My Roommate Was Moving Out. I’d Miss Her Quartz, Too.
Reviewed and edited by the Editorial Team
Published
For three years, I called it “your rock.” When Jo packed her quartz cluster, I realised how much of our life together had happened around it.
When my roommate Jo said she was moving closer to work, I teased her that I could finally put a plant where her quartz cluster stood. Three weeks later, I was asking her not to close its box yet. I wanted a photograph. I had expected to miss Jo. Being upset about her crystal was a surprise.
When we first moved in together, I thought it was an awkward thing to put on a bookcase. A tall point rose in the middle, with smaller ones crowded around it. It took up room, and I worried about knocking it over when I reached for a book. Jo moved her books to another shelf and gave the quartz a space of its own. She also showed me how she held it underneath, instead of picking it up by a point. She was certainly good to that rock. I had no interest in crystals and no idea what she saw in it.
One evening she asked me to hold her phone light while she took a picture. I was eating noodles and wanted to get back to them. Then she shifted my wrist slightly, and one flat face flashed. I moved my hand back; the flash disappeared. We spent several minutes finding it again. My noodles went soft.
After that, I began to notice a little point tucked behind the tallest one. Jo liked the view from the front. I preferred a side view that showed the smaller crystal. Sometimes I turned the base, and the next morning she had turned it back. After three years together, we could agree about cleaning the bathroom, but apparently not about which way a rock should face.
Looking at it also became an easy way to keep each other company. On a bad evening, I could come home and say I did not want to talk about work. Jo would ask me to hold the light. Somewhere between finding the right angle and checking the picture, I would start telling her what had happened. She listened without reminding me that I had said I did not want to talk.
I knew the move was good for her. I helped find boxes and looked up the bus to her new place. The night before the move, she sent me a picture of her new bookcase and asked where the quartz should go. I picked the middle shelf. Only after replying did I think about having to leave home to see it. On moving day, I kept imagining coming back from work to an empty flat. If I wanted company, I would have to ask for it. Until then, I had mostly just wandered into the living room.
Jo had put the quartz in its box when I asked for the photograph. She looked genuinely surprised. “You can keep it, if you want.” For a moment I wanted to say yes. But it was hers, and we had already chosen its place in her new flat. I sat down beside the box instead.
“I'll miss having it here,” I said. “And you. Obviously you.” She laughed, which made it easier to ask whether I could come over the following weekend. We chose Sunday lunch. I took a picture of her with the open box, and sent it to her before we carried anything downstairs.
Her crystal had become part of my life through those ordinary evenings together. I had kept calling it “your rock,” so she had no idea. I was glad I had finally told her.
On Sunday, the quartz was on the shelf we had chosen, with the little side crystal facing out. “I left it like that for you,” Jo said. “You can turn it back when I go,” I told her. Then we went to the kitchen. This time, we sat down to eat as soon as the noodles were ready.