As I Am

Chapter Eleven

            But then the other half of me wants to relive some of these memories, to look through the pictures and smiling faces and scenery to remember. And maybe Mom is right – taping them to my walls again might bring me closer to not only what’s on the thick paper, but also the old Bam – the old me.

            I start out as safe as I can – I don’t open the box yet.

            “This is you,” I say, bending down to hold the creepy picture of Cat in front of his own face. He barely glances at it before licking his paw, disinterested.

            I start on the wall to the left of my bed, smack in the middle between where I sleep and the balcony sliding glass doors on the other wall. I don’t know how to do this without screwing it up; I never finished an entire wall last time. So I grab some double sided tape and stick the photo smack in the middle of the pale wall.

            Eventually I decide that not looking in the box is going to be harder than looking in it, so I start taking out photos and taping them to the walls. The ones of Cade are too painful to look at so I stick them up without looking at his face.

            When my parents find my empty bowl in the kitchen sink hours later, I hear them come up the staircase to see what I’m doing. Neither of them says anything as they stand at the other side of the room, looking from behind me. I can practically feel my mother’s grin, so elastic that I’m putting my pictures up as if it’s some kind of masterpiece. To her, it probably is.

            After a little while Mom goes downstairs to probably work on her book. Dad sits against the old, antique dresser, gripping the sides with his fingers. I turn around momentarily, feeling him watching and realize he’s staring at the photos. So far they just look like a multi-coloured blob on the plain wall, but Dad is looking at them with his head tilted, as if he’s seeing something that I don’t.

            “I like it,” he says after a while.

            Then he rises from his perch and leaves me alone to put the rest of the photographs up in piece.

           

            “Who is it?” I ask, wearingly jumping down the steps of the lighthouse. Only a few photographs remain, which means that most of the wall is covered except for the edges where some don’t fit.

            “Just answer the phone,” Mom says with a small smile. Even her eyes light up and I can see that she’s taking my photo collage as some kind of peace treaty, as if I did it for her. She’s no longer mad.

            Confused, and slightly cautious at who could possibly be calling me here, I walk to the old coral pink phone hanging on the wall and take the receiver from my mother’s hand. Turning around, I slowly raise it to my face.

            “Hello?”

            “Bam,” someone says on the other side. “It’s Evan.