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Get Published on Female First
Serena gave the door a gentle push and it creaked open. The anticipation of what she might find behind the door was always the hardest part. She took a deep breath and looked up. Her former bedroom was exactly the same as the last time she had visited. She had been backpacking around Europe a few years ago, and returned to find that her mother had put an exercise bike in a previously empty corner of the room while on a health kick. It was still there - gathering the dust it had been gathering ever since her mother’s target weight had been reached. The bike could stay there and collect dust for as long as it liked - it was part of the room now.
Stepping inside, and pulling the door to, Serena smiled. The soft and fading pink carpet felt as fluffy as ever beneath her bare feet. The sweet smell of cheap childhood rose perfume still filled the air. The scent reminded her of brightly clothed, blonde-haired Barbie dolls, whispered secrets, and messily painted nails. Her eyes went straight to the crowded bookshelf by the window, with its white shelves crammed full of books that had made for riveting reading in childhood and adolescence. That bookshelf had been her father’s pride and joy - carefully crafted from scratch – he had spent three consecutive weekends putting it together and painting it. Now some of the paint was chipped and one of the shelves at a slant.
Framed photographs littered the windowsill, mostly pictures from secondary school. She picked one up, a silver filigree affair with tiny metallic-pink flowers woven into the pattern. Blowing dust from the glass and coughing as some of it hit the back of her throat, Serena saw it was the Year 9 badminton team photo. She remembered it vividly - they had just beaten Riverside Girls’ High - and she had decided then that she wanted to Captain the team, a dream that didn’t reach fruition until she was in the Upper Sixth. She had run home energetically that day, panting and soaked in fresh sweat as she gave her mother a feverishly enthusiastic account of the victory. It was almost ten years ago now.
The walls were the same pale pink they had been since she was a baby - refreshed every few years with acrid-smelling emulsion. Standing atop a three-rung stepladder, her mother’s reassuring hands at her waist, a seven-year-old Serena had struggled to get a heavy paint roller to cooperate. After a few small, sporadic licks of paint, her determination to repaint the room all by herself had vanished, and she had quietly asked her mother for help.
Generic boy bands beamed down at her from several once-glossy posters pinned to the wall above her bed, their pristine, gleaming smiles matching the head-to-toe white of their outfits. Gazing at their bleached-blonde, floppy hair and bright, baby blue eyes, she grinned - her tastes had changed so much. Luca, with his olive skin and chocolate eyes, was the opposite of the boy-next-door types she’d idolised in adolescence. She could hear the low hum of his voice as he chatted to her father downstairs. When she was younger, Serena had loved being tucked up in bed while the telly droned on in the living room below, the sound of her parents’ soft voices lulling her into deep, comforting sleep. It was something she had never grown out of.
The small, child size desk she had insisted on keeping even when her legs had grown too long to sit under it, was strewn with pencil sketches and watercolours. Tentative light grey pencil lines - blended beautifully by an almost apologetic index finger - contrasted brilliantly with the bold greens, reds and yellows of her watercolours. Where the shy subjects of her pencil sketches looked like shadows lost in the midst of rich, creamy paper, the brazen daffodils, poppies and tulips whirled in vivid watercolour. Serena tried to imagine her ‘early stuff’ as part of her current exhibition at the gallery, but it was impossible. No one commissioned smudges of pencil and splashes of watercolour.
Kneeling down, Serena opened the top drawer of the small desk to find her collection of My Little Ponies packed together tightly. They must have been in there for years - stashed away before a pre-teen sleepover so no one would think she was a baby. The vibrant shades of synthetic hair clashed horribly with their neon plastic bodies, each of them identical save for a small heart, star, or rainbow above the hind legs. Her mother used to laugh at the amount of time Serena spent combing their manes and tails before plaiting, twisting or curling until she was satisfied. She lifted a pink pony from the drawer and raked her fingers through its knotted blue mane, wishing she could hear her mother laugh just once more - if only for a moment.
Pulling the other two drawers out of the desk, Serena took them over to the bed, and sitting cross-legged on the narrow divan, tipped out their contents for examination. What seemed like hundreds of beaded bracelets poured out onto the clean white bed linen, and some cassette tapes clattered into a haphazard heap beside them. She and her friend Angela had spent a whole summer scraping their knees, making daisy chains and dancing to mix tapes they had made by recording songs from the radio - trying desperately to press the chunky ‘stop’ button before the DJ began speaking again. She looked at the erratic, loopy handwriting on one of the tapes to find a track list so nostalgically nineties, she ached for pop concerts and a copy of the now defunct Smash Hits magazine. She slipped several chunky wooden bracelets onto her wrist and looked around at the mess her childhood bedroom had become.
It was a room filled to the brim with decaying childhood dreams. Everything was coated with dust, the magazine and newspaper clippings tacked to the walls were yellowing and curling at the edges, and all the soft toys lined up at the foot of her bed gave off a slightly fusty smell. Serena got to her feet and moved across to the window. Reaching up to open the catch, she was surprised to find that she no longer had to stand on tiptoes. Growing up was one of those things you never noticed until months - sometimes years after it had happened. Cool, crisp air gushed in, replacing the dry, dusty atmosphere with a fierce freshness.
Hot, salty tears stung her eyes. She could see her mother’s face smiling up at her from so many of the photographs on the windowsill. Time had eaten away at her childhood the way her mother’s cancer had eaten away at her ovaries - till what remained wasn’t enough to sustain the life they had both once been so full of.
As she wiped her eyes with the backs of her fingers, Serena’s head filled with cardboard boxes, bin liners and fresh, white paint – charity shops grateful for old books, toys and games. She didn’t look back as she made her way downstairs, leaving the door open behind her.
Stephanie Louis is 25, she lives in Sheffield, South Yorkshire and works in I.T.
'I have been interested in writing since I was very young and have always written short stories and poems. More recently, I have begun work on two novels. My other hobbies include photography, improving my Italian and hanging out with my Norfolk Terrier pup, Rosie.'