Unsteady

-seven-

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, and stared at myself. I hadn't had much time to even look at myself with the past week of chaos.

I looked exhausted. My short, black hair was in tangles and my once sparkly hazel eyes were now dull and boring. Dark circles hung low under them.

I splashed my face with cold water, and quickly brushed my teeth with one of the cheap toothbrushes you get from the dentist's office. It was all I had, since I hadn't expected to stay any longer than a couple hours at Rachael's, and definitely not long enough to need a toothbrush or toothpaste.

After the phone call, I'd passed out. Once I woke up, it was dinner time and I was lying on the couch in Rachael's apartment. She was eating cold pizza and there was a plate waiting for me at the dining room table on the place mat across from her.

"We were down there forever, Val. The power went on after you blacked out, so luckily a doctor was in the building and said you were fine. We stayed until the storm died down completely." She'd told me.

Now there was only a soft drizzle of rain. Flashbacks of the storm kept coming back to me in little bursts. The phone call at mom came back to me all at once. I couldn't cry, though. All my tears were used, and my eyes felt like dry sockets.

I just continued to stare at myself after I was ready for bed, emptily.

I didn't want to sleep in the spare guest room, on the very top floor of Rachael's apartment. What if the storm came back while we were all sleeping, and we didn't get out in time? We were so high up, I couldn't look out the window without getting extreme anxiety. I had a small fear of heights and suddenly it felt like it escalated by a ton in the past few minutes.

"Valia?" Rachael's head poked in the guest room in which she'd assigned me to sleep. I looked up from the ground and at her.

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry. That you have to stay here." she said, her cheeks flushed bright red.

"It's okay." I mumbled, looking back at the ground. I had a zillion questions to ask her, such as who is Mavis? What happened to you in the past three years? Why are you even being nice to me?

But I stayed silent, until she sighed and turned around to leave the room, softly shutting it behind her.

I laid on the bed in the pitch black room, because Rachael didn't have a lamp or night-light. The complete darkness reminded me of the storm. After less than ten minutes, I switched on the lights and paced around the room. There was so much bustling New York City noise. Cars and taxis were honking, people's voices rumbling, and just plain noise. It was indescribable. It was simply just noise.

I missed my home. Back in the suburbs, it was mostly quiet but with a tiny background of small sounds of noise. Comforting noise. Not this kind of noise, twenty stories up on an apartment in somewhere away from home.

Whenever I was scared at home, I'd just walk around the apartment. It was a tiny apartment, only four stories and we lived on the second. I knew every single person well enough to feel genuinely comfortable walking around. I'd felt comfort knowing my mom was in the room next to me, and now I was a million miles away from my mom, or so it felt.

My only comfort was Rachael, and I barely knew her now. There were thousands of people in this apartment, at least one was guaranteed to be a creep. Or a serial killer. You never know, especially in New York City.

Eventually, I fell asleep. I didn't dream at all.

--

I woke up at sunrise and the light in Rachael's bedroom was on. My curiosity got the best of me, so I tiptoed across the hall to Rachael's room, and cautiously pressed my ear against the door to see if I could hear her moving around.