”So, long story short, I got the job,” I said a couple weeks later when I called Jeff.

We’d both returned to Coreyville and were both in the process of packing. Jeff was off doing his own packing for college, so I was sorting through my possessions alone. It was just as well. I suspect that, if we’d done it together, neither of us would have gotten anything accomplished.

“That was your idea of a short story?” he replied.

“Hey, I only told you about the boring interview, getting Mr. Atherton’s referral and waiting for a response.”

“There’s more?”

“Yes,” I said. “There’s Just Call Me Dave, my supervisor, who, so far, is sitting back and making me do all the work.”

“Also, you’re working second shift,” Jeff added, “when most people our age will be out having the time of their lives.”

“That doesn’t bother me so much,” I said. “I’ll find something to do.”

Jeff surely thought that the something I referred to involved pursuing Katie and, yes, that thought occurred to me. What I hadn’t told him is that I was taking the wings with me and had every intention of flying around again.

When you’re moving to a new place, you discover how much crap you’ve accumulated over the years. It’s also a nostalgic and emotional chore.

There was a part of me that just wanted to throw my stuff in a box, tape it up and be done with it. Everything I picked up, however, had a story. With each keepsake, I stopped to remember where I’d gotten it, who gave it to me or who was with me when I bought it.

It wasn’t as if I was leaving and never coming back. Mom wasn’t going anywhere and, although I was certain she turn my room into a storage area or find some other purpose for it, some of my stuff could stay there. So, I sorted my belongings into three piles: 1. stuff I was taking with me, 2. stuff I was leaving with Mom, 3. stuff I was tossing.

It came as no surprise that much of my memorabilia made me think of Jeff. For instance, I still had that out-of-tune acoustic guitar from that period when Jeff and I wanted to be musicians. We had it all planned: I would play guitar, Jeff would play keyboard and we would both sing. It was the era of musicians playing in costumes and makeup, so we also toyed with the idea of putting on a musical show dressed as our favorite comic book heroes, Doctor Wonderful and Doctor Life. I bought a guitar, played around with it for a few months and then gave up. Mom said that if I was really serious about it, she would pay for music lessons. It never got that far. And, forget about singing and playing at the same time. My brain just didn’t work that way.

Jeff, on the other hand, bought an electronic keyboard, and became quite a good pianist. For him, notes and time signatures were just mathematics with a little hand-eye coordination. He had to practice, of course, but he picked it up much faster than I did. When I stopped playing, Jeff’s interest waned, but I’m sure he’d have no problem starting up again.

I started to put the guitar in the stuff-I’m-tossing pile, but decided to leave it at the house. Maybe we could find someone who wanted it.

On one of my bookshelves, there was a pair of those cheap cardboard glasses that they gave you at 3D movies. You know, they had one red lens and one blue lens. We hadn’t actually gone to the movie theatre to see a 3D movie, though. When we were about 11 or 12 years old, this geeky guy, who dressed up like a vampire and called himself Count Maynard, hosted the weekend monster movie. He was showing a 3D movie and was encouraging everyone to go to the store and buy the glasses. We spent our hard-earned birthday money on those stupid glasses. We were so excited to see the movie and “experience the reality of 3D!” that Count Maynard had promised. The movie had a cheesy, fake monster and the “3D” never looked right, but we enjoyed making fun of that movie for years. As great as that memory was, the glasses went in the stuff-I’m-tossing pile. When would I ever use those things again?

There was one keepsake hanging on the wall that was definitely going in the stuff-I’m-taking-with-me pile. It was a piece of ceramic art: conjoined masks, comedy and tragedy, which Katie had given to me for graduation. Of course, I was taking it with me to be a constant reminder of Katie.

“She gave one of those to everyone who was in that show!” Jeff guffawed when I showed him. That might have been true, but I preferred to think of it as something special that she’d given only to me.

What surprised me were the keepsakes that reminded me of Mom or Dad. In one of my shoe boxes, I found photos of what was supposed to be an “annual camping trip” with Jeff’s family and mine. Mom thought it was such a great idea for my family and Jeff’s family to all drive up to the mountains and get away from our jobs and suburban life for a few days. Part of her, I think, also wanted to reconnect with Dad and going to a beautiful, romantic location away from work distractions sounded like a good idea.

Unfortunately, while Dad did love being out in nature, he was more interested in taking pictures and drawing what he saw than he was in reconnecting with Mom.

Jeff and I, however, loved those trips. In the early days, before Jeff’s accident, so we would go on hiking excursions. Jeff brought an 8mm video camera and he’d capture video for a proposed Doctor Wonderful and Doctor Life movie, which we never made. Once Jeff was in the wheelchair, the hiking stopped, but we’d still take less adventurous expeditions into the wild. Those camping trips did become an annual event for me with Jeff’s family; Mom and Dad stayed at home.

I also had boxes of old, discarded computer parts. Years ago, Jeff made a computer for me that was comprised of the parts that were left over after he upgraded his computer. Over the years, whenever Jeff upgraded his computer, he’d throw some of his old parts into mine. Consequently, I ended up with a bunch of old motherboards, sound cards and memory cards, not to mention a dot matrix printer that had been collecting dust in my closet for years. These parts became a forth pile, which I’d just give back to Jeff. He loved “antiquated technology,” as he called it. I’m sure he could do something with those old parts. To me, they were just junk.

In one corner of my room, Morty stood, propped up against the wall. He looked at me with those great, big, sad eyes and seemed to beg, “You’re not leaving me behind, are you?”

“No, of course not,” I said. “How could I leave you? I know how much you want to see the city. In fact, here...” I moved my packed suitcases against the wall next to him, so I wouldn’t forget him.

The next day, I put the stuff-I’m-tossing pile out with the rest of the trash and I moved the stuff-I’m-leaving-with-Mom pile to a corner of the room. The newly-formed stuff-I’m-giving-to-Jeff pile went into a box which I then put in the trunk of the car; we’d drop that off at Jeff’s when Mom took me to the train station. Morty and the stuff-I’m-taking-with-me pile went in the back seat.

I took one last look at the room where I’d spent the majority of my childhood. Memories of all I’d experienced there—good and bad—seemed to flash before my eyes in an instant. I turned away and closed the door behind me.

Next Chapter: Chapter Seventeen