One Day Past NaNo Year Four - Chapter Seven, Part 1
2:44 pm
Chapter Seven
Present
In all the chaoticness of her life, of the seven new case files added to her already overflowing case load, Jess thanked whatever entity or spirit that brought about Thanksgiving. Adding to stressful matters, was the issue of Alex, or Alejandro as he went by now a days. She revisited that night in Javier's apartment several times, their cryptic conversation running through her mind over and over again. It made her uneasy, her memories of her childhood friend clashing with what the present had brought her. A month ago, he had been a distant memory, and now he was back in her life, admitedly in what seemed day by day to be a different role. He didn't need her like he used to. Alex had changed, as everybody did when they grew up. However, something about him didn't ring positively in Jess' mind, and it made the creeping tingles of worry gradually work their way up her spine.
Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, Jess slaved away at work, rushing to get everything finished from that day and the previous day. The paperwork was over her head, piled up on her desk in piles, and that was to mention the case folders she needed to prepare for her visitations on Friday and a case to manage for the following week that was going to court. Stressful and busy was her life, though she knew there were thousands upon thousands of children around the world who needed help, and that was her job.
It was dark already outside, though as fall deepened and the thermometer fell, the sun sank earlier and earlier into the horizon with each day. Leaning back in her chair, Jess stretched, the individual vertebrae in her back popping as she threw her arms over head. Sitting back up, she logged off her computer, shutting it down for the night. Grabbing her coat, she let her eyes roam over her desk, satisfied for the moment at it's current state of semi-disrepair.
"That's as good as it's going to get," she said to herself, throwing her coat on.
Grabbing her purse from the bottom locked drawer, she threw it over her shoulder and left the office. The wind nipped at her ears. She hunched her shoulders against the cold, grateful for her heated apartment. Throwing her coat onto the couch, Jess didn't bother to remove her shoes. Heading into her bedroom, she regarded the half packed suitcase she began in the morning, a haphazard pile of undergarments, her burgundy sweater, a black skirt, and her hair dryer presented. Sighing, she opened her dresser drawers, tossing a pair of pajamas, a few socks, an extra bra, and her hair brush from atop the dresser into the suitcase. Moving to her closet, she extracted a pair of jeans and a long sleeved tee shirt, adding them to the pile of clothes laying within the case. Pushing open her bathroom door, she flicked on the light and reached under the sink for her travel toiletry case. Tossing her shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and razor into the case, she added toothpaste, floss, and her favorite lotion to the mix.
"I think that should do it," she said, nodding to herself.
Reaching forward, she pulled the suitcase closed, pressing down on the top of it to get it to close properly, latching it to keep it closed. Hefting it, she dragged it into the living room, leaving it by the front door.
Heading into the kitchen, she grabbed a banana and quickly made herself a sandwich that she would eat on the road. Passing by her phone, the answering machine blinked. Taking a bite of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she pressed the PLAY button.
"Hey lady," Olivia's voice said. "I know you're jetting out right as soon as you get off of work, but I just want to wish you a super fantastic, and totally digging Thanksgiving. Eat lots of turkey, stuff yourself with stuffing, and gobble up some pumpkin pie. Don't let Uncle Jerry and Aunt Hester get you down and I'll see you on Friday. Tata lady."
With a smile on her face, Jess threw her coat back on, and with sandwich in her mouth and her banana momentarily slipped into her pocket, she grabbed her suitcase and purse and headed out of the apartment.
The Seventh Avenue Subway Station was crowded, Jess having to push through hoards of people vying for a place on the subway car. Sliding her card through the register, she boarded the subway train, dragging her suitcase with her.
The subway took her to the outskirts of the city, where she got off and boarded a train headed for Cambridge. Watching as the scenery flew past, Jess dozed on and off until her stop arrived. Jerking awake, she grabbed her things and exited the train. The train station, a brick building with a black shingled roof and a sign reading "West Cambridge" stood before her. Standing beside the closed ticket window was her father.
"Dad!" she exclaimed, throwing herself into his arms.
"Jess, my girl," he greeted, hugging her back. "How are you?"
"I'm good," she said, yawning. "And tired."
"I'll bet," he said.
"Where's mom?" she asked, glancing around for her mother.
"She had a few last minute preparations to take care of before tomorrow morning," he said.
