Excerpt:

Jason looked once more over the random collage of memorabilia spread around his bedroom. He hadn’t shared a room with his brother since he was 10 years old, and in nearly nine years of occupying his own space he should have amassed a small hoard of personal artifacts and awards, trophies and trinkets that documented his own journey through childhood. Instead, the vast majority of objects in his bedroom were created or earned by both Jason and his brother. Countless little hiking and backpacking trips through the forests surrounding their mountain city resulted in a number of odd-shaped rocks and wood pieces on a few shelves; the Pinewood derby car they made together stood on the desk against the wall; even Jason’s first bicycle helmet, dented and propped on the top of a bookshelf, had been given to him by his brother. The way Josh told the story, you would think that Jason had challenged the river rock in the gorge to a head butting contest. Jason smiled at the memory.

That smile was the first one he had allowed to cross his face since the funeral two days before. It was odd how much emotion could be released by a simple stretch of muscles and skin. Tears that he had already thought he had shed welled up in his eyes and threatened to chart courses down his cheeks. Jason quickly wiped them away, but did not stop smiling. He continued to gaze upon the items that his brother had inadvertently left him as his own personal memorial. The barrier in his mind that he had built around his emotions was beginning to crack, and he could feel it. With a little trepidation, Jason pushed through the emotional wall and allowed them to rush out.

Memories, despair, courage, and a myriad of other indescribable feelings surged through his brain. The mental onslaught was overwhelming for Jason, but he held on firmly to the edges of his dinner tray as he squeezed his eyes and allowed the emotions to swirl through him. Colors and sounds flew across his mind’s eye, leaving afterimages burned onto his retinas and a slight ringing in his ears. Jason instinctively knew that peace awaited him just beyond this intangible barrage…but it didn’t come. The chaos in his mind only continued to grow and deepen as Jason patiently endured.

This was something entirely new to Jason, and he was quite sure that it wasn’t normal. He was passed concerned at this point and began to be afraid. Mustering his own inner strength that he had been using as a shield during his mourning, Jason pushed against the flood of tumult of thoughts and feelings as though he were wielding a staff made of memory. He felt stiff resistance from the chaos.

What had begun as a release of emotion had turned into a terrifying mental enslavement. Fearing now for his mental health, Jason conjured up an image of his brother alive and well, and slammed into the pandemonium wielding the image as though it were a sword. He pierced the chaos as though it were a thick sheet of canvas, and the peace he had known was behind it shone through. The turbulence in his mind quickly faded away into silence. And through that silence, Jason could feel something that he’d never felt before. Something that felt…vibrant?

The feeling only lasted for a second. In fact, the entire experience had lasted less than a full minute. For Jason, though, that was quite long enough. His head ached slightly from the barrage that he had experienced, and his hands ached from gripping the tray as hard as he had. He quickly looked it over to make sure he hadn’t damaged it too much. From the ache in his hands and forearms, he figured he must have been squeezing the tray hard enough to crack it on the edges. As he inspected it, however, he found that the tray was as solid as ever – in fact, it looked to be in better condition than he’d seen it before. Perhaps his mother had cleaned and polished them up a bit.

Now that his ordeal was over, the peace he had been searching for was available to him. His solitude no longer felt like freedom to him, and he craved the companionship of his family. He quickly wolfed down the still-warm food seated inside the wooden tray, then carried his dishes out of his room and down the stairs. Trying to be nonchalant, he walked into the kitchen where his mother and younger sister were washing dishes and placed the tray on the countertop. His mother was quick enough to realize his intention to blend right back into family life as though the last few days hadn’t happened, so she said nothing to make the moment awkward.

Jason washed his own dishes as his mother took the tray and stacked it on top of the rest next to the breadbox. He didn’t notice anything strange until he heard his mother muttering under her breath. Fearing some emotional moment coming on for her, Jason shut off the water and went to her, drying his hands along the way.

“What’s wrong, mom?”

She glanced up at him with a quizzical brow, then turned back to the stacked pile of dinner trays. “I’m not exactly sure. These trays have always fit together…but now they don’t.” In explanation, she picked up Jason’s dinner tray and placed it on top of the rest. There was no mistaking it – it was obviously too large to fit with the rest. In fact, the tray looked to be nearly a half an inch thicker all the way through and around than the other trays. Jason picked it up himself.

“Are you sure these are the same ones?”

“Well, honey, we only have the one set.”

It was kind of a stupid question; how many types of wooden dinner trays does someone have? And yet you could not deny the obvious fact that the tray Jason had brought down from his bedroom was a different size than the others. On closer inspection, he could also see that the tray wasn’t nearly as smooth and uniform as the rest. It still laid flat on the counter, but only because three sections of the bottom had protruded very slightly, resembling tiny legs. From that point of view, the tray looked like a ridiculously short table.

Jason continued to handle it, turning it around and looking for some indicator to prove that the tray had come from somewhere else. There was no way that the it belonged to the same set. How could it possibly have expanded in size? Maybe the tray belonged to a friend or a neighbor. Do people even share dinner trays?