Through Her Eyes (JenLisa)

Wish On A Star

When Lisa woke, Jennie was gone.

The bed lay empty, the blankets pulled into place. The pajamas Lisa had lent Jennie were folded neatly and resting on the floor by the closet.

Lisa stared into the empty room, surprised. She had been looking forward to Jennie's company, playing some CDs on the stereo or showing Jennie the video game with all the sparkly things and little characters that Lisa had bought because it looked like something Jennie would find amusing.

Lisa had never thought that Jennie might leave while she was asleep. Could Jennie really be that anxious to get back to the decaying building she lived in? What was there for her? An expensive watch that was probably stolen, a collection of things others had seen fit to throw away, a sweatshirt, a friend named Michael who had yet to be proven human.

Frowning, Lisa shut the guest room door quietly behind her, walking down the hall towards the kitchen. Sadly, Jennie was not there either, though several things that had once been in the trash were now sitting innocently on the kitchen counter. A bent spoon, a cracked porcelain flower holder that had belonged to Lisa's grandmother, an apple core.

"What the hell is with the apple cores?" Lisa asked the silence. Her only response was more silence.
She picked up the half eaten apple, throwing it up into the air and catching it in her palm again. Lisa was oddly reluctant to throw any of the things she considered garbage back into the trashcan. If they were worth something to Jennie...

Lisa sighed and set the apple core by the window to dry out, dropped the spoon into the dishwasher, and hung the useless flower holder back on its nail on the wall.

When she opened the back door to the porch, bowls of cat food in hand, Lisa was surprised to find Leo sitting there with six other cats, all watching her impatiently.
"Where's Jennie?" Lisa asked the black cat. Leo watched her with knowing eyes. The harder Lisa looked at him the more she thought Leo might be raising a superior eyebrow the way Jennie did when she thought Lisa was being especially dumb.

Lisa winced and set down the cat food in hopes of distracting the cat. "Shut up."

——-

Lisa waited anxiously that night but Jennie never came.

She couldn't force herself to stop waiting though, to give up and go to bed. What if Jennie showed up to go through her trash the minute Lisa turned her back? What if she came and Lisa missed her? What if she didn't ring the doorbell, didn't alert Lisa of her presence, and Lisa slept through her visit and Jennie walked home in the dark and got hit by a car and died on the asphalt and Lisa never knew about it and she just kept waiting but Jennie never came because Jennie was gone just like everyone else?

It was possible.

So Lisa waited, and waited, and finally she folded her arms on the windowsill and fell asleep.
When she woke again Jennie was still not there. It was light out, the sun shining too bright through the window and into Lisa's eyes. Lisa glared at the hated sun, wincing. She jerked the curtains closed, threw herself down onto the carpet and promptly went back to sleep.

Maybe Jennie would be there the next time she woke up.

——-

It wasn't fair, losing Jennie twice like that. Lisa was fond of routine and Jennie's routine was that she came to see Lisa every day. Lisa liked that routine. She was used to it, comfortable with it. Every night after work she waited and every night after work Jennie came to dig through her trash. That was the deal and Lisa liked it.

It was uncomfortable to think that nothing was for sure, that she hadn't been promised anything and that at any moment Jennie could just – disappear.