The Box (short story)

Today made three years since Sage’s father gave her the box. 

It sat now where it had been stationery since then, on the far right corner of her desk closest to her bed, collecting dust, memories and the fingerprints of basketball players. For some reason it made her skin crawl when women touched the box—even a lingering glance from Alice last week made Sage want to grab the box off the desk and chuck it out of the window.

She hated when men touched or acknowledged it too, just a little less. She let their questions float smoothly away like a cloud passing through the sky. What’s in that box? Come see what’s in this one.

It usually only crossed their minds when they were lying in Sage’s bed; she would hope that the weight of her curves atop their frame, her pink sugar Arabic perfume oil from Harlem, and her thick hair tickling against their skin would be suffice distractions from the haunting rectangle in the corner of their eye. But male curiosity tended to prevail. 

Dwyer asked about it once. It made her feel almost the way she did when women asked: defensive, exhausted, disturbed, exposed. Those, and something new. 

Cornered. 

There was nowhere to run to when he asked. Nothing to hide behind. When men asked before sex, she could use sex to distract them. If they managed to stay awake long enough to ask after sex, with her curls under their chin and their hand on the nape of her back, she could slide up to look them in the eye, caress their cheek and plant a kiss on their lips warm enough to melt all inquiries away. 

But Dwyer didn’t want sex that day. He came there to try to corner her—he wanted to; he just had no idea how well he’d succeed. 

 He walked into the room with something on his back. Something she couldn’t see but could feel. It changed the energy of the space; brought a silence with it, a stillness, that froze her in place. It was too heavy for Dwyer to carry.

His jaw was locked into a clench, his eyes at his feet or bouncing around the room, his brows tightened on his face. She sat on her bed watching him carefully from across the room as if the Thing could jump off his back and attack her at any moment. And it did. 

Dwyer thought he’d gotten distracted. Once he picked his eyes up from the floor, both he and Sage thought that he would look at her. But on his gaze’s way to meet hers, it stopped at the box.

He’d been in her room more times than he could count. He’d seen the box before—he must have. It faded into the background before: just another piece of furniture, an unremarkable object in between her mouse and a stack of books. The book stack was the only thing in her room that changed often; she kept the three-to-four books she read at a time in a pile and switched them out as she completed them.

Other than that, everything pretty much stayed the same. If you didn’t notice something the first time, it didn’t really stand out again. It was just Sage’s room. Sage’s stuff. 

But in that moment, when Dwyer’s main objective was to get the Thing off his back and Sage’s was to figure out what the Thing was and whether it could harm her, his eyes chose to see a box. Not stuff, but a fairly small wooden box with a gold lock on the front and floral engravings on top. 

“What do you keep in there?” 

Dwyer’s question did not float through Sage’s room like a cloud passing through the sky. It shot across the room and exploded in her lap. 

But there it was, the Thing weighing him down. And Sage somehow felt like she had to stay very still to not be noticed by it. Words froze in her throat; words she didn’t know even if she wanted to. They didn’t even make it all the way up to her brain before they were caught and stifled. 

“You heard me?” 

“What?”

Dwyer stared at her, waiting. “That little box. What’s in there?” 

Sage could feel that her neck was stuck in place and she knew time was running out before it became noticeable. She could not bring herself to turn and look at the box any more than she could even fathom answering that question or why Dwyer asking it stirred her insides more than her mother asking when she would finally open it. But she knew she had to stay very, very still to stay out of harm’s way. 

She cleared her throat and let out a breathy chuckle. “Why are you sitting so far away?”

Dwyer’s brows tightened even more. “I just asked you a question.” 

“You never come in here and sit all the way over there. You see me on my bed.” 

 “Sage–

 “Are you good?” 

“I’m fine.” 

“So why are you sitting over there?” 

“It’s a seat. You put it here for people to sit in.” 

“You’re not people. That’s for guests. You’re in here all the time. Every time you come, you hug me when you walk in, you throw yourself on my bed, you tell me to put on some music or a show while you roll up and then we—do you wanna smoke?” 

In a few swift rageful steps that sent Sage’s heart beating almost out of her chest, Dwyer made his way over to her bed. He didn’t sit on it, just stood near it, the shadow casting a tall darkness over her. Not his shadow, its shadow. Something was wrong. So wrong it was palpable. 

