Moving Memories

"What are you looking for?" Jen asked as she watched Joe rummage through a tattered old moving box.

"Nothing in particular," he said, brushing dust from his cheek.

"What's in the box?" she asked leaning a little closer. She could see old papers, notebooks, and some odds and ends.

"It's just a bunch of stuff from the past," Joe mumbled, his voice muffled from his head being in the box as he dug deeper, "I haven't looking in this box in years."

Jen leaned against the last unpainted wall of the apartment, she was wearing white overalls and a pair of faded old sneakers. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail and the rest was trapped by an old red bandanna. She held a paintbrush in one hand, letting her arms rest atop her knees.

"What made you decide to look in the box now?" Jen asked; she eyed the young man in curiosity.

Joe looked up at her and smiled, "because of the move, silly," he said. It had taken them a while to agree that they should get an apartment together and even longer before they found one that they liked. "Isn't that what people do when they move? They go through old boxes and relive the past, try to decide if they want to keep the stuff, realize the memories it brings back and decide to keep it though they will hardly ever look at it again,"

Joe's searching fingers had grasped a thin glossy book and pulled it from under the pile of papers. He smiled fondly at it as he thumbed through it. "I haven't seen or though of this book in years," he said.

"What book is that?" Jen asked looking over at him.

Joe stood up and crossed the room to sit beside her, "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," Joe said, "Alec used to read it to me when we were young. Whenever I was having a bad day."

Jen glanced sideways to see if Joe was in pain, but was relieved to find only a fond smile tugging at his mouth. "Will you read it to me?" Jen asked.

Joe's smile widened and he flipped open the front cover. "I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair..."