Risa turned to peer down the hallway again towards her mothers room. She subconsciously tapped her left index finger against her thigh before quickly balling up her fist after realizing her nervous tick was activated. She never quite knew how she had developed that strange habit, but she knew that she often tapped her thigh whenever she was nervous.
"Quit being so silly!" She chided herself. "Its probably just an open window." Risa's mother liked to open the windows in what she called "airing out the house". This was a usual occurrence especially during cooler summer nights. However, Risa remembered her mother specifically instructing her not to open the windown in her brother's room. It seemed like her mother had wanted to prevent any breeze or gust to enter the room in order to preserve it in its current state. Her mother seemed to want to mummify Caleb's room, hoping that by leaving the room untouched it would freeze time and bring Caleb back home safely.
Risa rarely entered her brother's room and her mother never did, or at least Risa had never seen her enter since the disappearance. Shaking her head one final time Risa strode confidently towards Caleb's door. Her footfalls made no sounds as she steps lively across the soft carpeted floor. Though she hadn't meant too, Risa was actually tip-toeing across the hallway. Risa felt the gentle strain of her calf muscles and abruptly realized she had been moving on the pads of her feet. When she stopped in front of the door she exhaled and forced her heels to the ground.
She waited. She was expecting to hear the tapping noise noise again but her hesitation was met with only silence. She frowned as she stared at the copper colored door handle. Risa studied Caleb's door with renewed interest, looking at it closely for the first time.
Littered across the door were several stickers and signs Caleb had accumulated through the years. The stickers were of various sizes and random states of decay. There were stickers of skulls and crossbones, relatively common to other boy's room doors she thought. A large sign proclaiming "Do Not Enter" in bold red and white was affixed at an angle across the top of the door. Risa chuckled at the sight of a small sticker of a unicorn still partially stuck behind larger bumper stickers promoting local musical acts.
Some years back Risa had gotten a hold of a small pack of stickers that were geared for young girls. The pack included stickers of rainbows, butterflies and unicorns. Charlene and Risa had come to the conclusion that Caleb's door was severely lacking in these types of stickers then proceeded to enhance the door with these newer, less masculine, stickers. As expected Caleb flew into a rage upon seeing these "girlie" stickers adorning the portal to his room and began to rip frantically at the stickers.
However, Risa had been prepared for this reaction and planned to escalate her mischief. Before placing the final sticker - which happened to be shinny purple unicorn - Risa liberally applied a coat of super glue onto the back of the sticker. No matter how much Caleb scratched and clawed, the majority of that purple unicorn held fast to the door.
Risa smiled sadly, "That feels like an eternity ago," she thought solemnly.
Without any further hesitation Risa reached for door handle and gave it a quick turn. The door knob was cool to her touch and the door swung open easily. Risa pushed the door open and stood beneath the frame of the door wanting to survey the room before taking another step into it.
The light from the hallway sliced into the room creating a narrow path across the floor. She heard the tap, tap, tap and her eyes were immediately drawn to the window at the far end of the room. The hallway light didn't quite penetrate the entirety of the darkness but with the muted glow of the moon seeping through the window, Risa could see what was causing the tapping noise.
The window was open and the wooden ball at the end of the cord for the window blinds was rhythmically hitting the sill.
Risa reached over to her right to flip the light switch. She was forced to squint briefly as the over head lamp flickered on. Her mother had decided to change all of the household light bulbs to a more cost efficient florescent bulbs. Because of this switch Risa always waited an extra second after turning on a light before moving forward to give the bulb that moment to flicker then come to life.
With the overhead lamp fully illuminating the room Risa let her eyes pass over her brother's former den. Much of the room was just as it was when her brother left it months ago.
Several articles of clothing were laid out across the bed. They were piled up neatly in Caleb's signature style. Caleb had developed the compulsive habit of arranging all of his clothing by color and season. By no means would he have been considered stylish or a fashonista, his compulsion was brought on by the desire for order rather than the aesthetic. With the rudimentary knowledge Risa had taken in from her high school psychology class, she guessed this need for order her brother harbors was born from the chaos their father often lived in. Risa thought again for a moment, "chaos" was probably a poor choice of words to describe their interaction with their father. A whirlwind of fun and spontaneity was probably a more apt way of describing it.
Her father had taken the Peter Pan theory - the idea of never growing up - too much too heart. Risa always remember her father as a kind hearted and loving man. He was quick to tell jokes and could even get the most suspicious stranger to sit enthralled when he would tell a story. He was a musician. An artist. A savant. But his thoughts and attentions often wandered. He picked up and played many different instruments. He would take on various jobs, playing music at different venues at different times and for varying pay. While this may have been an ideal situation for a bachelor roaming the earth, it soon became too trying for her mother.
The weeks and days before her father left seemed like a distant blur in her memory banks. It was as if a fog had settled on those recollections and Risa could never quite piece together what really happened during those days. Her parents had argued to be sure, though towards the end they argued quite frequently. There were never fights, no screaming, but just tense discussions usually ending with her mother leaving in frustration. Her father shied away from confrontation and would never be goaded.
Though Risa was still relatively young, she remember seeing the strain in her father's eyes even when he tried to mask it with his toothy grin. There was no fanfare or much excitement the day her father finally left. Her father would often be gone for a few days on end when he had to travel to another city for work so it seemed to Risa that it was just another one of those trips. Her mother never spoke about it, she had seemed resigned to the inevitable. It wasn't until Risa's Junior year in high school, when the boys began calling her house in earnest, did her mother give her a single piece of advice: "Be careful of those charmers".
Her mother's tone had been so flat and matter-of-fact that Risa took those words to heart. She seemed to raise her guard high whenever a good looking boy came to pay her compliments. She sneered at the romantic attempts made by her male peers. She shielded herself away from the giddiness and puppy love that seemed to plague her friends like a disease.
Risa found herself tapping her thigh again. She tugged at her shorts in frustration. She did not like having this habit, she thought it to be a crutch of her over active mind. She knew her mother, father and brother all showed signs of obsessive compulsive tendencies and she vowed never to develop one.
The breeze must have stopped, Risa thought, since the tapping noise had subsided. She looked over the room again, everything was as it should be. One day, she said to herself, I will clean up this room and put those clothes away. Risa felt that it wasn't good to keep a wound open and festering, she would try and help her mother get through her brother's disappearance.
