Say When - Micalea Smeltzer Page 0,1

kitchen there’s a bedroom, a bathroom, and two more bedrooms with a bathroom attached to what I assume is the master. I told Molly she could have it, opting for the room nearest the kitchen. True, I won’t have an en-suite, but I struggle to sleep a lot of nights and would rather be able to use the rest of the condo without disturbing her.

“Glad you like it, Sweet Pea.” He drops a kiss on the corner of my forehead and turns to go back for more stuff piled in the hallway.

My job is to start unpacking as they bring stuff in. Grabbing the bag my dad set down on the shiny white counter I pull out the boxes of utensils and get to work taking them out of the box and loading them into the dishwasher.

Molly comes in with a box and heads straight back to her room with it, huffing and puffing the whole time. When she comes back out, hands on her hips she says to me, “Thank God for elevators, because getting groceries in here is going to be a nightmare.”

I laugh, taking out a stack of pale blue plates. Flipping them over I get to work on peeling the stickers before they join the utensils in the dishwasher.

“I know, right? Can you believe it? This place is all ours.”

When our parents leave, it’s just us, for good. Neither one of us has ever been without our parents for long.

“Yeah.” She tucks a piece of flaming red hair behind her ear, showing off the numerous piercings there. “It’s weird. Tell me you feel it too?”

“Definitely weird. But I’m excited.”

For the next hour more stuff comes into the condo, along with furniture deliveries our parents arranged so we have a couch, T.V., desks, some bookcases, and beds.

“You guys have done too much,” I whine, feeling guilty.

My mom passes me books from one of my numerous boxes so I can add it to the sleek black bookcase. I opted for a simple black and white theme with just a pop of an orangey brown in the blanket and some throw pillows on my bed. Molly’s room on the other hand looks like the color wheel threw up in it. Not that I’d ever tell her that.

“We want you to be comfortable here,” my mom argues. “This should feel like home. This is your home now.”

“I know, but it’s a lot.”

Contrary to popular belief, I hate being spoiled. Loathe it more than just about anything else. I don’t like things handed to me. I want to work for what I have. Like with grades—I heard the whispers in the halls of teacher’s pet and that I was a suck up. I knew it wasn’t true, but that didn’t lessen the hurt I felt.

“It makes us feel better to know you’re in a safe building and have everything you need,” my dad offers his input behind a grunt, struggling to hold onto the mirror he’s hanging beside my bed.

“Oh, honey.” Mom drops the books she was holding on my bed and hurries to help him. Over her shoulder she says to me, “God knows your brother won’t let us do anything to help him.”

My older brother, Atlas, is what I would call a free spirit. He didn’t exactly excel in school. Not because he’s dumb, actually he’s incredibly intelligent, but being confined isn’t for him. He needs to be on the move, out in nature, going on adventures. I know it killed our parents when he told them he wasn’t going to college. I think they both nearly had a stroke when he announced he was buying a tiny house trailer and traveling all over the country.

When they asked how he’d make money he jokingly told them he’d be a stripper.

He might’ve only been half-joking, I don’t know.

But I love getting texts from him with selfies at different spots around the states where he stops. He takes up odd jobs, from repairing roofs, to putting in swimming pools, at one place he even learned to be a beekeeper.

Last summer, when he came back home for a while, he took me out to Shenandoah Park to camp. We were lying beneath the stars in our sleeping bags when I confessed to him how envious I was of his freedom. His fearlessness to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.

He said to me, “We’re all trying to figure out who we are and where we belong in the world. The processes might be