Billie and Brandon: Unpredictable Circumstances

13

Billie stared at her mother, watching her with slightly widened eyes in surprise. Maggie looked exhausted. There were bags under her eyes and her face was kind of pale.

Maggie cleared her throat, her voice sounding a little hoarse. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to pick up something that you didn't bring." Billie replied, hugging her jacket a little tighter around her. She didn't want her mother casting any other negative glares at Bean.

"Oh." Maggie replied, stepping aside to let her in.

Billie walked past her to go get the portrait in the bedroom in the back. As she walked into the living room, she was entirely surprised that there was nothing Christmas-y about the home in the least. No decorations hanging crookedly from the ceiling. No smell of cookies, no scent of bitter hot chocolate permeating the air. The TV was on, but the channel was set on some scientific channel and not on the Christmas specials. And Finneas clearly wasn't there so he must have gone to Claudia's.

As Billie walked toward the hallway, she noticed the pile of tissues on the floor near the couch and realised her mother probably had a cold. Usually when she got a cold, Billie and her father would nurse her back to health. Had Maggie been trying to take care of it on her own? Where was her dad? Or the steaming honey tea with lemon?

"You have a cold?"

"It's just a little one" Maggie croaked a little sharply, sitting back down on the couch and staring at the TV.

Billie wanted to say something, but she held herself back, shaking her head.

She wouldn't get sentimental.

She couldn't forget that her either of her parents didn't want her. And since that was the case, then Billie wanted nothing to do with them either.

Billie walked down the hallway and headed to her parents room, pushing open the door. It looked like she hadn't used it in a while. The bed was perfectly made with the blankets tucked in and there was a thin, growing layer of dust on the wooden headboard. Had her mother been pulling extra shifts so she wouldn't come home or something? And if so why wasn't it being used by her dad?

A little concerned, despite the fact she tried to tell herself she shouldn't care. Billie crouched under the bed and reached her hand around until she found the wooden frame of the portrait. She tugged it out slowly and held it up in front of her, smiling to herself that it was still in perfect condition, save for a few specks of dust here and there. Drew was going to love it. She tucked it inside her tote, making sure it was comfortably arranged so it wouldn't be damaged in transport.

As she left her parent's room, her eyes drifted to her own room door, slightly ajar. Morbid curiosity gripped her and she wondered, for some strange reason, what her room looked like. She knew most of her stuff was in Drew's room at this point. But she honestly was wondering what her room looked like now that there wasn't any life in it.

She padded over to the door and poked her head inside, glancing around. She had been right. Her room was fairly and oddly bare and untouched.

Except for her bed.

The sheets and covers were frumpy and ruffled and folded over themselves like someone had recently slept in them. Even the writing on her wall had been exposed from the lack of sheet covering it, just sitting there waiting for her personal thoughts to be completely exposed..And there was an open book resting on the pillow. Confused, she walked further in to take a look at the book. She was met with various random images of a blue eyed, blonde haired baby girl crawling on a fuzzy white carpet and crying and smeared food on her face and being given a bath. Some with another young boy, some not.