Kit: Something That Was Mine

Asha sent me a thirty-second film of a cardboard room turning inside out.

There were no people in it. A door became a table, a wall folded down, and a tiny paper chair vanished through a gap in the floor. It was strange and slightly unsettling. I watched it three times.

Can you make it sound like it shouldn't be happening? she asked.

I wrote back: That's quite a broad brief.

She replied: Excellent. Creative freedom.

I had a free evening. The guide files were waiting, but they could wait until morning. I took the old recorder, a metal tin, a wooden ruler and a handful of gravel into the shed behind the shop. Dad asked whether I was building something or threatening it.

“Neither.”

“Good. The neighbours are eating.”

For the door, I recorded a cupboard hinge slowed down. For the chair, I used the tiny dry scrape of gravel across the bottom of the tin. The folding wall needed something less obvious. I tried paper, cardboard and the ruler vibrating against the bench, then layered two of them until the sound seemed too large for the object on screen.

I lost track of time. Not because I was avoiding Nell, though the absence of my phone helped. I was listening closely to something that did not know about the newsletter. It needed a sound. I could find one.

At ten, Mum knocked on the shed door, carrying a mug of tea.

“Still working?”

“Nearly done.”

“Would that be the actual nearly done or the version where I see you at midnight?”

“Actual.”

She stood beside me while I played the film. At the moment the chair disappeared, she made a small involuntary sound.

I looked at her.

“That was odd,” she said.

“Good odd?”

“Very good odd. I didn't like the chair going.”

I smiled. “That's the idea.”

Asha loved it. She asked how I wanted to be credited before posting it in the incoming students' group. I sent my name and the words sound design. She sent back a screenshot of the credit in place, then waited for me to approve the actual clip.

It should not have felt remarkable. It did anyway.

The next day, Luca and I went to the park to test the quiet route at the relevant time. He had brought a notebook covered in stickers, most of which concerned either music or cats behaving badly. We checked the gate hours, the surface near the reading room and the benches that weren't hidden behind shrubs.

“Are you sending her the film?” he asked while I measured the gap beside a planter.

“Who?”

He looked at me.

“No.”

“Because you don't want to, or because you think wanting to means you have to forgive everything?”

I straightened up. “You ask very inconvenient questions.”

“I save the convenient ones for people I don't like.”

I wanted Nell to see it. I wanted her laugh, her precise strange description of the room, the way she would ask how I'd made the chair sound. Wanting those things didn't tell me whether I could trust her yet.

“I don't know what I'm waiting for,” I said.

“You don't have to manufacture a test.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I sat on the bench. A maintenance worker was sweeping leaves from the path into a pile that the wind kept revising.

“If she gets everything right now, how do I know it's not just because she wants me back?”

“You might not. Not immediately.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It wasn't going to be a magic answer.”

We watched the leaves escape again.

“She can be sorry and still have wanted the attention,” Luca said. “You can believe she's sorry and still not want to date her. None of those decisions has to eat the others.”

I thought about that on the way home.

Nell had sent the sponsor email for approval. It was clear and unshowy. She had not copied me into a speech she had already delivered. She had left room for my answer.

I approved the revised version. Then, after several minutes, I sent the film.

She replied later, not immediately, which I appreciated more than I expected.

The chair sounds like it has been removed from the idea of a room. I hate it. It's brilliant. Did you use something metal?

I laughed alone in the shop kitchen.

Yes, I wrote. And gravel.

She asked another question. I answered it. We talked about the work for ten minutes, and it was good.

Before bed, she sent one more message.

Could we talk after Thursday's project meeting? Not to ask you to decide anything. There are things I need to say without making you edit them for me. It's all right if not.

I read it twice.

Then I wrote: Yes. After the meeting.

I put the phone on the desk beside the college papers. The photograph of us was still against the lamp. I had turned it face down for two days, then turned it back. Neither position had made the situation simple.