7. A Last Breath.
Jade woke up relatively early, cramped onto the narrow couch in the den, wrapped in a red throw. She went out to the hardware store as soon as it opened and bought four rolls of packing tape and as many cardboard moving boxes as she could fit in her car. Then she started dismantling her home. Pillows, picture frames, books, blankets, shoes, silverware. She packed it all, labeling each box with indelible ink and taping it shut. When she heard a knock on the front door at 12:30, half the rooms in her house were shells of what they used to be.
"Why are you always inviting yourselves over?" Jade asked frustratedly as she opened the door to five people and one puppet she was not expecting.
"Hi Jadey!" Cat greeted happily. Jade rolled her eyes and stepped aside, sarcastically waving the unexpected five (or six) into her house.
"Why are you here?" Jade asked them.
"We're here to help!" Robbie said brightly. Four nodding heads agreed.
"It's the middle of the school day," Jade said, slightly astonished that the entire Scooby Gang would ditch.
"Yep," Beck agreed simply.
"So where do we start?" Andre asked.
Jade just stared at them warily.
"C'mon," Beck said pleadingly. "Let us help."
"Someone needs to start schlepping furniture down here for the movers," Jade said, rubbing her forehead with a defeated sigh. "And I need to finish packing up my room and marking things to be taken into storage or sold."
"Okay. So we'll start moving furniture down here, and you can finish packing your room."
Jade nodded, dragging Cat up the stairs by the wrist with Tori trotting along behind them.
"Cat, you take stuff off the walls. Tori, start emptying my closet into those," Jade ordered, pointing a pale finger at a stack of flattened boxes on her bare mattress. Cat clapped her hands excitedly and started unfolding the cardboard and Tori stationed herself by the closet doors. "Three boxes. Keep, donate, and destroy."
"Destroy?" Tori asked suspiciously, her eyes scanning the bedroom.
"Yes. Destroy."
Jade grabbed another box for herself and went across the room where a few sheets of bubble wrap were waiting on her desk. Carefully, she began wrapping each precious pair of scissors from the collection hanging on the wall and gently placing them in the box. Tori opened the closet doors and started taking the remaining clothes off of hangers and sorting them according to Jade's instructions.
"Ooh, I like this shirt!" Tori exclaimed, pulling a blouse off its hanger.
"Donate," Jade declared without looking.
"What about this one?"
Jade looked over her shoulder.
"Keep."
"And this one?"
"Keep."
"This?"
"Keep."
"This?"
"Destroy."
And so it went on. An hour later, there was a stack of full boxes near the door.
"What's this?" Tori asked suddenly, and Jade turned to see her dragging a cardboard box out of the depths of the closet.
"Ugh," Jade groaned. "Open it if you want. In fact, take whatever you like."
Tori pulled open the cardboard flaps to reveal a number of little blue boxes.
"Oh my God!" Tori gasped. "Are these…?"
"Tiffany shit? Yeah."
Cat slid across the room like a soccer player to join Tori kneeling beside the box.
"Can…can we see them?" Tori asked breathlessly. Jade shrugged. Tori delicately took a small box in her fingers. She ran her fingers across the Tiffany and Co. lettering before lifting the lid and moving aside the tissue paper to reveal a pair of diamond earrings. Cat's eyes grew, if possible, wider.
"They look like stars," Cat exclaimed. She herself looked like she had stars in her eyes. "Jadey you have a box of stars!"
"Are these boxes all full?" Tori asked as Jade rolled her eyes at Cat's comment. Jade nodded. Tori and Cat looked at their friend, scandalized. "Why don't you wear these?"
"I don't like them."
"Then why do you have them?"
"They're all…gifts."
"From who?!" Tori asked, gently putting the blue box back with its counterparts. "Who could possibly afford all this?"
"My dad," Jade explained. "Are you finished packing my closet?"
"Um…no," Tori closed the flaps of the cardboard box reluctantly with a sigh and sent it toward Cat, who drew an asterisk on it with a Sharpie and stacked it by the door. Tori picked up a plaid flannel button-down that had slipped off of its hanger and fallen to the floor. "Which box does this one go in?"
Jade sighed, looking at the shirt hanging from Tori's fingers and biting her lip. She swallowed.
"I don't care," she said finally, turning away. "You can give it back to Beck if you want."
