Wallpaperless
She's picking at the skin under her fingernails, eyes on the corkboard ahead of her and leg draped over the desk, covering a half-folded sheet of paper. The corkboard is covered in postcards from her sister, places Shay will never go. Distant palaces, monuments, beaches, forests. All signed, love! ciera.
This isn't even her room. Shay kicks her legs off the desk, chews on the end of her thumb. Stares at the folded paper. It's addressed to her mother. Her mother's desk, her mother's corkboard shrine to Ciera.
The little letter sitting like a Pandora's box. Not a postcard this time, so it feels more permanent.
In Shay's room, she stares at her ceiling and lets her fan spin round and round and round, dizzying, as she listens to the ringing on her phone. She's on the floor, even though she never vacuums the rug. That used to be Ciera's job, so it hasn't gotten done in three years.
The line picks up and: "Now?" He sounds like he's got a mouthful of food, so she can't tell if it's an annoyed now or just an expectant one.
Fifteen minutes later Oliver is in her doorway, his round cheeks red from the walk down the street, his eyes looking around her room. Shay gives him a smile because he only knows it as it is, and never saw it how it was. He never knew Ciera.
"You need a beanbag or something," he says, something he tells her a lot. He adjusts his glasses and tugs on the hem of his shirt, then settles on the floor against the bed.
Shay's picking at the skin under her fingernails, remembering what it was like peeling the wallpaper off the walls when Ciera moved out. A room all to herself, she'd thought, finally a chance to decorate it in her own way.
It'd gone from floral pinks to white. The walls are bare, the desk in the corner is dusty with disuse. The carpet never gets vacuumed and the ceiling fan creaks and clinks when it spins. Mom tells her to clean up the piles of clothes on her floor, the overflowing closet. The discarded books and ghosts of hobbies that never caught on, like a flute and a skateboard and a set of blank canvases.
No one else comes in here, because no one else has to. Shay always thinks, maybe I should. Maybe try something new, hang something up, rearrange the furniture. But it doesn't matter when it's this close. This close to college or whatever else comes after graduation. She just has to be here, doesn't have to live.
"Do you want me to make peanut butter crackers?" Oliver asks. Shay's been having a silent conversation with the white paint on the ceiling on accident, instead of him.
"Yeah," she says, and listens to his footsteps leave. Her phone's still in one hand, and she holds the other in front of her face. Oliver always knows what's best. And if he doesn't, he at least knows where to find the peanut butter, which is a treat for him because his dad's allergic.
Oliver gets to see her room. He's the one exception, which sounds cheesy, but it's true. Some people just get each other, which is why she's afraid that he's been applying to so many schools. So many schools far away, without her.
Her hand's turning pale white, plastering itself to the ceiling and spinning in time with the fan, stuck up there, hanging, while the rest of her dangles. While her mom prods at her and wonders why she never does anything good enough.
"Deep breath," he's telling her, and Oliver pulls her into a sitting position. He smells like peanut butter, and she knows he's going to eat all the crackers he just made, but that's ok because she doesn't want any. She'll just make them taste bland, and they'd stick in her throat and make it hard to breathe.
Her head's still spinning, but she leans against him. It's usually enough but it's just not quite, and she tucks her hands into her armpits where she can't see them or feel them.
Oliver's getting cracker crumbs on the carpet, and no one's there to vacuum it up.
"I don't want to go to college," Shay tells him, realizing she's sitting on the floor in pajama shorts, her legs covered in goose bumps.
Oliver chews. She's never told anyone this before. "Like a gap year?" No one's ever seen her room like this, blank and empty and just like her melting head. It's been like this for three years.
Shay leans away, eyeing his red jacket and striped socks. "No." She watches him push up his glasses. "I don't know."
He shrugs. "You don't have to. What do you want to do?" He doesn't say travel but she reads it in his eyes. She reads it in everyone's eyes when they're thinking about Ciera. Even someone who never met her. She rubs off on everything, everyone.
Shay blinks at her blank walls, blank room. Nothing, no one.
"I have no idea." She doesn't cry, doesn't feel any tears. But his jacket should be white. Or blue. Something to match the ocean of waves in her heart, because pretty soon he'll be gone. Gone too.
"We've got all year to figure it out. And the summer. It'll be ok," Oliver says sweetly. Always sweet. "Cracker?"
She shakes her head and wraps her arms around him, smelling his jacket. Shay's forgotten when Ciera smelled like. She can barely believe it. That she used to be in this room every day and night, and now it doesn't smell like her at all.
"She's not coming back," Shay says to his red jacket. He rests his chin on her head. "She wrote a letter to Mom. She didn't send me anything at all. She's getting married."
Oliver breathes in and out, reminding Shay of the rocking of waves. "She's written it to both of you. I'm sure you'll see her soon. She'll visit, or--"
"She hasn't visited once. In years," she reminds him, escaping his arms.
"Shay," he starts. He's sensible. "Ciera is going to do whatever she's going to do. It sucks, but it's true. But you--" he nudges her shoulder, and she huffs. "You've got to do whatever you're going to do."
"By myself," Shay adds. There's something under her fingernails and she's picking at the skin.
He catches her hands until she looks at the pinkness of his face, and the orange rims of his glasses. He's squeezing her palms in his. "You can't get rid of me that easily."
And it all feels like a lie, because she saw the white paint underneath her fingernails, remembered the feeling of scratching away all the floral remains of the wallpaper, and knows she's gong to have to do it all again. But still, for him, she smiles.