Later that night, Scott and Stiles would return home to find a box on each of their doorsteps. Scott took his box directly to Stiles’s house, shocked to find he had one of his own. They went up to Stiles’s room and opened the boxes, pulling out item after item from their lives with Erica. There were photobooth strips, arcade tokens, movie tickets, carnival prizes, Valentine’s Day cards, past birthday and Christmas gifts, and countless other objects collected over the ten years they had been friends. She had kept so much, and each item they pulled out reminded them of a moment they had shared together.
“Why does it feel like she’s breaking up with us?” Scott asked, his thumb running along the edge of a framed photo of him and Erica that his mom had taken last summer. Erica had joined him and his mom on their trip to the beach, and he had to practically drag her into the water. The framed shot showed him with his arms around Erica’s middle, her hands gripping his arms as she squealed when the wave crashed against their backs. He remembered how tired they both were on the drive home, Erica leaning her head against his shoulder when she fell asleep. He had been so happy that day, which was such a contrast to the deep misery he was feeling now.
“Because she is, Scott,” Stiles muttered, flipping through a comic book he had found in his box. It was The Brave and The Bold, issue #197, which had one of the sweetest moments between Batman and Catwoman in all of the comics. He remembered the day Erica had bought the comic. The two of them had gone comic book shopping together, and it was one of the few issues Stiles had read that Erica hadn’t. He remembered teasing her about how she hadn’t read such an important comic for Catwoman and Batman’s relationship, but all she had done was stick her tongue out at him and place the comic in her arms to buy. Over the years, he had seen her rereading this issue, often admitting it had become one of her favorites, and now he was holding it. Because she didn’t want it anymore. Because she didn’t want any reminders of him anymore. She didn’t want any reminders of either of them.
