Secrets ✔

7•Lost Things

**Elizabeth's POV**

I got a call from Alice's mom early the next morning.

With a voice thick with tears, she asked me if I wanted to go through some of Alice's things.

I almost said no. Apprehensive towards visiting a place I had once called a second home. A place that Alice and I had made so many memories in.

But than I agreed. I convinced myself visiting her home would give me a sense of closure, even though I knew I was lying to myself-Even though visiting her home would be like opening a wound I was desperately trying to heal.

I park my car, and trudge up her house steps with a heavy heart. All life seems to have disappeared from the O'Conners home. 

I don't even knock before the door opens. It's Mellie, Alice's mom.

She looks like everything she isn't.

Her blonde bob she meticulously straightened every morning, is now greasy and pulled back, her gray roots showing. 

Her eyes seem permanently red from crying, and her face usually rosy and pink, is now pale and dark.

Mellie pulls me into a hug, and shakingly draws a breath.

"Oh god, you remind me so much of Alice." She says wiping a tear that's starting to form in he corner of her eye.

I smile weakly an enter their home. An invisible but very obvious dark cloud has entered their house, making everything seem gloomy and cold.

Mellie tightens her knit sweater across her chest and gestures me upwards.

Alice's room lays untouched. I can almost pretend she'll walk right through the door behind me, her phone out in hand, desperate to tell me the latest celebrity gossip.

Her nail polishes are lined in perfect rainbow order, and clothe is still splattered around her room from when she searched for something to wear for the party. 

I can feel a rock heavy in my throat and I stiffen involuntarily.

Mellie sighs behind me and puts a comforting hand on my shoulder.

"I know Elizabeth. I know."

She walks over to Alice's closet and pulls out a cardboard box.

"These are all the things that were on her at the time. Feel free to take whatever you want from her room." She says quietly. "I won't have any use for it."

Mellie leaves the room, and I stand there on sure what to do next.

I hesitantly reach towards the box as if expecting to see something gruesome, instead I see mundane objects. Things that hold no importance. 

I find her red minidress which has dried all weird and stiffly.  I gag in the thought of her dead inside it. Her shoes are next. I smile thinking of the time we picked them out. I called them stripper shoes, but Alice loved them. She said they made her feel beautiful, not that she needed an object to make her beautiful.

Alice already was with her straight long red hair that anyone would die for. Her pale but rosy complexion that would turn a gorgeous shade of caramel the minute sun reached her skin. Her dark brown eyes that made every boy in school look in her direction. She was tall and willowy. Everyone said she should be a model, but Alice wasn't shallow enough. She never cared about popularity, well until this year at least.

Alice and I were opposites and in a way that was perfect. We balanced each other out.

The rest of the objects in the box are her cellphone which I pocket even though I know  there is no way in hell it will turn on. Not with all its water damage.

There's a business card from Denny's, one of the only restaurants in town. There's a number sprawled on the back of it, I remind myself to call it later. I take a few Polaroid pictures of us of her night stand an pocket them too. There's nothing else in here I need.

Mellie comes in the room quietly. I don't notice her until she talks.

"Do you think there was a reason she..." Mellie takes a shaky breath, "killed herself? Was she acting differently leading up till that night? Did she say anything to you?"

I shake my head. I had already asked myself that question so many times, but she wasn't different. In fact she acted very much the same that night except for her obsession with Austin... 

Austin.

I thank Mellie quickly for inviting me, and walk out of their house.

I lock myself in to my car, my realization buzzing in my head.

Austin. On her last day she was with Austin. 

It wasn't much but it was something.

I pull my phone out, my finger above the keypad. I hesitate for a second before pressing- Call.