But what the fuck did it have to do with the box? 

Before she could ask, as if she ever would, Dwyer suddenly picked up the box and stared at her with it in his hand like an angry parent with a report card. 

“Put it down.”

The voice came from somewhere deep inside Sage; pushed up to the surface by the butterflies in her stomach. Dwyer could tell her tone was different. His jaw unclenched, but not from relaxation. He was confused. 

“What is—

“Put it down. Now.” 

He chuckled in puzzlement. “Sage, I’m just—

“Put the fucking box down!” 

She’d never yelled at him before. Not like this. A week prior they got into an argument when he raised his voice at her outside of a party and he was half as loud then, and drunk.

They were both taken aback. 

Dwyer placed the box down on the table without breaking her gaze, so slowly that the sound of it finally landing on the desk seemed to echo through the room. It was his turn to freeze in place. He could see, and she could feel, that she had her own Thing now. 

“Sorry,” she whispered, eyes at her feet.

Dwyer sat a few cautious feet away from her on the bed. “Why do you always avoid things?”

Sigh.

 “I feel like every time I ask you some shit you find a way to dance around it,” Dwyer spoke these words to the wall. “Whether it’s big or small. You can never just have the same conversation with me that I’m having with you.”

“And you always find something about me to have a problem with. Why do you always make it seem like everything I do annoys you so much?”

“That is a new conversation, Sage. You see what I mean?” He looked at her and she wished he hadn’t. “I was just curious. It’s not even about the box. I always thought the engraving on it was pretty. I was looking at it just now and thinking about how I’ve never seen you open it.”

Sage turned away from Dwyer to hide the softening expression on her face. He was annoying, and pushy, and whiny. But he also just wanted to know something about her, and he was here—two things which could not be said about the man who gave her the box in question. And Sage could feel a coldness rising inside of her toward Dwyer’s plea for vulnerability that she knew also came from the same place that the box did.   

So she swallowed and turned around. Dwyer was still sitting a safe distance behind her on the bed, waiting. She looked in his eyes and knew if she danced around the conversation again it would not only prove his last point correct, but it’d also be a bit cruel. 

Dwyer was imperfect and, at times, painfully unaware of it. But he was good. Good in the way that people who occasionally fuck up but always mean well are. Sage, on the other hand, was not good. She appeared to be good, she managed to behave in a manner publicly that convinced most people she was good, but she was not. She knew that.

And she tried very often not to think about it—whichever category you place yourself in, what’s the use anyway?—but now here was Dwyer and he wanted the box open and those were facts Sage could not make go away.

But her internal reactions to the conversation alone were reminding her that a bitter spirit had made a home in her, the same one that lived in her father, and Dwyer’s slight pretentiousness and commitment issues were nothing in comparison to that type of darkness. This made her both want to tell him about the box, for he was good and good people deserve the truth, and to keep it closed away from him forever, because good people don’t need to see scars.

Sage heard a soft sigh from behind her. “It’s cool, Sage. If it’s gonna make you upset— 

“I don’t know what’s in the box.” She turned to make eye contact.

 “Huh?” He asked this in a manner that would make Sage’s mother tell him he can hear. 

 “You asked me what I keep in there. I don’t know what’s in it.” 

“Has it not always been there?”

Sage looked at the box. Past it, really, for an excuse to look away from Dwyer. She wanted to roll her eyes and throw her arms up. Not so much in annoyance at Dwyer, because now she was starting to feel a little bad for him, but in frustration at the whole thing.

How fucking stupid. A box smaller than the Bible, sent to her by someone she didn’t think about before his death and hadn’t thought about since, causing all this trouble. Something she didn’t even ask for—the box, a father, his death, whatever he put inside. Just dumped in her room like a heavy burden.

It was probably empty. I hope it is, Sage thought, ‘cause that means he and I share a sense of humor.

“It’s been there for three years. Since my dad died.”

A quick look of befuddlement at the mention of a father tickled Dwyer’s face like a dandelion, gently but present, and just as quickly floated away into the air. Of course he knew, theoretically, that everyone had a father, but the idea of Sage having one was new and a bit odd. The words always felt that way in her mouth too, new and odd like the first day of braces; my father.

