When we moved into the farm house I remember exploring the upstairs floor for the first time. There was one bathroom, and it was painted red with a tacky poster hanging over the toilet featuring a little cartoon boy smiling, urinating, under the caption “Please be neat, Wipe the seat.” The poster came down immediately and the walls were painted white, and thus became the bathroom that my brother and I shared for the next ten years. We both had our bedrooms upstairs, Harry’s was at the end of the hall with the blue “smurf” shag carpeting, and mine was the bright white room between his and the bathroom. Aside from the playroom at the top of the stairs, those were the only rooms we used in the upstairs…but there were two more. One was across the hall from mine and felt like the third bedroom that was missing a child. The natural light in that room was surprisingly intense, despite the small window, and I crossed the hall more often than I realized to sit in a rocking chair by the window and stare out into the yard. I went outside when I wanted to be alone. I went in that room when I wanted company.

The remaining room was between the bathroom and the stairs, and it was dark and windowless. When we moved in the space was already filled with storage from the previous tenants, and it seemed odd to me that they hadn’t taken their junk with them when they left. There was one light hanging in the middle of the room that you had to cross complete blackness to get to, and I only stepped in there once just to see if there was anything in the rubble that I wanted, since I assumed they wouldn’t be coming back for it. The room was heavy; everything was dated a few decades back but oddly un-dusted with age. I remember the way the light bulb seemed to suffocate, unable to properly illuminate the darkness that curled around the objects, and the unexplained anxiety that came over me when I turned the light off and had to make it back to the door in the dark.

In the upstairs bathroom there was also a small storage crawlspace that remained painted red, and it curved back to a thin wall that touched the aforementioned storage room. We kept extra toilet paper in there, and every time I opened the little door I pictured myself getting locked inside, and how dark and terrible that would have been. As long as the door stayed closed, everything was fine.

When I think of my old bedroom I see the color white. The walls were white. The carpet was white. The light was white. It makes sense that the grungiest little girl in the world should take up residence there. I slept like a rock in my white room, innocent and carefree listening to the sounds of cows, tractors and the freeway not too far off in the distance. I could see it from my window; sometimes at night I would watch the headlights flash by to make me tired. I would often look down at the huge, square backyard and the equipment barn beyond it. The crab apple tree to the right where I would sample the “apples” every year to see if they had gotten any sweeter. Every now and then one of my cats would walk underneath my window stalking something and I would whistle. They would look around confused until they spotted me, then yowl, but I wasn’t allowed to come down, kind of like Repunzel…is what a cat lady would say.

Ten or so years later when I was told we were moving from the farm house I went into denial. I boxed nothing. I continued to sleep soundly in my peaceful white room, thinking that if I left everything in its place including myself, I would automatically get to stay. It’s a strange, suspended spot in my memory when everything in my room clung to its place, until the day I came home from school and saw that my dad had done for me what I was unable to do myself. There weren’t even boxes, it was just all gone because it had to be.

I used to drive by the old farm house just to see it and remember for a second what it felt like to belong there.  One day I drove slowly up the dirt road and around the dead end turn around, looking up at my old bedroom. There was someone in the window. A little brown haired girl with her head resting on her arms, looking out at the yard. I stopped the car and she looked right at me. I smiled, but the girl just continued to stare. She had no idea who I was…really, who she had turned out to be. That sad little girl hadn’t packed her bags ten years ago and was left behind like she thought she wanted. I can’t sleep through the night anymore because she still does in that quiet white room of the farm house that is anything but empty.

Luciana, 24