Keep Me in Mind

by Jaime Reed

  Looking down at the black screen of my phone, I made the decision to break the ice and finally talk to him. We hadn’t spoken since I was released from the hospital a week ago and by now he probably thought I was avoiding him, which was only half true.

  The past month had been an adjustment to say the least, integrating who I used to be into who I was now and relying on photographs and secondhand accounts to fill in the rest. One of those accounts happened to be the sweaty boy now doing jumping jacks across the street.

  I pulled on a sweatshirt then crept out of my room with my sneakers dangling in my hand. I went full ninja, tiptoeing past Mom and Dad’s room, skirting around creaking floorboards, slinking down the stairs, and slowly unlocking the dead bolt on the front door. Only when I was safely outside and felt the cool morning air on my face did I finally let out the breath I’d been holding. My folks had canine hearing and hawk vision when it came to me these days, so one wrong step and it was a wrap.

  I was on the porch steps, sliding on my shoes, when he finally spotted me. He made a move to come forward, but I communicated through hand signals that I would go to him. Looking left to right for witnesses, I dashed across the street and jumped onto the sidewalk with only a square of concrete between our feet. The silence that followed was immense.

  Seeing him face-to-face, outside of the world of tubes and beeping monitors, was a bit surreal. When you’re lying down or in a reclined position on a bed, everyone’s taller than you. Now that I was vertical, my head just barely reached his shoulders—and I was five foot seven. I’d clock him in at about six two, and he maybe weighed a buck fifty. He was slim, but shredded with muscle, probably from all the running.

  The overall framework looked even better up close, but it wasn’t the first thing you’d notice about him. The square jaw, the faint cleft in his chin—they were the supporting cast to the star attraction. Those blue eyes invited you to stay and linger for a while. Inside those eyes was a cloudless sky or a still lake, a serene and quiet place to daydream.

  He broke the awkward moment with a whisper. “Ellia.”

  I tipped my head in a slight bow. “Liam.”

  “You’re up early.”

  “Yeah, I’m usually up at this hour. No matter how late I go to bed, my eyes will just pop open around five, like clockwork. No idea why.”

  He nodded thoughtfully as his gaze lifted to a spot just over my left temple. “How’s your head?”

  My hand shot up and touched the gauzy material wrapped around my head in a turban. Part of that area had been shaved bald to make room for the Frankenstein stitches that ran from the crown to the corner of my left eyebrow. It itched like crazy, but it was either walk around with a medical do-rag or try to figure out how to style three-fourths of my hair. As it was, I barely had strength to shower.

  “It’s fine. I’m fine.” I kept my eyes busy with random points of noninterest. The telephone wires overhead. The parked cars that lined the curb in both directions. The slope of the street that plunged past the vanishing point and met the ocean at the bottom of the hill. His sweaty T-shirt with the arms cut off and the words LEÓN HIGH SCHOOL TRACK AND FIELD on the front in bold varsity font.

  That actually explained a lot.

  He dipped his head until his face was in my line of sight, his voice soft and full of concern. “You still getting those headaches?”

  “Yeah. I got a big one right now—that’s why I’m out here. I need your help with something,” I said, all too ready to change the subject. “How are your hacking skills?”

  His thick eyebrows rose, clearly not expecting that question. “Um … nonexistent. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, you said we were close, right?” I began speaking quickly, feeling uncomfortable. “You seem to know a lot of stuff about me. I was just wondering if you could help me unlock my phone. I’ve been trying for a week and I can’t figure out the code. It’s six characters and no one in my house knows it and I didn’t write it down anywhere, because why would I? And what’s worse is the list to all my other codes, like the user account on my laptop, are stored inside my phone as backup and I don’t have a backup for the backup, so … ”

  He stared blank-faced at me.

