�Anne. I left my purse in my car. It should be on the passenger seat. Will you get it for me?� and she pulled out a ring of keys and held them up.

I liked to do these kinds of things for here. I would often bring her coffee from the staff room, and help her with office things, like paper sorting and data entry. The staff had probably thought I was sucking up because she was the manager, but Carrie had reminded me of my mother since I first met her in my interview, and I had wanted that kind of connection with her. She had had soft eyes then � the lightest blue ever, and neat, straight hair that was the colour of wet sand

I had taken the keys from her and looked at them. The one for her car had a thick, black piece of plastic for a base, but there were many other keys. I had recognized the one for the store's front door because it had had a circle sticker on both sides that was the same colour as the red smocks we all wore on the job.

I had wanted my own copy for a long time, and had known that I could get it cut at the hardware store in the plaza, but I had never had an opportunity like this to do it. The idea had held a special significance for me because of how the Value Village had become like a second home for me, and because it was where Carrie was, and far from my father. I had run out into the rain with the keys gripped tightly in my hand, and gone straight to the hardware store. The man there had me take it off the ring, and I was careful to remember where it had been so that I could replace it. Cutting it had only taken a couple minutes, and the key had been hot when he handed it back to me. The metal had had a clean polish, and the grooves had been sharp and jagged. I had rushed back out and gone to Carrie's car. Her purse had been open on the passenger seat, and that had been when I first saw all the pills she carried, and knew something was wrong.

I hadn't said anything to her because I had been dealing with problems of my own then. When my mother had died, my father and I had moved down onto the main floor of our house. He had started smoking again, and I used to come home from work to find him sitting on the old couch in the living room with his hand resting gently on the edge of an overflowing ash tray. Sometimes he would have the TV on, but often it would be off, and he would be staring at the wall.

The rug had caught fire one night, and one of the firemen who had arrived to put it out had said it was probably started by a stray ember hidden in some fallen ash. The rug had needed replacing; the couch had only been singed a bit on one side. I told Carrie about it one day and she had said I could donate the couch, and get my father a new chair. I had organized a truck to come and take it to my work, and my father had picked out a new chair out that folded back and had a leg rest that came out from the bottom. We had it placed where the old couch had been, and he had sat in it and lit a fresh cigarette.

I had hated the smell of those cigarettes, and had decided I was going to leave around that time. I was waiting for a couple more pay cheques to make sure I had enough to last me a while, and had begun to go through my stuff and sort the things I would take from what I wouldn't. They ended up being mostly things that reminded me of my mother, or of my dad, when he hadn't smoked so much. I had a weak plan to catch a bus south into the States, where I had a cousin living near Tampa. She had sent me postcards after my mother had died, and they were always of beautiful beaches and seabirds. I had her address tucked away in my wallet, and had even found a cheap bus that would take me down there.

The key had been in my pocket when I left home for the last time. My father had been asleep in his chair, so I had kissed him and made sure his cigarette was out, then left quietly and shut the door behind me.

The night air was cold and wet with Spring. I had walked from my house to the plaza on Victoria Park and was in the parking lot. There were large puddles that I had to jump or avoid, and I looked down at the pink moon in their reflective surface as I did. The storefront was dark. The key fit in the lock and turned very easily, and I heard a distinct sound as it clicked open. Ambient light shone into the store through the glass and pooled near the front. Nothing moved. The stillness was perfect.

I pushed open the door, and a warm breeze drifted over me. The smell of it was thick with industrial detergent, and memories of light, and colour, and Carrie. She always wore perfume that reminded me of the first flowering of magnolia trees. From the change rooms on one side to the furthest cash register, and the Employees Only door, a soft, damp light illuminated vague outlines that gradually became familiar. The entire back half of the large, open space was swallowed and black, though, and I would have to find my way around with hands and memory.

