Page 11 of Forget Me Not
I swallow, taking in the first and only picture I’ve ever seen of my sister and Jeffrey together, although despite the fact she kept their relationship hidden, I had an inkling that summer that she was seeing someone. Little clues I picked up on when I was alone in her bedroom: the smell of boy on her sweater, sandalwood and sweat, when I slipped it over my head. The spray of small flowers I once found crushed in the pocket, bursts of blue petals with yellow suns in the center. Stems tied together like a daisy chain.
I move the picture to the back, eager to hide it, because the rest of these memories seem to be good ones. I don’t want the presence of Jeffrey to taint them all.
“Look at this one,” I say instead, the picture on top of Natalie and me now, the two of us perched on the edge of a gnarled wood fence. There’s a stretch of placid water sparkling in the background, strings of Spanish moss framing the shot. “I think this is from when she worked at that vineyard.”
My mom turns toward the photo, her expression hardening into something I can’t quite read.
“Do you remember?” I nudge, noticing the rows of vines stretching into the distance, a little blue bucket gripped tight in my hand. “In the beginning of that summer? Picking grapes?”
I smile now, the memory of the moment coursing through me.
“She was so embarrassed when we showed up,” I continue. Thinking of how we decided to surprise her that day—Mom, Dad, and me—their clunky old station wagon trundling down that clay dirt road. The place was on an island, I remember; a quaint and quiet little corner of the South with a smattering of small houses and a single-pump gas station. One lonely restaurant with rocking chairs creaking on an old wooden porch. It was the only area around here that hadn’t yet been touched by the development taking over the neighboring towns and I remember that drive feeling like we were gliding into a different world, a different life.
That was also the last good day we’d all spend together before our parents told us about their divorce.
I close my mouth and look up at my mother, a bleak comprehension squeezing my chest as the stiffness in her expression suddenly makes sense. She must be thinking it, too. The way things changed right after this. The fact that Natalie quit that job shortly after our visit, a rebellion spurred on by their separation devouring everything good in our lives.
“What was that place called again?” I ask, picking up another picture as I try to break through the mounting silence, still not ready to put these away.
“Galloway Farm,” she says, a quiet sadness seeping into her voice.
I look down at the photo, this one of us standing in a grassy aisle. Wild vines on either side of our bodies and smears of smashed grapes staining the soles of our shoes.
“Is it still there?”
“I assume so,” she responds. “I still see their stuff at the grocery store.”
I flip to the last picture, this time one of my sister alone. She has a grape shoved up her nose and she’s making a face, crossing her eyes, the kind of goofy demeanor I forgot she even had. There are a few other people in the background of this one—other workers, I assume—but I blur them out, her presence alone overpowering them all. The image is overexposed, giving her skin a ghostly glow, but she still looks so alive, more alive than I’ve ever remembered her, and like with that sunset as I drove in, the warm nostalgia that surged its way through me, the sight of her like this reminds me that this place wasn’t always so bad. That there were happy moments, too, before life bared its teeth, and I wish we could go back to this moment, this day.
I wish I could erase what came next and stop time right here, freeze it in place before she could get hurt.
“So, about that pizza,” my mom says, jerking me from the memory, and I turn just in time to watch her down the rest of her wine, reaching for the bottle to pour herself more. “Do you know of anywhere good?”
CHAPTER 7
Sleep does not come easily here.
I spend the first few hours lying rigid in bed, eyes wide in the dark, the sour taste of wine on my tongue and a tinny ringing deep in my ears.
I forgot how quiet this place is. How much I’ve relied on the city’s white noise to drown out my thoughts, my own bodily sounds, so instead, I listen to the ringing, to the way it grows louder as the minutes stretch on. The silence around me so heavy and charged it feels like a physical thing, thick and meaty. My mind on the countless other nights I used to do just this.
I stare at the ceiling, the childhood canopy suspended above me like an intricate web, sticky and strong, before I flip to the side, next training my eyes on the wall that Natalie and I shared. After venturing into her bedroom earlier, trailing my fingers across the cold sheets, I’m now painfully aware of how empty her bed is, the absence of her body tucked safely inside radiating like an echo in a barren room.
I squeeze my lids shut, listening in the same way I listened before. Still desperate to hear all those same sounds: her breath low and slow like she was hiding something or the quiet flick of the pages when she read herself to sleep, the scrape of her furniture on the nights she stayed awake.
I drift off eventually, sometime past two, a restless dip out of consciousness until I twitch and find myself in the bathroom down the hall. It’s pitch-black except for the glow of the moon through the sole window by the sink; the tile cold on my feet and the vanity mirror luminescent in the dark. I don’t know what I’m doing in here, I can’t even remember the walk from my room, but I stare at my reflection until slowly, like a ripple traveling through water, I see Natalie’s face instead of my own.
I bunch my forehead, tilting my head to the left, to the right. Observing as my sister does the same. Her neck is long and lean like a porcelain swan’s; her skin wraith-pale like a smudge on the mirror. Then I start to reach out and that’s when something new happens, something strange. Her lips begin to shudder into a smirk and I look down at my palms, vaguely aware of a pillowcase clutched tight in my fingers. Little frills on the edges, the exact same one from my childhood bed. I don’t remember bringing it in here, I have no idea why I did, but when I look back at the mirror, Natalie is holding it, too, and I watch as she lifts it higher, placing it snugly over her head. My hands and her hands pulling it tight from the back, the fabric now flush against her face. I can’t see anything anymore, all I can see is black black black, but I can imagine the indents of her eyes, the dip of her mouth as she tries to inhale. The cloth of the pillowcase making it impossible to breathe.
Now she’s choking, and I’m choking, ragged little gulps like I’m underwater, my lungs on fire. My entire body begging for air.
I come to with a gasp, my hands grabbing madly at my own face. I’m still in bed, dripping in sweat, my mind stuck in that same dreamagain—but there really is something covering my mouth, some kind of gossamer fabric stuffed in like a gag, and when I finally grip it and pull it away I realize it’s the canopy, mosquito netting covering my face like a cobweb. It must have fallen somehow. I must have rolled over the fabric in my sleep, pulling at the old hook on the ceiling until it gave out after two decades of neglect.
I exhale, breathing deeply, relief flooding my lungs as my hand instinctively reaches for my heart. The entire thing is draped across my body, a gauzy sarcophagus trapping me inside, and I rip the mesh from my chest. Throwing it into a wad on the floor before glancing at my phone resting on the table.
It’s just past six.
I got barely four hours of sleep, but I know I won’t be getting any more after that, so I decide to get up, peeling myself from the mattress before making my way into the hall in the dark. The house is silent, my mom’s still asleep, though I notice her bedroom door is open because she’s been staying in the guest room downstairs, her leg making it impossible to walk up the steps. Still, I keep the lights off as I descend to the first floor before turning into the kitchen.
