Jamie looked over at the fenced off site and sighed dejectedly. The three story building behind the fence was now boarded up, locked and empty. The comic store, the arcade, the store that was limited to people over the age of 18, they were all gone. The offices above them, gone. The apartment that sat at the top, empty and lifeless. For Jamie, this was the same as losing a loved one. It was a gut punch that they could not recover from.
There were no signs on the fencing. No indicator of who was responsible or what was coming next. Just the fence, just the emptiness of a very popular facility for younger people. Jamie wasnt the only one who mourned the death of this place; others whom they had hung out with also complained impotently about it. But Jamie was the only one who came here, sat across the street and watched. As if this was just a temporary feature, a facelift for the old and admittedly rundown building. They knew better than that though. The adults who ran the stores, even the dimly lit one at the back, they had all concurred when anyone asked. It was the end for them. The arcade would come back, and that was some small relief, but it would be different. The people who operated this one had left town, retired. The comic store was gone forever, their website was all they had left. But you cant hang out on a website. Jamie couldnt say anything about the other business, or the offices, but they assumed something similar. That this was a definitive ending and Jamie and all the others who used to congregate here would have to find somewhere else to wile away their youth.
Jamie walked past the fenced site each day. Eventually they didnt even turn their head to look at it. The building had been torn down. Construction equipment was almost always visible over the top of the fence. There was nothing to look at anymore. Besides which, they had to worry about exams. They would be graduating soon, leaving high school and entering, what their parents called, the real world. The world of being an adult. They remembered, some years ago, making a deal with their friends about going into that adult shop when they were all 18. Their own celebration of adulthood. They still spoke of it, although now instead of anticipation, it was just frustration and depression. Another, similar, store was open somewhere across town, but it was different in many ways and each of the group had said they found it offputting and creepy. Jamie hadnt even gone to see it. They just assumed because it was in that part of town.
Jamie’s exams were on their mind as they shuffled down the road opposite the construction site. The bus stop where they had sat when the fence had first gone up, almost a full year ago, was gone. Jamie registered this, but ignored it. They cast their head up and looked at what they expected to be the same visage as they had come to recognise as familiar.
But it wasnt. The fence now extended to the buildings on either side of their former hangout. Each of the buildings that had been there, and from their perspective, it looked as if all the buildings behind them had suffered the same fate, had been torn down. Jamie quickly crossed the street and tried to peer over the fence which was half a foot or so over their head. What they could see was an empty lot. Or, rather, several empty lots which had been combined into a single empty block. There was a deep hole towards the center, but there was no way for Jamie to see what was down there. As they gave up and stepped back to continue their journey home, they noticed another change. A sign on the fence. It was metal and shone in a gloss that caught the light in a very strange way. It was pure white with no words, no logo and no embossing of any kind on it. Jamie had no idea what this meant, but it creeped them out more than the idea of the new adult store.
For once, Jamie was happy. They were finally free. They had not realised what a stifling presence their family had been and now that high school was done and they were starting fresh at a small college a couple of hours away, they could finally let themself relax.
Old friends, new ones and other people had joined their life and treated them not just with acceptance, but welcomed them. Respected them. It was what they had never realised was missing. Of course, they visited their parents frequently. Their home town was always right there and it was difficult for them to find reasons to not visit during their vacation or semester breaks. They never brought anyone with them, even when they had someone special. It never felt right.
Jamie walked a well trodden and familiar path on one such excursion to their family home. The bus stop was still missing, but the sawn off bolts that had once secured it to the footpath reminded anyone who walked passed that there used to be one here.
Jamie stopped at the former stop, reminded of the bench they had always considered the halfway point between their home and the downtown area of the city they lived in. The stop where they, and their friends, would always get off the bus so they could get comics, play games and all the things that seemed so far away now. Jamie felt a pang of nostalgia. It had been many months since they had picked up a comic, much less read one.
They looked over at the lot opposite. A lot had happened in this last year. There was a new building there. It wasnt finished, but it was well on its way to being completed. It swallowed the entire empty lot and Jamie realised that a separate construction on the far side road from where they stood was also part of this, the entrance to an underground carpark being formed.
