NightTide: The Girl With Red Eyes

I slept well, the bed was soft and warm, I hadn’t noticed it before but it was cold outside. Surprisingly I woke up before Jessica did, I didn’t know what time it was but I went outside. It was still dark outside, but I could see the sun rising in the distance. It looked nice out, I sat there for a while slowly watching it rise… I walked in and saw Jessica running around. She seemed to be in a panic.

The second she saw she screamed. “WHERE WERE YOU!”

It was surprising to say the least. “Watching the sun come up?”

She calmed down immediately. “Oh… my bad sorry, I though you took off.”

Why does she keep reacting like that? “Why were you so worried about that?”

She looked tired. “I’m in charge of you. If anything happens to you that isn’t caused by me, I’m going to get in trouble for it… Unless it wasn’t preventable.”

I stared at her for a second, I decided it would be best to calm her down. “I’m going anywhere. I don’t have anywhere to go. I think you might have noticed but I have a terrible sense of direction, I’d probably end up wandering back here.”

She had a weak laugh. “Actually, that makes sense, I’m surprised you just said that.”

Did she just insult me… “Heyyyy!” She did a mocking maniacal laugh and went to her room. I went to mine, I did need to change.

Since it was cold I dug around in that closet, I found a pair of thick blue jeans and a long sleeved, somewhat thick, white shirt. There’s a lot of white shirts in there… I walked out of my room and I didn’t know where Jessica was, she wasn’t in her room, she wasn’t in the hallway, and I didn’t see her in the entranceway… Then I noticed the bathroom door was closed, I heard water running. I guess she was taking a shower. I decided to just lay on my bed until she came out, at least I tried. My curiosity got the best of me and I went into her room instead of peaking in. The walls were blue and the carpet was white, it was different from the rest of the place. She had a large doublewide bed and a walk-in closet… It wasn’t super luxurious but it was far better than my room, I guess this is what you get when you work hard… She had a picture of her Keith, Elizabeth. I guess they’re all good friends, though I find it surprising how willing she is to hurt Elizabeth. Maybe that’s just how they are?

I heard someone clear their throat when I was looking at the picture. “Ahem, what are you doing?” It scared me, I spun around and tripped over my feet, I hit the floor hard… “Red, out of my room!” I didn’t argue I just got up and left quickly.

I stayed in the entrance way, I had shut and locked my room so I just waited for Jessica. Eventually she came out wearing a long sleeved blue shirt and, thick blue jeans… I guess that would explain why there were so many in my closet, if they are hand me downs then she must like blue jeans.

She stared at me for a second. “What were you doing in there?”

I looked down. “Curiosity mostly…” I was rubbing the toe of my shoes across the ground…

She walked closer and patted my head. “If you want to go in there ask, I won’t barge into your room so please don’t barge into mine… Ok?” She gave me a smile.

I agreed. “Ok.”

She walked over and grabbed something out of the filing cabinets, it was a clip board. She flipped through the papers on it.

She had a smile on her face. “It looks like today’s going to be an easy one, no paperwork. We just need to check up with the officers around base, have to find out how things are going.”

That didn’t seem so bad. “How many are there?”

She looked at the clipboard. “There’s four we need to check with today. It looks like the air field, armory, vehicles, and supplies…” She had a blank look to her face. “Stick close to me when we check in with the armory officer.”

What? “Why? Wasn’t I supposed to do that anyways?”

She looked at me. “I mean don’t leave my side, you can wander a few feet but DO NOT leave my side when we head there. As for why, you’ll find out when we get there. That’ll be the last stop so it’ll be later on in the day.”

I was wondering what I needed to help with. “So, what’ll I be doing?

She stopped for a second. “First, just watching. Once we get the routine down you can start doing this yourself if the work ever gets more than I can handle… That way we can split it… First thing though, let’s go get breakfast.” I had no complaints about that… We did stuff like that for a while, I was slowly learning what to do… It was nice being useful.