I

The green velvet chair needed to go.

“He’s not coming back Nora! I’m sorry…” Mom exclaimed as we rode, the chair bouncing this way and that in the back of the car.

What a dishonorable way to end things.
“We need to save it in case he does!” my ten year old self pleaded as we entered the foul smelling place. “We made a pact!”

With no response coming from my Mother, I shrunk into my seat, staring out the window at this desolate place, holding onto the moments that were quickly fading into past tense wondering why time was moving so fast away from me. I slouched in my seat as I watched the sign for the dump come into view, the smell of stale garbage hitting my nose, reminding me there was nothing else I could do to change my fate.

II

The golden hills stretched high in front of us as we climbed during one particularly boring weekend, hoping for anything to happen that would alter the trajectory of our kid lives.

“Come on Nora, we need to get higher!” Perry called, the warm wind whipping against my face. Down below, I rolled my eyes in disapproval, but continued with this insanity, pushing up the square glasses that everyone made fun of me for but him. He had just moved here from across the country, which was a welcomed change from the ordinary life I led without friends I was used to. Perry was the one who saw potential and joy in being an explorer, making something out of my nothingness.

Suddenly an odd object was in sight, clearly out of place with the landscape. Under the dying cypress tree, a flash of green popped out of nowhere.

“Hey check it out!” he yelled running the rest of the way, “It’s a chair!”

“You’re kidding? This is what we came here for? Its just some old piece of furniture!”

The green chair looked right out of the creepy old Victorian house owned by old man Cyrus. It had buttons all over the wooden curved back with an apparent wobbly foundation.
“Come on Nora! There’s been a different object here every week someone has been leaving, I’ve seen it from my bedroom window but I never catch who it is. This is… this means the world is ours for the taking!”
I shook my head at his excitement and optimism of the world, but he was right, no kid had ever found a relic like this, with its hand carved wood and worn out dark green velvet finish. Clearly no one else wanted it, so it was ours. Finders keepers of an imperfect thing.
“What do we do with it?” I asked, as we took turns sitting in our treasure.
“We take it home of course!” he decided, even if I still wasn’t convinced.

With Perry in the front and me in the back, we hoisted the chair up and back down the hill, feeling like the universe was finally rewarding me for being different, with someone to be different with.

III

I watched in horror as Mom ungracefully hauled our treasure out of the back of the car and unceremoniously dumped by a mountain of other forgotten items. There was nothing else I could say, the deed was done. With no words coming out of my closed throat, I gazed at the mountain, eyeing perfectly good desks, lamps, stuffed animals, TV’s and boom boxes were strewed across the mass.

“You can’t keep things forever, sometimes they have to go.”

Then why did the dump seem to personify a place of temporary things? The chair wasn’t supposed to be a place holder, it was supposed to be the right kind of permanence.

Within seconds, the seagulls ascended in the sky eyeing their new toy, and began fluttering onto the wood, clearly taking over custody with their dirty wings and feet, possessing it from now on.

IV

Proudly placing the chair onto the driveway of Perry’s house, he watched our parents horrified and perplexed faces at this bizarre prospect.
“Isn’t it incredible? “he mused, showing it off for all to see. We found it ourselves, no one else wants it anymore. Finders keepers!”

He glanced at me to contribute to the sales job, but I said nothing, still hesitant about the whole idea… was this chair really meant to be ours?
“So Nora and I decided on a joint custody situation,” Perry continued, trying to win over the parents.
“Oh really?” my Mother scoffed, her mouth forming into an amused line.
“We have it all worked out, I will take it for a month and then we will exchange it between houses. It’s only fair,” he concluded. This was our destiny.

For months afterwards, we schemed and plotted our way around when we would trade the chair, I warmed up to the idea, loving that we had this experience to share, politely putting it into the back of the chair after dinners at his house, placing it just so and settling into it with a Harry Potter book by the window, affirming and constant. No one ever came to take it from us. I could get used to this.

V

I dragged my feet into my room feeling utterly defeated, the smell of the dump still trapped in my nose. Looking under the window where the chair used to be, like if I hoped enough, the chair would miraculously appear as it did that day on the hill, waiting to be traded. It was supposed be Perry’s turn. He was supposed to have it next, but of course he already knew that. I imagined him in his room with the green walls covered with clippings of places he wanted to visit when he was older, sitting in the green velvet reading his National Geographic magazines. Now there was nothing left of him but the dents in my carpet.

VI

One day after summer waned and school started again, the rain finally came. Somehow this encouraged me to go on my own adventure, hiking up the once golden hills, brushing my hands through the green grasses. I couldn’t shake the feeling of this mundane ordinary life that I was left with once again. I was supposed to be getting used to eating lunch alone and folding back into myself. Perry wasn’t here to encourage my dreams in superfluous object. So sitting underneath the cypress tree I decided to wait for something else to happen, because I had a pact to keep.