Game Theory × NH

029 | copper

× Mercury

I liked to hit things, just as much as I liked to run. I would choose the physical pain of my knuckles every time they came in contact with the leather of the punching bag than to sit and feel the raw mental emotions that would rip me apart.

So maybe that was why I rushed to my dorm room, ridden with rage and heartache, and stuffed the folded up paper into a drawer in my desk.

The paper was from the floor of Niall's car. The guy smoking in the parking lot didn't mean shit to me; he was just a distraction so I could grab the essay off the floor mat. I wouldn't have noticed it - wouldn't even had paid any attention to it - if the words Pandora and my last name weren't visible from the outside of one of the folds.

It was like someone cut a wire inside me because I had stopped functioning; unable to control my body as I stared at the paper that held the truth about my parents.

Just as I was changing into leggings and a shirt two sizes too big, a thought occurred to me.

I opened up my jewelry box and dug around the contents until I found what I was looking for. I slowly pulled out a silver chain, attached to the bottom was a titanium ring.

At one point in my life, this was the only necklace I would wear. It didn't matter the occasion, a child's birthday party, Halloween, grocery shopping, I would be wearing the necklace around my neck like a prized possession. The only time I had taken it off was when I was going to the gym, not wanting to risk the idea that it might fall off and get lost forever. Ever since then, I had forgotten it in my jewelry box.

The ring was simple titanium with embedded tree branches along the outside. It was a men's wedding band, my fathers to be exact. I remember when I was younger, sitting in the emergency wing of the hospital waiting for my brother to come out with a cast on his arm when my dad told me the meaning behind the ring.

"The tree branches are symbolic," he had said. "Your mother and I's first kiss was under a tree at our college campus, and it was the same tree where I proposed to her."

I held the ring up, the light of the moon reflecting off the metal. It looked exactly the same as it did in the emergency wing, no wear or age, which was surprising after the hell it's been through.

"This was found in the debris," a police officer had told me when I was sitting in a doctor's office after my checkup. She held the band between her forefinger and thumb. "I figured it might be something you wanted to keep."

I remember reaching for the ring with a shaking hand, knowing my father never took the band off his finger.

Unclamping the necklace, I wrapped it around my neck and closed it again. The ring dangled just below the hollow of my neck, cold against my skin.

I had gotten a call in the middle of the night that had erupted my life into fire and ash. I had never felt so hopeless before. Everything I knew was gone and I was left with burned memories and charred family traditions.

That was one of the phrases I had written, and it branded a hole in my core, leaving me feeling nauseous.

Niall thought my stiffness in the car was because he brought up the kiss, but that was irrelevant to the situation. During that second of panic, I had a fleeting thought wondering if I was just imagining the paper on the floor - Niall wouldn't do that, would he? But then I remembered my English professor saying how he didn't have my assignment. That was when I knew the little folded up paper on the floor of Niall's car was my essay.