Page 14 of I Always Will

As such, Hailey had gotten used to going by the school, she’d gotten used to the memories of Alexandria that it held, and she’d gotten used to being able to remember them and move on with her day. Even if one oftheir songshad been playing on her headphones as she passed by. It had taken a while, but she’d done it.

When she’d first started university, she hadn’t gone far from home but it was far enough that she didn’t come by Sheridan very often. As such, when she was in the area, every sighting felt like a punch to the gut. Every movement was Alexandria coming out of the bushes at her. Every turn was the hope Alexandria would be there and the terror of going through their goodbye again.

Now, seventeen years on, it was easier to pass by. Hailey no longer expected her to be there because she never was.

Until this morning.

Kind of.

Hailey had made it through most of her run before reaching the school. She was hungry, exhausted, and drenched to the bone in the ice-cold rain that had been coming down in buckets earlier in her run. While she ran, it was nice, refreshing, but there was no stopping for a break because the minute she stopped, she knew the sensations that came with wet trainers and socks and leggings pasted to her thighs would take over and she’d want to rip her own skin off. So, for a great many reasons—not least of which was the coffee and croissants waiting for her at home—she was eager to finish the last mile and a half of her run.

She had rounded the corner onto Upper Hill Road, Sheridan Secondary School taking up the majority of one side of the street and a row of terraced houses on the other, as she was dreaming of a warm shower followed by a flakey croissant. Ordinarily, the only people she passed at this hour on a Sunday morning were those out walking their dogs. They paid her no mind so she didn’t look at them twice.

Today, however, she noticed a person standing at the school gates. The gates were locked, of course, and the move would not have been that odd had the person in question been walking a dog. Hailey had seen plenty of people pause mid-walk while their dogs had a good sniff around.

The person by the gates had no dog in sight. No lead. No dog. No nothing. Just them and a fixated stare.

Hailey’s initial thought was that something was wrong with them and she was wondering whether she should stop to offer assistance. However, as she ran closer, she realised who the person looked like.

She hadn’t seen Alexandria in years. She shouldn’t even know what the woman looked like at this point, but, in a few moments of weakness over the years, she had looked Alexandria up on social media. She posted almost nothing, especially nothing too personal, but there were enough posts and pictures for Hailey to know exactly what she looked like.

And there she was. At the gates to Sheridan. Just like in the old days.

Hailey refused to stop running. She crossed to the other side of the road, determined to shoot up a street she knew ran parallel to Upper Hill.

It wasn’t like Alexandria was really there. She didn’t come here. Hailey hadn’t seen her in forever. And, even if she was back in Newell, she wouldn’t be standing at their old school gates at the crack of dawn on a Sunday. That didn’t make any sense and wouldn’t fit Alexandria at all. She was all about logic and order. That hadn’t changed. Social media couldn’t tell Hailey much about Alexandria’s life, but it could tell her that Alexandria worked in statistics for the government. Of course. It was so her that an already-emotional Hailey had almost cried when she’d found that out.

She stayed off social media for a few days after that.

But the point remained that Alexandria wasn’t here. She was off in the big city, living her big life, and she was not brooding at Sheridan on a Sunday. Hailey was just hungry and hallucinating. She hoped she wasn’t getting sick from running in the cold rain. That was a much more likely scenario than the idea of Alexandria Daley being here.

She shot up the adjacent street and rounded onto the one running parallel to Upper Hill. She half expected the spectre of Alexandria to pop up in front of her again. It was like being back from uni for the first time—that fear she was about to jump out and accost Hailey. But, she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, keeping her pace, steadying her breathing, and making it home.

Nothing she did or thought about could shake the fear that Alexandria was about to jump out at her until she locked the door to her house, shutting the outside world away.

She walked through her house, stripping off her wet clothes and dropping them on the floor of the hallway as she went. She would pick them up once she’d eaten something.

By the time she was in the kitchen, she was down to her underwear and grabbing at the packet of croissants she had on the kitchen counter. She had been planning to warm them up before eating, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and hallucinating seeing Alexandria Daley outside their secondary school was definitely a sign of desperate times.

She wolfed the croissant down and breathed a sigh of relief. Her body felt a little better for eating. Her mind still whirled and the nervous clenching in her gut didn’t go away, but at least she wasn’t likely to pass out from pushing herself too hard. She could pick up her clothes, throw them into the washer, take her shower, and have the rest of her breakfast as planned. And then she could forget all about visions of Alexandria, go to work, hear all about Esme’s dinner with the future in-laws, and have a perfectly lovely Sunday.

Or, she could do what she actually did, which involved showering whilst thinking about Alexandria, eating breakfast whilst repeatedly checking her own pulse, and heading into work wondering over and over again why her brain decided to imagine Alexandria today.

It wasn’t like she didn’t think of her often. The moments were less frequent than they had once been, but Alexandria was still part of her. The dreams were significantly less frequent, but they, too, still happened. But, even in the height of missing her, in the aftermath of deciding to go their separate ways and never see each other again, she’d never gotten to the point of hallucinating her anywhere. Until now.

Why?

As Esme regaled her with tales from last night, part of Hailey’s brain set about convincing the rest of it that she must have had a dream that featured Alexandria last night, and the unique combination of hunger, exhaustion, the cold rain, the location, and that pining, melancholy piece of her heart that couldn’t let Alexandria go had given her that most unwelcome vision.

Or, it could be that Alexandria was really there. In Newell.

Because she was here.

At Mash-N-Go.

In the flesh.

“Here they are now,” Esme cheered, bouncing up and down. She moved from behind the tills to go towards the door to greet Alexandria and a man Hailey didn’t recognise.

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