"Who's she catering this year?" Jess asked as her father grabbed her suitcase and lead the way to the waiting car sitting in the train station parking lot.
The sun had set long ago, the flourescent light flickering and offering pooled light.
"The church is having a luncheon tomorrow and she's catering that," he said.
"Oh," Jess said, nodding and getting into the car. "So, how've you been? Last I heard you were thinking of taking early retirement?"
"Oh, I've been thinking about it," he mused, putting the car into gear and pulling out into traffic.
The train station sat in the middle of downtown West Cambridge, a quaint downtown filled with mom and pop stores that sat among the chain coffee shops, delis, and restaurants.
"You've been thinking about it?" she reiterated.
"Mm hmm," he said. "It'd be nice to have more time to fish and do the things I like."
Jess nodded. "You could spend more time building model airplanes too."
"That too," he said. "Did I show you my Heyward Model XXZ last time you were over?"
She smiled. "No, I don't think you did," she said.
"I'll have to show you that. It's an exact model of the same plane that fought in World War One," he said.
Jess responded and continued on her conversation with her father as they wound through the streets. They passed her old high school, the ice cream shop where she held her first job, the public library where her first boy friend worked. She smiled at the thought of George Neward, wondering what he was up to these days and if he was home for Thanksgiving as well. They had begun dating when they were both freshmen, hitting rocky waters at the end of their sophomore year and finally calling it quits midway through junior year. He, however, still rang in a special spot in her heart. However, traveling through the more recent memories of high school, Jess found her thoughts diving back into her early childhood and the streets of New Havenbrook and Cherry Lane and the yellow house. It was a whole other lifetime ago, yet forever a part of her memories.
"Well, here we are, Jess girl," her father said, pulling into the driveway.
A cherry red chrysler buick sat in the driveway with a Minnesota liscence plate and bearing an "I love my poodle" bumper sticker stuck to the bumper.
"Please tell me Uncle Jerry and Aunt Hester aren't staying with us this year," Jess groaned, slumping in her seat like a teenager.
Her father smiled thinly. "It's our turn. Aunt Penny hosted them last year and adamantly refused to do it again," he said. "They're our family, Jess."
"Unfortunately," she said.
He chuckled and lowered his voice. "If it's any consolation, we've put them in the basement guest room," he whispered conspiratorally.
Jess snickered. "I bet they loved that," he said.
"Oh, your Aunt Hester had a few things to say about that," he said.
Rolling her eyes, Jess stepped out of the car. "You want me to get my suitcase?" she asked.
"Nope, your father can take care of it," he said, puffing out his chest and striking it like a gorilla. "Me father, you daughter."
Jess giggled. "Ok Tarzan," she said.
Walking up the front walk, bordered with low cut evergreen bushes, Jess opened the front door to an assault of warm air, savory aromas, and Aunt Hester.
"You're going to burn the rou if you don't stir it continuously, Caroline," she was saying as Jess stepped into the house.
Uncle Jerry and Aunt Hester were technically Jess' parent's aunt and uncle, making Uncle Jerry Great Uncle Jerry and Aunt Hester Great Aunt Hester. Aunt Hester had a certain afinity for cardigans and tacky reading glasses she kept on a golden chain fastned around her neck. Uncle Jerry, a pot bellied man with his hair, or what was left of it, combed straight across his head. They were crabby and difficult to please, and Jess often found herself wanting to rip her hair out by the end of family holidays.
Kicking her shoes off at the front entryway, her father following in with her suitcase.
"Caroline, darling, we're back," he called out.
Jess gave her father a long glance and a disapproving scowl.
Her mother appeared wearing an apron and a pair of sweats, a wooden spoon in hand. She gave Jess a warm hug.
"It's so good to have you home, Jess," she said.
Aunt Hester followed. "Oh, hello, Jess," she said nasally. "Well, look at you. What a lovely grown woman you have become." Appraisingly, she raked her eyes over Jess. Then, finished, she shifted topics. "Can you believe your mother and father have put your Uncle Hester in the basement? I asked what was wrong with your room. What is wrong with your room? You can sleep on the couch, can't you? You're a young girl, your back can take it. I saw the bed your mother and father have down there. Not nearly as supportive as my chiropractor tells me I need. I'll tell you by the end of this god damn holiday I'm going to have a back spasm. You bet on it, Jess, dear."