"Oh," Tori said, understanding. Jade didn't look to see where the shirt went. Instead, she sealed the box holding her cherished collection. She marked it as scissors and started helping Cat take posters and pictures and butterflies off the walls. They gently bundled each frame and stacked them in a box. Jade was halfway through cutting a length of bubble wrap from the roll (she didn't pack her favorite pair of scissors) when Beck poked his head in, knocking on the open door.
"We downstairs are feeling lunch-y," he declared. "Any requests?"
"Sandwiches?"
"Ice cream!"
"Egyptian."
"Egyptian?" Beck asked Jade, blinking. She crossed her arms defiantly.
"I want falafel."
"I thought falafel was, like, Israeli," Tori said.
"It originated in Egypt," Jade declared. "Or, that's what Wikipedia said."
"Okay," Beck said, "but I don't know any falafel places around here."
"Me neither," Jade shrugged. "Get Chinese."
"But you just said—"
"I know what I said. I said it."
"Okay then. What do you guys want, Chinese-wise?"
The girls gave their orders (Jade as sarcastically as possible), and Beck repeated them back ("Okay. Wonton soup, vegetarian lo mein, cashew chicken. Yes?").
"Anyone wanna come with me?" he asked just before turning out of the door.
"Jade does," Tori replied immediately. Beck and Jade each raised a pair of eyebrows while Cat bounced on the bare mattress.
"Yay!" the redhead exclaimed.
"What? No I—"
"You need a break, Jade. You've been packing all day," Tori said kindly, placing a hand on Jade's shoulder. Jade knocked the other girl's hand away.
"I don't need a break."
"We're almost done anyway, Jade. Why don't you go, take your mind off things. We'll haul all of the upstairs boxes downstairs while you're gone."
"…fine," Jade agreed sullenly. "Start packing the kitchen while you're at it."
So she found herself in her ex-boyfriend's car on the way to BF Wang's. She swung her scissors by the handle around her index finger, determined to maintain the silence (and, as a bonus, she knew the scissor-swinging made Beck a little nervous). When they arrived at the restaurant the order they'd called in was already prepared, masterfully packed into a paper bag by Domingo, the owner's son.
"I swear I'm going to go broke if I keep buying lunch for these people," Beck joked as he counted the money from his wallet. Juan, Domingo's brother, was waiting patiently at the cash register.
"Well, at least you don't have to buy coffee every morning anymore," Jade replied. She was slicing a to-go menu into strips.
"You weren't that much of a budget-buster."
"Um, excuse me," Jade pointed the sharp end of her scissors at his face, "I've lost count of the number of times you said I was going to bankrupt you with my coffee obsession!"
"It was goodnatured joking!"
Jade gave him a sharp glare.
"Meaning," Beck clarified, "it was worth it."
The house was empty. The movers had come in the late afternoon, and the six students helped pack up all of the disassembled furniture and other things Jade didn't need (kitchen supplies and linens, mostly), which was going to sit in a storage unit until further notice. Jade took one last trip around each room, the setting California sun highlighting all that remained — boxes and dust. She came full circle, back to the five other teens who were waiting for her by the front door.
"The movers are coming back tomorrow," she announced. "They can help me get the rest of this out and drive it to the storage place."
There was a round of nods and murmured "okay"s.
"Thanks for helping," Jade said very quietly, staring at the doorframe. More nods.
"Are you ready to go home now, Jadey?" Cat asked.
"Yeah," Jade nodded. But she wasn't going home — she was leaving it, and she knew it. She took her time locking the door and driving home, Cat in the passenger seat harmonizing to the radio. Jade's fingers were motionless on the steering wheel, hardly hearing whatever music Cat was supposedly enhancing. A part of her felt warm when she thought about the people who had skipped school, unbidden, to help her pack her house. A bucket of cold water was dumped over that warmth as thoughts of why crept up in her mind. She was the black sheep of her family, no doubt about that, and the shepherd was forcing her to return to her pen. But she'd be damned if she let them shear her and force her to blend into the herd.
Go on, go on, go on, if you were thinking that the worst is yet to come
Why am I the one always packing up my stuff?
Okay, so Jade is moving in with her dad (and Celia, his wife) next chapter! As always, I'm happy to answer any questions/comments/concerns/conundrums/quests/crusades that you may have. It thrills me to read your reviews, so thank you so so much!