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In all honesty, Jedidiah had forgotten about that part of his childhood closet. That little box of things in the corner, covered by clothes thrown carelessly on top until it was eventually buried underneath layers of dress shirts and sweater vests. It’d probably been over a decade since he or Sydney had touched it, and so for a while, it had simply ceased to exist in his mind. Yet now he was back in his childhood home, “college dropout” forever engraved in his personal history, and Sydney…
Sydney wasn’t there to go through the box with him.
Jedidiah knew he should probably resist the urge to open it. Whatever was sitting in that box was a reminder of the past, and any reminder of the past was something he wanted to avoid right now. But whatever was in that box was also one more thing left of Sydney. And if Sydney didn’t wake up, Jedidiah knew he would need every single bit of their life from before that he could gather. He couldn’t risk losing him one more time to a pile of sweater vests.
Jedidiah took a deep breath, taking the lid off of the box.
The first thing Jedidiah noticed was that there were a number of rocks and dead leaves, lining the bottom of the box like a bird’s nest. Their “children”, Jedidiah recalled, from when they would play “house” as kids. He always had wondered where he’d ended up putting them when he’d eventually stopped caring as much about them anymore. They’d all been given the strangest names—though Jedidiah realised that he could still remember a good number of them. He wondered if Sydney would remember the ones he’d forgotten.
The next thing to catch his eye was a book, and at the sight of it his chest tightened. It was one of those cat books Sydney had always loved, where they all lived in clans in the forest. He used to read them, he remembered, though he’d only gotten as far as the third book in the second series. Something about the finality of them leaving the original forest had caused him a sort of sadness, and he hadn’t been able to continue.
Shakily, he picked up the book, noting the damage to the cover caused by years of reading and rereading. He wondered if there were still more books coming out. Whether Sydney had been keeping up with them. He could imagine the look on his face now—eagerly standing outside of a bookstore, eyes glimmering as he waited to get inside. Jedidiah knew he should have been waiting there with him.
Jedidiah knew he should have done a lot of things differently.
The next thing he found was a series of letters, and he immediately recognised them as some of the ones they sent to each other during their middle school years. He let out a small laugh as he remembered the sappy things they’d write, all faux-romantic prose from children who barely knew what love meant.
Of course they hadn’t known what it meant. They still didn’t know. Nobody had bothered to teach them, and now it was too late to learn.
Thinking about it now, Jedidiah was pretty sure he’d asked Sydney to their first middle school dance in one of these letters, though he was too scared to open them to find out. He didn’t think he could handle knowing that the version of him that shyly asked Sydney to hold his hand under the table during their English class was a better friend. Partner. Whatever exactly he was to Sydney.
He wished more than anything that he’d tried to find out.
For a moment after removing the letters, Jedidiah thought he might have reached the end of the box’s contents. However, at the bottom, almost hidden by the various forest items, was a small, folded-up piece of notebook paper, slightly crumpled from use. It wasn’t folded like the letters, neatly and horizontally—probably so that they could pretend it was a proper love letter—but instead into a rough square, as though they hadn’t seen it as something too worth the time.
Jedidiah hesitated for a moment, before extracting the paper from the box and unfolding it.
Half of the inside was covered with a messy scrawl, one that Jedidiah immediately recognised as Sydney’s, even all these years later. The other half was his own writing, though the stark contrast between his writing in eighth grade and his writing now made him cringe. He hesitated again, not sure if he wanted to see what was inside, but decided to risk it.
“Hello, Future Sydney and Jedidiah! We made this box as a sort of time capsule for us to look through fondly when we’re all old and gray, living in a cabin in the woods together with our pet worms. Because we’re definitely getting pet worms, right Jedidiah? Anyway, all of this is some stuff from right now (which is probably a long time ago for you) to give you guys a trip down memory lane! Feel free to add your own stuff, for FUTURE future Jedidiah and Sydney!! Because they’ll probably want to know what they were like as adults. Anyways it’s Jeddie’s turn to write something now!!”
Jedidiah’s eyes lingered on the line about them growing old together. Even when they were young, that was what they wanted. He was the reason they couldn’t have it. Another wave of guilt crashed over him, not just for the things he’d done, but for the fact that this younger version of himself and Sydney may never have that happily ever after they dreamed of.
He wondered what they’d say to him if they could see him now. They’d probably be angry. He wouldn’t blame them.
He sighed, blinking back the tears forming at the corner of his eyes, and continued reading.
“Hi. This is Jedidiah. First of all, Sydney and I aren’t getting pet worms—”
That part was crossed out with red pen, the words “Yes we are!” scribbled just above it.
“—but he’s right about everything else. This is essentially a time capsule, because someday we’re probably going to want to remember where we started out. And even though we’ve known each other for a long time already, no time like the present to start documenting, right? Besides, we can keep adding to it, like Sydney said. It’s not like we’ll just stop being friends someday, we love each other too much for that. So maybe when we’re old men like Sydney said, we can think about the people we were, and the people we’re becoming.”
A tear fell onto the page, seeping into the ink and causing it to bloom into a colourful mess. Jedidiah quickly folded the note and put it back into the box, not wanting to ruin it further. These past versions of himself and Sydney had been so confident that everything would be alright as long as they were together. Even Sydney, who Jedidiah knew had seen life at its worst, seemed to have believed in this future wholeheartedly.
He was the reason that they couldn’t have that. He’d failed to save Sydney, and now the love of his life was clinically dead in a hospital being watched over by some sort of creepy nurse. He wished he could apologise to the children who’d written these letters. They deserved their happy ending.
Jedidiah sighed, carefully placing everything back in the box. He needed to get back to work.
Someday, he thought to himself. Someday he and Sydney could come back here and go through their childhood memories, and they could pretend that nothing bad had ever happened to them. Maybe Sydney would smile that impossibly beautiful smile of his, and they’d joke around like they used to, and for just a moment it could feel like something close to perfect.
But that wouldn’t happen until Jedidiah brought him back, and sitting on a closet floor crying over fond memories wasn’t doing anything for either of them.