Sage was the type of person who just existed: extremely, memorably, defiantly, in a way that made you feel like she’d just always been here and always been that way. She existed so profusely that you forgot to wonder about her origins. Her past mattered less than her present, and how much she was affecting yours.

She stared at the box and began recalling its origins. She was a freshman in college at that time, still under the impression she was going to finish, typing a paper at her desk in her room. Her mother entered with a tight-lipped expression and both hands clasped in front of her, the way you’d stand at a funeral. Sage was almost undisturbed by this countenance, thinking her mother was coming to have one of her pseudo-serious talks about keeping cleaner habits around the house or dressing less slutty, but then she looked into her mother’s eyes. Red and watery.

It wasn’t that her mother didn’t cry often. It’s just, Sage thought, she only cries when something dies.

“Your father is no longer with us. His sister mailed me a letter saying that he walked into the ocean last Sunday morning and drowned.”

Her mother said it in such a matter-of-fact way, Sage could tell partially because she was trying to hold herself together and partially because she knew Sage didn’t harbor much sympathy where this matter was concerned. Sage knew this and still felt inclined to hug her mother—not to convince her that the news hurt, but because deep down it really did.

But she stayed seated regardless. “On purpose?”

Her mother nodded.

“Did he leave a note?”

“Not really, but,” she stepped out of the room briefly and came back in with a little wooden box in her hand, “he left this.”

“Where?”

“On the beach, in the sand. Left a note for his sister at the house saying to go to the beach, then left the box on the shore with a piece of paper that said to give it to you.”

Sage frowned. “Where’s the paper?”

“Your auntie didn’t send it. Said it got wet on the beach in the middle of—you know, the movement…grabbing his body and everything.” Her mother stopped like she’d been cut off by something. Sage reached out and grabbed her hand and they squeezed each other, holding a gaze, and then her mother let go and continued.

“She told me the paper was sitting underneath the box and it said to give it to his daughter, not to ever be opened or interfered with by anyone but her.”

Then she placed the box on Sage’s desk, and it’s been there ever since.

Sage told Dwyer all of this. When he asked about a funeral she told him it wasn’t in this country so they couldn’t have attended if they wanted to (which she didn’t). She didn’t recount all of the details about how abusive her dad was to her mom and how she hasn’t spoken to him since he made the lone attempt to reconnect the year they got away from him and then gave up on them afterward, about how she didn’t want or need a father but subconsciously resented him for not trying to be one. Any memories she had of him were too distant and unclear to share with Dwyer; she hadn’t seen him since she was in preschool. So when Dwyer asked why she never opened the box, she said:

“It’s like a parting gift from a stranger.”

Dwyer nodded, digesting this, his head resting against the wall behind her bed for support. Then he picked his head up and leaned forward. “Do you think you’re scared of what might be in it?”

“No,” Sage shook her head. “I’m not scared of it, I just do not want it. Whether it’s a bracelet or a note or whatever, I have no use for it or the awareness of what it is.”

Dwyer smiled at her, and usually she loved his smile, but right now she hated it. “Open it.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why do you want me to?”

“‘Cause I think you’re bluffing and avoiding,” Dwyer was no longer smiling. “And I know it’s not my place, but I don’t think that’s the real reason you haven’t opened this and I think you’re avoiding it like you avoid everything else.”

“Bluffing?” She scoffed.

He pushed the box into her hands. “Do it then.”

Sage looked from him to the box and back and chuckled. “You’re serious.”

He nodded toward the box. She sighed and pushed up from the bed. “Fine, but I don’t have the key.”

“That’s an old box. The lock probably doesn’t even work.”

“Well I don’t wanna break it. Let me go downstairs and look for a key in my mom’s things.”

Dwyer sighed. “Sage.”

She started toward the door. “Do you want anything to eat from downstairs? Or we could order something. I kind of want that Chinese food we had last time.”

“SAGE!”

“O-KAY!” She screamed with both arms in the air and slammed them down at her sides. “So-fucking-what I don’t want to open the box, it’s my box! What does it have to do with you?”

