It’s been two weeks since I rescued Alice, though she keeps insisting that she didn’t need rescuing. Ungrateful baby.
“Welcome home,” Alice greeted as I opened the door.
“What do you want to eat tonight?” I asked, as usual, ignoring her greeting.
“Anything is fine,” she answered, not even glancing up from her book.
“How about that Mexican place?”
The only answer I received was the sound of flipping pages. I took that as a “yes” and started to press numbers. After ordering, I plopped down onto the couch, which earned me a small sigh from Alice.
“What are you reading?” I asked just for the sake of making noise.
Again the only answer I received was the sound of moving pages. I sighed and leaned back into the couch. I was already use to Alice’s silent treatments since she wasn’t naturally a talkative person anyways, and whenever she did talk, she would use French because she loved the confused looks people always got whenever they couldn’t understand her, but even this had lost it’s appeal to her since I was pretty much fluent in French, though I rarely spoke it.
At hearing the doorbell, I sighed tiredly and pushed off the couch to answer the door. It was the Mexican delivery guy. I grabbed the food and thanked him while handing him the money and telling the guy to keep the change. He thanked me then left.
“Food’s here,” I yelled as I kicked the door shut with my foot.
Alice finally put the book down and stood up from the couch to get plates and silverware. After a few minutes of arguing about who got what first, we finally settled down and started to eat. I turned on the TV and changed it to a random channel just for the sake of noise. I was getting tired of all the silence.
“Does your family miss you?”
Alice glanced at me, her expression still its usual indifference, but I saw something flicker in her icy blue eyes so fast that I almost thought I imagined it.
“No,” she answered simply before taking another bite of a cheese covered chip.
“Oh,” I decided not to press further.
Finishing dinner, I gathered all the dirty dishes, with Alice’s help, and put them in the sink to be washed later.
Settling back onto the couch, I glanced at the TV to see that it was an infomercial for some kind of radio-microwave-computer-looking thing. Somewhere in the less lazy part of my mind, I wanted to change the channel, but I had lost the remote again and I didn’t want to look for it.
“Shouldn’t you get a job or at least start going to school? I mean, you’re going to be living here from now on, right?” I asked, while mentally weighting the pros and cons of looking for the remote.
I looked over curiously when Alice didn’t answer and saw her looking at the TV as well, her book long forgotten.
“Alice?”
She turned towards me, her pale face emotionless, and answered: “No.”
And I couldn’t tell which part of my question she had just answered.