Side By Side » Theo Raeken

I'll Be Good

Edited.

The cold drops of water fell on me, the ones on my face disappearing between the silent tears. My hands and clothes were dirty with mud as I laid down on the floor, sad and confused.

I missed them, I missed my parents. I missed how I would jump into their bed on the weekend at eleven a.m. after being awake since seven watching cartoons. I missed how my mom would always get mad when I didn't organize my bedroom or did something wrong. I missed when I asked my dad not to tell her about something I did but shouldn't have done. I missed when we were still all together, everyday. I missed when I didn't have to go to a stupid big area full of dead people only to see my dead parents.

That's where I was, I realized when I opened my eyes, in the middle of hundreds of thousands of dead buried bodies and I was the only one alive, I didn't want to think about it, I didn't want to think about anything, I just wanted to sleep. I was so tired. The lights were out and the guard was probably sleeping - but how could he? How could one sleep with so many lost souls around him? How could anyone sleep? We were all so lost, dead, undead or alive, it didn't matter, because no one knew what they were actually doing and someday we'd all end up like those who kept us company for eternity, and that scared me.

"Skirt?"

I closed my tired eyes and took a deep breath, seating on the floor and looking at the names of my mother and father.

I hoped my parents weren't lost, at least not as much as I was. I wanted them to be somewhere away from me, because all I always had by my side was catastrophic. I felt like I was bad news and knew something bad was about to happen, just didn't know what, and didn't want them to see it.

"Alice?"

I slowly turned my head to the side, letting him know I knew he was there, and went back to my original position.

I loved him so much, I loved everything about him, Stiles was perfect. Theo's words about having someone who would walk into the woods in the middle of the night pop in my head, I was glad I had him. Since we were young Stiles had always been there to protect and help me and everything something wrong went down with one of us the other was always there for support; but sometimes I felt like I didn't deserve him. Nobody did, really, but he sure deserved the world.

I felt my cousin's hands on my shoulders and his body bent down next to me.

"Hey, you ok?" I looked at him and slowly nodded. "What are you doing out here?" A vibrating sound came from his jacket's pocket and caught my attention, my eyes moving up to the time. 03:23. "Do you wanna go home?"

"Do you ever visit your mom, Stiles?" I asked in a whisper.

He didn't say anything and neither did I. We were lucky to be alive, to be able to move on from something so tragic, we were lucky we still had real people around us, even if some of them were as fake as my parents' presence. We had the ability of living through it, it was good enough.

"You know what's the worst thing about not having her by my side?" Stiles spoke after a while in a weak voice.

"What?"

"To know that part of me is buried in there with her."

I glanced at him and analyzed him. "You still have your dad, you know?"

Stiles slightly smiled. "You have him too."

***

I dropped my head on the library's table, tired. The school day was over and Stiles had disappeared to God knows where with Scott and Lydia - asking me if I wanted to tag along -, and I stood in the library studying for what seemed to be my hardest subject: AP Biology.