The fence was still the same. The sign that they had seen last time they were here was not. The glossy white metal had been vandalised. On it, in a thick black marker were the words fuck the white. Immediately Jamie understood. They had never been big on keeping up with local news, being a larger picture kind of person. This was going to be a White Hotel. They had never considered their hometown, a city sure, but a small one, to be important enough for one of those. They were for cities like LA, or Berlin. Important or political cities. But if Akron can have one, they thought before putting all of this into the back of their brain and continuing on the path to their parents.
School had taken Jamie across the country. Study in their chosen field, particularly post-graduate study, was limited to a few dozen places across the whole world. While they didnt get especially good marks in their undergraduate programs, the fact that they wanted to stick with it and take it further allowed them to enrol in a post-grad program that, theoretically, could lead to a doctorate some distance into the future. Unfortunately, it meant leaving their comfortable corner of the world behind, possibly forever. As much as their parents understood and encouraged them to pursue this, they could not hide their disappointment that their only child would only get back here once a year at most.
It had been three years now, and they had only gone back once before this: A Christmas family reunion, an almost mandatory event that brought together a large swathe of the extended family from both Jamies parents side. The only thing that stuck with Jamie from this reunion was the number of comments about how next time, they would all have to stay at the new hotel.
Jamie remembered these comments as they drove past the hotel in the back seat of a rather dingy looking taxi. The driver was saying how it was finished, and it looked like it. The fence and its sign was gone, the iconic white facade reaching from the street towards the overcast sky shone in that same glossy way as the sign had. The entrance was not on this side of the building, so Jamie could not see inside and there was no curiosity in them now.
Their fathers health problems had come out of nowhere, although with the presence of hindsight, Jamie remembered certain things they, and their parents, had ignored over the years. When the illness was caught, it was too late. From their apartment in a city across the country, there had been many late night phone calls, conversations about the worst that could happen and bittersweet story swapping about memories from childhood.
And then he was gone. Less than a year after the diagnosis, and two months longer than he was supposed to last.
So now here Jamie was, an unplanned, yet expected journey home, on familiar streets with unfamiliar buildings.
The driver was still talking about the hotel as he pulled up and let Jamie out. After paying and thanking him, they walked to the door and steeled themselves as they let themself in.
Jamie stood outside the White. It was the day after the funeral. Inside this building, somewhere, was their aunt. Their fathers sister. They did not want to be here, they wanted to be on the way back to the airport and heading back to their life, their real life. But no one else actually knew where the White was. Jamie was the only one who used this way to get from home to town, so here they were, outside the lobby trying to find their aunt, and the reason why she had not been at the funeral.
As they entered the lobby, an attendant with a foreign sounding name on a badge on his chest strode over - a very well practised walk – and explained that he was here to help with whatever Jamie needed. There was nothing wrong with the man, nothing that Jamie had not expected. Yet the white uniform, the overall whiteness of the lobby and the bland, unblinking expression on his face made them extremely uncomfortable.
Jamie asked about their aunt to which the attendants facade slipped and he glanced back at a person that Jamie assumed was his supervisor – a woman in the same white uniform who was at the check-in counter. On seeing her face drop, Jamie walked over to ask her about it. She tried to leave, but Jamie was too quick.
“Im looking for my aunt, she staying here,” they said, using their authoritative voice they had learned as part of their studies.
The woman swallowed. “She isnt here,” she said.
“I dont believe you,” Jamie replied. “I havent told you her name yet.”
“You have to leave,” the woman continued. “You cant be here.”
“Why not?” Jamie asked.
As they finished speaking, the elevator behind the woman dinged and a dishevelled man with an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth exited, followed by a uniformed police officer. “Theyre out through the carpark,” the former said. “Pretty gnarly. Im going to need contact information for all your cleaners and the victims next of kin.” Before she could stop herself, the woman flicked her eyes to Jamie. “Well, that saves a lot of drama,” the man said, approaching Jamie.