step into the sun ☼ deh

xvi

chapter sixteen
the bedroom down the hall
evan pov

trigger warnings: none

Mia's room was always out a cream color. It always had a beige carpet color that didn't clash with the walls. It wasn't decorated elaborately (I never spend too much time on Pinterest, though Zoe set me up with an account, at one point). When she was little, I had little blue clouds here and there to represent a sky. There were those glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, like many kids owned. Zoe told me she had them in her room, when she was young. The room had a lot of sky-things in it for a while. As Mia got older, she would put little posters from magazines on the wall. Mostly in middle school, she had her internet stars and bands covering her wall. I found that a little bit creepy, at one point, but she was in middle school. She took the posters down, the summer after seventh grade. She hung up Christmas lights, like most teenage girls do at some point, when she was a freshman. Mia stayed away from the magazine posters, for the most part.

She had her desk, one one side of the room, and her bed on the other. Her desk had study supplies, and usually her laptop would stay there. She was one of those people who bought a lot of notebooks, but had no idea what to do with them. Most of her notebook were stored on her desk. Beside her bed, was a small bookshelf that kept all of her favorite books. I put Connor's favorite books there, and many of them have at least one dog-earred page. I never knew how Mia could read more than one book at once. I could tell that she had finished The Giver. It was in a stack, separate from the others. It's paperback cover was lifting up a little big, and some of the pages looked slightly bent. The books on her shelf were mostly coming-of-age stories. Mia always hated romance novels. When she was fourteen, she read The Fault In Our Stars, since her teacher recommended it to her. I remember she came home one day from school, and told me a little about the book. She started reading around 3:30, and finished at 5:45. She came out of her room and slapped the book on the counter. I could tell that she had been crying.

"How was it?" I asked.

"Terrible... He dies!" Mia replied. I had never read the book, but somehow, I had known this, "Even without him dying, I hated it."

I couldn't help but laugh, "Why did you hate it?"

"Because, they freaking had cancer, the author was mean, and it was depressing in general!" Mia ranted.

"Didn't the author turn nice, though?" I asked. I had a vague memory of seeing the movie, with Zoe. Now that I think of it, Zoe hated it too.

"Yeah, but I still hated it!" Mia later told me that the reason she hated romance novels was because they were shallow. Nonetheless, she decided to read Wicked.

"I thought you didn't like romance novels..." I told her.

"I don't, but Wicked it so much more than a romance novel. It's about a woman who turns... well, wicked... because of what was happening around her..."

On the wall, above the bookshelf, was a bulletin board. It was mostly covered in postcards, and pictures of her and her friends. There were a few selfies of her and I on the board too. Her favorite is the one of both of us, with the Snapchat Dog-Filter. I never understood why people liked that filter so much. My favorite was the one we took together, after her final dance recital. We both looked happy, though the occasion was bittersweet.

Mia's comforter, on her bed, was plain white, and she had a blue throw blanket, resting on her bed. Her pillows were also white, and she always kept her special teddy bear on the head of the bed. She was never in love with the idea of getting rid of it. It was a regular brown teddy bear, so nothing totally extravagant. Nonetheless, she loved it a lot. She had it since she was little, and it's always kind of kept her company.

Hidden in her collection of books was a DVD of "Annie". At one point, " Annie" was Mia's favorite movie. She would always sing the songs, and try to learn the dances. She was Annie for Halloween that year, too. I don't really know why she liked "Annie" so much, though. Maybe she just liked the songs, maybe she related. I'm not sure.

Mia's room kind of showed off most of her little quirks and childhood memories. I'm not the type of parent that snoops in their child's room, just in case there's anything in there. Mia never minded if I came in her room, just to talk to her, or something. Mia's room kind of told a story, kind of like the scrapbook, but the scrapbook was never going to tell me about her Annie-Phase, or that she hated romance novels. The scrapbook wasn't going to tell me that she kept her teddy-bear for years.

I snapped a couple pictures of Mia's room to put in the scrapbook. I didn't know if Zoe would exactly like random pictures of Mia's room in the scrapbook, but I figured that someone was going to tell Zoe about these things. The Annie Phase, and the books, and the teddy-bear kind of helped make up the person that Mia was. A picture says a thousand words, and the scrapbook would be able to tell hundreds of stories. I loved the scrapbook, and I was proud of it. I hoped that Zoe would like it, whenever I gave her the scrapbook... Mia's entire life was in that book. Every aspect was captured and documented on a page. It was a little scary, knowing that you were putting a life into a book to give it to someone, and the life meant a lot to you and the other person. No matter what, though, I knew that I shouldn't spend all my time taking pictures. I wanted to celebrate life, as much as I wanted to document it...