Jess smiled as Aunt Hester rattled on, her painted nailed hand wrapped around Jess' arm while her other arm was wrapped around Jess' shoulders.
Jess extracted herself from her Aunt Hester's grip. "Where's Uncle Jesse, Aunt Hester?" she asked.
"Oh, he's downstairs sleeping. Was tired and everything after our long trip," she said and then groaned, gripping her lower back. "It just about killed my back. My chiropractor has me on this anti-inflammatory and it works wonders, I'll tell you. Makes me gassy though," she said, with a wink.
"That's nice, Aunt Hester," Jess said.
"Jess, have you had dinner?" her mother asked from the kitchen.
"I had a sandwich," she said, moving into the kitchen.
Her mother busied herself wrapping up some mini pumpkin cheesecake bits, packaging them into a white box.
"Mmm, darling, these are wonderful," Aunt Hester said, dipping her hand into the box and snatching one up. "You should serve them tomorrow night."
"We'll have our own pumpkin pie," Jess' mother said. "These are for the church function."
"Which church do you go to again?" she asked.
"We don't," Caroline said, picking up the box and setting it down on the kitchen table along with a stack of other boxes and piles of cutlery and paper plates. "I'm just catering their dinner."
Aunt Hester made a noise in the back of her throat. "It's the lack of religion and faith that people have today that just nips my buttons," she said, shaking her head.
"Everybody's different, Aunt Hester," Caroline said with a sigh as if she'd had this conversation a thousand times.
"But religion binds us all together. With the power of Christ..."
"Not everyone believe in Christ," she said.
Sensing another religious drama, Jess quietly snuck out of the kitchen and climbed the stairs. Her bedroom door, painted pink and harboring the same mish mosh of magazine cutouts and decorations as she had in high school, sat at the end of the hallway. Opening it, she smiled at the sight of her old bedroom, bed, neatly made with her old purple and aqua comforter, her white curtains, her old dinosaur of a computer quietly sitting on her desk. Above her desk, her bulletin board was covered in pictures of high school, pictures of her trio of best friends, pictures of Homecoming, Prom, pictures of sports games, pictures of Chester. Jess laughed sadly, her dear puppy dog having passed away three years ago. Reaching forward, she grabbed a picture of him, his wrinkled face framed in the picture, his tongue half hanging out of his face. Turning it over, it read:
Chester, April 1997
Jess smiled sadly, placing it back on the board beside the picture of her high school best friend, Cherie Woolsworth, a girl who she parted with at graduation, promising to keep in contact. However, as is the testament of time, she lost contact with Cherie. However, her sixteen year old smiling face, decked out in face paint in her high school's old colors, maroon and gold, beamed from the bulletin board. Other pictures filled the board, pictures of other people, pictures of places, pictures of things. Jess remembered how much she loved to take pictures when she was younger. She always had her camera in hand. Thinking of it, her fingers twitched and Jess laughed, shaking her hand.
Sighing, she stepped away and opened her closet door, all her old clothes still hanging in there. Biting her lip, thinking of the past month and of Alex, she reached around the door, grabbed the desk chair and dragged it over. Stepping up onto it, she braced herself on the door jamb to her closet and reached up on the top shelf of her closet, grabbing an old shoe box that was jammed in the back corner of the closet. Taking it down, she tucked it beneath her arm and stepped down. Closing the closet door, she put the desk chair back and situated herself back... on her bed. Brushing a stray hair out of her face, she ran a hand over the dusty box lid.
Alex
Her fingers traced the letters. She'd made the box not long after she'd moved away, forgetting about it years later. It must have been sitting up on the top shelf for years next to her old winter coats and boxes of random and idle junk. Slowly, she slipped her fingers under the box's lid, prying it off. Setting the lid beside her, she peered inside the box, a wealth of memories contained within. Dozens and dozens of photos, nearly every photo she'd taken back then lined the bottom of the box in a thick layer. On top of the photos was her first camera, her old Polaroid. Grinning, she lifted it from the box, holding the viewfinder to her eye, squinting and lining up the sight, framing an old poster of a movie actor she'd been in love with when she was sixteen. A smile formed on Jess' face, a smile of memories. Setting the camera down, she dipped her hands into the box and pulled out a stack of photos.
Jess and Alex when they were ten, their faces pressed together in an effort to fit within the view finder, though it cut off halfway through Alex's right eye. Jess winked one eye closed, sticking out her tongue at the camera. Alex laughed, a carefree and child-like expression.
