Remember This✔

Chapter One

Today

"And just in case you missed it there will never be a more perfect time to declare your presence to the world than the moment it demands it. For we are all called upon when it is our time to shine and not a moment before."

"To live forever-"

"To live forever as we will have our moment forever." Molly closes the book and holds it tightly to her chest. "The end."

"I love that story," Daisy whispers.

"I know," Molly says. "You make me read it to you twice a week."

Daisy smiles and rests her head back onto her pillow. "I almost know it completely. When you leave here, could I have it?"

Molly's grip tightens around the book and she reaches across to turn off Daisy's lampshade on her nightstand. "Goodnight, Daisy."

"Goodnight, Molly."

Molly leaves Daisy's room, the book with her. Daisy is the biological daughter of Molly's new foster parents and since Molly's arrival a few months ago Daisy has managed to break a shell that no one has ever come close to knocking through. Maybe it's because she's a child that Molly is different with her. She doesn't know Molly's past and she doesn't ask about it. Molly likes that.

Molly's foster mother, Pam, is brushing her teeth in the bathroom as Molly walks past it. Their eyes meet for a second before Molly becomes panicked and picks up the pace to her bedroom.

She places the book on her night stand. It was her sister's. She remembers the first time her sister, Savannah, shared it with her and just like Daisy, Molly asked her if she could have it too. Savannah laughed.

"Maybe one day," she said. "This book helps people discover what their lives could become. Once I've figured it out it will be your turn."

It is now her turn. But Molly has no desire to take the words literally. Her moment has gone, it is spread among the wind. If Molly should have had her 'forever moment' then destiny would have redirected it. All that's left is the sound of her sister's laugh when she reads it and the painful acknowledgement that she will never hear it again.

Molly lays in her bed in the dark watching the moon's light spray beams through her window. She has been in the foster system now for three years. In those three years she has laid in beds like this one across twenty different homes. Some houses, some apartments, some cottages, even one mansion. Twenty buildings. Twenty strangers. Twenty reasons for her heart to break a little more.

This is the first foster home she has stayed in for more than four months. She doesn't understand what that means. Did the rest want rid of her but Pam and her husband Daniel don't? Have her social workers finally become tired of having to relocate her across the country?

So many questions pound her head at night. When will she have to move again? Where will she move to? What will happen once she turns eighteen? Will she be discarded, thrown out onto the street? She will receive her inheritance money when that happens but what is the point of buying a house that she can never be happy in?

"Remember this," Savannah said. "We cannot take money with us when we die. We cannot take things or possessions or certificates. The only thing we take with us is our memory. So make the brightest memories, the most wonderful memories, because they'll be all we have to live with forever."

Molly's tears once again dampen another pillow. Her heart once again beats quickly against another mattress. Her silent screams cling to the fabric that she touches. It leaves behind her imprint of sorrow. A sorrow the world has never known.

Savannah would have been strong enough for this. But not her, not Molly. Molly will never be strong enough; and that is what she tells herself as she falls asleep.