I sat there in the heavy silence that followed Alice's final words, my mind grappling with the weight and meaning of it all. For a moment, it felt like being hit in the face with a snowball—everything going white for an instant, the world blanking out on impact, and then the cold, stinging pull back to reality.
For lack of a better analogy, that was the best way to describe my thoughts: stunned, scattered, and freezing over. I wasn't even sure how long I'd been sitting there like that, but by the time I came to, Alice was gone.
No, she hadn't vanished into thin air. I'd actually seen her walk out the same way she came in—calm, deliberate, and with that same knowing smile that lingered just long enough to irritate me. She said something as she left, but the words slipped right through the fog in my head.
