Regretting You(105)

I’m always going to have memories of them because they were a huge part of my life. But these letters are not my memories of them. They aren’t ones I want to know or keep in any capacity.

One by one, I rip them into tiny shreds without reading them.

I’m content with the direction in which my life is headed, and I know if I obsess over the past, that obsession will only serve to anchor me in a place I am more than ready to move on from.

I toss all the torn pieces of their history into my bathroom trash can. When I look up, I’m met with my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

I’m starting to look happy again. Truly happy.

It’s a beautiful thing.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT





CLARA


A few months later

I walk to the back of the living room and slip my hand inside Miller’s. We’re both nervous. We’ve worked so hard on this film, and I really want Jonah to like it.

My mother turns out the lights and takes a seat on the couch next to Lexie and Efren. Jonah is seated at the edge of the love seat, anticipating the video more than any of them.

We decided in the end to make a mockumentary. There was way too much seriousness in our lives when we started this film, so I really wanted something fun for a change.

Our time limit for the entire thing is just a few minutes, so it was harder than we thought to execute something with a beginning, middle, and end in such a short amount of time, but I’m hoping we pulled it off. We just don’t know if anyone else will appreciate the humor in it.

Miller looks at me, and I can see the nervous energy in him. We smile at each other when the film begins to play.

The screen is black, but then words flash across it in bright-orange letters, revealing the title: CHROMOPHOBE.

The scene opens on a character, aged seventeen. The name KAITLYN flashes across the screen. Kaitlyn (played by me) is sitting in an empty room on a stool. A light shines on her as she stares off camera, nervously wringing her hands together.

Someone off camera says, “Can you tell us how it all started?”

Kaitlyn glances into the camera with transfixed fear. She nods nervously. “Well . . .” It’s obviously hard for her to discuss. “I think I was five, maybe? Six? I don’t know exactly . . .” The camera zooms in closer to her face. “But . . . I remember every word of their conversation as if it happened just this morning. My mom and dad . . . they were standing in the living room, staring at the wall. They had all these . . . these . . . plastic paint swatches in their hands. They were trying to decide on a shade of white to paint the walls. And that’s when it happened.” Kaitlyn swallows but continues, despite her reluctance. “My mother looked at my father. She just . . . looked at him like the words about to come out of her mouth weren’t about to ruin our family forever.” Kaitlyn, obviously disgusted by the memory, wipes away a tear that’s sliding down her cheek. She sucks in a deep breath and then continues speaking on the exhale. “My mother looked at him and said, ‘How about orange?’”

Her own recollection causes Kaitlyn to shudder.

The screen fades to black, then cuts to a new character. An elderly man, gaunt and gloomy. The name PETER flashes across the screen. This character is played by Gramps.

Peter is sitting in a green midcentury modern chair. He’s picking at the chair with his frail fingers, loosening some of the fuzz. It falls to the floor.

Again, a voice somewhere off camera is heard. “Where would you like to begin, Peter?”

Peter glances into the camera with dark almond eyes encased in years of accumulated wrinkles, all different in depths and lengths. The whites of his eyes are bloodshot. “I’ll begin at the beginning, I suppose.”

The screen cuts to a flashback . . . to a younger version of Peter, in his late teens. He’s in an older house, in a bedroom. There’s a Beatles poster hanging over the bed. The teen is rummaging through his closet, frustrated. Older Peter’s voice begins to narrate the scene.

“I couldn’t find my lucky shirt,” he says.

The scene playing out on-screen is of the frustrated teen (played by Miller), walking out of his room and then out the back door.

“So . . . I went to find my mother. To ask her if she’d seen it, ya know?”

The mother is standing at a clothesline in the backyard, hanging up a sheet.

“I said, ‘Mom? Where’s my blue shirt?’”

The screen is back on the older version of Peter now. He’s staring down at his hands, twiddling his thumbs. He blows out a quick breath, bringing his eyes back to the camera. “She looked right at me and said, ‘I haven’t washed it yet.’”

The screen now shows the teenage boy again. He’s staring at his mother in utter disbelief. He brings his hands to the sides of his head.

“That’s when I realized . . . ,” Peter’s voice-over says. “I was left with only one option.”

The camera follows the teenage boy as he stomps back into his house, back to his room, and back to his closet. His hands push apart the clothes in his closet until the camera is focused on a lone shirt, just hanging there, swaying front to back.

“It was the only clean shirt I had.”

The camera is back on older Peter. He presses his sweaty palms against his thighs and leans his head back against his old green chair. He stares up at the ceiling in thought.