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Several minutes pass before I decide to go inside. My parents nowhere in sight when I enter. No doubt they are wandering the property and making sure there is no damage. I scan the bare interior, the moving truck not arriving until the day after tomorrow. Fucking bullshit. We have to sleep on the damn floor until our shit arrives. Could we not even get air mattresses?
I walk down a hall and find the room Mom said would be mine. Once inside, I shut the door and lay on the tan carpet. No matter how many photos or posters I add to the walls, this room will never be mine. At most, I will only live here the next two years and then fly back to Florida. Back to Cora and Micah and everything I love.
I crawl over to the suitcase deposited in my room—probably by Dad. Unzipping the case, I riffle through the contents until I locate what I search for. Tucked between my jeans is a small wooden box. I trace my fingertips over the lightly stained grain, a tear slipping from my eye as I stare at my most prized possession. My favorite birthday present from my favorite person.
The box is about the size of a novel, but deeper. Cora used a wood burning tool and inscribed our names on the top surface as well as the date when we became official. Then she got artsy and added a beach sunset.
I brush my fingers over our names and the tears spill heavier. Not even a full day has passed and I can’t breathe. The constant warmth I once felt beneath my sternum is now cold and sunken and empty. Without Cora nearby, the world wobbles off-kilter. Revolves slower. Shifts to an endless night.
Flipping the small latch, I open the box and stare at the contents. Lose focus as the one person who means more to me than anyone else is just a memory in a fucking box. One by one, I pull each item from the box. One by one, I cry a little more. So many photos. Of us together—laughing, kissing, watching television. Of Cora by herself—some posed, some candid. Goofy faces, serious faces, expressions she reserved only for me. Drawings she did on napkins, scrap pieces of paper and other random types of paper. Some folded, some small enough to sit open in the box. Most she doesn’t even know I possess. Small tokens of her I kept since the day we met.
Pieces of her. Pieces of us.
I set the drawings on the fluffy carpet and spread them out so I have an unobstructed view of them all at the same time. Once I have them all spread, I go back to the box and take out the next items. Photos.
Polaroids and regular four-by-six printed images. Cora almost always had a camera with her everywhere we went. She kept it stashed in her purse or backpack, taking it out whenever an opportunity presented itself. Most of the photos on her camera—an older, thirty-five-millimeter film Nikon—were of places, things or other people. Every once in a while, I would snatch her camera and shoot pictures of her. And every once in a while, we were able to get someone else to take a photo of us together.
Sifting through the photos, I land on one of my two favorites. The photo is just of Cora. We were wandering along the trail in Walsingham Park and I had been holding her camera for a bit after she stopped to use the restroom. At the time, I had been walking ten feet behind her. Her eyes drifted up to the trees, searching for birds or squirrels. Or maybe she was simply admiring the trees—she did that sometimes, got lost staring at the trees. I lifted the camera to my eye and snapped the shutter, capturing her profile with the sunbeams haloing around her. She looked like a peaceful angel. My peaceful angel.
When she printed the black and whites, she teased me and asked why I took the picture. My response to her was “you just looked so peaceful and in your element. I wanted to capture the moment.” All she did was nod and smile.
My second favorite photo was of the two of us. More like our silhouettes. In the photo, we stood side by side with an arm around each other. A friendly guy on the beach snapped the photo as the sun set behind us. It wasn’t noticeable to most people who glanced at the photo, but we were both smiling like idiots. Giddy after dating each other for six months. Just looking at the photo now makes me smile like a fool. A fool madly in love with his soul mate.
I set the two photos beside each other and stare at them a while. Go back to the time they were taken. Remember how I felt those days. How the sight of her made my heart swell and breath vanish. Tears drip from my chin and splatter on the photos. I trace my finger over Cora in each of the pictures.
Fuck.Two years away from Cora will feel like an eternity.
“Gavin?” Mom bellows from somewhere outside the four walls that will now be my room.
I ignore her call a minute as I continue going through the box. Get lost in the drawings and photos as tears continue to fall. But the moment doesn’t last long.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Gavin, didn’t you hear me calling you?” Mom asks. In my periphery, she stands in the doorway with her hands on her hips, staring at my profile and the scattered images.
After a moment, I lift my tear-stained eyes to hers. Yeah, I heard you. But I don’t fucking care. That is what I want to say to her. But I don’t. Instead, I lie.
“Nope.”
I don’t elaborate. Don’t give her anything to expand on. Because I don’t want to look at her. Don’t want to speak to her. And a second later, I go back to staring at the items in front of me. But she interrupts me again and I groan.
“Well, Dad and I were thinking we should go out and grab something to eat. Maybe see what’s near here too. Sound good?”
She is doing her best in a shitty situation she is aware upsets me. And I guess I should reciprocate and try not to be too much of a dick. I mean, is it really such a bad thing that she is good at what she does? That her boss deemed her better than others in her field. A good son would be happy for his mom. A good son would be proud. But every time I try to be happy for her, all I think about is how I drew the short end of the stick in this whole situation. How I had no say or alternative.
I may be sixteen, but shouldn’t my voice count in matters like this? Shouldn’t I have a say?
“Yeah, Mom. Can you give me a few minutes? I want to call Cora before it’s too late for her.”
Something new to deal with. Fucking time zone differences. Bad enough I don’t get to see her or speak to her regularly. Now I have to fight with the fact that our lives exist with a three-hour time disruption.
“Sure thing. Ten minutes. And then we’ll go.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She gives me a sad smile then closes my door and walks off. Once she has been gone a few seconds, I call Cora.
She answers on the first ring. The moment I hear her voice, every live wire inside of me calms. Almost three thousand miles away and Cora still holds the balm to my heart. We talk nonstop for ten minutes—her more than me. She talks about Shelly hanging out with her and staying over at her house. How they have been watching Lord of the Rings on repeat and Shelly wants to kill her. This makes me laugh for the first time in weeks.
