a home that rings with joy and laughter, with the ones that you love inside

[forthsofar]

There was nothing wrong, exactly, with the furniture in their new apartment. Some of it came with the unit, while others were ones Neil planned to bring one floor down from his old, smaller place. All serviceable, even if some of it was a little plain. It’s just that none of it was hers, a realization that only struck Rosie once her few belongings from the Home--all she had in the city, all she had in the world--were packed up in a dismally small amount of boxes in the corner of the dormitory, awaiting transport to Candlewood the next day.

She’d gone out then, intending only to spend an hour or so in the Törgt showroom--just to look around, to get some possible ideas for how to make the best of what they already had. But she’d found one piece, then another, and it had made so much sense to think about getting another bookshelf, and the desk chair in her bedroom wasn’t comfortable at all… Before long, Rosie had a slip of paper scribbled with product code numbers and a growing awareness of two things: she was about to spend a truly breathtaking amount of money, and she hadn’t the slightest idea how she was going to get any of the things she planned to buy home with her on the bus.

“You know, we offer a delivery service,” said one of the salespeople standing nearby; mostly out of helpfulness, Rosie hoped, than a slightly grasping desire to take advantage of her clearly overwhelmed state. Whatever the impetus, though, the suggestion was a good one, and she followed him to the counter, coming away a few minutes (and several hundred dollars) later with all her furniture ordered and a FLÅTTEPÄK delivery scheduled for tomorrow.

The next day, after completing the last of her discharge paperwork with Matron Robin and getting David’s help to move her few boxes from the Home to the apartment, Rosie settled in, listening for the sound of the buzzer as she made space for the things she’d so impulsively purchased. It took less time than she expected. Going to the door, she opened it wide, pausing at the sight that greeted her: not a hallway full of burly movers toting furniture, but one single, slightly weedy-looking deliveryman with a pushcart full of long, flat boxes.

“You Wilson?” he asked, starting to pull the dolly past her into the apartment. “Got your Törgt stuff, where’dya want it?”

“I think there’s been a mistake,” she said, utterly baffled as the man started piling the boxes in the middle of the living room floor. “I ordered...I ordered quite a lot of furniture, what is this? What are you doing?”

“Yeah, you got the FLÅTTEPÄK service, right? That’s this. Instructions should be in each box, hardware, everything you need.” Rosie froze, staring at him in disbelieving, dawning horror, and he snorted--a reaction she found more than a little distasteful even in the midst of everything else. “Most people have fun putting it all together. It’s one of those...like a bonding experience thing. Oh, and I’m gonna need a signature, kid.”

What could she do? She signed. And then, once he had taken his cart and gone, the door shut tightly behind him, Rosie went back to the stack of boxes and burst into hysterical, embarrassed laughter. Taking out her phone, she sat down on the floor, the boxes behind her, and took a selfie, texting it out to all her friends with a brief if frantic message: Does anyone know how to build furniture? Help!!!

Comments

[forthsofar]

"Just friends, really," she says quickly, blushing faintly at the question and glad--for different reasons--neither Neil nor David was in the apartment to have heard it. "He's a few years older than we are, but we're from close to the same time, back home. Different places, of course--he's from Vermont, in America--but the same general era."

She pauses, leaning down to ruffle Beau's ears. "I think that's why we became such good friends."

[lost_boy]

"I was only checking," I assured Rosie when she blushed. "To be certain David hadn't done something I needed to belt him for."

I knew what Rosie meant, however, about becoming good friends with someone because of the things they had in common. For me it was never the time, really, because I was from so far into the past, but other things. I had been drawn to Eddie because we were both outcasts who had relied more heavily on our friends than our family.

I approached the dog to pet him as well, smiling as I stroked his ears. "I wish I could have a dog in the Home."

[forthsofar]

"Jamie!" It's nothing that should delight her, this idea of any of her friends--especially not Jamie, whose rage she'd seen well enough before, directed to a far more appropriate victim--pummeling David or anyone else who might upset her in the name of righting a wrong. Certainly, it's nothing that should make her laugh, brief and bright, as it does now. "He definitely hasn't, believe me. We're still very much together, and it's..." Rosie trails off, smiling. "I haven't anything to compare it to, really, but I'm awfully happy."

She takes another sip of water, watching Jamie pet Beau. "That would be nice, wouldn't it?" she says. "I know Sabrina had Salem while she was living there, her cat, but that was a bit of a special circumstance." How special, she doesn't explain, not wanting to give up any of what feels a bit like a secret. "But they should let you have a dog, or even just have a dog or cat or something that lives there--one everyone can enjoy."

[lost_boy]

"What?" I asked, smiling at Rosie's response. I was glad she was happy, because I knew what that was like, but I also thought she should know what could happen to someone who hurt her. I wouldn't kill anyone, not like I had done on the Island, I knew far better than to do that, but I could make sure David hurt, too, if he ever hurt her.

"I think the workers are afraid it would end up being their job to take care of a pet and they already have so much to do," I admitted. "In most cases, they probably wouldn't be wrong about that, but if it were my pet, I would make sure to take care of it."

Maybe I could convince them to let me have a cat. If they had let Sabrina have a cat, I couldn't see why I shouldn't be able to as well.

[forthsofar]

"Nothing," she assures him with an easy smile and a faint shake of her head, her response a little automatic. A little less than perhaps he deserves, given what good friends they are. "I've just...until Darrow, I never had friends who'd be willing to belt anyone for me if they needed it. Not even my brother would've, I don't think." Rosie ducks her head again. "It's...nice, in a very odd sort of way."