I let my eyes drift over the veil of darkness where the light seemed to recede into the fabrics and tea mugs of the closer shelves and racks. I was drawn to that light at first, and moved toward the largest patch of it. The glow turned into a white dress with lace and puffed sleeves, and I pulled it out from the rack and held it up in front of me. I let it flow and gather as I rippled it from where my hand held its hanger, then pulled it close to my nose to breath it in. The dress smelled clean and sharp with the industrial wash fragrance, and I wanted to put it on � the dress and the smell � and see myself glow with that eerie light. I carried the dress over to the change room mirror, stripped myself of all my clothes, and climbed into it. I looked like a bride. I looked like the white pedals of a blooming magnolia, and my lungs were filled with that smell of clean that covered everything. Then, I felt a chill on my body and looked around to make sure the door was still locked. I was completely alone. My skin looked dead in the blue light, and I stood very still and squinted my eyes up so that I could look at myself in the mirror as if they were shut. I looked like my mother.

I walked over to where I knew there would be mens sports jackets and put one on. Now it was just the bottom of the dress that shone from below the large jacket, and a little bit from my chest. There was a new smell. It was something below the powerful laundry smell, and it rose out of the jacket and clung to me. It was the smell of the original owner, I guessed, that hadn't quite washed out.

A wind had picked up outside, and there was a gentle rattle from the large windows at the storefront. The clothes felt strange all of a sudden, and wanted to be out of them. They seemed too precious to have been simply donated, like my father's old couch. I thought about the clothes having been willed to Value Village, like part of an inherited estate. How many of these clothes had belonged to people who had simply died, I wondered. I missed my own clothes; they were on the floor by my feet. I quickly took off the jacket and dress, and held my arm up to my nose to breathe in my own scent. I could smell the night, and my father's cigarette smoke, and something sweet underneath it all. I felt silly for having been so horrified. It wasn't like the clothes had been dug up and stripped from a corpse. They were in a second pile on the floor, so I put my own back on, then put the dress and jacket on the rack of clothes to be hung the next day.

I felt uneasy without my bag, so I found it and returned it to my back. I was aware that I would be sleeping inside the store that night, and figured I would be safer from trouble in the back. If anyone were to come in they would not push into the shadows, and if it was the opening manager they would go straight to the office and start on the morning procedure. I would slip out then, undetected.

In the back of the store was where the children's toys and furniture were organized into the corner, just behind the books, records, and miscellaneous collectibles. The men's clothes were separated from the women's by a wide break between clothes racks. The light seemed to amble up through that corridor, and I opened my eyes as wide as possible to let in what little of it there was. Still, as I moved past the first few racks, I became completely blind.

The bookshelves were ahead, and I walked hand over hand against the racks until I felt their flat side. I could smell a kind of dry, crisp rot from the old paper, and I could smell my father, or at least the couch that was still waiting amidst the other discarded furniture. The children's things were back here too. Things like play sets, cribs, and stuffed animals were all kept sectioned off in the back of the store. The stuffed animals were kept in metal bracket shelves, but because they were rarely sold, they just sort of kept piling up in them. They would spill out sometimes, or more likely they were tossed around by children waiting for their parents to finish shopping. One of my tasks had been to tidy up in there, but I had always just shoved them back into their shelves, like chickens were shoved into boiler cages. Looking at them now, I could see a tiny glint from all the pairs of black, glossy beads they had for eyes. They were all brightly coloured in the daylight, and I had never been intimidated by them before, but here in the dark I felt they were watching me. I thought about all the previous owners who must have just grown up and gotten rid of their silly childhood friends.

I had started crying, because I missed my mom right then. I had my own stuffed animal packed away in my bag; it had been a gift she had given to me when I was just a baby. I wondered about the lost paths of these hollow creatures, and whether I would ever grow tired of my mother's gift and discard it so carelessly.

