Taylor was sitting on the floor in her empty room. Boxes surrounded her. She had tears in her eyes. Taylor’s father knocked on the door twice and entered.
“What do you want?” she screamed, throwing her stuffed bear at him. He closed the door quick enough to allow the bear to hit it, and then opened it again.
“The movers need your boxes, honey. It’s time to go.”
After fourteen years in this house, Taylor was leaving. And she was not leaving voluntarily. She wanted to stay in the house. “Her” house. But her father had been offered a job in Washington, in Spokane, as Chief of Staff at a hospital.
Taylor’s father stepped into the room and picked up the bear. “Look, Taylor, this is a great opportunity for me. I’m going to be one of the youngest people in charge of an Emergency Room in the state. That’s big.”
Taylor, still on the floor, still with tears in her eyes, looked up to her father. “What about me? What about my opportunity? I was going to be on Varsity next year! What do you think my chances of being on Varsity at some Podunk school are? None!”
“You don’t know that,” her father interrupted.
“Yeah, well neither do you!”
Taylor’s father handed the bear back to her and she grabbed it from his hands. She slammed it hard onto one of the open boxes and placed her head on her hands, sulking. Her father stepped into the hallway and called downstairs. “Okay, you can get these boxes now.”
Taylor sat in the room and didn’t move while the men came and went carrying her life out the door. She watched, but said nothing. Tears flowed steadily from her eyes and she wiped them often to not allow the movers to see how many tears they were causing her.
When the last box was gone, she wiped her eyes one last time. She noticed that her stuffed bear had fallen from its box and was lying on the floor. She placed the bear so that it was sitting upright, stood up herself, took her purse from the floor and left the room, with the bear staring at her as she closed the door.
Taylor walked downstairs and looked at her father standing at the car. She exited the house, closing the door behind her. She got into the car without a word and her father got in as well. He started the car and the two drove off, on their way to a new life in Richmond Valley
