Snapshots | ✓

Forty Four: Hayes

Thursday, May 19th, 2016

Hayes was less than halfway through packing despite having been at it for several hours. She kept finding things then sitting on the floor giggling to herself for a few minutes as she remembered the events surrounding it. Her favourite ones she would take a picture of and send them to Micah. A brochure from the ridiculously touristy bus tour she'd made him go on with her. A map to the Smithsonian stapled to a notebook with her detailed notes from their visits. Her ticket stub from the Washington Capitals game they'd gone to, along with a selfie she'd printed off on glossy paper and pinned to her wall. He had his quietly amused expression and was looking at her instead of the camera, and she had a huge smile as she leaned into his personal space until their faces were almost touching.

She put the picture and ticket stub into a little box of precious items and moved on. The top of her dresser looked bare without all of the random jars and knickknacks that had previously occupied the space. She had no idea how Micah lived with so few items on the surfaces in his room. He only had a few photos in his room arranged in black frames on his dresser. One picture of his family in front of mountains somewhere when he was very young, he and Misha barely reaching Andrew's waist, his mother already looking too skinny to be healthy. One from when he was a teenager with a toothy grin and windswept hair, at the beach with a bunch of friends including Jimmy and Tara. A third from when he'd been home for Christmas during university, Andrew and Lenore posing nicely for a photo and all four kids pulling funny faces behind them. There were wallet sized formal graduation photos of Misha, Leo, and Finn tucked into the frames but no photos of Micah's own achievements, a fact that made her heart go a bit wobbly.

She'd printed off a copy of the picture of them at the game for him too, and had even put it in a black frame that nearly matched the others, but hadn't worked up the confidence to give it to him yet. She'd probably leave it in his room on her move out day so she wouldn't have to face him to explain why she thought it had been a good idea.

There was no reason for her to be nervous about it. They were just-friends no matter how much she wanted more. She'd never had a problem giving any of her other friends photos of them doing fun things, so she had no reason to be weird about this one.

She removed another photo from the wall, a shot of Micah glaring at Bastet who was napping on his laptop. She was in love with Micah but was too afraid to do anything about it. No matter what Holly or Mara or anyone said about him returning her feelings, the fear of losing him completely if something were to go wrong between them was too strong for her to risk saying anything to him. She'd had the argument with herself dozens of times and the fear won every single time.

The only reason she had somewhere to live in New York was that her parents were moving back to their Toronto condo and were allowing her to live in their New York property. She had been too busy wallowing to find somewhere to live, and she had done cursory looks for jobs but hadn't bothered applying on anything. Holly said she needed something exciting to break her out of her mood if she wasn't going to tell Micah how she felt, so she was considering taking her baby sister on a European cruise. Even if she was still wallowing, she could at least do it in luxury.

The comfortably monotonous soap opera that had been running in the other room was suddenly cut off by the urgent beeping of the breaking news intro. "We interrupt this program to bring you breaking news of a bombing at the George Bush Center for Intelligence, the headquarters of the CIA located in Langley, Virginia..."

Hayes felt the ground drop out from under her.

--

She hadn't moved from the couch since the news flash. The same shaky footage played over and over again with the newscaster relaying details as she received them. Witnesses gave vague descriptions of what had happened, "experts" who looked more like people looking for their fifteen minutes of fame discussed possible people to blame and how the nature of the business conducted in the building would make any kind of investigation difficult. The headline kept updating with more dead and injured.

Bombs had gone off in the facility shortly after 2pm. They didn't know how many yet but it was bad. One of the facades had completely caved in and there were smoking holes pockmarking the roof. Cell service had been cut off for the entirety of DC and some of the area around it just in case there were more attacks planned. No group had claimed responsibility for it but the news outlets were already calling it the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11. The entire city was on lockdown, news outlets encouraging people to go home and stay there until things were sorted out.

The death count was almost at fifty and Micah hadn't checked in.

She knew he couldn't have—they didn't have a landline in the apartment—but that didn't stop her from wondering why he hadn't. All three of his siblings and his dad had contacted her over Facebook asking if he was back and since she had responded with a negative she hadn't received anything but a request to keep them updated.

They'd locked down the facility. Employees were being screened and searched before being allowed to leave due to the sensitive nature of the information held on the premises. With the large number of employees who worked throughout the Center it would take hours to get through them all, some estimating up to two days, with priority given to those who needed medical attention.

She wrapped the blanket tighter around herself, her athletic shorts and tank top not being enough to keep her warm but not wanting to get up and miss something, and waited.