The scent hits me in the face.
Pine and smoke. Vanilla. Drake's citrus twisted through with something that smells like anguish. My own sweet under-note trampled flat underneath.
I gag.
I don't make it dramatic. I just breathe through it while my mouth waters. I yank the bag mouth wide and stuff the blanket down into it. The plastic snarls against the fabric.
Next, the blue cotton strip that Eli once called my "security worm." I hold it for a second because it's a reflex. Then I smell it and that reflex dies. Bag. Gone.
The cardigan goes next. A button snags on the edge of the plastic and for a second there is resistance. I shake my hand until it lets go.
I strip the pillowcase off with brutal efficiency. The pillow itself—foam, fancy, bought after neck pain and three hours of reviews at two a.m.—goes in too because it's soaked in smoke in a way washing won't fix.
The weighted blanket is last.
It's heavy enough that lifting it makes my biceps remember they exist. I drag it across my knees, across the edge of the bag, and then I stop because my breath won't pull all the way in.
It was a good blanket.
It feels stupid to grieve a piece of fabric.
I shove it down until the bag bulges, then I press air out and twist the top like I'm wringing a chicken's neck. The plastic creaks. When I pull the tie tight, the sound is final. Scent tightens inside the bag: boxed-in, contained.
I tie a second knot because I don't trust one to hold.
The bag sits in the middle of the floor like a crime.My instinct says, hide it under the bed.My instinct should also saybuild a new nest now, right now, immediately.
Nothing in me moves.
I sit back on my heels and wait for the reflex to kick in. It doesn't. The place inside me that always hums with wanting to arrange softness just goes quiet.
A ridiculous thought: maybe I finally broke the part of me that's useful.
"What are pack for," Drake said the other night, laughing into my mouth. The thought slams into the wall of the day and drops like a stone.
I stand up and my knees crack. A lovely, human noise.
The chair in the corner has a dent in the cushion where Eli sits when he reads to me. I've teased him that he'll ruin it with his bony scientist ass. Today I'm grateful for the shape.
I go to the closet again. On the top, folded alone, is a single fleece throw I bought on clearance because it wasthe exact right shade of green to remind me of spring. It smells like laundry, not like people. It smells like nothing. I like that.
I take it down and hold it with both hands. It's light. It's small. It will not curl over and around and make a cave. It will cover my knees and pretend that's enough.
I sit in the chair. I pull the blanket over me. I tuck my feet up and make my body small, like I'm trying to hide in a nest made for a rabbit. The fabric brushes my chin. It's soft in the way fleece is factory-soft, not earned-soft like cotton gets after a hundred washes.
The room smells wrong.
Even with the bag sealed, even with the stripped mattress, the air is a layered thing that doesn't know me. Ragon's scent has always been comfort when it's on him. Marie's scent has been a thing I've learned to live beside. Drake's citrus used to make me smile. All three of them in my nest without me—their combined presence twisted with shame and cruelty in the place where I fall apart on purpose—makes my skin crawl.
The rest of the house murmurs beyond my door.
Someone laughs, small and tentative, and then stops.
A low voice rumbles. Another voice—hers—floats up in a shape that would be soothing if I didn't know what it looked like pressed into my pillow.
Footsteps pause outside my door. The air shifts with them. For a second, hope lifts its stupid head.
The footsteps move on.
