Don't Forget Me

by Victoria Stevens

  “Forced?”

  “It’s like every time I try and take a photo it ends up looking like something out of a catalog, you know? Like a stock photo of a stock family.”

  Hodgkins gestured at his portfolio with a wry smile. “Yeah, I can see that. They’re not bad photographs, Redleigh, all right? The composition is sound, the quality’s impressive. It’s what they’re showing us that isn’t working. Like you said, they’re not real. What is it that’s holding you back from losing yourself in the moment and letting the photos happen spontaneously? What are you afraid you might capture on film?”

  Everything, Red thought.

  He was afraid that the photographs would show Hodgkins and his class just how fractured and useless his family had become—that they’d convey his mother’s pain, and how broken Luca was. And his father? He wasn’t even around for Red to photograph.

  “Don’t overthink it,” Hodgkins said when Red didn’t answer. “And remember that our families aren’t limited to the people who raised us—sometimes they’re just the people that we care about the most.”

  Red hadn’t looked at it that way—had only considered including photographs of his parents and his brother—but he doubted that would help. Who did he really, truly care about other than them?

  Hodgkins handed his portfolio back. “Stop trying to get the perfect shot and concentrate on getting some authentic ones, okay? Families are complicated and ugly and messy sometimes, Redleigh, and if that’s how you see yours then that’s what I need you to show us. If you can capture that honesty, you’ll be fine.”

  If only it were that easy, Red thought as he shoved his portfolio in his satchel beside his camera and let himself out of the studio.

  * * *

  When Red finally got home from school, his mum was waiting for him in the kitchen with a tray of gingerbread cookies. She looked a little flustered, a smudge of flour on her cheek, her hair spilling out of its usual neat ponytail. Red knew she only baked when she was stressed.

  He cocked an eyebrow and helped himself to a cookie. “Rough day?”

  “You could say that. Luc and I had that meeting with his principal after I dropped you off this morning.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “Not great,” she said with a frown. “Mr. Lynch seems to think your brother would be an excellent candidate for university.”

  “That’s…” Red trailed off, confused. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “It was, until he handed Luca a list of schools that offered track scholarships.”

  Holy shit. “He did what?”

  She sighed. “Exactly. Apparently, he’s been reading Luca’s file. He seems to think Luc should start training again and try for another one.”

  “How did Luc react?”

  “He didn’t, really. But I could tell it upset him.” She shook her head and took a big bite out of her cookie. “I keep waiting for the day when he gets better, you know? When things are different.”

  “They will be, Mum. You know it takes time.”

  “I know,” she said. “I just … I wish there was something I could do. I might talk to the doctor about trying a new medication, maybe one he’ll actually take.”

  “Again?” Red said doubtfully.

  A few months back, the doctors had changed Luca’s medication from Zoloft to mirtazapine. At first, Red had barely noticed the difference in him, but then one evening out of nowhere Luca fell asleep on a chaise longue on the veranda outside. He slept there all night underneath a blanket Claire tucked around him and stayed that way until morning.

  After that, Luca went from barely sleeping to sleeping all the time, and his mood swings disappeared completely. He became steadily more withdrawn and shut off, but it was more than that. It was as if someone had taken the energy and life and Luca out of him and left him empty. On the mirtazapine he was nothing. Red was secretly glad he had stopped taking the pills; he liked having his brother back, no matter how hard it was to watch him suffering.

  “It’s for his own good,” Claire said. She looked completely crushed, like this was her fault. Red wanted to tell her she was wrong, that none of this was anyone’s fault. Sometimes life just fucks you over and leaves you to pick up the pieces.

  He thought back to his conversation with Hodgkins. Maybe this was what he meant about honesty—because this scene right here, seeing his mother surrounded by baked goods with flour on her apron and worry in her eyes, made his fingers itch to reach for his camera and steal a snapshot. Not one of her smiling, or posing, or pretending. One of her being upset, and worried, and raw. Real.

  He reached across the counter instead and covered her hand with his own. “I love you, Mum.”

  “When Luca got home from school, I told him we’d take out another mortgage to pay for college if we had to,” she said quietly. “That he didn’t need to worry about scholarships.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That he’d think about it,” she said, sighing. “I think he just forgets sometimes, you know?”

  “Forgets what?”

  She raised her head to meet his eye. “That he still has a future.”

  11

  Friday night. Two hundred and eighty-eight days. It had been a long, long week and Luca needed to do something to release the anger and frustration that had been building up slowly inside him ever since Monday morning and that ridiculous meeting with his mum and Lynch and all his talk about track scholarships. Like it was that easy for Luca just to pick up where he’d left off last year with his running. Like Luca hadn’t already spent countless nights out on the track by his house trying to force himself to get back into the one thing that used to come as easily to him as breathing. But being on a track made so many memories come flooding back, memories that he still couldn’t deal with. So running wasn’t just hard; it was impossible.