  I pushed out a long breath, my shoulder slumping in defeat. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

  I turned and walked away, my phone in hand. All my contact numbers, pictures, and possible clues of my missing life hid inside an overpriced piece of plastic. It could be the meds talking, but being at home for a week without electronic stimuli was causing physical withdrawal. I felt naked. My thumbs were now unemployed. Texts and voice mails were trapped in limbo while cobwebs collected around my last status update.

  There was nothing else I could do—the life I knew and what I tried to know were gone. My only hope was not to trip and do a face-plant on the pavement in my rush to flee the scene. That would be a really messed-up streak of karma.

  His voice stopped me in the middle of the street. “Vivian.”

  I turned back to him. “What?”

  He stared off to the trees, looking pensive. “You wouldn’t use numbers unless you had to. You’d want something simple, something not many people would know about. A name. V-I-V-I-A-N. Six letters. That should work.”

  He had a point and I was blown away by his observation. I was terrible with numerals and all my passwords in the past were an inside joke. Which brought me to my next question. “Who’s Vivian?”

  He dismissed the inquiry with a small shake of the head. “Just try it.”

  My thumbs flew over the keypad, and, with a musical chime, the home screen lit up with icons.

  “Oh my god! It worked. Thank you!” I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him tight. I could tell the gesture surprised him, but eventually he hugged back. As soon as I pulled away, I was nose-deep in my phone, sifting through apps and checking for Internet access. “How did you know that?”

  “Lucky guess. At least this explains why you never called me,” he said.

  I lifted my head and met his steady gaze. “Uh, yeah. Sorry. I just have a lot going on right now and … whatever this is with us, I just don’t know.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced down at his sneakers. “No, it’s cool. I’m glad to know you’re okay.”

  “I am. I just need to take this all in,” I said, for lack of a better response.

  This was the other half of what I wanted to avoid—the expectation, the longing, the hope for everything to go back to normal, to feel things that were once there. It was one thing to wake up from a three-day coma having no memory of the past two years of my life. It was another thing to have a tearstained boy hovering over my bed, calling me “babe” and declaring his undying love and devotion.

  I suspected my response was no different from what most people would have said in that situation. And at the time, I had no clue the devastation three little words could cause. “Who are you?”

  * * *

  “Ellia, it’s me, Liam,” he’d said, leaning over my hospital bed, his blue eyes wide. “Your boyfriend.”

  The doctors told me that I was missing part of my memory, but this? I’d never seen this dude a day in my life. I was already in a bad mood, and having him roll up to my hospital room while I was trying to sleep had me ready to fight.

  I shook my head at him, unsure if he was lying or just crazy. “How can you be my boyfriend?” I asked, my voice hoarse. “Do we go to the same school? You don’t look like a freshman.”

  “That’s because we’re juniors. You don’t remember meeting me?” He’d reached across the bed for my hand, but I pulled it away. For a stranger, he was getting way too familiar, and I was tempted to call the nurse. He seemed harmless enough, but my internal panic button stayed locked in case some foolery was about to jump off.

  “I’m not a junior,” I’d argued. “I just started high school. Look, I think you got the wrong hospital room. You can’t really see my face with all the
bandages, but I don’t think I’m the person you’re looking for.”

  His expression was one of disbelief and worry as he drew away from the bed. “Yeah, you are.”

  That look on his face was haunting, like someone had died. I was embarrassed for him. And then I was embarrassed for freaking out the way I did. Then when I later found out from a friend that he was telling the truth, I could only imagine how embarrassed he felt for putting his heart out on the line like that. It was all one big ten-car pileup of mortification. Meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, Do my folks know I dated a white guy?

  * * *

  So yeah, I’d been dragging my feet on this little reunion. I couldn’t be responsible for destroying something that beautiful.

  “Listen, I’m gonna run for a bit then get ready for school. You wanna come with?” Liam asked as the silence began to choke us both.

  I cut my eyes at him. “Sorry, but aside from zombies, flying bullets, and wild dogs, there’s no legit reason for anyone to run voluntarily.” The comment won me a grin that animated his entire face.

