The 90's Kid

B A

  Cavis beamed at her. “I know you just stole my cheat book.” She gave a wry smile in reply.

   “Teagan, you should play too.” As he said so, the young man looked up, curious expression on his face.

   “Actually, can I ask you a question?” 

  Cavis walked toward him, interested. “Sure?”

  “Do you know what a Nintendo Switch is?”

  “Never heard of it in my life. Mom, did you keep my SNES?”

  “Naw, I don’t think that’s necessary. Just come here.” Ms.Tanes smiled like she's in on a joke.

   When Cavis walks over to their side of the living room, the thing he described in his head as “mystical space age touchpad cell phone” was shoved in his face. A commercial of some sort  played, showing Cavis…

  His eyes widened. “Holy shit. I want it now.”

   “It’s in the car. We were ‘bout to take it back too. You--” She cut out of her own statement, breathed, then started again. “Raris got it for Christmas from Teagan. Said he wasn’t interested. You wanna give it a try?”

  He was about to nod eagerly, until...

  “I actually don’t think that’s necessary.” Cavis mom spoke again from her place on the couch, a sort of somber happiness playing on her lips. She got up, and directed with her hand for Cavis to follow. 

 Beatrice’s happy expression pointed at him suddenly shifted into a disgruntled look, one Cavis didn’t understand the context of. He confusedly followed his mother anyway, leading up stairs and down the hall to his old bedroom. 

 The house creaked like an old man’s joints now, more scratches were littered everywhere. Cavis vaguely wondered why his mother hadn’t moved into a smaller house after everyone had moved out or… well, died.  

  They finally reached their destination, outside the bedroom door of his room, one he himself hadn’t even seen 2 years before is passing. His mother reached for the door knob, then her hand fell back. She appeared hesitant to open it. 

  “Mom, what’s in there? I mean, it’s okay that you probably trashed all my stuff, I really wouldn’t mind…”

 “No. It’s not that. It’s just…” Her hand dwindled at the door, and seeing his mother’s struggle, Cavis decided to turn the knob and open the door of his room himself. 

  What he was greeted with made him hurt more than anything else. 

  The room was cleaner than it had ever been when he lived in it, with no clothes or pizza crust on the floor, the bed laid and not ridden with stains, and the posters on his wall of Nintendo paraphilia taped properly for once. 

  But it was the fact that the room was exactly the same as 20-some years ago when he left it, with the light blue paint and the pale red bedspread, with the cabinet in the corner littered with bumper stickers and the blue lava lamp collecting dust on his drawer, with the note Beatrice gave him for Christmas when he was 6 still hanging limply from the back of his doorframe. That moved him to tears. Sad, horrible, anguished, grieving tears. 

  “Mom... why... yo--you didn’t have to…” He said through chokes, falling to his knees, sobbing in the door frame.  Cavis could not help but imagine a world in which he had never come back, the most probable world, where his mother just kept his things, mourning and mourning over something that had been long gone, cleaning the room year after year of dust and disuse, having to always look painfully at something she lost and could never get back. It hurt, it hurt him so much.