I was moving through the dark now, bumping and pushing through the space, kicking at assorted childhood clutter that reached out for me through the black. When I found my old couch, I sunk into its stinking cushions and buried my face in the rough fabric. It wasn't just because I missed my father a little, or because I felt sorry for myself for choosing to run away, it was for Carrie too. I didn't know what was wrong with her, but when I saw those pills in her purse and that grey look on her face, I had known it was serious, like how it had been serious for my mother. I didn't want Carrie to die because she had become the closest thing I had to a mother. I didn't want my father to die either, because I still loved him very much. I hated the idea of coming into work one day and seeing his old sweaters hanging up in the men's section. I needed to sleep. I curled up on the couch and shut my eyes tight.

When I awoke, it was to the sound of a door closing, and I immediately started to panic. I reached for my bag and slowly got up off the couch. I moved quietly from the back of the store up to the front, and I could hear some papers rustling from the manager's office. Then I heard Carrie clear her throat, and I stopped still where I was to listen. It was Carrie, for sure. I took a deep breath in through my nose, and I could smell her spring magnolias amid the bouquet of old cigarette smoke and detergent. My bag dropped down off my shoulder and heavily into my hand, and I knew that I couldn't just slip out.

Her door was ajar, so I slowly pushed it open and stepped inside. Carrie looked up with mild surprise. �Anne?� she asked. �You're not on the schedule for today.�

I had already started crying.

�Anne? Are you alright? What happened? Is everything alright?�

She rose from her chair and stepped around her desk to see me. My face hung low over my shirt, and tears rolled off my cheeks and fell to the carpet.

�What's the matter, sweetheart?�

�I'm leaving today.� I said quietly, between sobs, then blurted out how I got the key cut and sneaked in late at night, and that I had spent the night and was running away, and that my father was getting worse, and I didn't know what to do, and�

�Anne.�

�Yes.� I said, and looked up at her. Her eyes were misty and damp. I hadn't noticed that they were red when I had come in, but now I saw that she had been crying, too. It suddenly felt very early in the morning.

�It's OK. This is a special place, isn't it? I figured you would think so when I first met you. Did you sleep on your old couch?�

�Why are you dying, Carrie?� I had said the words before I had thought not to, and they had come from somewhere inside that I hadn't been since my mother's funeral. No one had ever told me why she had died.

Carrie's eyes flicked away and her lip quivered as she let go there in front of me and cried.

�I don't know.�

She put her hand out for my shoulder. �I've been to see specialists, Anne, all over the city, and I keep getting more and more prescriptions, but I'm not getting any better.� She gasped inward suddenly, then exhaled with a shudder. For a moment, we both stood there in the soft lamp light, sobbing into the empty space between us. Then, a voice crawled up through me.

�I don't want you to die, Carrie. I don't want you to die like my mother died. I'd get so sad � I'd have to sit around and smoke, and stare at a wall.�

She started laughing then, through her tears, and I couldn't help but laugh too.

�Why would you smoke?�

�That's what my father does. He just sits and smokes, and stares into space � ever since my mother died.�

�I don't want to die either, Anne.�

I wiped at my eyes.

�Why are you running away? What about school?�

And I started crying again, just like that.

�If you know why you're leaving, Anne, then you have to do it, but if you don't know why, then I think you need to stop and think about it.�

�I'm going to Tampa to visit my cousin.� I said. �Maybe just for a bit.�

I pulled the key out of my pocket and gave it to her.

�Will you come see me when you get back?�

I nodded.

She reached her arms around me and pulled me toward her, and I hugged her back.

I got to Tampa a couple days later. My cousin had already spoken to my father, and he had called me on the phone down there. He had been worried about me when I hadn't come home. I told him I was going to stay for a little bit, and that I couldn't live with him if he was going to kill himself the way he was doing. I told him that I couldn't handle losing another parent. He called me a week later to tell me that Carrie had died. There had been a call that came from work, and he had offered to fly me back for the funeral. I packed my bag back up and took the flight, and I went to her funeral because I had told her I would visit when I got back. I didn't go back to work, though, and for years I would avoid Value Village all together. I have gotten over that, but the smell of magnolias still makes me cry.

PEACE - Tristan

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