Rosie listens to everything else with a thoughtful, considering expression as she finishes what remains of her water. "No, you're right," she says, dutifully taking her empty glass into the kitchen and putting it in the sink. "With everyone coming and going, it'd be easy for a pet that was supposed to be everybody's becoming nobody's at all." None of which would be fair, to either the staff at the Home--as glad as she was to be out from under their thumb, she didn't truly wish hardship on them--or to whatever animal fell under their care.

[lost_boy]

"Of course it's nice, knowing someone wants to protect you," I answered and I was teasing her a little, but at the same time, I was utterly sincere. Before Peter and the Island, I hadn't had that in my life. My mother had tried, of course, but my father had been a violent man when he was in his cups, which he often was. She did her best, but there was really only so much she could do when he would start in on her before he turned the violence on me.

On the Island, I'd had a pack of boys who looked out for me. Or so I'd thought. It wasn't until Darrow that I really began to understand what it meant to look after someone and to have them look after me in return.

"Maybe when I have to leave, I'll get a cat," I said, then looked at Rosie. "Weren't you frightened? Moving out?"

[forthsofar]

"Uncertain, more than frightened," Rosie says, after giving his question the serious consideration it deserved. "I'd wanted to be out of the Home, and back in Oxford I'd been helping Mummy with enough things for so long--chores and errands and keeping an eye on the grocery money each week, things like that--that I knew I could live on my own well enough. But it does feel different now, actually doing it rather than just thinking about it."

She frowns slightly, the answer sounding not quite as satisfyingly reassuring--for either of them--as she'd hoped it might be. "But I'm glad to have done it. To be doing it, I suppose I've really only just started." Rosie looks towards the stack of furniture boxes in the living room and laughs. "And what a start it's been."

[lost_boy]

That was likely the difference, I imagined. Rosie wanted to leave the Home, but I didn't and that was probably why I was nervous and a little bit afraid. Being so close to Eddie made me happy, being close to all my friends was the only way I knew how to live and I didn't like the idea of being on my own. Even the idea of trying to sleep alone in a bedroom filled me with dread.

"I'm glad you're glad," I said and as much as it made me sad that she wasn't at the Home any longer, I meant it, too.

"What is all this?" I asked, looking at the boxes as well. "I didn't really understand your text."

[forthsofar]

"I am," she says, because it's the truth, she is tremendously glad to have moved out of the Home, to have claimed a bit of independence for herself at last after so many months of planning and hoping. But there's another edge she thinks she can hear in Jamie's voice; not quite the oddly thunderous expression he'd worn for a moment as she'd opened the door, but something a little quieter and frail. Rosie moves close, giving him a gentle, brief hug before pulling away again. "Even if we're not living in the same place, you're not getting rid of me in the least, you know. Once I'm more settled in, you should come by for...I don't know, a movie or something. Something fun."

His question and the admission that follows it makes her laugh, bright if slightly rueful. "That, apparently, is all the furniture I bought yesterday," she says. "The place I bought it from said they had a delivery service, but nobody explained that it'd just be...pieces." Rosie looks up at him. "They'll deliver it, but you have to put it all together yourself."

[lost_boy]

"How?" I asked, sitting myself down beside one of the boxes and lifting it into my lap. Even though I had just asked Rosie how we might do that, I didn't expect her to give me full directions, because if she knew how to do everything, she likely wouldn't have sent out the message. Besides which, I was excited by the prospect of learning how to put it together.

"Does it come with instructions? Can I open the box?"

It was still Rosie's furniture. It belonged to her, I didn't think it would be fair to simply open it up without her permission.

[forthsofar]

Jamie hauls one of the boxes at random off the pile--from the general size and shape, it looks to Rosie like the other bedside table, but she couldn't be entirely sure--and it's as good a place as any to start again.

"The man who delivered everything says each box should have everything you need to build whatever's inside," she explains, before getting the pair of scissors she'd been using to open everything. "Instructions, all the pieces, the screws and nails and all of that." That should still struck her as a little dubious, a source of slight concern at the back of her mind, but she'd had decent luck with everything so far. She only hopes it'll continue to hold until the last box is opened.

"Here," she says, handing the scissors over to Jamie. "If you want to open the box, I left the tool kit in the other room--I'll go get it."

[lost_boy]

I had never built any furniture before, but I didn't think it could be that hard, and so I took the scissors from Rosie and began to open the box, first taking out the instructions, then the bag with the screws, and then pieces of the furniture itself. I was reading the instructions when Rosie returned and I looked up at her.

"I don't think it should be that difficult," I said. "All the pieces are labelled with letters and then it tells you which slot goes in where and even what screws to use. I just think you need more than one pair of hands to get it all done, so it's a good thing I'm here."

I held up pieces A and B, then fit them together, and looked at the screws.

"Can you give me one of those long screws?" I asked Rosie. "And the weird tool that looks like a little curved pipe?"

[forthsofar]

"That's a relief," she says, coming back into the living room with the tool kit in hand before settling on the floor next to Jamie. She nods at his request, then opens up the bag and starts sorting through it.

It's harder than she'd first anticipated--why they'd decided this needed two kinds of screws that seemed only a half-inch different from one another in length, she can't possibly fathom--but after checking and re-checking the one in her hand against the illustration in the instruction booklet, she hands it and the little tool over to Jamie. "Here, I'll hold the two pieces steady while you work."