Thank you Pixie Longforest and Katelle26 for reviewing chapter 2!
Alice lay in her bed wide awake and staring at the ceiling. She couldn't sleep. She wasn't able to get more than an hour of sleep all night. It's not that she hadn't tried; she just wakes up shortly after she falls asleep in a sweat. The same thing happened to her last night when she got home late after the monster flew away. Her Dad was the one that she would talk to about this, but she didn't want him to worry. After all the events that happened to him also, adding his daughter with unexplainable nightmares was not at the top of the list to tell him. Taking his words to leave to heart, and leaving was at the top, so many things would be easier for him if she just ignored him and went to bed.
She rolled over and looked at her clock on her bedside table. It was almost one. She groaned and rolled back over. This was going to be the longest night. Closing her eyes, Alice thought about what happened earlier: all of the reporters, hiding at Charles house, and Martin throwing up. She smirked at that last one, Joe looked so embarrassed.
Joe.
She had an idea.
Alice threw back her covers and got out of bed. She changed out of her pajamas and into something warm. She tiptoed down the stairs and saw her Dad passed out on the couch. As quietly as she could, she managed to open the front door and slip outside. She grabbed her bike that she had left by the side of the house and got on. Alice left her house and headed down the street. As she passed block by block the smell of ash was the only scent in the air. She couldn't see much, mostly by street lights running on backup power as she weaved through streets and neighborhoods. Then she found the house she was looking for. She pulled up to the curb and dropped her bike running passed the burned garage, and around to the back of the house. She was lucky that she lived in the more outskirts of town, where her house was not touched by fire or Air Force. Alice raised her hand to the window and knocked. It was silent inside so she knocked again. There was a sound of things being pushed over, and then she saw him.
Joe looked through the window at her and opened it up.
"Are you ok?" There was concern in his voice behind the tiredness.
She just smiled at him, "Yes, I'm fine."
"Uh, do you want to come in?"
She nodded and started to climb through the window. She grabbed his outstretched hand and let him help her into the room. When she found her footing and balanced herself Alice found that she was left staring into his eyes. They were so dark; they were deep and looked like there was a mystery to them, but at the same time soft, and innocent. When she realized that she was still holding Joe's hand and had been staring at him for a couple seconds, she dropped his hand looked down at her shoes and took a step back. After a deep breath she looked back at him and tucked some of her hair behind her ear.
"I'm sorry for coming over so late. It's just that I can't sleep, and I was hoping that you could help me."
"Yeah, of course."
"Well it's just that I don't know who to talk to." Alice folded her arms and put all of her weight on one leg. "I haven't been able to sleep, today or yesterday. I wake up each hour feeling like I had a nightmare, but don't remember if I did." She paused. "Is this happening to you?"
He shook his head. "No."
She walked around the bedroom finding a clean space on the floor and sitting down, leaning against his deck.
"It's weird." She said as he sat across from her, with his back to the wooden chest at the end of his bed.
"I want to know what is scaring me, but at the same time I don't." She let out a deep sigh. "I almost want to forget everything that happened."
"Anyone would." Joe answered.
She looked at him, and then pulled her eyebrows together. "How are you handling this so well?"
Joe had confusion etched in his face, and held it for a short time before letting it fall.
"I know this sounds stupid, but right now, I feel better than I have in the last four months."
Alice let out a small laugh. "I don't think anyone would expect that answer from someone who was in the hands of a man eating alien."
He joined in on her laugh. When they both stopped the atmosphere in the room drastically changed, from light and friendly, to heavy.
Alice looked at Joe and saw that he was staring at his hands with a sad expression in his eyes. The heavy air carried on for a few minutes, and then Joe started to speak.
"I never cried about my Mom." His eyes were still at his hands.
She had questions for him right then with that one sentence but remained silent, knowing that this could possibly be much more difficult to him then she thought. One of the questions was why he brought this up.
"I just never wanted to believe it. I feel numb when I think about her, like she was never there in the first place, but I can remember her clearly." Joe stopped and looked like he was going to stop talking but continued. "It's hard to watch my Dad cry about her, and not have the same feelings about her death."
He looked up at her and she could see the pain in his eyes.
His hand went to his pocket and then he pulled it away empty handed.
"The locket was the only thing I really had of her." His eyes became distant, like he was remembering something. He opened his mouth to say more but quickly closed it and looked down at the floor.
Alice hurt watching him, her mother left when she was four and didn't leave many memories behind. Joe had his mother until he was thirteen and it was obvious to everyone that he was closer to her than his father. When she died things must have been extremely difficult between them. Alice remembered when they started filming, and his friends would ask if his father knew where he was, and Joe would just shake his head and look away or change the subject. The sad part was the whole town knew of this problem. They knew that Deputy Lamb loved his son, but not as much as his wife, for he never showed it or expressed it in anyway. They lived in a small town with little gossip to talk about, so the difficulty between the Lambs was highly discussed. She saw it happen even at school. She was a grade above him, and his tragic life story would be talked about in her grade without him knowing.
There was hope inside her that after everything that Joe had done in the past couple days would help things between him and his father.
She did have one question for him though.
"Why did you let go?" He looked away from the floor and looked back at her. She could read the emotions running through his eyes, and it briefly caught her off guard.
"The locket, why did you let it go?"
"Oh, um," He took a deep breath, "I wanted to let go of it because I felt like it was holding me down." He finished the sentence with the air he was holding. "I felt that maybe if I let go, I could stop the space growing between my Dad and me, leave all of our troubles behind us."
What Joe was saying was eating her up inside. It was strange; she had never felt this way for anyone, ever. Alice looked down at her own hands and the room grew with silence, it wasn't awkward or uncomfortable, but calm, lighter.
"Alice?" She looked back at Joe, and he gave the appearance that the earlier conversation was gone, almost like he had forgotten it.
"When we were at the hospital, and when we were sitting next to each other on the couch at Charles' house, why you moved away when Martin noticed," he swallowed, "noticed us?"
"Oh," She felt a blush creep up onto her cheeks and she looked down in an attempt to hide it. "Well there is this boy, and I've had this crush on him for the past couple days, and I want to get to know him better. I want to tell him or express to him that I like him, but don't know when and when his friends spot me trying to get closer to him it brings me back to earth and reminds me that I'm being stupid." Alice nervously looked from her hands to his face. He looked stunned.
She grinned and stood up from the floor. As she walked to the window and pushed it back open he was still staring into space contemplating her words. She climbed onto his desk and started to climb out his window then paused.
"Thank you for the talk." Joe slowly nodded his head, not moving his eyes, and then seemed to snap and beamed up at her like he had been given the greatest news on the planet.
"Yeah, thank you also, it felt good to tell someone about my mother."
She copied his smile. "Don't forget about our date later, ok?" She turned and jumped out his window before she could see his reaction.
Alice rode home with a smile on her face, and still had it when she snuck back in the house, finding her father in the same place she had left him, and falling back into her bed. Her late night trip was worth every second. What she learned was that, for a fact, that she liked him, and he liked her.
That night she slept until the morning, with nothing waking her up.
I hope you liked this chapter! Also, please review so I know how this story is going so far!