S.H.I.E.L.D Academy

Alise Rogers' POV • High School

As I leave the bathroom, I hear faint notes of an acoustic guitar and ghostly humming floating up the corridor. Toothbrush in hand, I creep along the hallway in the direction of the sound. I know this is the opposite way from Zaria's room and more towards the boys' dorms, but I'm pretty sure that I can't fight how beautiful the music is.

As I get closer, I can hear a charmingly raspy voice making lyrics-- and I'm intrigued. No turning back. I slide along the wall, approaching the lighted room the words are coming from, taking care to stick to the shadows and keeping silhouettes minimal. Pausing a few feet from the door panes I stop and listen. I think he's crying, but he does a good job of staying together.

"A different word in the window every night,
From adulation to pulchritude to kryptonite
Butterflies in finger paint made from the prints of my feet,
The shaky promises shattered that you promised to keep

These things about you from my father I've heard
You're a vestige, in every single sense of the word
Already gone, or never even there
I see you in the mirror, I see you everywhere
I just don't know
Jessalyn, I see you everywhere."

And I'm crying. Who is this?
I get as close as I can, and try to slowly crane my neck around the panels of the doorway.

The voice stops singing and shakes a little bit. He swipes his nose with the back of his hand, taking some tears with it. "A-Alise?"

Mason?

His green eyes are bright, with confused grey mingling with the mossy shade. "What . . What're you doing here?"

No sense in keeping my shoulders and neck stupidly hooked around the door, so I straighten out and stand in the doorway.

"Hey," I gulp, some tears still fogging up my eyes. I try again. "Hey, Mason."

"Hey."

"Sorry, I uhm . . I came to Zaria's overnight, and I must've taken a wrong turn," I say, glancing at the floor, Mason's band posters, his dartboard and finally his flushed face. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he says, his normal tone replacing the husky, tear-laden voice.

"I uhm . . I heard you playing." Duh, I think to myself. Dumb thing to say.

Mason just looks off into space, one hand lightly holding the neck of his black acoustic and one arm hanging over the top, fingers dangling in front of the rosette. His tears have stopped, and he coughs into a fist and glances up at me. "Yeah?"

My curiosity gets the best of me, and I wipe an eye. "So, was Jessalyn your . . "

"Mother," he finishes for me. "Yeah."

* * *

"I guess I'd always just assumed Laura was your mom."

I speak softly, now seated on the edge of the bed beside Mason, dangling my feet over the annoyingly puce dorm carpet. Awful color, puce. Eugene would tell you that it comes from the French, the word literally meaning "the color of a flea". You'd think if you were going to build a dorm to accommodate kids year-round, you'd give them a carpet that wouldn't make them think of pestilence. Or botulism.

My thought-party gets crashed by a new flow of tears from Mason. Quiet ones; a dignified stream.

"Laura's my stepmom," he begins. "Jessalyn ran from us after I was born. Left everything. Dad always said that you could see her heels out the door before the ink could dry on my birth certificate."

I tilt my head in disbelief. "That's cruel," I whisper.

I shrug. "You know my dad. He's not cruel, he just doesn't know how to deal with some things. So everything still seems new to him, and sometimes making a joke is easier than taking it as one played on you by God. Of course, I've got no problem with God. I just have a bit of an . . issue, I guess, with the hand I was dealt."

I marvel at the fact that this is the most Mason's ever said to me--probably to any of us--at one time. Even so, his clear-headed take on life is timeless, and I wish I could hear it more often. Not to mention his singing. That's just pure amazing.

"That song," I say, after a contented pause. "Tell me about it?" My tone is tentative, yet warm. Friendly.

Mason smiles weakly while wiping an eye, and takes a drink from a glass of water by his bedside.

"She loved words," he says, so quietly I wonder briefly if he's telepathically communicating with me.

"Dad told me about how he'd come home every night, to find that the blackboard in the living room window facing the street would have a new word written. We lived in the suburbs, then, a nice neighborhood, picket fences and all that. And sometimes, the words would mean how she was feeling that day, or what she was thinking about."

"That's neat," I smile, scooting closer to him to hear him better. Mason starts to idly strum a few quiet chords while he talks, staring at some spot on the wall that I can't see.

"The day she left, Dad said that the board was really scratched up, and it fell behind the couch it was propped on," Mason says, reaching under the bed. Pulling out a blackboard, he hands it to me without even looking my way. "And it had that word on it."

I can feel more tears coming to my eyes as I look at the elegant scrawl among the ugly scratches. It was badly smudged, too-- probably from sixteen years of being saved and moved around, but I could still make out the word. Vestige.

Mason hands me a small dictionary, a marker already in the corresponding V section. Under a brilliant yellow highlighter hue, I read the definition silently:

A trace of something that is disappearing or no longer exists.

* * *