I was sitting in my room, going through and editing my photographs, when I heard a knock on my door. "It's open!" I called.
Mother walked in. "Hey, sweetie, it's three-fifty, I'm going to go down to the cafe now, okay? I'll be away for awhile."
"How long is awhile?"
"Oh, I don't know, I'll be back maybe around nine or ten."
"Five hours?!"
"Yes, dear. You can order takeout if you want from Pike's Pizza, but remember, request Mr. Jones for delivery. Okay? We can't have some stranger coming up to our little haven, now, can we? He's the only one allowed up here from Pike's."
"I know, Mother," I assured her.
"Good." Mother leaned in and gave me a hug. "I'll see you later, sweetie!"
"Okay. Bye, Mother."
She turned and walked to the door. "Bye, sweetheart. I'll need you to shut the elevator behind me with your key."
"Right." That was why I couldn't ever go down to street level, even if I was brave enough to. Because the entrance into the elevator from our apartment could only be shut (and opened) from inside the apartment. And since I had the key to the elevator around my neck, I would never be able to leave- Mother wasn't about to shut the elevator from the inside of the apartment for me, and even if she was willing to, I definitely wasn't too keen on wandering downtown by myself. Especially not after seeing the news stories every few months about downtown shootings, gang violence, people getting robbed... no, thank you.
I turned the key into the lock as soon as we reached the elevator. "Bye, Elisabeth. I'll see you tonight!" Mother said.
"Bye," I said, trying to hide my half-heartedness. When Mother was inside the elevator I closed it behind her.
Once the doors had slid shut with a gentle thud, I turned my back to the elevator again, just like I had done for years. One time, years ago, I ran inside it, but nothing really happened, since I couldn't go down in it or anything with the door open. I just stood there for a minute before Mother told me that I was being ridiculous and to please get out so that she could move on with her life.
I walked almost immediately over to the phone. It was only four o'clock, but I still felt like getting pizza. I was bored already, and after only about thirty seconds alone. That was no surprise though- I had been feeling progressively more and more restless in the past few months. Before she stopped coming, my childhood nanny Miss Nancy told me I was a 'people person'. She was probably right- I much preferred talking to people than sitting alone reading or playing an instrument to an empty room.
That was part of the reason that I had been working so hard at my schoolwork for so long and took as many extra lessons as I did: just talking to people like my language instructors and listening to my music teachers critique made me feel relaxed. Now where did I put the phone...?
There it was. I called Pike's and ordered a small Hawaiian, with delivery to my address, and promptly hung up. As soon as I did, I regretted it.
"Oh. No." I said aloud, sitting down with a start. "I didn't request Mr. Jones for delivery." I grabbed the phone in a panic and dialed Pike's again, but they put me on hold. Who buys pizza at four o'clock anyway?! I couldn't find a reason I would have been put on hold.
It must have been at least five minutes before I got hooked up with some tired-sounding guy on the phone. "What would you like to order?"
"Actually, I need to cancel an order. A small Hawaiian under Elisabeth?"
"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.
"Wow!" he exclaimed, maybe a bit over-enthusiastically considering it was all just cityscapes and pictures of the sky. "They're really good!"
"Thanks," I said. Whether he was faking his enthusiasm or not, it was nice to have someone compliment my work. Mother had never shown much interest in any of my hobbies.
"You know," Timothy said, "my aunt owns a shop that sells photography down closer to the beach. I can give you her number, I can tell you right now that she'd be interested in looking at them."
"Really?"
"Yeah!" he said as I handed him the money. "Here's her card, give her a call. Just tell her that her nephew Timothy suggested you. And thanks for the tip, by the way," he finished. "I can put my number on the back, too, in case you want to talk to someone more your... own age. My aunt can be kind of intimidating sometimes."
I laughed as he wrote out another number on the back of the card in pen. "Sure thing, I definitely will." Why was I comfortable with this guy after less than two minutes? This is wrong. Very wrong.
"Actually... this is my last delivery for today, I can just stay for a little bit if you want... you know, to talk about your photography. No pressure though," Timothy said slowly, running a hand through his hair.
I glanced at the clock. "That would be great!" I said, almost all my nervousness gone. I was just happy to have someone to talk to. "I have a few hours until I need to... um... be somewhere."
"Awesome!"
"You can take off your shoes over there by the elevator," I said, closing the door to the elevator with the key. "And, of course, you can have some of the pizza!"
"Thanks!"
"So," Timothy said, once we were seated at the table and he was munching on a piece of pizza, "Tell me a little bit about yourself and your photography."
"What do you want to know?"
Timothy raked his hand through his hair anxiously. "Um... this is going to sound really weird, I know. But... my aunt has this thing where she needs to know each of her suppliers on a personal level... something about changing the mood of the photos or something. I don't know. Can you just... like... tell me some basic stuff about yourself?"
How do I know I can trust him? "How do I know I can trust you?" I asked aloud, then put my hand over my mouth, embarrassed. "Sorry, that came out odd, I..."
"It's fine," Timothy said. "I can tell you some stuff about myself first, if you want." I nodded and he cleared his throat before continuing. "Okay. So, my name's Timothy Kress. I have a little brother named Christopher and an older sister named Stephanie, who's married to a guy named Michael. They have a daughter named Olivia, she's about one I think. And I have another sister-who's-not-really-my-sister named Jane, who comes over all the time with her husband Ross and daughter Ella. They're pretty much part of the family with the rest of us. Krista's kind of my sister too, even though she's actually my mom's sister so she's my aunt. But they have different last names- Krista's is Parks, and my mom's used to be Parks but now it's Kress, since she got married. Her other sister's last name is Parks, too, since she never got married either. She's adopted a bunch of kids though, so..." He paused. "Sorry, getting kind of off topic here," Timothy apologized. Honestly, I hadn't even noticed. I was just enjoying the sound of someone's voice other than mine and the radio host's.
