Magnetic

Chapter Four

 My muscles were stressed and tired from moving box after box.

Every single one of our boxes seemed to be filled to the brim, and I couldn't help but wish that we had packed lighter. The movers would bring them into the house, and then I would be ordered by my dad to take them to a designated room. That wouldn't have been terrible if we had purchased a one-story house.

The only rooms on the second floor were the laundry room, bedrooms, and most of the bathrooms. I was so excited to have my own bathroom for the first time after living in a two-bedroom-one-bathroom apartment for so long.

Most of the house had hardwood flooring, something I was unbiased on but my father preferred. What really sold him on the place was the humongous basement and backyard, neither of which we ever had before. Ever since I was a small child, I had always wanted a dog, but our apartment complex never allowed us to have one, and we didn't have a yard.

My dad promised me that if I adjusted well, tried to make friends, and kept my grades up, by summer time, he'd take me to the humane society to pick one out. That was one of our deals that had been made when we were deciding on the things that I would get out of this relocation.

"Dad?" I called out, dragging a box out of the entryway so the movers would have space to place the other boxes. "Where does this one go? It has 'pictures' written on it."

"My bedroom," he answered from the kitchen. Through a large rectangular cut-out between the kitchen and hallway leading to the spiral staircase, I could see that he was storing away my mother's prized china; she had been extremely proud of herself for collecting so many rare sets. He stared at each piece longingly before stacking them up in a cabinet, probably not to be touched again until the next time we move.

When I was really young, playing tea party with that china was one of my absolute favorite things to do. My dad would call her foolish for allowing me to handle the expensive dishes because I was such a clumsy child, and he thought that I'd end up shattering everything I'd touch. Throughout all those tea parties, I was proud to say that I only broke one cup.

I heaved the box up the staircase. The amount of times the box had almost slipped out of my arms and fallen down the stairs was uncountable, but, somehow, it finally found it's way on top of my father's mattress that had been brought up when we first started unloading the trucks.

With my dad's keys that were also lying on the mattress, I cut into the tape that held the box closed and opened the flaps of it wide. In the box was photo album after photo album and tons of picture frames. I recognized my elementary class pictures, side by side in a long picture frame that had hung above my father's favorite—and my mother's least favorite—leather couch in our apartment.

My favorite picture of all was a medium-sized one that was adorned with a bright silver frame. It was taken in front of the Epcot ball in Disney World, my mother and father wearing pairs of similar Mickey and Minnie ears. A Cinderella tiara graced the top of my tiny blonde head.

Each of our faces showed the exact same emotion: pure happiness—the kind of smiles you couldn't fake. It had been a couple of hours after I met Cinderella, my favorite princess of all time. She loved my enthusiasm and gave me her tiara. Nothing that I could have ever imagined had the ability to make that trip seem better than what had actually happened.

I traced the edges of the frame with my finger, wishing I could relive the great memories that had been created on that trip, and took it across the hallway to my bedroom, to be displayed on top of my night stand. I placed it beside another picture that was already standing there. It was of a young couple—a handsome man in a suit and a beautiful woman in a white dress. They were sitting on the front steps of a building. The woman's mouth was wide with laughter, her eyes squinted shut. Whispering something in her ear was the man, a smirk painted across his lips. They were my grandparents on their wedding day. It was my favorite picture of them; they looked so happy, young, and in love. The changes that come along with time hadn't hit them yet. Their love hadn't caused Nana pain. It hadn't caused her health to decline.

When my grandfather died my freshman year, I woke up like I had any other day: not yet ready for school and dreading some biology test that I would definitely fail.

I had walked past the living room to the kitchen to get breakfast before school and saw my father sitting on the leather couch, his hands over his face. He was breathing so heavy that his whole body shook.

For a moment, I didn't notice it; whenever he was extremely stressed and felt like he was losing control, he'd resort to the relaxation of his favorite couch, covering his face and taking a few deep breaths to calm him down. But when I was pouring a mountainous amount of cereal into a bowl and heard sobbing, I crept into the living room to investigate.

The plastic landline phone sat in his lap; he had moved one of his hands from his face to the phone and clutched it tightly.

"Dad?" I spoke, stepping a bit closer to him. Because his cries were so loud, he couldn't hear me. My dad wasn't normally an emotional person; he only cried like this when something extremely bad happened, like the death of my mom. I knew this had to be a serious matter.

I didn't go to school that day. Although I didn't know what had happened or why my father was so upset and distraught, I stayed with him, not wanting to leave his side while he was so emotional. I hadn't asked him if I could skip, but he never mentioned it, as if we had some unspoken agreement that I could just miss the day.

After hours and hours of bawling and I had cooked the two of us grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, my father's eyes ran dry, unable to produce any more tears, and he finally explained to me what had happened.

"Papa had a heart attack this morning, Nicki," he mumbled, rubbing his raw, red eyes. "Nana found him unconscious when she woke up."

"Did he wake up and realize he was having a heart attack?" I asked. Besides from the small-budget movies that we would watch in health class, I wasn't really sure how a heart attack worked. All I knew was that you don't die instantly; it takes a small bit of time.

"I don't know."

He had seemed pretty healthy when we saw him just last month, one of the recent times that my father had an impulse for us to visit our family.

In fact, Papa had even raced my twelve-year-old track-running cousin, Reynold, up and down a small hill near his house and won without even breaking a sweat. Reynold was so mad that he got beat by an "old man", but Papa thought it was the funniest thing in the world. He had always been in extremely good shape, despite his increasing age.

"Is he..." I asked, trailing off. I didn't want to say the word. Because Papa had been doing so well, it felt like, at any moment, my father would tell me that he'd be fine and everything would be okay.

"He is," Dad muttered.

At that moment, I stood up and left the room, refusing to believe that somebody else was completely gone. My mom, now Papa. Who'd be next?

I slid under the covers of my bed, wishing that I could rewind time.

Wishing that I could've done something.

Wishing that the people that I truly loved and cared about wouldn't keep leaving so soon, when I really wanted them with me.