Will to Way, Wilt Away

Chapter 2

Waking up to sun rays jabbing my eyeballs, I immediately sat up only to trigger a stinging soreness across my entire chest. My shoulders were now a nice beetroot red. No actually, a nice Clifford the Big Red Dog red. I looked down and realized I slept with my right hand resting across my chest, leaving a lovely pale handprint right on my heart. Well, I pledge allegiance to never let my ass sunbathe again.

When I started looking around for my phone, I saw that I was still in the glass box with a nine-story tumble beneath me. I watched a small figure cross the street down below and my stomach churned from the distant streets below. My stomach also churned slightly from the realization that my butt had been pressed against the glass for the entire town to look up at and enjoy. That's one way to announce your arrival in your new town.

I took my phone out of my pocket and it was now 11:59 AM. I had been asleep for over 4 hours. Luckily my suitcase was still parked in front of the steps leading down into the glass box. I stood up and wobbled to my suitcase while yawning and saw the keys to my apartment resting on top of my luggage. "Oh damn," I whispered. Either there were some very trustworthy people living in this building, or there were some homebodies who never stepped outside their apartments. I wasn't particularly opposed to either type of person, given I considered myself both.

I took the grayish-gold key in my hand and wheeled my suitcase two steps forward to apartment 9C. When I put the key in the lock, my heart skipped a beat. I was nervous as hell. My last and only other home situation was far from homey. For years, I envisioned moving out into my own place, and what was behind this door could be all that I desperately wished for when I was little. In a shaky motion, my trembling hand pushed open the bright white door to a medium-sized pearly white kitchen island immediately to my right. I stepped onto the light hardwood floor and observed the kitchen area which led into the bare space of what I assumed was going to be my living room. A door to the left of the open living room space led into another empty room, which I guessed was my bedroom. I turned my head and saw a door that led to another empty room for a purpose unknown to me. And actually, who was to say that the room to the right of me wasn't the bedroom and the room to the left was the one of unknown purpose?

I walked forward with my heels clacking on the floor with an echo that further reminded me of how empty this apartment was. Though the walls were stark white and the red suede heels I was wearing left footprints in the substantial layer of dust across the floor, I still saw the remnants of the last happy home that this apartment held. I saw the nails in the wall that once hung precious family portraits, like the ones where everyone looks extremely posed and unnatural while dressed in matching outfits. I always wanted that kind of picture in my home. The worn out stovetop spoke of all of the horrendous dishes that the mom made, but the dad and the kids still ate it because even though they hated the mom's cooking, they loved the mom. I noticed one light bulb above the living room area that didn't turn on, and I could hear the mom nagging the dad every single day to change it. He never did. Don't worry though; there was always light in their home. A home like that never got dark.

For a few hours, I slowly unpacked all of my belongings with only the changing shape of the sunlight through the window to tell time. It started as a short rectangular sliver of light on the living room floor and slowly stretched forwards into the kitchen area as the hours passed. I first found that only the empty room to the left of the living room had an attached bathroom and closet, so apparently this room was my bedroom. As for the room to the right, I guess it was just extra for now. My whole life I never had extra anything, only a lack of something. And now, look at that, a whole extra room!

My six shirts, three pairs of jeans, and two pairs of shorts only took up a corner of one of the shelves in my mini walk-in closet. The more glamorous floral blouse, corduroy pants, and red suede heels I wore were the specially-picked outfit that I bought myself to celebrate my move here. It was a dumb purchase in hindsight, but they were all from the Nordstrom sale section so I still felt frugal. They were also my first pieces of clothing that weren't my mom's college hand-me-downs that she no longer fit because "to bring me into existence, she had to gain a crap load of baby weight." My bad.

After organizing my few toiletries in the bathroom, I sat criss-cross-apple-sauce against the kitchen island blowing up the $9 air mattress I bought at Walmart before leaving for Napa. I don't know if I was light-headed from blowing or the sun was making the whole apartment too stuffy, but blowing up this mattress seemed like an Olympic sport. Executive decision: sleeping on a half-blown up mattress is better than sleeping on the hardwood floor or dying from vertigo. So I quit this task and decided to venture to the McDonald's I saw across the street.

I grabbed my wallet from my suitcase front pocket and counted the little money I had. $750 in nineteen years of birthday money that my grandma gave me and 35 cents of change that I found in a Wendy's parking lot a few days ago. I needed a job. And soon.

After quickly body checking in the shower door, which was the only full-length reflective surface in this apartment, I once again noted my lack of a thigh gap and then headed to McDonald's to make my fit body dreams an even bigger delusion of mine.

I stood at the front door before exiting and admired the entire apartment once more. Although I felt a sense that I was a considerable step closer to being at peace with my life, I had no idea how I would ever fill the entire living room with furniture, my entire closet with clothes, or my entire fridge with food. The apartment was overwhelmingly empty. But what hurt more than the fact that I came into this apartment with few belongings is the fact that I came into this apartment with even less love in my life.

Most parents are there when their child moves into their first new home, but my dad wasn't here hauling boxes full of kitchenware or books or bedding into the living room. Hell, I didn't even have these things, let alone an actual dad. That man was probably sitting in his leather recliner having a can of beer and thinking about how successful he was to be able to afford an 8,579 square foot house in Southern California (Yes, that was the exact size of the house according to my dad's constant boasting). My mom should be here teaching me how to use the washing machine and reminding me to call home every day to ease all of her irrational helicopter mom fears about anything bad that could possibly happen to me. But she never hovered over me. She hovered over the Louis Vuitton bag that she waited for months to go on sale. But never me.

I began wondering what the family that lived here before me was actually like. Based on Shiloh's nervous dodging of my questions about the previous residents, I was slightly worried about the seeming mystery lurking in this apartment. I'm not a fan of horror movies or ghost stories, so if some paranormal shit starts going down, I'm out. I'll slum it on a park bench with the pigeons. But also, if the universe abruptly decided my life would be some kind of spooky tale instead of the coming-of-age sob story I had pictured for myself, I would be kind of pissed. There's no way I suffered through all this crap from my parents to have my life become the premise of the next Conjuring movie.

While scanning the whole apartment one more time, I saw a series of pencil marks against the wall adjacent to my bedroom door. Each line was progressively higher than the last, the highest one being about five and a half feet off the ground. The doubt about the last residents quickly left my mind. They were the type of family who measured their kid on the wall. In other words, they loved their kid so much that they would practically vandalize their own home to document their child's growth. My parents wouldn't even hang a picture of me on the wall because the paintings they put on the wall instead were "priceless." But based on the way they treated me, they clearly put a price tag on their own daughter's value.

I envy that kid who was measured on the walls. I bet children like that never know how lucky they are to have parents who love them and wouldn't miss watching them grow up for the world. I could only imagine a life as easy, simple, and joyful as that.

After my intensive pondering, my stomach was ferociously grumbling so I finally headed out into the hall. I locked my front door, and turned my head to an unexpected sight. My heart skipped a beat at the unexpected scene before me.

In the glass box, I could see the silhouette of a tall, slim boy on his knees staring at the city beneath him. I looked closer and saw what looked like a crow bar by his feet. Of course my first, and obviously irrational, thought was It's either a murderer, a ghost, or a murderous ghost. But the sounds coming from the box were the opposite of anything cruel or demonic. I heard crying. The boy was crying.