  He took a step back and then another. “You underestimate yourself. You’d be surprised what you can do.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  He turned in the middle of the street then began to walk backward. “You’re into fashion and you like to sew. You’re always making up weird outfits and dressing up that creepy mannequin in your room.”

  I laughed at the thought of my ridiculous room, which I hadn’t recognized when I came home from the hospital. I apparently now owned an old sewing machine and there were folded scraps of fabric piled on my desk. Hundreds of glossy magazine pages doubled as wallpaper and there was a life-size mannequin by the closet wearing nothing but an eye patch and a hot-pink feather boa. That dummy scared me every time I got up to use the bathroom. Yeah, that thing definitely had to go.

  “Anything else I should know?” I called after him.

  “The pictures on your phone should help fill in some of the blanks for you,” he said. “By the way, the mannequin—her name’s Vivian.” He spun around, broke into a jog, and disappeared down the hill, leaving me with a fresh batch of confusion.

  I should’ve been used to it by now, but more bizarre occurrences kept showing up every day, much like the boyfriend I couldn’t remember. Liam. Weird, gorgeous, cardio-junkie Liam. The most confusing thing of all was that on some subconscious level I looked forward to seeing him tomorrow. Same time. Same place.

  I wasn’t breaking any new ground by saying I hated high school. The hours were ridiculous, the work was tedious, and there was no reward save the hope of early release.

  The learning part, however, I actually liked. I excelled at storing up useless information. I also found twisted delight in observing the student body. It was better than any nature show and taught me more about human behavior than whatever weird medical trivia my mom threw my way. I’d always been more of a spectator than a participant, a wallflower soaking up the atmosphere and gathering material for a future story. Everything made for a future story.

  This morning, I parked my car in the school lot, bracing myself. Ever since the accident, my day couldn’t start without getting harassed by the Ellia supporters: friends, classmates, frenemies, haters, girls who wanted to be her, and guys who wanted to date her. I’d barely climbed out of my car when I was greeted by one of her biggest fans.

  Kendra Bailey was Ellia’s replacement on the dance team. Just under five feet, this brown-skinned windup doll usually said the first thing that came to her mind with no censoring capacity or off switch. For that reason, I fumbled with my backpack hanging off my shoulder and pretended to look busy.

  My front pouch was covered with buttons, mostly concert souvenirs, except for the big black button in the center that read TALK NERDY TO ME. Ellia had given it to me as a joke. But the zing that zapped my fingers when I touched it wasn’t funny. It could be just static electricity coming off the metal, but it felt like an ominous prelude to another craptastic day.

  “Hey, Liam,” Kendra said, and kept pace with me as I walked.

  I reluctantly looked up from my backpack. That one glance was all the prompting she needed before jumping right into her long-winded monologue.

  “So this whole Ellia thing’s got me trippin’ about life and how short it is, ’cause there’s no guarantee that we’ll live long enough to get old. I mean, just last week, a guy cut me off on the freeway and I could’ve died and I was thinking, The last thing I told my dad was I need twenty bucks for gas. The lamest final words you can tell someone you love, and now I’m trying to make every word count for something, just in case my number’s up.” She twirled the ends of her hair as she looked up at me for feedback.

  My response was a sideways glance that I hoped conveyed the full measure of my disinterest.

  The drama seekers at school all wanted me to perform, to play the role of the grief-stricken widower without having had any of the perks of a real marriage. They’d watch me in class or in the halls, waiting for some emotional outburst they could sigh or coo over. I wasn’t that guy, and, more to the point—of which I had to remind everyone, including Kendra—Ellia wasn’t dead.

  “I know she’s alive, fool, but it really makes you think,” Kendra replied with a smarmy expression. “I just chatted with her that night—I told you that part, didn’t I?”

  “A few times.” I kept walking through the grid of old vehicles riddled with bumper stickers and Hawaiian-print seat covers. Oddly enough, most of these cars belonged to the faculty.