Chester when he was a young dog, pup-like features still ringing about him. He lay in a stray streak of sun on his side, his eyes closed and his mind off in doggy dream land.
A pair of pink sneakers, the laces undone and messy with a streak of mud across the toe.
Jess sifted through a few more.
Elizabeth at twelve, her brown hair cut short and her hands tugging at it, her eyes forced open wide.
Alex and Eric sitting on the front stoop of Jess' old house, Popsicle in hand. Elizabeth sat behind them, giving Eric bunny ears. Alex glanced up at her with a conspiratorial grin on his face.
A tree framed in the setting sun.
The playground where Alex, Jess, and Elizabeth had spent so much time.
A candid shot of Alex as he lay in a patch of shaded grass, his arms folded behind his head and his eyes far away and distant.
Jess paused at the photo, her finger running across the edge of his face.
Jess' bedroom door opened and her mother slipped into the room, quietly shutting it behind herself.
"I've just about had enough of your Aunt Hester," she whispered. "I swear, if she complains about one single more damn thing, I will strangle the lady."
Jess smiled, looking up from the photo. "You'd really strangle a nearly ninety year old woman, mom?"
Her mother smiled, sitting down on the bed beside Jess. "You'd do the same."
She nodded. "You're probably right."
"What're you looking at?" her mother asked, peering over her shoulder. "Oh, I haven't seen that camera in a long time." She picked up the old Polaroid. "You think it still works?"
Shaking her head, Jess set the photo of Alex down. "I dropped it years ago and it broke. Remember?"
"No, can't say that I do."
"Dad tried to fix it and sliced his finger open," she said. "Remember? We drove him to the hospital and everything."
"Oh yeah, and you drove him there. You'd just gotten your liscence," her mother said.
"And I begged to drive him," she answered back.
Her mother nodded her head fondly. "You were a very stubborn child," she said fondly.
Jess laughed sardonically. "Thanks mom," she said sarcastically.
"And a sarcastic adult it seems," she said. "So, what else are you looking at?" Reaching forward, her mother took the picture Jess had set down. "Oh, little Alex Munez. Such a sweet boy, he was. Why're you looking at these?"
Chapter Seven
Present
In all the chaoticness of her life, of the seven new case files added to her already overflowing case load, Jess thanked whatever entity or spirit that brought about Thanksgiving. Adding to stressful matters, was the issue of Alex, or Alejandro as he went by now a days. She revisited that night in Javier's apartment several times, their cryptic conversation running through her mind over and over again. It made her uneasy, her memories of her childhood friend clashing with what the present had brought her. A month ago, he had been a distant memory, and now he was back in her life, admitedly in what seemed day by day to be a different role. He didn't need her like he used to. Alex had changed, as everybody did when they grew up. However, something about him didn't ring positively in Jess' mind, and it made the creeping tingles of worry gradually work their way up her spine.
Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, Jess slaved away at work, rushing to get everything finished from that day and the previous day. The paperwork was over her head, piled up on her desk in piles, and that was to mention the case folders she needed to prepare for her visitations on Friday and a case to manage for the following week that was going to court. Stressful and busy was her life, though she knew there were thousands upon thousands of children around the world who needed help, and that was her job.
It was dark already outside, though as fall deepened and the thermometer fell, the sun sank earlier and earlier into the horizon with each day. Leaning back in her chair, Jess stretched, the individual vertebrae in her back popping as she threw her arms over head. Sitting back up, she logged off her computer, shutting it down for the night. Grabbing her coat, she let her eyes roam over her desk, satisfied for the moment at it's current state of semi-disrepair.
"That's as good as it's going to get," she said to herself, throwing her coat on.
Grabbing her purse from the bottom locked drawer, she threw it over her shoulder and left the office. The wind nipped at her ears. She hunched her shoulders against the cold, grateful for her heated apartment. Throwing her coat onto the couch, Jess didn't bother to remove her shoes. Heading into her bedroom, she regarded the half packed suitcase she began in the morning, a haphazard pile of undergarments, her burgundy sweater, a black skirt, and her hair dryer presented. Sighing, she opened her dresser drawers, tossing a pair of pajamas, a few socks, an extra bra, and her hair brush from atop the dresser into the suitcase. Moving to her closet, she extracted a pair of jeans and a long sleeved tee shirt, adding them to the pile of clothes laying within the case. Pushing open her bathroom door, she flicked on the light and reached under the sink for her travel toiletry case. Tossing her shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and razor into the case, she added toothpaste, floss, and her favorite lotion to the mix.
