“It’s just like I remember, just—” I watch as Amara tries to find the words, her eyes searching every corner of the family room. “I don’t even know. The heart of it is gone.”
My chest tightens, tears stinging my eyes. Because it’s true.
This home used to be lively. It used to be filled with things from his time overseas. Things of Grandma’s. Things of my mom’s. Trinkets and evidence of someone wholived their life to the fullestin every single corner.
While there are stillthingshere, it doesn’t feel the same. It hasn’t since the day he passed away.
I head into my bedroom, dropping our stuff. This is the only room in the house that has been relatively untouched, and it’s only because my sister told me it was my job to go through it all.
Actually, I think her exact words were, “I’m too old to stumble across a crusty porn magazine. If you want shit gone, get it gone before the house gets broken into.”
I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
There are shelves upon shelves of trophies from various sports. Grandpa loved watching me play and supported me until the day he couldn’t. He believed in me so much that sometimes I thought he was the only one who ever did.
When I was falling behind in school, he was the onewho knew that I was smart enough to do well and got me tested. When I was diagnosed with severe ADHD, he was with me as I got medicated. I was told I had a combined type, where I can be a mix of inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive. It helped me a lot to know, but I was terrified, for some reason, that the medication would change me in some way.
But all it did was help me.
Unfortunately, I was then of the opinion that the medication would fix me, and I didn’t continue the therapy I needed to deal with the other ways that it hurt me.
My grandpa was a superhero.
Band posters have come untaped, half hanging off the walls, while clothes are strewn about.
If I looked under the mattress, I probablywouldfind the porn magazine that my friend stole from one of the local gas stations. He had left it at my place, and I was terrified of Grandpa finding it.
I couldn’t throw it away because that would have increased the chance of him seeing it in the trash. I couldn’t take it outside the house, because what if someone saw me with it?
The only answer was to stow it under my bed with the weed I tried one single time, and hope for the best.
“It’s so weird being in here again,” Amara murmurs, looking around with her hands tucked in her back pockets. I watch her thoughtfully as she gazes around.
A box piques her interest, and she grabs it.
A cameraman bumps into the door, and she jumps. We had both forgotten they were there, just lost in this time capsule of a room.
She smiles. “Is this your old sticker collection?”
I blush. “I’ll be honest, I forgot I even collected them.”
“God, you hadsomany. Seriously. How many do you think are in here?” She opens thelid, tossing it on the bed next to me before placing the box on top of it. “There’s got to be hundreds in here.
“Just one of the random things I fixated on,” I chuckle.
She nods, picking up a small, blue-and-yellow oval sticker. “Like I never understood why you had to keep your Chiquita stickers on your bananas.”
“They’re cute! I liked the blue!”
She hums, looking through the stickers until she finds the one she was clearly looking for.
“Is this one from when your grandpa forced us to go vote together?”
I nod, the memory burned in my brain. He was so excited about the 2008 election and wanted us all to come with him. He even talked to Amara’s parents about it. They voted somewhere else, but he wanted to make sure they were okay with Amara coming with us. He wanted us to be involved in one of the most historical moments in American history.
Amara’s parents were voting later that night, and she was annoyed that she was then sucked into going twice.
Grandpa had given me his sticker, now weathered and worn with time.
