The key went in with four or five little clicks, as I stood with one hand carefully flicking around my jacket zipper, the other in a tight fist because I had nothing else to hold onto. My dad turned the brass doorknob, and with a firm push a vacuum of cool air pulled my family in, but my feet remained planted with a magnetic-like hold on the dusty green mat that said Welcome. My two younger siblings ran in, gawking at the brown and gray entryway, sliding and galloping their fingers in tiny dances along the chair rail, even admiring the dusty radiator on the wall. The weak and squeaky patters of their sneakers echoed against walls saturated with memories alien to me, stories of a previous family I would never know. My mom turned to me, eyebrows raised with a beckoning tilt of her head, and I looked down at the old splintered threshold, and stepped over it without a word.  

I stood in the entryway, just a few feet from where I was before, but the house seemed an entirely different realm. I instinctively took off my jacket but put it back before it could leave my forearms as I walked through an empty foyer. The kitchen greeted me with a subtle flickering of the lights that gave the room a light orange tint.

“Yeah, we're going to have to change those,” my dad said, reaching up at the ceiling with a slight groan. “It’s kinda dark in here, isn’t it?”

“A little. But the windows bring in more light,” I replied as I slowly spun, taking a panoramic view of the brown cabinets that had an unnatural glisten. I touched the corner of the counter, quickly removing my fingers as the separation created a little pop.

“Come over here,” he called, sitting at a small table at the far end of the kitchen. He stopped drumming his fingers as I sat down on the bench. I wiped the tips of my fingers against the squared edge underneath the table, rubbing them together to ensure no residue had been left behind. 

“Feel this bench,” he said, patting the wooden bench we were sitting on. “It’s like we’re at a restaurant. Like in a booth.”

I gave a little laugh. “It’s definitely not like the other house.”

“Well,” he said with a sigh. “It’s going to take some getting used to. But imagine once we redo this kitchen…” His voice dissolved into the low background hum coming from the house as I turned to look out the window. Seeing two elementary school-aged children running, playing tag underneath a bright, cloudy sky reminded me of those commercials for water guns or backyard toys in front of suburban homes with loud, fun, silly music playing in the background. It would be years before I could even picture one being filmed here. My sister, running, slipped and crashed into a bush. A purple one, with a dark hue and a hint of red. My eyes widened, immediately I reached for my pockets, and pulled out a small folded white paper towel. Unfolding it, I held up the purple leaf with the same hint of red against the window, comparing the bush in my peripheral. My token of remembrance of a place to which I could never return had found its new home here. With a growing smile, I neatly placed my new hope back in the paper towel. 

“Dylan,” my dad said, placing his hand on the side of my shoulder, rubbing it in a gentle rhythm. It was a strong hand that I used to think could hold the world in its palm, one that could hold my shaking body close in front of a rollercoaster but also could hold me as my tears hit the floor in front of a bed bearing a grandmother who had raised me as much as anyone else had. “We’ll get used to it. It's not just new for you. But I’ve also done this a few times, so I can guarantee you that it will be fine. This house has potential, and once we bring in our stuff, it’ll feel like home, don’t worry.” 

“I know,” I sighed. My gaze fell from his eyes to the scratched and dusty hardwood floor. “I know.”

With a weak creak from the bench, I stood up and made my way across the hall to a room with discolored carpeting that looked like it hosted dirt from decades ago. Stepping onto it, my muted footsteps accompanied the silence that made my hairs stand on end. The strain that imagining us living here put on my head ceased as I gave up and accepted what was in front of me. Dusting the floor with the edge of my shoe, I again sat down, against the wall with my head resting next to a minor scratch indented into the paint. I closed my eyes and reached up against the wall to feel the little dent. My thumb caressed the edge, then grazed over the hole itself, as I was brought back to a room with light grayish-green walls with a similar marking. I moved my head carefully, as if to look around the empty void my eyelids brought me into, recalling a brown couch that wrapped around half of the small room, a glass stand the T.V. stood atop that we had chipped bringing it up the rotting porch stairs, a black ceiling fan that would move in such slow rotations you would forget that it was even on. The small square room flooded with the soft yellow evening light of a Sunday dissolved into a long rectangular room with such tiny windows you could only see with the white fluorescent lights on as my eyes opened. I felt the weight of half a million tears as I got up, and moving my head back I knocked it into the wall. I swung my hand and struck the wall where I hit my head, my knuckles trembling to the rhythm of my shaky breath. I removed myself from the future living room as quickly as I could.

I was back in the foyer, parallel to the front door as I faced a flight of stairs that would bring me to an empty hall of shut doors. A sizable stained glass window composed of little fragments and shapes tinted the evening light a dark, soft blue as I made my way up each carpeted step and around the corner. My feet dragged against the floor until I confronted the door which would open into a room I would come to know over the next several years. The heavy wooden door was the only one ajar, letting in only a sliver of unobstructed natural light into the dark hallway. Unclenching a jaw ready to scream and cry its frustrations, with great caution I let the toe of my right shoe make its way through the doorway, bringing me along. 

I made my way into the center of an asymmetrical room, my footprints etching delicate patterns in the layers of dust blanketing the floor. The dying sunlight shone through two square windows at the far end of the room onto a fading white radiator cover, and I could see little particles of gray nothing floating peacefully in the air. Reaching into my pocket, I drew out a small blue and red stuffed chameleon. I took four steps forward and on that cover I placed the stuffed animal. Involuntarily, my fingertips slid on the top of the surprisingly smooth surface, flanking the chameleon, slowly moving away until I felt my grip tighten on the thin piece of wood and I pulled myself in closer. My eyes squeezed shut, my face in a concentrated frown, and I used the already fading images secured in my subconscious to once more look around a vivid and bright room. It was small, not quite as long as where I was standing but wider. My eyes moved meticulously in their sockets, admiring each individual detail my memory could conjure. A tidy room, maybe a sheet on the bed in messy folds or an unopened pack of batteries hastily thrown next to a plastic controller but a clean vacuumed rug, stacks of books on the little black shelf, and several items in a neat row on the dresser. A glued-together lego Statue of Liberty, a bronze trophy of a boy running earned in the second grade, a small silver safe, and a picture frame holding a photo of my family in some forest taken when I was only 5 years old. Following family photos were in a neat stack in the top drawer of the dresser. 

I recalled the four blue walls and a closed white door, a poster of a hand-drawn world map, and a small blue chair holding a mountain of stuffed animals. The chameleon was always at the top. It was the smallest, one that would take two hands a toddler to hold but could fit in my palm now. One which was placed into my hands by a teacher as I stood in a foreign room with big, colorful letters and numbers on the walls in wacky fonts. A chameleon that rested upon my forearm six miles over the glistening Atlantic ocean and but only a few feet away from a perilous edge of a winding path up a mountain the van could barely stay on. The lizard stared back at me as my eyes focused on the little swirls of red and blue covering the stuffed animal from head to toe. My breathing slowed to a steady tempo, and the blur of my peripheral encroached on the chameleon until tiny droplets forming at the corners of my eyes forced them open. Feeling the tension in my hands holding onto the radiator cover, and with the image of a fraction of a home as vivid as being there lingering in my mind, I let go. 

Motionlessly, I inhaled and exhaled softly. I turned to face the open room, an empty one, but one that could be filled with a bed, desk, and memories. Sounds of footsteps on creaky stair boards rang into my room as I adjusted the chameleon on the radiator cover to face me.

“Dylan, it's time to unpack.”