we depend (I depend) on you • jayvik

Jayce - Year Eighteen

It takes Steb and the young women who live next door two days to pack up and move our entire home into the new one. We shove everything into boxes – Steb and the nice ladies do most of the work, while you and I help where we can. I help you clear out our miniature workstation and then we clean out the kitchen cabinets. After that, we messily fold all of the bed sheets. You sit in a chair, and I roll around where you need me with a rather large cardboard box balanced precariously on my head.

Despite Steb's promise all those months ago that we could keep everything that was ours, much of it gets tossed out or left by the curb for someone else to claim. It's mostly things we no longer have use for, such as our mismatched curtains you once bought on sale for a coin apiece, and the couch pillows that flattened into unrecognizable ovals over the years. The very last thing to go is the couch itself, old and faded, heavy with the scent of dust and time.

Most of our dishes are discarded too. They crash into the dumpster one by one, flung like toy disks, and although I have never been granted the privilege of eating off of them, watching them shatter still twists something deep inside me that I'll never heal from.

We arrive at Steb's house around noon, and everything changes.

Everything.

The house isn't huge by any means, but compared to our old apartment, it feels massive. And it's bright. So much brighter than what we're used to. No more dark, cramped rooms tucked between towering buildings that swallowed up all the daylight. Here, the sun actually reaches the windows and casts ribbons of rainbow along walls that don't feel like they're always closing in. The air feels lighter here too. It feels like different air. It feels new.

There's a yard around Steb's house. It separates it from the neighbors who have identical yards and identical houses.

It's not a big yard, but there's a little herb garden along one side and plenty of soft, green grass. The kind that looks almost too perfect to be real. And I can't help myself – I have to try it out.

So I do.

I take off from your side on the sidewalk, rolling in circles and zigzags and whatever shape comes to mind, tearing through the green until I'm covered in grass and mud. I don't stop until the ground begins to feel slippery, but even then I feel lighter than I have in months.

Then, of course, my fun ends as my messy tracks get disassembled and introduced to the garden hose.

Steb is right about the house not having any stairs. The inside is completely flat. Everything runs together from room to room. But outside, there are two wooden stairs that separate the entire house from the newly-paved walkway – the one that Steb had poured two weeks ago for your convenience. And although the walkway is nice, you've still been having trouble with those two stairs. Sometimes you try to get up them yourself, but it's not uncommon for Steb to have to wrap his arm around your chest and use all of his strength to lift you to the top.

I can't use the stairs either, Viktor. I always have to get carried up them. And poor Steb struggles significantly more to lift me up those two steps than he does you.

I hope you can find some comfort in that.

The house itself is nice. Cozy, even. The first thing you said when we stepped inside was that it smelled like Steb. He just grinned and squeezed your shoulder in a nice, fond way. When I asked you what that meant, you told me it smelled clean – like fresh laundry, lavender, and dried tea leaves.

There are windows everywhere, stretching almost to the floor so I can see outside from just about any spot in the house. The furniture is newer, modern even, but something about it feels... impersonal. I guess that's what happens when you spend the majority of your time in someone else's home. There's a couch in the sitting room, a lounging chair, and a coffee table in front of the fireplace. W e never had a fireplace - it would have definitely been nice during the cold months. Bookshelves line the walls on either side of it, and every shelf that I can see is crammed full of books. There's history, geography, even an entire section on cooking. It's well put together, but everywhere I look feels as if it's missing something that our home was full of.