Elisabeth Marie

Chapter Two

"We've already sent that one out. No refunds. Sorry."

"But-"

"Enjoy your pizza," he said before hanging up.

I slowly put down the phone, stunned. I had given some stranger my address, and I couldn't do anything about it. The elevator didn't go to a new floor until the door had been opened. I couldn't just leave the pizza guy in the elevator... but what other option was there? I had never met anyone other than people whom Mother had approved beforehand. 

"I'll have to let  him in. I can't leave him in there or the elevator won't work until... ever," I said aloud. I mentally calculated the time it usually took for the pizza people to get to the apartment, then subtracted the five minutes I had spent waiting on the phone... Definitely no more than ten minutes, if that.

Mocha barked her agreement. "Mocha, you need to go downstairs to the rec room for awhile... I don't think you should be up here if we have a stranger up here," I said, urging her to the stairs to the bottom floor of our apartment and tossing some toys down to keep her occupied for a few minutes.

I fixed my hair and grabbed a ten dollar bill for the pizza and tip before going to a chair near the elevator to wait. "I'll just... take the pizza, pay and give him the tip. Then shut the elevator behind him. That will be it," I said aloud,  trying to calm myself down. He's probably, like, fifty, like Mr. Jones. A sweet, grandpa- type guy. No worries. But then why was I worrying?

What felt like just seconds later, the intercom buzzed.

"Hello?" asked a male voice, probably belonging to a teenager like me. "Is this thing working? Um... your pizza's here, Ms. Johnson."

I hurried over to the elevator, slowing down and straightening my posture for the last couple steps. I flicked my eyes to the heavens for a second, looking for some help from someone I only knew about from books on religion. Here we go.

I took a deep breath and turned the key.

My reflection in the golden elevator doors slid away as they opened and I saw myself replaced with a boy, probably around my age, standing in the elevator with a pizza box. I'd never seen someone my own age before, at least not up close, and had to work a bit to hide my surprise at how normal he looked. No crazy piercings- no piercings at all, actually. No visible tattoos. None of the crazy dark eyeliner that the boy getting arrested in a video Mother showed me had. Just a Pike's Pizza uniform and a mop of brown hair over his grey-blue eyes.

The boy stood there for a minute then walked out, handing me the pizza. "Are you Elizabeth?" he asked.

"Yeah,"  I said, still struggling to keep my surprise hidden.

"Well, um, here's your pizza," he said. He sounded a little nervous. Was I doing something wrong?

"Thanks... Timothy," I said slowly, reading his little nametag and handing him the money.

"Yeah, sure thing, Elisabeth," he said  politely. When I caught him looking at me, he quickly turned away and looked around the apartment.

"Oh, no," I said after a second of trying to figure out why he would be looking at me, "I didn't give you enough for the pizza! Just a second, I'll go grab another couple of dollars..."

"Oh, okay, perfect," Timothy said, still looking around the apartment. "You know," I heard him say as I dug through the kitchen drawers for the bag containing my food allowance- where is it? "you have some really nice photographs hanging in here. Where did you get them?"

Victory! I took five more dollars out of the bag before registering what he had said. "Oh, um, I actually took them," I said shyly, coming back into the entryway. "I just... yeah." If Mother heard my grammar just about now, she would probably faint.