1. Infinite
In the cool quiet dark of her room, there is a light - not the light at the end of the tunnel, or any overtly death-related notion; just a light, a cheap-looking desk lamp with a too-bright fluoro tube that somehow is angled to still not cast enough light. The desk it casts that light over is cluttered with all the spoils of life and growing up, and a few things that shouldn't really be there but are, for whatever reason is enough for her. An ancient recipe stand, found at a garage sale in the next street, takes pride of place, filled with a mess of notebooks and loose sheets of paper, and a periodic table with most of the actinides missing. A crossword torn from a magazine rests before her - tossed aside temporarily, it's ripped edges fluttering slightly in the chilly breeze from the near-black window.
Two alarm clocks sit dangerously close to the edge of the desk, gathering dust. Miscellaneous stationery fills jars and caddies and overflows onto the desk, spreading everywhere and getting lost and found and lost again. A chipped trophy, a broken jewellery box, and an old hand painted piggy bank sit somewhere off to the side, to be dealt with when she finds the time.
A camera with no batteries and a stick of purple zinc occupy gaps, as if trying to find a place where they will be wanted and used, instead of left behind and forgotten in the wave of modern technology and phones and general coolness that takes away the need for purple zinc. An enormous pile of paperwork - everything from assignment sheets to Polaroid photos to stencils to lists of just about everything to teaspoons. A dictionary and a thesaurus lurk in the corners, as if ashamed to be somewhere they are used so rarely.
A drink coaster and a placemat are somewhere under the jumble of paper and pens, for when she has to eat at the desk - something that is becoming all too common in her busy rushed world. On the coaster, which bears a lemon and the word CITRUS, sits a mug of hot chocolate. Once she would have said the mug is half full - sometimes she'll now say that it is half empty, but mostly she will avoid the argument and merely state that the liquid comes halfway to the top.
Finally, hidden behind her laptop, difficult to see behind the glow of the screen, is a shot glass. It contains only an inch of water, not alcohol, but it is a reminder of what many young people her age - many of those her friends - are doing with their time. She prefers to sit and think, and read, write, and dream, and worry. Worry for him, because she loves him. Worry for the rest of the world, because if he's gone, what is left? What is out there, coming towards her, or even him? The cool quiet dark of her room breeds worry, but only because it is a thinking space, and worry is a thought, and the cool quiet dark fosters other thoughts too, of every kind; not only the nasty ones. Dark does not spawn dark. She has had this cool quiet dark as her space for a long time now, and she is not dark.
She twiddles a stray piece of sticky-tack between her fingers, stretching it, twisting it, and remembers something a very wise man once told her - "Some infinities are bigger than other infinities." She has never thought too much about infinity before, because the idea of something that huge rather scares her, but she likes the idea that infinity has a size, and a changing size at that. She only hopes that her infinity can go on a little longer.
Months later, after she has found out what happened to him, and found him, and judo-flipped him to the group for scaring her like that, she decides that maybe infinity isn't so scary after all, if she can have one with him. She resolves to make her bedroom warmer and lighter next time she is in it.
Disclaimer - I own nothing. The characters belong to Uncle Rick, and the quote near the end to John Green, who I think is wise (even if he may need to grow a beard and get some better glasses before the rest of the world will realise). Most of the stuff on the desk is mine, though I don't I can claim any credit for that.