[Other Original] Home [SWC]

You've played a game with yourself nearly all your life- how many flights can you climb before you give up and take the elevator? As a kid, you'd done all twenty flights of your apartment building only twice. Once just before you were sent to boarding school, and once after weeks of foot travel.

This is the first time you've done it as an adult.

You key in the code once you've caught your breath and balance from the switchbacks. The door creaks open. Of course it does. You're the only one who ever used it.

The only one who ever used the apartment at all, really.

Little lights flicker on at your feet as you pad through the pristine entry, but you choose to leave the main lights alone. Stormy and grey though the morning may be, the floor-to-ceiling windows across the entire penthouse let in plenty of light to see by. Lightning flickers and thunder grumbles, neither enough to startle you. Liminal is the word that floats across your mind. It's a mood that you don't feel like breaking.

The main area of the apartment is so needlessly large. Neither you nor your sister were allowed to have friends over and your parents never entertained; the rooms were decorated according to fashionable standards every two years and then left to collect dust. What a waste- the view is beautiful from here, even in the damp gloom. The whole city at your feet. You liked to stand here and just watch the world sometimes, when you were younger, with audiobooks playing on the apartment-wide sound system. You do the same now, in quiet stillness. But these rooms weren't yours to use. They were for decoration, not for functionality. Not for children. You remember being punished for sitting quietly on the sofas once.

You were six.

You never did it again.

There are three rooms in the apartment that you do see as yours. Your bedroom and your bathroom were assigned to you, but the kitchen was your own choice. You were the one to spend the most time here. You were the one to position that little table perfectly to avoid being blinded by the morning sun. You were the one to collect all the accessories- colorful trivets and oven mitts, spoon rests and utensil holders, ceramic mugs and cast iron pans and silly decorations. You find all these things where you left them, in the uppermost cabinets, and begin to place them carefully on the counters.

You remember it becoming a pain to put them all away before your parents returned.

But it was worth it, to enjoy your own space. To enjoy what little time you spent here. To enjoy cooking, and cleaning up, and relaxing. Doing things for yourself. On your own time.

The infinity pool catches your eye as you pull down the last gaudy mug. The surrounding lush and manicured plants flutter gently in the wind, rain rolling from their broad leaves into the overflowing pool. That was never yours. The terrace was your sister's domain, before you were born and after she left. You didn't go anywhere near it. You didn't even look at it, not after she hit you for doing so. You still don't.

You were four.

She was eleven.

In a fit of determination, you slide open the terrace door. A damp, chlorine-tinged gust greets you. You watch the waves slosh gently over the glass.

You close the door.

Maybe it makes sense that you can't swim.

The first room of the long hallway is the office. It was also your playroom once, yes, but it was never not an office. You remember finding a box of photos, taken the week your sister demanded to have a camera and abandoned in the back of a closet for years after. Only one of them stuck out to you- a candid taken from the door to this room with your father at his giant, paper-covered desk, wholly focused on his computer. But that's not what you remember most about the photo. You were in it too, out of focus and on the edge of the frame. Standing at the gate of a collapsible playpen, not touching any of the toys surrounding you. Watching your sister with an unreadable expression.

The room has hardly changed since, besides the removal of any trace of a toddler.

You learned a little bit about child development once. You realized after that there wasn't an age-appropriate book anywhere in that room.

Maybe your endless chatter is an attempt to make up for being such a late talker.

You skip over the bathroom and guest bedroom. Your grandmother stayed there once. She died shortly after.

You were three.

Your sister's bedroom is next along the hallway. You had peeked in there once, out of plain curiosity, years after she had left. She would've lost her mind had she known. But a desk, a bed, and several bookshelves filled with discarded gifts were all you saw. You remember that she spent most of her time studying, as she was expected to.

You wonder sometimes why the same expectations were not placed on you.

You wonder sometimes what her life was like before you were born.

You've never been able to find out.

You skip over your own room for now, wondering how long it has been since either of your parents slept in the master bedroom. You don't get any answers; the housekeepers clean too thoroughly to leave any clues. You draw back the heavy curtains, still preferring the natural grey over artificial white lights. There's a classic novel positioned perfectly under the lamp on one of the nightstands. The oversized bed has been overtaken by throw pillows in various shades of neutral.

You slept in it once, the first time you were left alone for a week.

It wasn't comforting.

You sit on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the arrangement of accessories. It's the most comfortable bed you've ever sat on, but you're still uncomfortable. There's something not right about it. About everything here. The spa-like bathroom was always useless to people who preferred to go to a spa. You never understood the point of having it. Or the walk-in closet, which is nearly the size of your dorm room but houses only a single dress and two suits. You don't understand the opulence of this place. You don't understand your parents. You don't understand why they made the choices they did.

Why are you here?

You swipe at your eyes and press your palms into your cheeks. Your bedroom door is the only one open. You never liked it to be shut. You never liked to feel isolated. Even if all other doors were shut, even if nobody else was in the apartment, you kept it open.

You've kept the bed accessible. Just in case. But other than that, this room has been your storage area for many years, even before you left. You spent most of your time wandering the city, after all, coming back only to sleep and eat. And after you left, everything you couldn't travel with- you had it sent here. Neatly stacked boxes line the wall, shipping labels unbroken. You don't know what's in most of them anymore. But it's convenient, at least. The few unboxed items, well, they'll-

"Hey, where are you?"

Your reverie breaks.

"Why aren't any lights on?" your partner says, as they find their way to your bedroom. You shrug. They eye the boxes critically. "Oh, this is way, way more than I thought- where're we even gonna put all of that?"

You shrug again. They pat your forearm as they brush past. "Well, we still can get all of this home today!"

Home.

Did you ever think of this apartment as home?

You start picking up boxes, three at a time, and hauling them to the elevator. Your partner chatters the whole time, physically helping far less than they're meant to but emotionally bringing you back up to the happy, easygoing, energetic person you usually are. It's not long before everything is loaded in, and you can press the button for the lobby. The doors slide shut, blocking out the now-grimy tile of the entryway.

You're twenty-one.

And you're moving on.