“Sage,” Dwyer exhaled and stood up, paused, and tried again. “Sage, one day you’re gonna have to stop running from your demons and fight them head on.”

She found this laughable and didn’t hide it. “I do not run from my demons, Dwyer. I’m friends with my demons, and my father’s too.”

He shook his head. “You’re not supposed to be friends with your demons. You’re supposed to fight them and get rid of them.”

“Well me and you fight all the time and you keep coming back every weekend.”

Silence followed. Dwyer looked down at her, seeming taller now than ever before, with a strained expression. She instantly regretted what she said—Dwyer had always complained that her mouth was too quick and sharp, too clever.

He pushed past her toward the door. “This is the last day you gotta worry about that.”

Sage stood stunned watching him leave. When he turned, there was the Thing he walked in with on his back. A large, shadowy, unsettling something, taunting her. Threatening her. Calling her bluff.

“Okay, Dwyer, fine! Relax. You’re dramatic and annoying but if you want to know what’s in the box so bad—”

She flicked the lock with her acrylic nails and it popped right open, much easier than she expected it to. In fact, she didn’t really think about it at all before she did it. But now it was unlocked and the box was still closed and Dwyer stood in the doorway looking in suspended disbelief, so there was no going back now.

When Sage lifted the lid, she couldn’t exactly place it. Not the contents of the box, but the emotion she was feeling. It maybe wasn’t even an emotion at all; there were cramps in her stomach but they weren’t painful, warmth in her eyes but no tears. She couldn’t understand what she was looking at, couldn’t allow herself to, but she felt somehow deeply connected to it. It suddenly felt like a parting gift from an old friend.

Dwyer had taken a step closer to get a better view, but he didn’t come close. This looked and felt like a private moment between Sage and the two large pink seashells her father had left for her in this box, not to be interfered with by anyone but her.

Sage and Dwyer stared at the seashells with the same expression. They were…seashells. It wasn’t clear why they were seashells, but they were, so Sage and Dwyer sat with that for a moment.

“I’m gonna leave you to it, Sage,” Dwyer said this to her in a low tone, like there was someone he didn’t want to awaken. Sage looked up from the shells for the first time since opening the box and noticed something lighter about him.

It was off his back, whatever it was. It was still here, floating across the room from him to her and into the shells, disappearing into a fog. The whole room was lighter—brighter, but just as heavy. Like monsters in the dark sticking around in the light.

Dwyer walked out and left Sage ogling the shells, her palm growing sweaty holding the box, and then he turned and came back. “What’s the real reason you never opened the box, Sage?”

She looked up. She hated questions—God, he’d asked so many today—but the answer flowed through her without a thought this time. “Same reason I don’t like blocking people,” she said. “Too final.”

Dwyer smiled, understanding what she meant. He pointed at the box in her hand. “You know you can hear the ocean in those, right?”

Sage rolled her eyes.

“I’m serious,” he said. “Hold it to your ear and you might hear his spirit.”

Sage smiled too now, but out of pity for him and the purity of his optimism. “I don’t think so.”

“How come?”

For the first time, she ran a finger over one of the shells. It was cold, which sent chills down her spine when she imagined that the shells were one of the last things her father’s hands touched while he was still warm.

“Sometimes,” she said with a calm expression, “there really just isn’t anything to say.”

Dwyer nodded, watching her cradle the shell in her hand like a small bird, and then walked away.

“Wait, D,” Sage called.

“Yeah?” He returned.

“Why’d you seem upset when you came over today?”

Dwyer chuckled. “Oh, ‘cause I went through your phone last week and found out you cheated on me. I was gonna confront you about it today.”

“Cheated on you?” Sage scoffed. “Okay, even if I did sleep with someone else, how can I cheat on you when we’re not even in a relationship?”

“Call it whatever you want, Sage, but I think you know the difference between right and wrong.”

He tilted his head at her, knocked the wall with his knuckles as he sometimes did on his way out, and gave her one last look.

“See you next weekend,” he said. Then vanished.

Sage smiled when he was gone, then looked in front of her and saw a mirror. She stood there, a girl holding a seashell with thick hair framing her smooth face. Sage placed the box down on her desk, raised the shell to her ear, and listened.