Memory Lane

Part 21: The Truth

Let's try this again. Now that I know what happened to you, the past paints a different picture.

I've been in bed for a week, sick with a fever that refuses to break. My dreams are so intense and vivid that being outside of my head is disorienting. But I welcome the break reality gives me.

The nightmares start the same way, with a swim in the pond behind the woods. You're warm and alive in dreamland, a mermaid with a shining goldfish tail blowing bubbles as you speak with sea creatures. By some miracle, I can swim as well, although I have no tail.

We follow schools of fish through the water, their glittering bodies acting like lights that guide us deeper into the water. Brackish waves crash in my vision, so thick and heavy that I can no longer see the fish as anything other than glittering specks. I push through the water in desperate search of your shining form. A pale arm darts out in front of me and I seize it, pulling it close.

Your cold rotting body comes forth and I shudder with revulsion. Maggots squirm where your eyes should be and blood oozes from a long cut around your neck, clouding the water. An impossibly large centipede crawls on your arm, taking large bites of your skin. You press a corpse kiss to my lips and I decompose with you.

I wake up, vomiting over the bed sheets. Last night's dinner becomes a Pollack original over Egyptian cotton. The maids change the blankets without betraying a single emotion on their faces. I'm too ill to feel shame.

After that, I can hardly keep anything down. I don't fight to eat more, subsisting on miso soup and bottled water.

You transcend my dreams, joining me in the real world. Your pale figure hovers over my bed, concern etched into your face. Sometimes, when you grow weary, you shrink into the corner. Your ever-watchful eyes are more blue than before if that's even possible, the afterimage of their stare like a bouquet of cornflowers.

I want to laugh. You're dead. What's the point of worrying over me when we can't even touch each other?

Cold fingers graze my forehead. Airi checks in on me before she goes to school. In the afternoon, she piles lessons and homework that I've missed on my desk. I read none of them, paralyzed with sickness. But even if that hadn't been the case, I still wouldn't have touched them.

You would have been disappointed in me. When we started going out, you were trying to get my grades up so we'd go to the same college. I agreed to try because I would be around you more, but it was hard to be more than mediocre at my studies. "Above and beyond" was too much to ask for.

But still, you believed in me. You told me you meant it when you said you wanted us behind the white picket fence, raising our kids so that they wouldn't turn out as messed up as we were. So I had to hit the books before I could see you walk down the aisle.

There were a few issues with your plan. While we had a chance of going to the same college, your father wasn't going to marry you off to a girl, much less one that was Japanese. Although your family tolerated our friendship, their conservative Catholic values didn't let them do more than that. Additionally, you believed that what you felt for me was sinful, even though you loved me and wanted to be in a relationship with me.

Funny enough, that was the least of your worries. The fighting between your parents escalated from screaming matches to physical projectiles. Mingled in with their voices from across the street were the sounds of breaking glass accompanied by ominous thumps. You weren't sure if you would have a family by the end of the year.

"Why don't they get divorced?" It was clear to me that any love they had for each other was lost in the past.

You let out a long sigh that told me you've asked this question to yourself many times.

"It's not that easy. My mom doesn't have a job that would pay her enough to live on her own. If it came down to divorce, my dad would get sole custody. Then I would have to move again and it would be a whole mess."

Was it you talking to me or your mother? These days it was hard to tell, especially because you picked sides in the ongoing feud. Your father's temper made him an easy villain, but your mother was hardly innocent. It took both of them to make that home unsafe for you. After all, there was a reason why you slept over so often.

Once you broke up with Harry, you came in through the front door instead of my window. It was your way of making our relationship public even though neither of us announced it in school. Evan knew, but he didn't breathe a word outside the three of us.

We were afraid of what would happen to you if word spread around town. I could see your parents sending you to conversion therapy in a heartbeat, ruining all of our plans for the future with a single word.

So I kissed you behind closed doors and held your hand when I thought no one was looking. We loved each other in places no one else would go, picking secluded spots in the woods or forgotten hiking trails. Evan even drove us to places further from town where no one knew who we were, giving us slivers of a normal life during scant hours on the weekends.

It wasn't enough. I suffocated in the closet you locked us in. I hated telling our mothers that we were close friends or the way we jumped apart when we thought someone would see us. Our love was running on borrowed time. We couldn't keep up the charade forever.

"My dad thinks my mom cheated on him," you whispered one night, your voice so low that I was certain that I imagined it.

I turned around suddenly to face you, not expecting you to divulge the details of your personal life. You bit your lip, guilt coloring your cheeks.

"It's why he calls her all those names. She won't say who he is, but he's been in the house. My dad found his things and now he thinks he can beat and scream the name of this man out of her. I don't get why they can't settle this like normal rational people. It's so embarrassing."

I picked at a mole on my arm, trying to think of something to say. "Do you think he'll stop if she comes clean?"

"I don't know." You buried your head in my neck. "I wish things would go back to normal."

I stroked your hair. "Me too."

There were many days when I yearned for the family I once had. The urge to dig up my father's grave and bring him back to life never did quite go away. But enough time passed and I accepted things as they were, whether or not I wanted to.

He was dead. So were you, but I couldn't bear that yet.

I have a horrible habit of living in the past. I think that's why I spend so many days dreaming of you. To me, we're still back in California kissing under the stars.

I don't think I could be blamed for it. I felt the most alive when I was with you.

To me, you can't be gone. The world doesn't exist without light. And yet I languish in the dark, clinging to the vision of you.

The nightmares turn violent. You hurt me in ways that I'm familiar with. Cuts on my thighs, blows to my head — everything I've given returned tenfold. You claw at my insides, bite off my face, and stab my guts. I'm grateful for the pain, preferring it over the low hum of guilt. The sharp imaginary sensations help me think.

A list of people forms in my head. Who would go as far as murdering you?

I think about everyone we knew. Harry, your resentful ex-boyfriend. Mr. Moore, your volatile father. Evan, my friend turned traitor. Which one was heartless enough to push a knife through your chest and leave your bleeding body in the woods?

I can't stop reading the news reports on your death. No matter how many articles I scroll through, it doesn't make sense. Why did it take them so long to find you? Shouldn't people have been alarmed after the first month of your disappearance?

Chiyo texts me theories, strongly suspecting a senseless killing by a careful serial killer. Young girls go missing every day and she thinks she can find a pattern if she looks hard enough.

I go back to dreaming, holding your cold dead hands.