Short Story Collection!

My Danny

 I stand teetering between the hardwood floors of the hallway and the soft grey carpet that lines the floor of Harper's bedroom. A weight settles in my chest right over my heart; the dark blue walls that once felt like an extension of my own home now seem cold and hollow without Harper's laugh or the sound of her blasting Taylor Swift as loud as she could. I struggle to step through the threshold, but my feet are now buried in the grey carpet. I look around, and it's clear that even though it's been a month since Harper passed, her mother hadn't opened the door, let alone come into her room.

Who can blame her? Parents aren't supposed to outlive their children.

The shelves are still full of the books that she had devoured through the years; the walls are plastered with band posters and drawings that Har had done but had deemed too bad to put into her portfolio. Her plants have been dead far too long for me to try and revive, except her little succulent garden. My heart clenches almost painfully, and tears flood my eyes. It's hard seeing this room, knowing the one that made it this way is gone and will never enter this space again.

I make my way to her cluttered desk, drawing pads, charcoal, erasers, and markers are littering the surface. I pick up the sole framed photo on the desk; it's a snapshot of us laughing together just a month ago when we celebrated her 20th birthday. Her ocean-blue eyes are framed by her large square-framed glasses that are perched on the edge of her nose; freckles are sprinkled over her cheeks, and her long brown hair has been curled for the party. It's so hard to look at her so full of life when, a month ago, we buried her under 6 feet of earth.

I look behind me where Jenny and Harlow are standing, the two remaining parts of my second family. They are even more apprehensive. Their eyes are rimmed red and puffy from crying. They slowly join me in the room, eyes staring at me, pleading with me to lead them through this emotional journey of reminiscing and letting go.

"Where do you want to start?" Harlow asks.

I stand in silence, not sure where to start. How do you start to go through someone's room? It feels so wrong, going through her room even though she won't be coming back.

"Let's start with her shelves, I guess," I say, turning to face her massive bookshelves filled end to end with books and trinkets.

Her mom nods, taking Harlow's hand, and they enter the room together. We close the door and slowly advance towards the shelf. I start up high, looking through the collections of books, carefully putting them into one of four piles.

Mementos for her mother and sister to keep.

A donation pile.

Trash

Finally, a pile for me to take.

Most of her books end up in the donate pile save for the 20 that had her handwriting pressed into the pages. Of which I took the Divergent and the Hunger Games series, her comments bringing a faint smile to my face.

Unfortunately, most of her small plants have wilted and died from the month of neglect. I grab the little succulent garden and place it in my pile. She has a few other things on the shelves: rocks that she found that she thought were cool, crystals glinting in the faint light in her room.

We go through her room, and with each item we pick up, we reminisce about Harper and how her laughter would fill a room, how she had the odd tendency to walk in a zigzag, running us off the road. As the somber feeling is lifted slightly, it becomes clear that even though she's no longer existing in the real world her presence will always linger in the fragments of her life that are scattered throughout the room.

We finally get to her closet. Harlow throws the doors open, and the smell of her perfume wafts through the room, filling it with the smell of sweet pineapple and coconut. Her mother quickly grabs the sweater she wore almost every day in the fall and winter, clutching it to her chest as tears fell down her face. We do the same process with her clothes, this time far more ending up in Harlow's possession, which I know Harper is smiling at in heaven. We reach the small collection of hoodies, the majority of which are mine that she stole and never returned.