A Part of My Memory

Zara

I thought it was a dream until I realised it wasn't.

They were memories.

They came back in flashes at first. Every memory, every experience. Then in segments. I remembered the first party where I met Serena. And another party where I met Ally who had been dared to push a stranger into the pool and I happened to be that stranger. Serena had decided to avenge me but she was so drunk that she ended up pushing the wrong person—Faizah—into the pool and ended up falling inside after.

That was how we met. And I remembered it all.

I remembered the time when Ally kissed a guy for me because I didn't want to complete the dare. The time we stole Faizah's phone to text her crush, who eventually became her boyfriend. The time we all sympathy cried with Serena over her boyfriend and then got revenge by breaking into his device and selling his gamer equipment on eBay for 20 bucks.

I remembered our experimental baking sessions that always ended in diarrhoea. Our prank calls. Our several trips and near-death experiences. I remembered the time we all moved in together but got kicked out within the first two weeks. The time we all got matching tattoos and cried and laughed because of the pain. The way we pulled a steak-out when we suspected Ally's boyfriend was cheating, and when we found out he was, I remembered the way Faizah of all people nearly ran him over.

I remembered the beach and the experience. The laughs and the cries. And I remembered the accident. The truck that didn't stop. The way I was thrown into the air before everything went black.

And that was when everything inside me broke.

Elliot had taken me to their funeral... the girls in the pictures... that was them. My best friends. My sisters.

I gripped my head as the memories overwhelmed me, and I curled into a ball as the sobs wrecked my body. I tried to stay quiet. But it was too much to bear. I couldn't hold in the mourns. Couldn't stop the tears. Couldn't help but cry out in pain. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't do anything but weep.

I stumbled to the bathroom and locked myself in there as I cried and cried and couldn't do anything but cry. My throat and eyes burned. My head pounded. My lungs refused to work. My heart was causing me so much pain that all I wanted to do was rip it out.

They were gone.

They were really gone.

I heard a banging on the door followed by the sound of my name being called by voices. Voices I didn't recognise. Voices I didn't know. I didn't know them. I lost my family in that accident and I had been living with a bunch of strangers. They had lied to me. I trusted them and they lied to me. I didn't have any family. I had no one.

I gripped my stomach and curled into a fetal position. All I could do was scream. I wanted the pain to end but it didn't. It broke me, tore me apart piece by piece until I couldn't take it anymore. I'd never known grief like this, grief that felt like it was slowly ripping the life out of me.

I urged myself to breathe, but my breaths were ragged and they weren't enough. Weren't enough to sustain me, and I prayed that my lungs stopped functioning so the pain could end. All I wanted was for the pain to end.

Serena. Ally. Faizah. They were gone. My sisters were gone.

The thought wrecked more sobs out of me and the pain only got worse. It felt like my heart was physically torn in two. Like there was a tourniquet around my lungs. Like my brain was being pushed up against my skull.

It hurt. Everything hurt.

"Zara!" That voice. I knew that voice. "Zara, it's Elliot. Let me in please," he begged, and there was an urgency in his voice that made me sit up, but I didn't open the door. I pulled my knees to my chest and leaned against the bathtub, dying on the inside. "Zara, let me help you." When I still didn't open the door, he softened his voice and said, "please let me help you. Let me in."

I buried my face in my palms to silence the cries, but judging by the way that Elliot said my name, he could hear the muffled whimpers. "Zara, please."

He wasn't even my cousin. We weren't related at all. So how could I trust him? My birth parents left me. My adoptive parents had basically abandoned me. And now my best friends were gone. It was only a matter of time before Elliot left too.

He had already left me. He left to stay on his own at his apartment. He left when I needed him most. He left just like everyone else left, so he would only leave again.

But he came back, a distant voice reminded me. He was here.

I had only known him for a weekend... and yet he had allowed me to come to stay with him in his home. He had taken me in and helped me despite knowing that I was little more than a stranger to him. And he had come back.

Forcing myself to my feet, I unlocked the door and sat back on the bathroom rug, holding my knees to my chest with my head lowered. Elliot entered and closed the door behind him, locking it.

I didn't say anything. Didn't say anything when he sat beside me. Didn't say anything when he put an arm around me. Didn't say anything when he told me it was going to be okay and gently pulled me against him.

I didn't say anything.

I only cried. The tears were relentless, surging out of me like a wave. My body racked with sobs and Elliot held me through it all. He rubbed my back in a circular motion and kept whispering that it was going to be okay, that he was here with me, that I wasn't alone.

I tried to focus on anything other than the pain. To count each comforting circle Elliot drew on my back, each beat of his heart in his chest, each breath he took. I tried to focus on anything other than the grief threatening to tear me apart. I focused on the feel of his arms around me, on the gentle words he whispered, on the fact that he was here. That he was alive. That I hadn't completely lost everyone.

"Don't leave me too," I managed to croak out, desperate for his presence.

Elliot wrapped his arms tighter around me, causing more sobs to seep out of me. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Thank you for staying with me," I mourned, dampening his shirt with my tears.

"Thank you for being okay," he said, and his voice broke. I leaned back then and looked up at him.

He was crying too.