  Kendra’s short legs kept my pace with hurried strides. “But it’s trippy though, right? To think the last thing I told Ellia was ‘see ya at school.’ So generic. It’s like something you write in a yearbook to someone you don’t know that well.”

  This could go on for weeks if I didn’t put my foot down. “Kendra, do you waste time thinking of what your life was like inside the womb? No, because it doesn’t matter anymore. You can’t go back there and too many unknowns lay ahead of you to even care. After you die, the last thing you said or did won’t matter for the same reason, so stop stressing.”

  Kendra threw up her hands. “See? That’s what I’m saying! You can make the simplest stuff sound deep.”

  “Um, thanks.” I tried my best not to roll my eyes, then left her to her existential crisis.

  I followed the masses under a wide, flat, roof canopy as they migrated toward the main building. Backpacks bounced in stride with the power walk of the punctual. Car keys dangled from hands, a status symbol of maturity, the freedom to leave at any time. Rushing feet trampled the burgundy floor mat at the entrance, the words HOME OF THE CONQUISTADORS faded under dirt and tread.

  It all had a flow, like marching ants or blood vessels channeling through valves and passageways. The major clog in this circulatory system was the presence of the not-quite-popular girls, who traveled in packs and were known to do a lot of giggling whenever a boy walked by.

  “Hi, Liam.” Four girls greeted me in a strange musical chorus. I couldn’t tell if they were freshmen or upperclassmen. They all seemed similar to me—the same messy braided hair and tight jeans, the same inflection in their voices that made everything sound like a question, the same duck-face pose for every bathroom selfie.

  I waved and kept walking. I didn’t want to invite more conversation that I wasn’t awake enough to endure. I’d caught a three-hour nap last night and the energy drink I chugged down after my run was a liquid placebo.

  I turned onto another hallway and, as practiced, averted my gaze from anything wall-related, from the bulletin board to the happy-cutesy couples who made out in front of it. Every square inch of León High School seemed to be a memorial in her honor, a kind of Graceland where visitors could relive the Ellia Dawson experience for themselves. There was the display case by the main office where her achievements were preserved behind glass. Assistant captain of the dance team. Chief organizer for student council. Costume ma
nager for drama club. Editor of the social column of the student newspaper.

  My girl was everywhere, so getting over her was not a realistic goal. The most depressing artifact in this museum, the part that choked me up every time, was walking past her locker. All of her stuff had been cleared out. The stickers were scraped off, but the gummy adhesive left tacky gray smudges on the tan door, like phantom fingerprints on a window. No one had been assigned to it yet.

  “Liam!” called a voice from behind me, followed by a hard punch on my shoulder.

  I turned and saw Wade McPherson wearing an angry frown on his face.

  Wade was on the track team, too, but he was by far one of the slowest people on and off the field. He had the rugged, muscle-bound jock image down pat, whereas I was more on the skinny side.

  I rubbed my sore arm. “What was that for?”

  “You took off without me,” he complained. “You were supposed to wait for me this morning and you left before I got out of the shower. I had to take the bus. The bus, Liam!”

  “Well, that ought to teach you to wake up on time. I’m not going to be late for school on behalf of your vampiric sleep schedule.”

  “We all can’t get up at oh-dark-hundred to run like you do. Some people actually have lives,” he said, reviving the argument we’d had countless mornings before.

  Wade lived with us three weeks out of the month. This way, he wouldn’t have to be uprooted again while his mom worked in Chicago at a PR firm, or however gold diggers kept busy between husbands. I had a hard time explaining exactly who Wade was to new people, despite having the same last name being a dead giveaway. If you squinted hard enough, you could see the family resemblance.

  “You better show up on time after school or else you’re going to get left again,” I said as we climbed the steps to the second floor. The top floor was for seniors and AP students only, but Wade remained stuck at my peripheral. His shaggy brown hair and the peach fuzz on his chin hid under a maroon hoodie that he’d worn every day for the past two months. Since the breakup with his online girlfriend, he’d been in full mourning without all the black.