Timothy cleared his throat. "I kind of want to say I'm a good student, but I don't know what the requirements are for calling yourself a good student, so I'll leave that out. Um... I used to play guitar, but haven't been able to for awhile. I go to school just a few minutes from here, even though I live more like a half hour away. I'm hoping to enroll in the military after this year, and I work at Pike's Pizza," he finished. "Questions?" he asked.
"Wow. I... if you're enrolling in the military after this year, does that mean you're going to be a... twelfth grader?"
"A senior? Yes. Nobody says twelfth grader." He laughed. "Are you going to be a senior, too? I'm guessing that you go to my school, since you live so close," he said.
"I'm going to be a... um..." What's an eleventh grader called?
"Freshman?" Timothy suggested. "Junior? Sophomore?"
"Yes," I said.
Timothy laughed again. "Not really a yes or no question, but I'll go with it. So, your turn," he said, pulling out the pen he had used earlier and a piece of crumpled up paper. "Oh, notes. To give to Krista," he explained after seeing my curious look.
"Right. Okay, so, I'm... Elisabeth Johnson. I'm sixteen, almost sixteen and a half. I've lived in this apartment my whole life, with my mother, Sharon Johnson. I don't go to school," I said, "but I'm homeschooled by a ton of tutors. I play piano and flute and I'm fluent in four and a half languages- the half is Japanese, which I'm not actually fluent in. At all. I'm pretty awful at it." Timothy laughed and I took that as a sign of encouragement. "I like photography as well as drawing," I continued. "The sky is amazing to me too. I can look at the stars for hours and sunsets and sunrises are the prettiest things I've ever seen, especially from up here. Oh, and I have a dog named Mocha, do you want to meet her?" I asked, remembering her suddenly.
"Sure," agreed Timothy, laughing.
"Okay, just a second, I'll go get her," I told him, going down the hall and opening to the stairs.
"Mocha! Come on up!" I called down. She came sprinting up the stairs, and I laughed. "I want you to meet a friend of mine. Timothy, here she comes!" I called as she ran past me into the great room.
I walked after her, and found Timothy rubbing her belly just the way she loved it. "Do you have a dog?" I asked, surprised.
"No, but my aunt does. Um... did."
"Oh. I'm sorry... I could tell. You're really good with her," I said honestly.
"Yeah. So, um, it's been, what, a half hour? Are you needing to go somewhere, or...?"
"No, I don't think I need to-" the phone rang. "Just a sec," I apologized, going over to answer it. "Hello, Johnson residence."
"Hey, sweetie," Mother said. "Turns out that my friend is ill, so I just grabbed a quick bite and now I'm coming home. I should be there in about two minutes, okay?"
I glanced at Timothy, wide eyed, before turning back to the phone. "Oh, okay, great! Sure thing, see you soon!" I said into the receiver, trying to sound carefree.
"Okay, bye dear."
"Bye." I hung up quickly, then turned to Timothy.
"Hey, that was my... driver... to an... activity. That I'm going to. Turns out they're going to be taking me there early, so, um, if you don't mind, I think I need to go get ready. And then they're going to pick me up in a few minutes."
Timothy took the hint. "Oh, right, of course!" he said, getting up. "Anyways," he said, "here's the card, my number's on the back, and so give either me or my aunt a call, okay?"
"Okay," I said, smiling, as I took the card. 'Krista Parks', it read. 'Art Extraordinaire'. We walked over to the elevator and I put the key into the keyhole.
"Why did you do that?" Timothy asked, gesturing to my necklace.
"Oh, um, the elevator has to be unlocked to work. Otherwise anyone could come into our apartment who lives in the building, you know?" I said.
"Oh. I guess that makes sense," Timothy agreed.
"Yeah," I said as he got into the elevator.
"Well, it was nice to meet you, Elisabeth!" Timothy said as he pushed the button and the doors started to close.
"You, too, I'll call you," I promised.
"Bye!" Timothy called.
"Bye!" I said as the doors closed. As soon as they were completely shut I rushed to put away the second glass of water, pushed in the second chair into the table, and slipped the card from Timothy's aunt into the pocket of my jeans. Almost immediately the intercom crackled.
"Elisabeth, it's Mother, I'm home! Come unlock the door, sweet pea!"
I took one last glance around the apartment to make sure not even a speck of dust was any different than if I had been home alone. Then I turned to the elevator and sighed. I would never be able to tell anyone about Timothy. I could never really call him, I would have to explain how I gained access to his number.
"I will never see the only person who could have been my friend again," I said aloud, sitting down as it hit me. When will I get to meet anyone else? When will I get to leave? I can't live here forever, can I? Will I be forced to? What am I even going to do with my life? I felt weak. I heard the intercom again, Mother urging me to hurry and lecturing me on my incompetence, but it seemed far away and distant, like when you're half asleep and aren't really in the world yet. But instead of coming closer to consciousness like I would in the morning, I seemed to just drift further and further away, my head spiraling into an angry hurricane of the thoughts I had never paused to think about before.
The world went black.
~*~*~*~
A/N: See, I told you that things would pick up soon! So, what do you think of Timothy? You'll be seeing more of him, don't worry about that ;). Sorry for the super brief introduction, you'll learn more about the characters as the story moves on. Thanks so much for reading!! <3
P.S. Elisabeth's hair is longer than it is in the picture for this chapter!