That One Smell

I can smell my literature class where I stood at my bed and scribbled in green dry-erase markers about the activities I would use to teach A Wrinkle in Time. I can smell the one time we had a snow day and we went mattress sliding in Westy on the side stairs. I can smell the tea and popcorn, movie parties, hurt feelings, tears, anger, and pain. I can smell “a girl died last night. She lived on our hall.” I could see her door from my doorway. Her name was Mallori but that was all I knew about her. I hadn’t gotten a chance to get to know her yet, and now she was gone. I smell a party with Chinese and ice cream on Kristen’s floor, indulging to try to forget the pain of going to the viewing hours for a girl my age. I smell the tears, tears, and more tears. I smell the tangled, hurt, angry, scared feelings. I smell the times of retreat into the closet with the mops and extra bunk bed pieces. I often feared the mattresses would careen off the wall and crush me where I sank small into the comfy chair, munching Laffy Taffy and crying out to God. I smell the creak of my door as I walked back into 423 and the homework waiting for me there. But that wasn’t so bad because when I walked back from that closet, I always had hope. I smell the answered prayers, the healing, the finished assignments, and the goodness of God. That one lotion embodies for me W4W my sophomore year.