Chapter 4: Memories

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**Sorry , it's kind of short. The next one will be longer!!**

After graduation, Dad, Eric, and I began to move my stuff out of my room to transfer it to my dorm. So far, the only things left in my room were my bed, dresser, and a few boxes of various items.

"Ali, are you keeping this?!" Eric called from the bottom of the stairs. He was in charge of going through the boxes, to make sure I woudn't leave behind anything important. 

I walked out of my room and stood at the top of the staircase. He was holding one of my dolls my mom had gotten me when I was little. It was one of those fancy porcelain dolls with the perfect shiny face and thin, silky hair. 

"Yeah, I'm going to keep that here, though." As much as I loved the doll, I didn't really want to bring it to college with me. 

He shrugged. "Suit yourself. I'd love to have a bunch of girly dollies in my room," he said in a girly tone, waving his hands around.

"Shut up," I said, laughing. 

I went back in my room and started sweeping. I couldn't believe I wouldn't be living in here anymore. I'd spent 4 years in this room. I'd cried here, laughed here, did sexual things here (don't tell anyone), just about everything here. 

I paused and looked around. I noticed my painting was still on the wall behind my door. I walked over to it and unpinned it from the wall. I had painted it last year, shortly after my mom died. During that time, I was going to therapy and my therapist thought it would do me some good if I found an outlet to express my anger and pain. So I painted. It was pretty good too. It was of a girl standing in the rain with an umbrella.

I took the painting downstairs to where Eric was. "Can you put this in the 'Dorm' pile?" I handed him the painting.

His expression softened. "Oh, I remember this. This is when I started to think you were emo." I punched him in his arm.

"Ouch! Geez, I'm joking woman!" He put it inside the box.

"Make sure you don't break anything. I have valuable stuff in these boxes," I said as I sat down next to him on the couch and slid a box over to me.

He lifted a tampon out of the box he was going through. "Oh yeah. Real valuable." He erupted with laughter. I quickly snatched it from him and stuck out my tongue.

"How's Jada?" Jada was Eric's current girlfriend. They'd been together for about two years. She was the same age as Eric. They were even sharing an apartment. I'd told Eric numerous times to just marry the girl but he'd always say I'm not the marriage type of guy.

"She's good. Medical school has her head in the books all of the time." Eric attended Morehouse College and Jada went to Emory University. 

"You need to keep your heads in the book too, man. Are you still taking those physical education classes?" Eric had wanted to become a P.E. teacher.

"Yeah, it's pretty easy though. I might switch to something more challenging, but still sports-related." He pulled out an old ratty shirt.

I looked at the shirt and we exchanged glances. "Just toss it." We both laughed. 

We continued going through the stuff in the boxes for a few minutes until I felt a sudden sadness. Now that I was about to go off to college, I wouldn't see Eric much anymore and we'd been close for years. I was going to miss embarrassing him in front of Jada and all of the other girls he used to date, and I knew he was going to miss constantly picking on me like any brother would and should. I had known him for seventeen years of my life and it still didn't feel like it had been a long time.

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