Remember Me (On Hold)

vi

vi.

I wake up before my alarm this morning, roll over, and shut it off. I took forever to fall asleep. I kept thinking about that night after that were months that Harry was alive but not really awake. He would still draw in his journal and hang out with me and laugh sometimes and everything, but now, looking back, I know that he did it all automatically like the way you brush your teeth and eat breakfast. You don't really think about; your mind is other places. It's something you do to get ready for something else.

I pull out Harry's journal, and I'm pretty sure that I deserve to, seeing as it's only six forty-five and already a bad day. But when I open it everything just gets worse.

Dear Valerie,

this is a thank you letter. yesterday i carried my camera around with me and just took all these pictures—i saw everything different, everything is cropped into rectangular boxes and my eyes were taking pictures before my camera was. And then i got them developed at the one hour place where this asian cute girl flirted with me and said 'yer photos are really great' and i wasn't just happy and really eager to see them so i just said thanks and i wasn't like 'that was totally illegal for you to just look at my pictures like that'.' and they are really good especially the flower ones and the one of the broken glass and concrete and oh yeah also the one of me reflected in the window of the record store with all the disgusting teen guy singer posters with fake muscles that are way too big for their skinny stick bodies and there i am reflected a real guy with my camera. valerie, because of you my life might actually turn out ok. i'll get wild and travel all over the world and take photos of animals and tribal people and get hired by national geographic and have all of these amazing adventures and wild sex with gorgeous women who speak only some very rare dialect so we'll only communicate with body language and therefore never stay in touch. or i'll give my parents heart attacks and go to some new york art school instead of real college and become famous for my pictures that capture the souls of hookers and heroin addicts and runaway kids who live on sidewalks and sleep on flophouses and when i give my acceptance speech after i win the nobel prize award i will say 'really it all started with you, Valerie Hart. I owe it all to you. And to my beloved Arabella Quintton because without you I wouldn't be standing here saying these speech that I hope make sense'. And you'll be laughing and teary and proud.

love,

harry

•••

Obviously, I skip photo this morning.

I sit on the path behind the apartments, pathetically alone, and wait for 8:50 to come. I turn my back to the buildings and look at the hill and the trees. I start to count the trees. Then, without really realizing it, I start to think of one thing I did wrong for each tree. I look at Wide oak—I didn't tell anyone when Harry cut himself, Baby oak—the time I told him I was getting sick of hearing about Nigel's arms and his grey shirt, Tall tree with bare branches—the way I would leave when he got depressed and stopped talking; I should have stayed, I should have just sat quietly, so that he knew I was with him, Pine tree—the afternoon I lied and said that I didn't feel like hanging out with him every single day, when really I just didn't want to steal nail polish from Macy's because I feel shitty the one time we did it. I could tell he was about to cry, even though he turned around and left. That was the day he got caught with eyeliner and hair dye stuffed in his backpack. I pick out a smaller pine for not being there to get caught with him. Then I look out to where there's this huge group of trees in the distance, and I count those for all the times I called him some name, or told him he was being a fucked up—because even though I was always joking, it might have hurt.