Page 59 of Scars Like Wings

Everett smiled and nodded, a fondness glowing in his eyes. “Yes, a lot of fun, actually. He spent the night here Thursday and came over Friday to spend the night again after work. Wewatched movies, and he cooked again. It was nice and sweet. I don’t know. I think I might be in love with him… maybe? I guess?”

I almost spit out my coffee. “Fuckingfinally! I thought you wouldneveradmit it! It’s been almost twoyears!”

Uncle Everett rolled his eyes. “You are love-obsessed, kiddo.”

“Yeah, but you have been in love with Thompson since you two went to that barcade and the dessert shop after, and that was when y’all were together for, like, seven months. You have been in this love limbo where you haven’t said the words becauseyouare scared of feelings. I may be a hopeless romantic, but you are the lead in a rom-com who is scared of saying anything because you don’t want to ‘ruin’ the relationship,” I said with finger quotes.

“You aresodramatic! Teddy knows how I feel about him, and we will say those three words when we are ready. You can’t rush these things.”

“Sure, Jan,” I replied, drinking more of my coffee. “Sounds very rom-com to me.”

“Bee isn’t wrong,” Simone agreed.

“She does have a knack for these kinds of things,” Maisie shrugged.

Uncle Everett rolled his eyes again and picked up his mug. “Okay, I’m going to go back to my room now. I’m clearing out space for Teddy, so he can come around more often. And before you ask, he isn’tmoving in. It’s just so he can spend the night, we can have more fun weekends together more often, and so it’s easier for him to get to and from work. I was going through my stuff and getting ready to donate some things?—”

“OoOoh, can I go through it before you donate it? Your shirts are thebest!” IadoredEverett’s old shirts. Everett’s six-foot-seven, broad muscular frame made his shirts oversized on me. They were big cozy, and I loved wearing them to bed or to lazearound the house. I had been wearing his and Pops’ old shirts since I was a kid, and it was a habit I had never broken even to this day with shirts I hadn’t outgrown. They were free, so it did save me hundreds on pajamas.

“Come on then, kiddo. I have already made a nice dent in my room and have a few piles for donation.”

The four of us headed to Uncle Everett’s room, the second room on the right in the hallway. Everett’s room was an opposite to my own. While mine was colorful, light, and very bo-ho, Everett’s was darker and far more modern. His furniture was all wood and steel. There was a navy accent wall behind his California king bed, and the bed only had a few pillows and a throw over his duvet and sheets. A closet and ensuite were on the wall to the right of the doorway. Normally, Everett’s room was tidy, with the bed made and the entire room pristine. But today, there were piles of clothes, books, boxes, and random knickknacks all over the floor, bed, and every available surface. There was a small path along the floor to walk and a tiny space before the bed, but that was it.

“Someone’s hoarding tendencies are really coming to bite them in the ass, huh?” I teased, nudging him with my elbow.

“Shut up,” Everett led the way along the path toward his bed. “It isn’t hoarding, it’s staying prepared for anything.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said as I bent over a pile ofveryold electronics. “Keeping computer junk from before I was born isdefinitelyabout staying prepared. What even is this? I feel like I can hear the sound of trying to get on the internet and hoping no one calls just from looking at this—Holy shit, is that afloppy disk?”

“Okay, okay, okay. You’ve made your point, you little menace. The t-shirt pile is over there on that side of the room.”

“No, no, no, my kind sir. You have opened this Pandora’s Box, and there’s no putting a lid on this.” I put the modem down and gasped at a stack of small boxes. “Is that my oldWhere inTime is Carmen Sandiego?game? Oooh, and my copy ofSims 2?”

“What even are these, Byrd?” Simone said, plucking a copy of aReader Rabbitgame from the stack.

“These are all my old computer games! When I was a kid, I didn’t get a gaming system until I was like ten, but we had a computer. My mom used to only let me play computer games if they were educational, and my dad was only able to sneak a few non-edutainment games in there a year. So, I can literally tell you so much about Egyptian mummification, who wrote the first novel ever, the trading of salt in Africa, and the first man in space because ofCarmen Sandiego. These games weresomuch fun!”

“Gods, you used to spendhoursplaying and replaying those games. Even when you got older, you used to just pop them into the computer and still play them on raining Saturdays after your cartoons,” Everett said while he folded a shirt on the bed.

“Yeah, because they wereawesomeand the music wasamazing! Wow, I thought we lost these forever!”

“Might as well be lost forever. You can’t even play these anymore,” Maisie said, turning over an oldRugratsgame.

“You can absolutely play these! You just have to get a CD reader and portable version of Windows?—”

“Have you showed Quinn how much of a nerd you can be? Does she know what she’s in for yet?” Maisie teased.

“No, but no time like the present!” I got my phone from one of my pockets and snapped a picture of as many old computer games as I could while Maisie and Simone chuckled. I typed up a text to Quinn.

“Aren’t you happy I’m a hoarder now?” Uncle Everett joked.

“The first step toward help is admitting you have a problem, Uncle Ever,” I said, earning another eye roll from him.

“Ohmigod, Byrdie! Look at this!” Simone squealed from where she and Maisie sat in front of an old cardboard box. There was fading Sharpie on it that read:Girls’ Old Things. I recognized the handwriting before the box itself. It was Pops’ handwriting, a sharp and quick cursive. His handwriting always reminded me of gothic letters, like those written by Edgar Allen Poe. I traced my hand over the marks. This was a box from when we packed up my childhood house—the only home I had ever known—after Mom died.

When we packed up that house, we were in such a rush to leave it and the memories of Mom that seemed to fill every brick and board of that house. We wanted to escape, not from my mom and our grief, but from the almost-ness of her presence in that house. It was always like you could turn around and she would be right there. In our haste to leave, anything that wasn’t immediately necessary was tossed into a box. This particular box, with all of its nostalgia, was one of those things. It was strange how things had a way of disappearing and reappearing in life, just like old keys you had lost or a jacket you had misplaced.

“Wow, Bee, I never would have thought you liked BarbieandBratz?”

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