“Miles picked his room,” Mom said. “There are still two left. Want to go next?”
Shouldn’t you go next? I wanted to ask, but it didn’t matter. Her room could be as small as ours now because she didn’t have to share.
“Sure,” I said, because I knew she wanted me to say Sure.
Inside, the house was empty, no furniture yet. Living room to the right, stairs in front of me. “Want to look around downstairs first?” Mom asked, because Miles and I hadn’t spent time here yet, but I shook my head and started climbing. When I got to the top of the steps, I stopped.
“Isn’t it fun?” she asked. “I left these the way they were. I couldn’t help it.”
Each bedroom door was painted a different color. One yellow, one purple, one green. The bathroom door was painted red. “Are the rooms inside the same colors?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Only the doors. Each room has something special about it, though.”
Right then the green door opened. “I picked this one,” Miles said, sticking his head out. “It has a big, big closet. Like a hideout. For me.” Miles was eight, young enough to still care about hideouts.
“So green is gone,” Mom said.
I didn’t care which room I had but I knew she wanted me to pick.
“I’ll do this one,” I said, pointing to the purple door at the end of the hall.
“You can check them both first,” Mom said.
“No,” I said, “I’m fine. Unless you wanted purple?”
“I like them both,” Mom said. “The yellow room has a window seat. The purple room has a diamond window.”
That settled it. I knew Mom had always liked window seats and our real house, up in a suburb of Salt Lake City four hours away, was newish and beige and had no window seats anywhere.
“Purple,” I said. “It’s like a rainbow up here.”
“That’s what made me want to paint the front door blue,” Mom said. “It was the only color that was missing.”
Lots of colors were missing. Pink. Orange. Brown. Gray. But I didn’t say that.
3.
It turned out that a diamond window was not a window shaped like a diamond, which is what I assumed it would be. It was a big, regular-shaped window that opened outward, but instead of having two big panes of glass it had lots of small panes of glass, and those were diamond shaped. I couldn’t see out clearly because of all the shapes and that bugged me, so I opened up the window. The wind in the trees was relentless. It sounded like an ocean outside my window so I closed it again.
Because of that stupid window, it felt like the house was a fly with those eyes that have a million parts. And it was looking at me.
I’d picked the wrong room. I should have done yellow.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. Something big, and black, and outside my window.
It was in the tree. I took a step closer. And then closer again.
The thing stretched its wings and settled. I could see that much, even though the window made it smeary and bleary and in diamonds.
I took another step.
I wanted to open the window to see what the thing was, but I also didn’t want it to fly in.
Another step. The thing outside the window turned its head.
The purple door slammed open behind me and I spun around to see Miles. “Come on!” he said. “Gram and Papa and Uncle Nick and Aunt Kate are here! They’re going to help us unpack!”
I looked back at the window but this time it only showed me trees. Something had looked away.
4.
“What room would Ben have picked?” Miles asked at breakfast the next day.
Ben loved blue, he would have picked blue for sure, but there was no blue room.
And then I knew the real reason we had a blue front door.
“Maybe mine,” I said. “Purple is closest to blue.”
“Maybe not to Ben,” Miles said, and he was right. You could never be sure how Ben would see things. He had his own kind of logic.
We were getting better at talking about Ben, but not much. Better because we did talk about him but also there was so much more to say and we were all still too fragile to say it.
After lunch I sat outside and I saw the boy on the bike ride by again, and he didn’t see me that time either. And he still had on the same clothes and he still looked happy.
Next day, same thing all over again. Boy, bike, clothes, happy.
In my family we never call people names because sometimes people used to call Ben names and we all hated that. When he was younger he didn’t notice so much, but when he was nine, the year he died, he noticed every single time. You’d see his eyes flicker. He’d take it in. And then who knew what he’d do with it. Or how it made him feel.
Here is something bad about me.
I call people names in my head sometimes.
I don’t do it to be mean.
I do it to label.
But I know names-to-label are bad too. Names-to-be-mean are worse, but both are bad.
Here’s the name I called the boy in my head: Nerd-on-a-Bike.
5.