Beacon ⌲ Stiles Stilinski [1] EDITING

thirty

Shuffling into Allison's room the next morning, I curled up at the head of her bed and watched as she reorganized some books on her desk across the room. Noticing her bedroom was extra tidy and the fact she had made enough of an effort to change out of her pajamas, I registered that she had fallen into one of her coping modes.

Whenever my sister was anxious, she did everything she could to feel in control of her situation. Most of all, Allison never wanted to sit back and be seen as helpless. On the other hand, I tended to lean towards closing all windows and staying out of reality for a while, and I wasn't sure if that was evidence of our differing personalities or just another reason to paint myself as the weaker twin. Obviously, things weren't going to get better with any amount of hibernation on my part, but I was almost persuaded to give it a try anyway.

"Hi," I mumbled, resting my chin on top of my bent knees. She smiled weakly back at me through her vanity mirror and continued filing stuff away. "Spring cleaning?"

"Just trying to keep things as normal as possible. Besides, it's good to keep myself busy. Lydia just texted that she's coming over to go over our birthday outfits."

At the idea of yet another few days of keeping Lydia in the dark, a dark pang of guilt hit my stomach. While we had been further dealing with the kanima, she was still planning her annual birthday celebration for that night. Somewhere in the corner of my closet was an expensive floral kimono shawl that I thought Lydia would like, already pre-wrapped in a bow. The material was silk and out of my usual price range, but when I had rushed into the store quickly to buy her a gift, the feeling as if I owed her something took over.

"Did you hear from Matt?" I wondered.

At the mention of his name, my sister faltered and looked at the floor. "Yeah, um, turns out you were kind of right about him."

"What?" I uncurled my limbs and jumped up from the bed in alarm, hurrying over to my sister's side. "What happened? Did he try something? Tell me, I swear I'll -" 

"Ellie, calm down," she rested a hand on my shoulder with a soft smile. "I'm fine, I got out of it. He didn't force himself on me or anything, but there was something on his camera."

"For the yearbook? Why would he need that at a rave?"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure he only uses it for the yearbook," Allison sighed. "He forgot something at his house on our way there so he ran inside for a minute, leaving me alone in his car, and maybe I was being too nosy but I picked up his camera and started flicking through the pictures anyway. I assumed he wouldn't mind."

"And?"

"And they were of me. You were in some of them, and there were also some of the lacrosse team, but too many of them were of me."

My eyes widened. "You doing what?"

"Sitting, walking, talking, reading. Ellie, I don't even know how he took some of them."

"Oh my God, Allison," I gasped, a horrible feeling churning in my gut since I had been with Stiles while she was abandoned with a sixteen year old stalker. "You could've texted me, I would've found you and got you away from that creep. How did you spend the rest of the night with him? Does he know what you saw?"

"I stashed the camera away again before he came back to the car, and I didn't bring it up for a while. I thought it would be better if he didn't know I saw them and I could just handle it later without him being so close to me. But they were all I could think of so, when we were taking a break from dancing, I asked him about them."

"What did he say?"

"He said they were candids," Allison shook her head in dismay. "He changed the topic but for the rest of the night he was way off. You actually arrived just in time to get me away from him at the end of the night."