"I think that should do it," she said, nodding to herself.
Reaching forward, she pulled the suitcase closed, pressing down on the top of it to get it to close properly, latching it to keep it closed. Hefting it, she dragged it into the living room, leaving it by the front door.
Heading into the kitchen, she grabbed a banana and quickly made herself a sandwich that she would eat on the road. Passing by her phone, the answering machine blinked. Taking a bite of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she pressed the PLAY button.
"Hey lady," Olivia's voice said. "I know you're jetting out right as soon as you get off of work, but I just want to wish you a super fantastic, and totally digging Thanksgiving. Eat lots of turkey, stuff yourself with stuffing, and gobble up some pumpkin pie. Don't let Uncle Jerry and Aunt Hester get you down and I'll see you on Friday. Tata lady."
With a smile on her face, Jess threw her coat back on, and with sandwich in her mouth and her banana momentarily slipped into her pocket, she grabbed her suitcase and purse and headed out of the apartment.
The Seventh Avenue Subway Station was crowded, Jess having to push through hoards of people vying for a place on the subway car. Sliding her card through the register, she boarded the subway train, dragging her suitcase with her.
The subway took her to the outskirts of the city, where she got off and boarded a train headed for Cambridge. Watching as the scenery flew past, Jess dozed on and off until her stop arrived. Jerking awake, she grabbed her things and exited the train. The train station, a brick building with a black shingled roof and a sign reading "West Cambridge" stood before her. Standing beside the closed ticket window was her father.
"Dad!" she exclaimed, throwing herself into his arms.
"Jess, my girl," he greeted, hugging her back. "How are you?"
"I'm good," she said, yawning. "And tired."
"I'll bet," he said.
"Where's mom?" she asked, glancing around for her mother.
"She had a few last minute preparations to take care of before tomorrow morning," he said.
"Who's she catering this year?" Jess asked as her father grabbed her suitcase and lead the way to the waiting car sitting in the train station parking lot.
The sun had set long ago, the flourescent light flickering and offering pooled light.
"The church is having a luncheon tomorrow and she's catering that," he said.
"Oh," Jess said, nodding and getting into the car. "So, how've you been? Last I heard you were thinking of taking early retirement?"
"Oh, I've been thinking about it," he mused, putting the car into gear and pulling out into traffic.
The train station sat in the middle of downtown West Cambridge, a quaint downtown filled with mom and pop stores that sat among the chain coffee shops, delis, and restaurants.
"You've been thinking about it?" she reiterated.
"Mm hmm," he said. "It'd be nice to have more time to fish and do the things I like."
Jess nodded. "You could spend more time building model airplanes too."
"That too," he said. "Did I show you my Heyward Model XXZ last time you were over?"
She smiled. "No, I don't think you did," she said.
"I'll have to show you that. It's an exact model of the same plane that fought in World War One," he said.
Jess responded and continued on her conversation with her father as they wound through the streets. They passed her old high school, the ice cream shop where she held her first job, the public library where her first boy friend worked. She smiled at the thought of George Neward, wondering what he was up to these days and if he was home for Thanksgiving as well. They had begun dating when they were both freshmen, hitting rocky waters at the end of their sophomore year and finally calling it quits midway through junior year. He, however, still rang in a special spot in her heart. However, traveling through the more recent memories of high school, Jess found her thoughts diving back into her early childhood and the streets of New Havenbrook and Cherry Lane and the yellow house. It was a whole other lifetime ago, yet forever a part of her memories.
"Well, here we are, Jess girl," her father said, pulling into the driveway.
A cherry red chrysler buick sat in the driveway with a Minnesota liscence plate and bearing an "I love my poodle" bumper sticker stuck to the bumper.
"Please tell me Uncle Jerry and Aunt Hester aren't staying with us this year," Jess groaned, slumping in her seat like a teenager.
Her father smiled thinly. "It's our turn. Aunt Penny hosted them last year and adamantly refused to do it again," he said. "They're our family, Jess."
"Unfortunately," she said.
He chuckled and lowered his voice. "If it's any consolation, we've put them in the basement guest room," he whispered conspiratorally.
