The "Forget You" Brew

I.

The memory jar broke against the pavement. 

Kyle could only watch in horror as the jar's contents—translucent liquid that frequently switched colors from white to pink, then red—escaped its now-shattered container as bubbles. 

"Oh no . . . ," someone murmured behind him.

He got up from the pavement, fixated at the visions the bubbles showed, each one holding a memory of Allison's.A memory Allison had of him.

And just as quickly as each vision presented itself, the bubbles vanished into thin air. Kyle's heart dropped to the pits of his stomach.

Allison—the girl he loved, the girl he never realized loved him in return—had chosen to forget him. And the memories he'd worked hard to retrieve, the memories he'd wanted to return to her were gone forever. 

. . . . .

Eight hours ago. 

College senior Kyle Thomson must have uttered the words "Have you seen Allison?" about a hundred times that evening before someone had been able to tell him anything helpful. 

"I think I saw her running toward the botanical garden earlier" was helpful, but it made Kyle wonder why she'd want to go there when they'd agreed to enjoy the annual Aspen City College pep rally bonfire together. He'd already spotted her at the bleachers about an hour earlier, but she was speaking with her ex-boyfriend, Gregory, and Kyle didn't want to stay for that. 

"She looked like she'd been crying over something" was another piece of information from the same source, but that didn't sound encouraging. Did that asshole Gregory make her cry again? Shit. 

He brisk-walked to the garden, mobile phone pressed to his ear and waiting for Allison to pick up. The burning glow of the bonfire from the football field was still visible from the entrance, but it did nothing to make the woodsy part of campus less eerie. And when Allison didn't answer his calls, Kyle decided to use his phone flashlight instead to illuminate the path he took.

"Allison?" he called out as he navigated the area cautiously. "Allie, are you here?" 

Leaves and twigs cracked beneath his feet until he stopped in front of thick foliage that intrigued him. It was already about ten in the evening, but there seemed to be very faint yellow light coming from behind it. For a moment, he'd forgotten what he came here for and wondered if this was a secret passageway to somewhere that only the university's botany geeks knew of. 

Convinced Allison had found this too, he reached through the foliage and poked his head in. 

The next thing he knew, he was standing in the middle of a cement road, in what looked like an abandoned old town that somehow reminded him of the neighborhood he grew up in. Strangely, even as the place didn't look lived in, it didn't give him the creeps. 

Even stranger was that it looked as if it was only midday in this . . . place, wherever this was.Surely, he was only imagining things. He had a few beers at the bonfire, after all. (But if he was hallucinating this badly, did that mean someone spiked his drinks with something stronger? Like some kind of drug, maybe?) 

Kyle raised his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes.He didn't at all feel drunk or dizzy. 

So is this—a dream? 

He closed his eyes, took a long, deep breath and realized he was standing in the exact same spot when he opened his eyes again. 

Where am I? 

A cool breeze coasted right by him, tousling his unruly head of blond hair and directing his gaze to something in the distance. In the horizon, he saw a swarm of paper planes take off and disappear into the blue sky.