The Waiting Game

Chapter Three

There was a packageman with an oddly shaped package. It was hexagonal, with a seven-pointed star inside of a circle with an eye in the middle stamped in wax on the upper left of the box.
"For a miss Alexandrea," he said.
"Thanks," I replied, taking the package, then signing for it.
"Have a good day," he said.
"You too," I said, swinging the door shut.
How odd. It took me a minute to comprehend. Alex? Alex had never gotten a package, not once in her life! And what about the seven pointed star? It seemed to stare into my soul, looking for fear and weakness, like a wolf on the hunt. I set the package aside. All throughout the day, I couldn't stop thinking about the mysterious package.
When my sister came home, I said "Alex, there's a package for you by the door."
"Are you sure?" She said.
"Yes."
When she believed I was out of earshot, I heard her mutter,
"how did they know... I hadn't told them about mom... I missed it today... Vials... Two weeks early..." As I was about to ask her what she was talking about and what was in the box, she said, almost too cheerfully "Yay! My new science kit is here!" My sister loves science. Our mother used to work for the government in biological and chemical science, so there is a small room at the back of the house for all of her equipment. It used to be just my mothers room, then it was my mother and sister's room, and now I suppose it is my sister's room.
As she walked to her 'laboratory' I mulled over her strange words in my head. Who and what did she mean by they? What did she miss today? I had never seen that shape or type of package before. And the wax stamp? Never heard of that or seen that either. I love science, but not as much as those two. What was two weeks early? My thoughts turned to my mother. Why wasn't I crying about her? It was very queer. I was still sad, but not as much.
I kept thinking about the odd package all the way through dinner, right up until I fell asleep.