Priya's Boxes

They let him into the holding room. Priya's whole stored life fit into six boxes, and Theo sat on the concrete floor and went through every one of them like an apology to a stranger. Mostly it was ordinary. Books, kitchen things, a coat. But the sixth box was different. The sixth box was full of notes — Priya's own, in a small determined hand — and they were all about the door. She had been studying it. For two years. The notes were careful, almost scientific: dates, observations, the temperature of the air that came under it, the way the forest smell changed with the seasons on the other side. She had not been afraid of the door. She had been courting it. The last note was dated the day the cameras lost her. It was short. It said: I think it only opens for someone who isn't running away. I've been running my whole life. I have to fix that first, or it won't take me. I think today I finally fixed it. Theo read it four times. Then he put the notes in his bag, because they were not finished, and somebody had to finish them.