Never Been Kissed

- TWENTY-SIX -

                                                                    -•TWENTY-SIX•-

Laurel and I stood side by side in Beck’s bedroom, shocked.

“This wasn’t like this when I left the house.” She breathed.

Beck had come back here.

The room was trashed. Everything was unrecognizable. The sheets had been ripped carelessly off the bed and clothes from the closet and dressers were strewn all over the floor. The DVD’s and their respective player had been upturned and his desk lay on its side, the wheels at the bottom spinning slowly with an audible “whir”.

A glass lamp had fallen onto the floor and now lay in ugly shards, flickering dangerously. They sat amongst the nest of papers, magazines, books and dirty laundry that scattered the floor like miles and miles of marshland.

One of the bedroom windows looking out over the yard and subsequently, the lake, had been carelessly flung open allowing the cold draft off the large body of water that was Lake Minnewaska into the room.

I still couldn’t get over the fact that he’d been here. And it had to have been more than a few minutes ago, I concluded as I looked at the spinning wheel on the desk that was only just beginning to stop completing its revolutions.

However, I wondered greatly what had possibly possessed Beck to fly into a nervous rage and destroy his room like this. There was something going on with my friend. And from what I could tell here, it was bad.

I looked over at Laurel and was struck to find tears pooling in her eyes. Knowing that she was too proud to admit she needed comfort at a time like this, I closed my mouth and looked away.

“Maybe we should look for clues.” Her strangled voice twisted out of her throat.

“Good idea,” I said in a small voice before walking to the right side of the room.

Beck had obviously been a little bit rougher over here; it might have even been where he first began to smash things. The glass shards that jostled for space on the floor seemed to span the entire room and I had to tip-toe in my flimsy ballet flats so as not to hurt myself. My eyes scanned over the papers on the floor and I spied a small black trunk, the lock broken, amidst a pile of broken glass on the floor.

I lifted it up, inspecting.

It was nothing special really. It had a clip lock which was reinforced with a keyhole mechanism, but the lock had obviously been broken off in the efforts to remove it quickly, which was why the silver mechanism was hanging haphazardly off the box. I opened it, suspicious, but there was nothing inside.

I was about to set down the trunk when I spied something in the same place the trunk had been before. It was a photo frame, or, what was left of it. Broken clips and the glass shattered, the gilt dented and scuffed—by being thrown onto the floor? Being very careful to not prick myself, I picked it up and gingerly wiped off the bits of shattered glass that still clung to the old film inside.

I immediately recognized the photo as the one I’d seen when I was here the first time. Well, minus Laurel and Mrs. Lozier. I deduced that this must have been one out of the set of family photos that were taken of the Lozier family at the time.

Beck’s round, childish face looked out of the photograph, smiling widely at the camera. At that time he’d just been growing into his ears and his teeth and he looked rather awkward, but it was precious. I wiped off the other side of the photo, shocked to find a man staring back at me.