Displacement // Shawn Mendes

Ten: What Home Should Feel Like

The amount of anxiety that came with such a small stack of papers was a ridiculous ratio. My hands were sweaty and my breathing was ragged; making it appear as if I ran all the way over here. As my fingers touched the light plastic of the doorbell button, I looked back at my car, wondering if it was too late to go home running and get over the queasy feeling that was settled in the pit of my stomach.

Some completely insane part of me ended up pressing the button, and I heard the doorbell faintly ring throughout the inside of Reyna's home.

Even at the doorstep, with the dark brown padded "WELCOME" mat and the mahogany door, it was obvious there was a story to be told. The mat didn't lie, because even out here, in the brisk air and the blue-colored sky, I felt welcomed. Almost as if this was where I belonged.

For a moment, I wanted to stay; smelling the mixed aroma of wet pavement and homemade Mexican food escape from the bottom of the front door, golden lights shining out of every window and casting an illuminating shadow over the entire neighborhood. The house reminded me a lot of Reyna. Within the mix of outcasts, jocks, cheerleaders, popular kids, etcetera, Reyna was the golden light that casted over everyone.

She smelled like something I recognized, even though I couldn't really decode the scent. She kept to herself, but never hesitated to become welcoming the second you stepped into her bubble. She was a lot like her house, and it made me wonder if I was anything like mine.

God, I hope not.

Before I could sink further into the quicksand of my self-pity, the wooden mahogany door opened to reveal a woman much shorter than me. She wore an apron that was smudged from what I assumed was the Mexican food I smelled all the way out here. She looked up at me, her black long hair tied into a side braid.

"Hi. Are you Reyna's friend?" Her accent was strong, and laced through every word she spoke. Even more so when she spoke Rey's name.

"Yeah, y-yeah I am. I just want to give her these papers though, so could you–" she nodded as I spoke, not giving me any time to complete my sentence.

"Reyna! Tu amigo esta aqui!" She yelled up the stairs, turning to me as she invited me in. Hesitantly, I took her invitation but heard her mumble something about me standing in the cold without a jacket.

Reyna's home was decorated with dozens of pictures on the wall, and the golden lights that shone outside proved to be eloquent; their yellow glints lighting up the entirety of Reyna's home.

"I'm sorry, what's your name?" The short woman asked me, as I stopped in my tracks admiring the home around me. To me, it wasn't just a house. This was a home.

"My.. my name is Shawn." I smiled and looked down at her, as she nodded and offered me a seat on the leather cushioned couch in her living room. She looked so much like Rey, with the same wide eyes and olive skin color.

"Amanda." She shook my hand, and for a moment, she was disconnected with the chaos of Mexican oldies playing, and the smell of food cooking in the kitchen, mixed with her younger daughter screaming as she ran around the house. But then again, in that same moment, she snapped back to reality and ran immediately to the kitchen.

I seemed to be unable to sit still. I stood again, sneaking past Amanda Alvarez as she faced her back to me in the kitchen. The walls smelled of double-layered paint that had to be coated over and over again to cover drawings colored in Crayola. There were vintage portraits of both girls, and it wasn't impossible for me to distinct one from the other. Toys were strewn all across the floor of the carpet-covered hallway, which again was covered infinitely in photographs- both old and new. I could think of four, maybe five, pictures of me throughout my entire house. Mom and Dad's wedding picture that once hung over the furnace in our living room, was now gone after they'd shattered it in an attempt to state that their marriage was over.