on his feelings. His hot chocolate had gone cold long since, and the cookies had been left untouched ever since the girls had left. He had sat, with his legs spread, and his elbows on top of his knees, staring at the wall, lost in thought. And in his mind, he heard her laughter, her voice, her playing the violin, her singing, the look in her eyes when she talked about something she loved – he couldn’t get it out of his head. He minded it a lot less than the parrot voice that now occupied where the images had been, but it started to grate against his nerves, how all these memories that he had carefully filed away to think back on later, had just started to overflow and flash, one after another, in front of his eyes.

Things he hadn’t even thought he would’ve known or remembered had surfaced as well. The way her hair fell into curls at her shoulder at concerts, and the way she moved, in a frantic, effortless grace when she was playing with passion. And when she was confused, she paused for a second, muttered to herself, and started to play all over again. Then afterwards, how she would talk ceaselessly, but it never bothered him. He found himself drawn to her, drawn to her talk, her energy, her friendliness, he found himself wanting to listen to her forever.

And it was those feelings that bothered him the most. He didn’t understand where they had come from, why they had come to him. And it confused him, so, so much.

But as the memories continued to play in his mind, everything suddenly came into focus, and the last hour had become one of the busiest, sharpest, and most certain times of his life. He figured out what he had to do, and he figured out how he felt, and he just knew.

But now – now, he wasn’t so sure again. What made him so confident? Why did he think he could hold Sophie’s life and future in his hands, and what made him so sure that he – he – he – he swallowed. He couldn’t bear to say it yet.

It had taken him a while to admit to himself, and he was still far from accepting the feelings. But he knew what they were now. But that was all.

“Are you ready, Alexander?” was Anna’s friendly reply. She rubbed against her necklace – had that always been there? – nervously. It glimmered faintly for a brief moment, and Alexander wondered if he was seeing things. It didn’t react again, and he figured it was probably something with the sun or a play of light from the Christmas décor that hung around his house.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he replied, a little grimly.

Ava nodded and Abby dug into her friend’s backpack. “Ava, where’d you put the keys?”

“What do you mean?”

The two girls frantically got down on their knees and began to dig through the backpack.