Broken Glass, Broken Hearts part 35

Tyler stood in the doorway and smiled at me, "I'll see you later. Guess I've got some packing to do." I smiled sadly and nodded, "Yea. See you later, I guess." He waved and drove off. I watched until I couldn't see his car anymore. I closed my eyes and felt a breeze brush my hair on my face. Tyler was moving. I stared at the empty house and listened to Jake's music, loud even on the first floor. I walked up the stares, down the hallway to my room, and opened the door. I walked over to the side door in my room. I put my hand on the knob for the first time since Dustin's death. I started to turn the knob slowly but then had a random burst of anger and ripped the door open. I looked down the short hallway. There were three rooms in this hallway. My family and I had lived in this house since I was five, and my parents still didn't know about this hallway. Actually, I think they may have noticed it once or twice, but they thought it would cost to much money to clean up so they left it for Dustin and I to play in. And Dustin and I had played in it. We had played in it every day until our thirteenth birthday. Then we no longer 'played'. We instead 'hung out'. (Which, as you probably know, is just playing with a different word to make it sound more mature.) After that, Dustin and I went in the hallway almost everyday and read or talked. Sometimes we brought our lap top in their so that we could have privacy while we did video chat, even though our bedroom was already the only occupied room on the third floor. We had gotten the house for cheap way back when because the street was so lonely and the house was so old and beat up. My dad had done most of the renovations himself with my uncle, who's a contractor. I stepped into the hallway, flipped the light switch, and closed the door. Two of the three lights in the hallway flickered on after I flipped the switch a few times. One of the light bulbs obviously needed to be changed. I looked up at the dead light bulb and made a mental note to change it. I looked at the two doors on either side of me and the the beautifully carved door at the end of the hallway. I walked forward, ignoring the doors on my sides that led to empty rooms that were probably dust coated. I turned the nob to the room at the end of the hallway and stepped in. I smiled as I saw the easy-bake-oven, the small table my dad had carved for us, and the chest my grandfather had made for us for Christmas one year. The chest was full of things we had used in this room. Dress up clothes from when we were young, novels, dvds and art supplies. I smiled, opened the chest, and pulled out Dustin's dusty sketch pad. I smiled as I opened it and looked through her beautiful drawings.There was a sketch of a girl in a long white dress running through a rose garden. There was a photograph that had been taped in of a deer standing motionlessly in closely packed fir trees. There was another sketch, but this one was of a girl with her head on the shoulder of a boy wearing a football uniform. A sketch of her and her old boyfriend. I sighed and closed the sketch pad. Her drawings had always been the place where she truly expressed herself. She never showed her elegant or romantic side in public. But here, no one could judge her. Here, everyone loved her. Everyone loved us.

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