Not Today | ??

"A single loose thread
And it all comes undone..."

✧✧✧

Water.

There was so much water.

From the water falling from the clouds, each drop hitting solid surfaces angrily, creating a harsh, anxiety-inducing buzz, to the way she felt water gather in her eyes, blurring her vision, though not spilling over onto her cheeks to the way she felt like she was drowning.

Evelyn took a deep breath, but it seemed futile, as if she was surrounded by water instead of oxygen, her lungs ceasing their ability to inflate and deflate, causing her heartbeat to become inconsistent and unsteady.

Unsteady.

That was a good word.

That was a good word to describe how she felt.

Unsteady. As if caught in a riptide, the human body being too helpless to swim against the current.

Unsteady. As if a balloon, at the mercy of air, unable to control the direction it floated in or the place it landed.

Unsteady. The way a girl would be when told her brother was Missing In Action.

Unsteady.

The steady beat of rain seemed to mock her, as if setting the tone for bad news, despite being one of her favorite things.

The irrational part of Evelyn's mind told her maybe it had to do with the fact that the men in pristine suits with perfect posture knocked four times. Not three times. Four. Four wasn't a good number. Not the way three was. She ignored that thought and ran up the stairs, ignoring her mom trying to call her back down.

Evelyn walked in her room, first noticing Tristan on her bed, ignoring him when her eyes then flitted to the book covers on her wall. One was completely misaligned, the edge hanging. How had she never noticed that? Evelyn walked forward immediately, fixing it, but the second she did that, she realized the one to the left of the cover wasn't perfectly aligned with the one she'd just fixed. She fixed that, too. She pulled back to look at it and those two were fine, but all the rest looked, or rather, felt misaligned.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

It was all wrong.

Her covers.

Her brother.

Missing in Action?

What did that even mean? Had he wandered off? Was he a prisoner? Was he dead?

Evelyn took deep breaths. She was close to hyperventilating and trying to count 1, 2, 3 in her mind, but the only thing that gave her any semblance of relief was reorganizing.

"Hey, hey, hey," Tristan said, coming up beside her and putting her hands in between his, placing them against his chest and forcing her to look up at him.

It was then that she realized she was wrong about the organizing. Tristan provided relief, too. But the amount was minuscule. How could you feel relief when your brother was Missing in Action?

"Evelyn, stop," he said softly. "Don't give into your obsessions like that, you know it's not good."

"But it's all wrong," she said, her voice breaking. She was on the verge of hysterics and slightly embarrassed Tristan was there to see it.

Tristan furrowed his eyebrows, realizing something was fundamentally wrong.

"Evelyn, what's wrong?"