Leaving Home

You can figure it out.



With a heave, he threw the last of the clothes boxes into the back of the red SUV. It didn't look like a typical moving scene– there were no piles of furniture, no bookshelves stacked precariously on top of each other with a sort of hidden excitement. On the contrary, it looked empty– four clothes boxes; one for each family member, and another four for personal belongings. They didn't need a moving van. They weren't moving their life. They were starting a new one.

They stepped hand in hand into the bare house. Was it truly colder, or did the lack of life in the hollow building give that illusion? Even the walls, once painted bright colors with bright names, like "Paprika" and "Honey", seemed drained. Their footsteps echoed around the entryway as they took a final tour of the house he had once had a life in.

Up the stairs they trudged, their hands still in each other's grasp. They silently wandered to his door, and pushed it open.

It shouldn't have come as such a shock, but there it was. His room was utterly barren. Boxes of items to sell were scattered across the dreary beige carpet. A garbage bag, labeled "Trash", was propped against a corner. He knew, as he had thrown them in himself, that all of his folders of drawings, every doodle he had ever saved from his school binder, the video game sketches from years and years ago, and almost every piece of art he had ever created sat in that bag. He had personally thrown away his memories. All the spirit had been removed from his room, and the life once harbored there now resided in the bottom of a trash sack.

Slowly, he absorbed it all, and slowly, he sat in the broken office chair amid all the scenery of cardboard cubes. He bowed his head, and silently, tears began to flow from his eyes.

'It's not fair," he said quietly. "How can they think this is fair?"

She made a sympathetic sound and wrapped her arms around him, sitting in his lap.

He recognized her and entwined her likewise. "I have a life here," he continued, pain beginning to stain his voice. "I have my friends. I have my acting. I have you. It's all here."

A shudder wrenched its way down his back, and he gave a small sob.

"And they're making me throw it away. Throw it all away."

His hands balled into fists, clenching the shoulder seam of her shirt tight.

"It's not fair. There's nothing for me out there. My future is here. They say they're acting for my future but they haven't got a clue about it…"

"Shhh," she whispered, kissing the protests from his lips.

He hid his face in her neck and cried.

But then the sound of the car's trunk slamming shut wafted through the window in the other room, and then the front door was opening with the noisy crack it always made. Then the too-cheerful call came, reverberating through the empty house. "It's time!" Then they were softly stepping down the stairs, his face still wet and her eyes beginning to shine, and then they were in the all-too-bright sun of the day, their eyes adjusting slowly.

Suddenly, she embraced him, and pulled him close. "You can't leave," she said, almost pleading. "You can stay here, can't you? With me, or with our friends. We can make it work, right? You're not allowed to move. Remember?"

But his response was a slow, solemn shake of the head. "I can't stay," he said, his voice gravelled by sorrow. "My family doesn't want it."

"Forget your family, forget your blood!" she hissed, her fingers grasping at his shirt. "Your real family is right here! You can't leave us!"

He sighed and held her tighter, closer.

"Please," she murmured. "Please don't leave." Her voice broke to a whisper. "I love you too much."

"I love you too," he sighed heavily, and kissed her.

The scene's colors eventually bled back through to his eyes; the grumble of the car's engine and his family's calls to get in, the rustle of the leaves in the wind slowly reached his ears. The world stopped spinning, and resumed its chaotic hurtle. Life appeared again, filtered hopeless and empty through his tearstained eyes.

Then he turned from her, and walked to the car.

He watched her out his window as they drove away, the angel of his life shrinking into the distance.