It was an unusually cold summer day of 60 degrees in Nowhere, Arizona, a small town in the middle of…well, nowhere.  It’s the kind of town where nothing big ever happened, and no one expects anything big to ever happen…in Nowhere, a funeral was considered a big scandal, and this month’s talk of the town is a moving sale.  Who knows?  Maybe the reason these people are moving is because someone died…that would probably get the front page in our daily paper, Going Nowhere in Style. Yup. Since my girlfriends were out of town and I was bored, I decided to head over to that moving sale I’d seen a few blocks away, not knowing this was a day that would change my life. I stuffed ten dollars into my jeans pocket and started my way over.  Reaching the small, dingy looking house with a moving sign in the front yard, I saw about five or six cars parked out front, and people walking in the main door…obviously, no one else had anything better to do today, either.  I headed inside and decided to just look through everything quickly, or so I expected.  A few hours later I had only made it a few yards from the front door, enthralled by all the miscellaneous junk crowded into such a small space. My phone buzzed, and a quick check confirmed that it was my mom telling me to come home for dinner, so I took the antique urn I had chosen for my close cousin Maggie’s birthday present, and went to go pay the lady who seemed to be in charge. 
      I got home, and before heading down to dinner, I put the urn under my bed, so no one would see it and give away the surprise…I love my parents, but they aren’t great at keeping secrets.  I didn’t think about it again until a few weeks later when I was cleaning my room.  I saw it sitting there all alone, and I took it out to clean, and then send it.  As I looked at it I started having second thoughts…was it creepy to send an urn to an eighteen-year-old girl? Or anyone at all?  When I had first seen it, I had thought it would be nice, because my cousin Maggie liked antiques.  Even though we were born within days of each other, our tastes varied dramatically: me with my comfy skinny jeans and t-shirts, a collector of big jewelry and weird earrings, and her, vintage to the end, collecting as many old looking things as she could.  I had never understood this fascination, but despite this we got along well, and every time I saw a cheap antique I would pick it up for her.  But now, when it came down to it, it seemed a little bit weird…who sends an urn to a teenage girl?  Finally I decided to go ahead and clean it, and then if I didn’t end up sending it to her, I could put it somewhere in my room.  I struggled with the cover for a while, but when I realized I couldn’t open it, I brought it down to my dad to see if he could.  After a fierce game of tug-of-war with it, my dad finally loosened the top and handed it back to me. I opened the lid, and was surprised to see a big pile of dust.  I was about to throw it out when I realized…it wasn’t dust, but ashes!
      I’m ashamed to say that my first thoughts were “Ewww!” , and “Throw it away!”, but before I tossed it in the garbage, I realized that the people I bought it from probably didn’t know that they had sold these ashes, and were probably relatives of the deceased.  I decided to bring it over to their house and…well, see if they wanted the ashes of some dead relative back.  When I got there, I was surprised to see that the house appeared empty, and that the grass was starting to look overgrown.  I suddenly remembered it hadn’t just been a garage sale, but a moving sale, and that by now they were probably all gone!  Since no one was there who could help me find the family, I went home. That evening I was about to check on the internet to see if I could find them, or where they had moved, when I realized I didn’t remember their last name.  I made a mental note to myself to ask my mom, the social butterfly, about them tomorrow and promptly went to bed.  
      The next morning was a Saturday, and when I woke up, I immediately went to go get my mom.  She said she was pretty sure their name was Simm, or Simms, so I looked them up on the internet.  I didn’t find any results for Simm on the internet, but after some diligent spy work on the computer, I eventually found a family named Simms on Facebook which looked right.  I ended up leaving Mrs. Simms a message on her wall.  After a few days without a reply, I started panicking.  That was something that was a little strange…I never get worked up about anything—I’m the “responsible one” of the family, always reading thick, literary novels, (albeit, they usually have a good romance in there somewhere) and getting homework done on time—and here I was worked up about a little container full of cremated remains!  After what seemed like years, but was probably only days, I was finally appeased with an answer—her son wrote me that his mom never went on Facebook, because it was too confusing for her (hence the long wait),but that she wanted to get in touch with me over phone.  We swapped phone numbers, and that evening I called her up and we talked.  
      It turned out that the people I had gotten the urn from was a family from Australia (they all have super cool accents!) that had moved here a few years ago, because of her husband’s job, but had moved back when his old employers made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.  Mrs. Simms didn’t want me to mail the urn to her because she was afraid it might break on the way; but since I was obviously not going to fly 7,500 miles to Australia just to drop off an urn, and she was too old and tired to travel all the way back here so soon, we couldn’t think of a solution.  Finally, we hit upon a plan—her son, who was my age, was planning on staying in Arizona, but his mom wanted him to fly to Australia to organize the rest of the shipping, and help her settle in anyway, meaning he could easily stop by and pick the urn!  Soon afterward, I hung up, but as I got ready for bed I realized that I still knew absolutely nothing about whose ashes I had on the night table next to my bed. I brushed my teeth, my mind running wild making up stories about who was in my room and how he had died.  The part of me that loved fairy-tales was rambling on with the ideas of a pirate or prince, tragically killed defending his true love and family, while the responsible, more tame side of me came up with the image of a balding, old librarian with a paunch, full beard, and suspenders who simply died of old age…cute in a grandparent-ly way, but no knight in shining armor.  As I drifted off to sleep, I fleetingly wondered what Mrs. Simms’s son would be like.
      The next morning, after checking the plan with my surprised parents, and being teased about having “a young man coming over to see my lovely daughter” by my father who seemed to think this was a date, I started getting the house ready for…for whom?  I couldn’t even think of this guy’s name!  I searched my memory until I remembered. Hugh. That really wasn’t hard to remember at all. I grinned foolishly as I fantasized for a moment about Hugh Jackman, also from Australia, and felt my hopes rise in regards to this “young man”.  Just the same, I kept repeating his name over and over in my head so I wouldn’t forget it when he came tomorrow. All I hoped was that my dad wouldn’t start quizzing him about his financial situation, or tell him “I want two-thousand camels for my daughter’s dowry”. (Yes, he had done this before to guys I bring home).  Tuesday afternoon, accompanied by smirks and winks from my parents, I answered the front door and immediately thought of the song “Big Bad Handsome Man”.  Blushing, I invited him to have something to drink.  Once he was comfortable, I asked him about the urn’s story.  It was a nice conversation, and I felt very comfortable with him, and didn’t feel awkward about talking to him about whoevers ashes they might be, or really anything at all!  It turns out the ashes were Mr. Simms, and that, apparently, I had not bought the urn from his mom, but some random lady who had pretended to be Mrs. Simms, just to get ten dollars from me!  I also found out that his mother was in her mid-fifties, and his father had died of a heart-attack a few years before.  He went on to say that his mom had meant to bring the ashes with her to scatter them into the famous Australian beaches, because that’s what his dad had wanted, but when she went to the mantel piece where she kept it, it was gone! They couldn’t find the urn anywhere, and ended up having to leave without it.  We chatted comfortably for what seemed like maybe half an hour, but turned out to be quite a few!  When we realized how much time had passed, he said he had to leave, but just before he left he reminded me he had my phone number, and asked if he could call me soon.  I replied with a happy yes, and as he left, I had a feeling this was the beginning of a beautiful romance.  
      
      
The Urn
9-10
1