Jess snickered. "I bet they loved that," he said.
"Oh, your Aunt Hester had a few things to say about that," he said.
Rolling her eyes, Jess stepped out of the car. "You want me to get my suitcase?" she asked.
"Nope, your father can take care of it," he said, puffing out his chest and striking it like a gorilla. "Me father, you daughter."
Jess giggled. "Ok Tarzan," she said.
Walking up the front walk, bordered with low cut evergreen bushes, Jess opened the front door to an assault of warm air, savory aromas, and Aunt Hester.
"You're going to burn the rou if you don't stir it continuously, Caroline," she was saying as Jess stepped into the house.
Uncle Jerry and Aunt Hester were technically Jess' parent's aunt and uncle, making Uncle Jerry Great Uncle Jerry and Aunt Hester Great Aunt Hester. Aunt Hester had a certain afinity for cardigans and tacky reading glasses she kept on a golden chain fastned around her neck. Uncle Jerry, a pot bellied man with his hair, or what was left of it, combed straight across his head. They were crabby and difficult to please, and Jess often found herself wanting to rip her hair out by the end of family holidays.
Kicking her shoes off at the front entryway, her father following in with her suitcase.
"Caroline, darling, we're back," he called out.
Jess gave her father a long glance and a disapproving scowl.
Her mother appeared wearing an apron and a pair of sweats, a wooden spoon in hand. She gave Jess a warm hug.
"It's so good to have you home, Jess," she said.
Aunt Hester followed. "Oh, hello, Jess," she said nasally. "Well, look at you. What a lovely grown woman you have become." Appraisingly, she raked her eyes over Jess. Then, finished, she shifted topics. "Can you believe your mother and father have put your Uncle Hester in the basement? I asked what was wrong with your room. What is wrong with your room? You can sleep on the couch, can't you? You're a young girl, your back can take it. I saw the bed your mother and father have down there. Not nearly as supportive as my chiropractor tells me I need. I'll tell you by the end of this god damn holiday I'm going to have a back spasm. You bet on it, Jess, dear."
Jess smiled as Aunt Hester rattled on, her painted nailed hand wrapped around Jess' arm while her other arm was wrapped around Jess' shoulders.
Jess extracted herself from her Aunt Hester's grip. "Where's Uncle Jesse, Aunt Hester?" she asked.
"Oh, he's downstairs sleeping. Was tired and everything after our long trip," she said and then groaned, gripping her lower back. "It just about killed my back. My chiropractor has me on this anti-inflammatory and it works wonders, I'll tell you. Makes me gassy though," she said, with a wink.
"That's nice, Aunt Hester," Jess said.
"Jess, have you had dinner?" her mother asked from the kitchen.
"I had a sandwich," she said, moving into the kitchen.
Her mother busied herself wrapping up some mini pumpkin cheesecake bits, packaging them into a white box.
"Mmm, darling, these are wonderful," Aunt Hester said, dipping her hand into the box and snatching one up. "You should serve them tomorrow night."
"We'll have our own pumpkin pie," Jess' mother said. "These are for the church function."
"Which church do you go to again?" she asked.
"We don't," Caroline said, picking up the box and setting it down on the kitchen table along with a stack of other boxes and piles of cutlery and paper plates. "I'm just catering their dinner."
Aunt Hester made a noise in the back of her throat. "It's the lack of religion and faith that people have today that just nips my buttons," she said, shaking her head.
"Everybody's different, Aunt Hester," Caroline said with a sigh as if she'd had this conversation a thousand times.
"But religion binds us all together. With the power of Christ..."
"Not everyone believe in Christ," she said.
Sensing another religious drama, Jess quietly snuck out of the kitchen and climbed the stairs. Her bedroom door, painted pink and harboring the same mish mosh of magazine cutouts and decorations as she had in high school, sat at the end of the hallway. Opening it, she smiled at the sight of her old bedroom, bed, neatly made with her old purple and aqua comforter, her white curtains, her old dinosaur of a computer quietly sitting on her desk. Above her desk, her bulletin board was covered in pictures of high school, pictures of her trio of best friends, pictures of Homecoming, Prom, pictures of sports games, pictures of Chester. Jess laughed sadly, her dear puppy dog having passed away three years ago. Reaching forward, she grabbed a picture of him, his wrinkled face framed in the picture, his tongue half hanging out of his face. Turning it over, it read:
Chester, April 1997
Jess smiled sadly, placing it back on the board beside the picture of her high school best friend, Cherie Woolsworth, a girl who she parted with at graduation, promising to keep in contact. However, as is the testament of time, she lost contact with Cherie. However, her sixteen year old smiling face, decked out in face paint in her high school's old colors, maroon and gold, beamed from the bulletin board. Other pictures filled the board, pictures of other people, pictures of places, pictures of things. Jess remembered how much she loved to take pictures when she was younger. She always had her camera in hand. Thinking of it, her fingers twitched and Jess laughed, shaking her hand.
