Remember Me (On Hold)

SUMMER

SUMMER

I watch drops of water fall from the ends of my hair. They streak down my towel, puddle on the sofa cushion. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my ears.

“Sweetie. Listen.”

Mom says Harry’s name and I start to hum, not the melody to a song, just one drawn-out note. I know it makes me seem crazy, I know it won’t make anything change, but it’s better than crying, it’s better than screaming, it’s better than listening to what they’re telling me.

Something is smashing my chest – an anchor, gravity. Soon I’ll cave in on myself. I stumble upstairs and yank on the jeans and shirt I wore yesterday. Then I’m out the door, up the street, around the corner to the bus stop. Dad calls my name but I don’t shout back. Instead, I step onto the bus and ride away, through Los Cerros and through the next town, until I’m on an unfamiliar street, and that’s where I get off. I sit on the bench at the bus stop, try to slow my breathing. The light here is different, bluer. A smiling mom with a baby in a stroller glides past me. A tree branch moves in the breeze. I try to be light as air.

But my hands are wild; they need to move, so I pick at a piece of the bench where the wood is splintering. I break a short nail on my right hand even shorter, but I manage to pull off a small piece of wood. I drop it into my cupped palm and pry off another.

All last night, I listened to recording of my voice reciting biology facts on repeat. It plays back in my mind now, a sound track for catastrophe, and drowns everything out. If a green-eyed man and green-eyed woman have a child, the child will probably have green eyes. But if both the father and the mother have a gene for brown eyes, it’s possible that their child could have brown eyes.

An old woman in reindeer cardigan sits next to me. My hand is now half full of wooden strips. I feel him watching but I can’t stop. I want to say, What are you staring at? It’s hot, it’s June, and you’re wearing Christmas sweater.

“Do you need help, darling?” the old woman asks. Her hair is wispy and white.

Without looking from the bench, I shake my head. No.

She takes a cell phone from his pocket. “Would you like to use my phone?”

My heart beats off rhythm and it makes me cough.

“May I call your mother?”

Harry has brown hair. He has green eyes, which means that even though his parent’s eyes are brown, he must have a recessive green-eye gene.

A bus nears. The old woman stands, wavers.

“Darling,” she says.

She lifts his hands as if she’s going to pat my shoulder, but changes her mind.

My left hand is all the way full of wood now, and it’s starting to spill over. I am not a darling. I am girl ready to explode into nothing.

The old woman backs away, boards the bus, and vanishes from sight.

The cars pass in front of me. One blur of colour after another. Sometimes they stop at the light or for someone to cross the street, but they always go away eventually. I think I’ll live here, stay like this forever, pick away the bench until its pile of splinters on the sidewalk. Forget what it feels like to care about anyone.

A bus rolls up but I wave past it. A few minutes later, two little girls peer at me from the backseat of a red car – one is blond and tan; one is brunette, fair. Colored barrettes decorate their hair. It isn’t impossible that they’re sisters, but it’s unlikely. Their heads tilt to see me better. They stare hard. When the lights changes to green, they reach their small hands out the rolled-down window and wave so hard and fast that it looks like birds have bloomed from their wrists.