“I never use my desk.”
“Exactly.”
As I haul the pile of clothes off my desk chair and onto my bed, I imagine a different version of me, one who sat at this desk twice a week to study for accounting and work on her transfer application instead of using it exclusively to roll joints. A studious Murphy. A more organized Murphy. One who could definitely pull off a passing grade on Friday’s final. If I clear a place for her, maybe it’s not too late tobeher, just for this last stretch of days before the exam. I tug on the desk drawer and it tugs back. Too much shit wedged in there. I jiggle the handle, barely fitting my fingers in to prod anything that might come loose.
“What’s going on?” Kat asks from where I left her on the bed.
“My desk is jammed.” Just as the words come out, I give one last tug and the drawer releases. There, buried between outdated teen magazines and travel softball paperwork, I spot the royal-blue binding of a Geneva High School yearbook. There’s quite literally a quarter inch of dust on the top, and I cough a little as I crack the spine. “Found it,” I say. “Or found one. From…” I do the mental math, subtracting from the current year. “Sophomore year, I think?”
I flip to the junior portraits, thumbing toward theMs at a speed that threatens paper cuts. There she is, with long brown hair and a face like an Accutane before picture. Eliana Meyers. Eliana. What a perfect name. I whisper it to myself, enjoying how it pirouettes off my tongue.
“You find it?”
“It’s Eliana. Eliana Meyers.”
“WOO! ELIANA!” Kat shouts, then pauses and adds. “Wow, that’s really pretty.”
I run my finger along her name as though it were braille.Eliana. I wonder why she shortens it. Flipping back a few pages, I find my own picture among the sophomores, looking every bit as sixteen as I’d love to forget I ever was. My pixie cut phase never did me any favors, and the oversize gray sweatshirt I’m wearing stands as evidence that I never put picture day in my planner. I flip back from Ellie to me then back to Ellie. Eliana. I wonder if I fold down the pages in between, I could line our pictures up, our teenage selves permanently kissing so long as the yearbook is closed.
“So what are you saying in the email?” Kat presses, and I recenter myself on the goal at hand.
“I don’t know. I have to think about it. But I’ll let you know if I need a proofread.”
“Or a ghostwriter!” she offers. “Whatever you need. I’m gonna jump, though, if that’s okay. I’ve gotta study.”
“Of course, love you.”
“Love you back!”
The line goes quiet, leaving me alone in the company of Geneva High School’s finest. Across the two-page spread from me, Kat’s not-yet-tamed brown curls and precontacts wire frames take me back to a hundred and one high school memories. Given the chance, what would I say to little high school Kat? Or Ellie? I don’t bother thinking of what I’d say to my high school self. She wouldn’t have listened anyway. I close the cover and slip the yearbook into a slot in one of my packing bins. Maybe I was wrong about memory lane. It doesn’t have to be a one-way street. Maybe it’s just somewhere you only plan to visit when you’re ready.
I climb back into bed, digging my laptop out from underthe covers and clicking into my email again. ElianaMeyers @Illinois.edu. When I hit enter, a tiny headshot-style picture of her appears next to her contact. I’d expect a freshman ID photo, if anything, but the picture is recent—blonde hair, bangs and all. Junior year of high school Ellie wouldn’t recognize herself now.
My fingers stall on the keyboard, the cursor pulsing in the subject line box. I could take this a hundred different ways, only one of which is short enough that she may actually read it.
Reminder: IOU one chaicoffski
I hit send, praying the U of I spam filter goes easy on me.
twenty-two
“Keep or toss?”
Without looking up from my dresser drawer, Mom dangles a pair of Captain America pajama pants from her grip.
“Keep,” I vote. “I still wear those.”
“Fine.” She folds them over her arm and adds them to thekeeppile, which is quickly overflowing into the almost nonexistentdonatepile.
This is the game of packing, as I’ve learned it: Mom holds up a piece of my childhood, I vote to keep it, and Mom gives me a skeptical look before adding it to the keep pile with some commentary on how everything can’t stay. Rinse and repeat for the entirety of an afternoon. It’s excruciating, but Lord knows I wouldn’t get it done if she left me to do it on my own.
“Murphy? Keep or toss?” Mom reaches back into the drawer and pulls out the next lucky contestant: the threadbare redpajama shorts with my parents’ alma mater printed across the butt.
“Absolutely keep. Those are Kat’s favorite.”
Mom raises a brow. “Then why don’t you just give them to Kat?”
“Because.” I pull my heels toward my butt, hugging my knees to my chest. “Then she couldn’t wear them when she’s here.”
