Where We Used to Roam Jenn Bishop (red white royal blue TXT) 📖

“Exactly,” I say. “Sorry. I’m not doing a good job explaining myself. It’s for my art.”

“Your art.” Tyler looks impressed. And he’s doing that repeating-me thing, which I actually find kind of hilarious when it’s him, even if someone else doing it would drive me up the wall.

“I make these boxes. Shadow boxes. I find stuff that catches my eye—that could tell a story, I guess. Stuff that you don’t think would go together, but somehow it does.”

“Like this old dish and a…” Tyler scans for something super random. “Toilet plunger?”

“Ew. But yeah. Except not a toilet plunger. But you get the idea.”

Tyler puts down the toilet plunger, his face totally giving away his regret. “That’s cool, Em.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You don’t think it’s weird?”

“Well, it’s different, I guess. But weird? I think everything’s a little weird if you spend too much time thinking about it. It’s your thing and it makes you happy. So what if it’s weird?”

It’s something about the way he says it, or maybe it’s that he says it at all. That he’s okay with weirdness—mine, anyone’s—but I can’t stop myself from blushing a little. I turn toward the shelf, not wanting him to notice, and that’s when I see it.

An astronaut Barbie. The exact same kind Becca got for her eighth birthday. She hated Barbies—we both did—and so after her party, where she did a medium-good job of pretending she liked the gift, we did what any nerdy third grader would do.

We launched her. Not into space, just over Becca’s house. With her birthday money, Becca went out and bought the gift she actually wanted, a model rocket kit, and while she worked on that, I got Barbie ready for her maiden—okay, only—voyage. I gave her a tattoo sleeve—stars, obviously—and a good haircut. (Who’s got time to wash that much hair in space?)

Unfortunately, we didn’t get the launch angle exactly right, and Barbie didn’t so much go over Becca’s roof as get caught on one of the back gables. Her dad kept saying he’d call someone to come get her down, but he clearly wasn’t prioritizing it, because by the time someone came with a tall enough ladder, she’d vanished.

Some bird must’ve flown off with her. That was Becca’s theory, anyway.

I wasn’t so sure. I liked to think Barbie didn’t give up on that first try, when things didn’t go quite right, and that she launched herself into the outer reaches of the atmosphere one cool winter night.

There’s no price tag on the Barbie, but there’s a sign on the top of the shelf saying everything in this aisle is two dollars. I grab a basket from the end of the aisle and add her to it, and that’s when it hits me: how I can win Becca back.

Not with a postcard. Not with something I write. I mean, who am I kidding? I’ve never been much of a writer.

I need to show her that I remember what our friendship means. And what better way to do that than with a shadow box? I’ve got almost two months to make it. Two months to fill it with everything that can remind Becca of how we used to be.

And then when I go home at the end of the summer, I can give it to her myself. Maybe we need this time, Becca and me, to see what we’re missing. What we lost by drifting apart this year. And then we can go back.

Just like rehab is helping Austin go back to how he used to be, this box will help me and Becca.

Tyler and I scan the shelves of Goodwill. I don’t tell him what I’m making yet, or why. Not that everything that goes in my basket is just for Becca’s box. Sometimes things just catch my eye—I save them for later, not knowing why I’ll need them, only sure that they have some purpose. Plus I have two months here. Plenty of time to make several shadow boxes.

Eventually our stomachs are growling and I’ve collected more random stuff than will fit in my backpack. At the register, the elderly lady ringing us up marvels at the sheer range of our findings. Old magazines, the astronaut Barbie, the tarnished spoon, random old postcards, some beaded necklaces, marbles, and a couple of toy cars like the ones Austin had as a little kid. “So, who’s your new friend, Tyler?”

“Emma,” he says proudly. “She’s here from Baaahston.” He turns to me. “Better?”

“B-plus.”

Tyler seems pleased with himself.

“Boston, huh?” She shows me my total. All this stuff for fifteen dollars and some change! “Don’t see too many folks from your neck of the woods out here.”

I hand her a twenty. “My mom came out here when she was in college,” I say. “She wanted me to have an adventure this summer.” So far, Tyler hasn’t asked any more questions about this reasoning. Maybe in his head, it’s something people back in Boston do all the time. Send their kids off to remote locations for the heck of it.

“Well, I’m sure our friend Tyler can make that happen.” I help her put what doesn’t fit in my backpack into two plastic bags. “Have a good one, you two,” she calls after us. The bell by the door jingles while Tyler holds it open for me.

“You have a lot of old-lady friends?” I ask on the way out, teasing Tyler.

“Actually, yeah.” His voice suddenly sounds more serious. “She’s good friends with my grandma,” he says. “I live with my grandparents.”

“Oh,” I say as I try to figure out how to attach these bags to my bike so they won’t whack me the whole way home. “That’s…” But I don’t know how to finish the sentence. I can’t say I’m sorry, even though that’s what almost comes out. For all I know, he prefers it this way. Still, part of me wants to ask Tyler why he doesn’t live with his parents. But then the other part thinks of