Sighing, she stepped away and opened her closet door, all her old clothes still hanging in there. Biting her lip, thinking of the past month and of Alex, she reached around the door, grabbed the desk chair and dragged it over. Stepping up onto it, she braced herself on the door jamb to her closet and reached up on the top shelf of her closet, grabbing an old shoe box that was jammed in the back corner of the closet. Taking it down, she tucked it beneath her arm and stepped down. Closing the closet door, she put the desk chair back and situated herself back... on her bed. Brushing a stray hair out of her face, she ran a hand over the dusty box lid.
Alex
Her fingers traced the letters. She'd made the box not long after she'd moved away, forgetting about it years later. It must have been sitting up on the top shelf for years next to her old winter coats and boxes of random and idle junk. Slowly, she slipped her fingers under the box's lid, prying it off. Setting the lid beside her, she peered inside the box, a wealth of memories contained within. Dozens and dozens of photos, nearly every photo she'd taken back then lined the bottom of the box in a thick layer. On top of the photos was her first camera, her old Polaroid. Grinning, she lifted it from the box, holding the viewfinder to her eye, squinting and lining up the sight, framing an old poster of a movie actor she'd been in love with when she was sixteen. A smile formed on Jess' face, a smile of memories. Setting the camera down, she dipped her hands into the box and pulled out a stack of photos.
Jess and Alex when they were ten, their faces pressed together in an effort to fit within the view finder, though it cut off halfway through Alex's right eye. Jess winked one eye closed, sticking out her tongue at the camera. Alex laughed, a carefree and child-like expression.
Chester when he was a young dog, pup-like features still ringing about him. He lay in a stray streak of sun on his side, his eyes closed and his mind off in doggy dream land.
A pair of pink sneakers, the laces undone and messy with a streak of mud across the toe.
Jess sifted through a few more.
Elizabeth at twelve, her brown hair cut short and her hands tugging at it, her eyes forced open wide.
Alex and Eric sitting on the front stoop of Jess' old house, Popsicle in hand. Elizabeth sat behind them, giving Eric bunny ears. Alex glanced up at her with a conspiratorial grin on his face.
A tree framed in the setting sun.
The playground where Alex, Jess, and Elizabeth had spent so much time.
A candid shot of Alex as he lay in a patch of shaded grass, his arms folded behind his head and his eyes far away and distant.
Jess paused at the photo, her finger running across the edge of his face.
Jess' bedroom door opened and her mother slipped into the room, quietly shutting it behind herself.
"I've just about had enough of your Aunt Hester," she whispered. "I swear, if she complains about one single more damn thing, I will strangle the lady."
Jess smiled, looking up from the photo. "You'd really strangle a nearly ninety year old woman, mom?"
Her mother smiled, sitting down on the bed beside Jess. "You'd do the same."
She nodded. "You're probably right."
"What're you looking at?" her mother asked, peering over her shoulder. "Oh, I haven't seen that camera in a long time." She picked up the old Polaroid. "You think it still works?"
Shaking her head, Jess set the photo of Alex down. "I dropped it years ago and it broke. Remember?"
"No, can't say that I do."
"Dad tried to fix it and sliced his finger open," she said. "Remember? We drove him to the hospital and everything."
"Oh yeah, and you drove him there. You'd just gotten your liscence," her mother said.
"And I begged to drive him," she answered back.
Her mother nodded her head fondly. "You were a very stubborn child," she said fondly.
Jess laughed sardonically. "Thanks mom," she said sarcastically.
"And a sarcastic adult it seems," she said. "So, what else are you looking at?" Reaching forward, her mother took the picture Jess had set down. "Oh, little Alex Munez. Such a sweet boy, he was. Why're you looking at these?"