Universal Displacement

Finding, Plotting, Falling

She folded another t-shirt and placed it delicately in her suitcase. There'd be others coming soon enough to help her, but she just needed some time to do a little of it on her own. Luckily her room was far enough from the detonation site to have escaped most of the damage. Vicki found that her eyes kept glancing to the hallway as she packed. Her suitcase was halfway full and she realized that she'd refolded the same skirt three times. With a frustrated scoff, she tossed the skirt down and marched down the short hall. She marched right up to Sutton's door, and then she froze. Her hand was poised over the doorknob.

She really didn't want to look inside. But, if that were true, why did the thought of walking away now send panic up her spine?

Sutton wasn't dead. It wasn't wrong to look in her room.

Vicki stood tall and smoothed her short hair. Then she pushed open the door.

It struck her first that it was oddly clean, save for a few articles of clothing on the floor. Vicki stepped inside cautiously, as if she'd set off some booby trap if not careful, and peered around. It didn't seem too unusual. There weren't schematics pinned to the wall or suspicious electronics on the tiny plastic desk. But there also seemed to be something missing. Sutton usually had little knick knacks she collected scattered around. The piles of paper on her desk would only grow if she wasn't reminded to clean it up. In all respects, it was Sutton's room. There just seemed to be an absence of Sutton in it.

Sitting on her friend's full sized bed, Vicki sighed.

"What happened?"

Her foot nudged one of the t-shirts on the floor and she blinked in confusion.

Wait. That looked like...

Vicki picked up the article of clothing and started in surprise. This was one of her boyfriend's shirts. Why did Sutton have it?

Vicki stood, eyes darting around the room at the other articles of clothing left on the floor. She took a short breath and raced back to her own room and pulled open the last drawer in her dresser. It was not how she'd left it. Half of her boyfriend's clothes were missing or mussed up. Vicki did not let clothes sit like that, unfolded and collecting wrinkles.

She suddenly looked up, studying her room anew, as if looking for some clue or sign as to what this discovery meant.

Could Sutton and her boyfriend have...?

No.

Vicki shook her head and immediately dismissed the idea. Sutton wasn't like that. Not in a million years. Besides, she could always tell that Sutton had felt a bit uncomfortable when he came over to visit. And Sutton had made it clear that she wouldn't participate in the same relationship activities if she ever started dating someone.

So what, then?

Perhaps it was the federal team that came in and searched their house? It was possible, but why would they move around her boyfriend's clothes? Why had they tidied up Sutton's room when the living room was obviously an inconsiderate mess?

A closer look around the rest of her room made clear to Vicki that not everything was how she'd left it either. Someone had moved her snow globe she'd gotten from visiting Roswell, New Mexico to the opposite end of the shelf she'd placed it on. Her closet sliding doors had been closed wrong, with the handles inwards instead of on the outsides. And her mattress, she gave it a good jostle, it seemed a bit sunken in. It was if something heavy had been laying in one place too long.

A metallic 'thunk' sounded through her room as the bed she'd been shuffling settled and Vicki refocused in curiosity. Her headboard may be metal but there was no way that the mattress or bedsheets made that sort of noise when brushing against it.