I walked home quickly to avoid the coming storm foreshadowed by the clouds above. I had reached my apartment building when the dollhouse crashed to the earth in front of me. When it hit the ground it splintered and cracked open revealing the guts of a plastic furnished home.  

 

I stared down at it for a moment taking in the remains in parts: chipped blue paint, broken mini mirrors, and rusted hinges before finally looking up. On the roof of my apartment building I could make out the figure of a man. 

 

“What?” I yelled, after he called down to me. 

 

“I said get out of the way!” he shouted, and without any further comment an electric keyboard with Dora the Explorer’s face went sailing over the edge of my building. It landed a few feet away from me and all I could think of as it fell was that old TV trope of grand pianos falling from skyscrapers.

 

I went into my building and to my own apartment on the second floor. I stood in front of my beat up door, and felt the teeth of my keys bite into the fist that I had clenched around them. I turned and went back to the stairwell, taking the steps all the way up to the roof. 

 

“The hell are you doing?” I demanded, finishing my question from below. 

 

I watched as the man tossed a bedazzled purple hairbrush over the edge before turning to me. “Throwing this stuff off the roof,” he answered. 

 

“Obviously! I mean what do you think you're doing? As in you could have killed me!” Upon reflection that was also obvious. 

 

“Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you,” he said, pulling out a lamp with a My Little Pony lampshade from the blue bin at his side. He dropped that over next and I counted the seconds before it hit the ground.

 

I made my way over to the edge of the roof keeping some distance between me and the man with practised skill. The door was closer to me than to him, and I was out of his arms reach.  I stayed, telling myself it was because I wanted to make sure Mr. Spring Cleaning didn't try and follow his junk over the side. 

 

Four Barbies, a fake cash register, a box of puffy dress up clothes and ridiculous hats, a tea set. I enjoyed when he threw something especially breakable, and was disappointed when something like the dresses were stolen by the wind without smashing into the earth. 

 

I sat on the edge of the roof and watched the man empty the box until there was only one thing left: a worn-out teddy bear in a tutu with an ear that had been bitten or ripped off.

 

“Wait!” I said, before the bear could go over. 

 

The man paused and I spoke quickly,  “It's not much of a finale is it? That soft bear will hardly make much of an impact. The last one ought to be good.”

 

The man considered my audience feedback with a nod. 

 

“When I finally left my boyfriend I burned everything he ever gave me,” I said. My hand  ghosted over the scar on my thigh. Everything but this last present that I couldn't set on fire. 

 

I pitched him a lighter from my pocket. Something I kept on me for when I got stressed and needed a break from quitting smoking. 

 

He held the lighter up to the pink tutu till it caught flame. When he tossed the flaming bear over the edge we both leaned forward and watched our own homemade meteor fall through the air. Seeing it on the ground among the graveyard of broken toys I suddenly felt that I wasn’t at the front row of a show but at a cremation. 

 

“Good-bye Annie.” 

 

I refused to look up from the flickering funeral pyre on the sidewalk, “Was that the name of the bear?” I asked, though I knew it wasn’t. 

 

“It was my name,” he answered. 

 

 I didn’t know if making a wish on shooting stars counted if the shooting star I had seen was a burning teddy bear in a tutu. Still, I wished and still hope that broken dollhouse mirrors don’t count as bad luck. 

 

I stayed up on the roof with him, until the rain finally fell to the ground putting out the fire below.