Glitch (The Write Awards 2013 Winner)

Glitch - Chapter 27

They watched Veronica in fragile silence as, with her back turned towards them, she retreated towards the door. The plait sitting neatly down her back swayed in slight motion with each step taken away. It was only as her hand rested on the handle of the door did she reconsider the silence. Her lungs took in a breath before she turned to make eye contact.

“Bye then.” The farewell was muttered in a sigh. Freya didn’t blame her for the stilted goodbye. They had barely spoken two words to each other despite spending over a week in the same flat. There wasn’t much to be said at the parting of ways. In fact, Veronica had only told them that morning that she intended to make the move to AlbionCity permanent by moving into accommodation of her own. Freya pulled her lips into a smile; hoping that the expression didn’t come across as insincere or cursory. That wasn’t her intention. She had resolved to slowly etch away the bitterness from the surface of her thoughts and genuinely wished Veronica luck. Freya just wasn’t very good at capturing that sentiment on her expressions. When painting in the numbers of the emotion on her face she had a tendency to stray outside the lines resulting in an unconvincing image. She nodded her head to add a sense of conviction to the gesture.

“Good luck.” Freya left it to Alexa to voice the sentiment out loud. If it was hard to capture sincerity in her expressions it would have been even more of a struggle to locate it in tone of voice. The joint effort seemed to have done an adequate job as, with another nod of solidarity, Veronica finally made her exit.

It felt silly to sit staring aimlessly at the recently closed door. Instead Freya directed her gaze to amble along the perimeter of the flat. The ample space that had been allotted to them only reinforced the emptiness of the flat. The breakfast bar, a few days earlier near constantly inhabited, sat unused. Several sets of plates and cutlery lined the cupboards untouched and unneeded. And a steady silence settled into a permanent residence in the place of the departed Anomalies.

“Looks like it is just you and me now,” Alexa said as she pulled herself off her perch on the arm of the couch. She spoke while stretching out her limbs; breaking away the confines of the awkward goodbye.

“Are you not going home?”

“And leave you here to mope on your own? That would just be irresponsible. It is almost impossible to imagine the level of misery you would allow yourself to get tangled up in.”

“I’m not that bad.” Freya said with a derisive narrowing of her eyes as her lips pulled into a smirk of disapproval. Alexa let out a breath of amusement in response, before drawing away her eyes and falling into an unexpected pensive still. Her head was dipped and prevented Freya from reading the cause of the disruption to Alexa’s usual disposition. Eventually, as if giving into an isolated demand in her mind she filled the curious silence. Still not making eye contact.

“I have to stay. It sounds horrible, but it was a relief to get away from my home.”

When she finally returned her gaze the expression in her eyes had changed beyond recognition. They were suddenly laden with a heavy burden of melancholy as she searched Freya for a reaction to the statement. Alexa seemed to be searching for some sign of disapproval or disgust. Apparently unable to believe that the statement flared no such notions within Freya’s mind. And for the first time there appeared to be a notch in Alexa’s usual surety.

“Do you not get on with your family?” This question was perhaps a little too forward and explicit to fall on the right side of politeness. And so it was immediately followed by a slight grimace to knit across Freya’s brow. But she figured there was no way of alleviating the worries without diagnosing the source and it was no good brushing over the issue either. Frankness and honesty suddenly seemed like the most reliable cure to anxiety. Perhaps it was a symptom of paranoia. Either way it remained an unmoveable notion in her mind.