  The urge to beat the crap out of something or someone spread over him like a rash, putting him on edge, making his skin crawl. He had to get out of the house; he had to get away, or he’d explode.

  Luca got onto the first bus that arrived, not caring where it was headed, and rode on it until the light outside the windows had faded to black and they’d pulled up to the final stop in town.

  People stared as he walked past, their eyes following him, halting their conversations midsentence, and he knew exactly what they saw—a young, healthy, wholesome teenage boy. That was why they looked, but it wasn’t why they stared. They stared because they couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on beneath his boy-next-door exterior, but they knew something wasn’t right.

  Eight o’clock. Nine. Ten. He was in a dimly lit bar full of middle-aged men drinking pints of ale and bickering over who got to play darts next. It was shabby, and it was grimy as hell, but it was also perfect. He was invisible. And the bartender hadn’t asked for ID, not caring that Luca was still half a year away from being eighteen.

  Luca couldn’t even stand being in his own house. Redleigh and their mum were constantly on his back, breathing down his neck, suffocating him, and they couldn’t seem to understand why he didn’t like to be around them, not even for dinner. It was their stupid questions. So many stupid questions it drove him insane: Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it? Is there anything I can do to help? On and fucking on.

  That was the one good thing about his dad not being around—his radio silence. Not that his dad would bother asking how he was even if he were home.

  Luca ordered another beer. There was someone watching him as the bartender handed him his change and pushed the bottle across the bar. Luca could feel his eyes on him but didn’t look up, taking a long swig of beer instead. He was about halfway through the bottle when the man from across the bar jumped off his stool and walked by him toward the bathroom, shoving into Luca with his shoulder as he passed.

  “Hey,” Luca said, turning around to face him. “Apologize.”

  The man was huge, with a thick neck and small red-rimmed eyes. “Piss off, y
ou rat,” he said. “Are you even old enough to be in here?”

  Luca glanced down at the bottle in his hand and then back up at the man, his jaw set. “I can handle myself.”

  “Yeah, right. That I’d like to see.”

  “Don’t push me,” Luca said, standing from his own stool. He could feel the anger welling up inside him, white-hot and burning. “You don’t know shit.”

  The man stepped toward Luca. He towered over him like an ugly, meaty giant, but Luca refused to be intimidated, not by this clown. Not by anyone.

  “Language, kid. Mummy wouldn’t approve.”

  Luca clenched and unclenched his jaw, his hands balling up unconsciously into fists by his side. The bartender was watching them closely. “I told you not to push me,” Luca said.

  The man burst out laughing, a low, growling sound that shook his whole body. He laughed and laughed, and it made Luca’s skin crawl, the anger building until he snapped and threw the hardest punch he could muster right at the left side of the guy’s jaw.

  The laughter stopped abruptly, replaced by a sudden, hushed silence. The guy staggered backward, his hand gripping the side of his face tightly. Pain shot through Luca’s arm, but he stifled a grimace—because whatever happened next, he wouldn’t show any weakness.

  “You little shit!” the guy barked, lunging toward him. Luca ducked, narrowly avoiding a flying fist, and straightened up just in time to lay another punch, this time on the guy’s left eye. The man lunged again and his fist collided with Luca’s stomach, winding him, and Luca stumbled backward, his face colliding with the hard surface of the bar. He gasped for breath, unable to stand up. Someone grabbed hold of his collar and yanked him away, dragging him across the room and throwing him out the door. Sprawled on the pavement, Luca looked up and came face-to-face with the bartender.

  “You’re an idiot,” he said. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

  “Sorry,” Luca muttered.

  “Yeah, well. Don’t bother coming back.”

  He slammed the door shut. Luca propped himself up on his elbows and took a deep breath, testing his stinging lungs. He could feel the pain starting to creep in. He got clumsily to his feet, the beer kicking in all at once and fogging up his mind, and followed the wall of the bar into an alleyway. Suddenly, the bar door flew open, throwing bright light across the dark pavement. Luca could hear voices, one of which he recognized—the guy he had punched.

  “I’m gonna find him,” the man promised. “I’m gonna find that little shit, and I’m gonna kill him.”

  Luca froze, inching backward across the wall until he was hidden behind a Dumpster, swallowed by the shadows. Now that the adrenaline had subsided, he felt an unmistakable stab of fear in his stomach.

  “Leave him alone, Phil,” another voice said.

  “Yeah,” someone else agreed. “He’s not worth it. He’s just a kid. He was probably drunk.”

  “What a pussy,” he growled in answer. “I’m bleeding. He made me bleed.”

  “Let’s go back inside and get it cleaned up, then. No point getting angry out here, he’ll be miles away by now. You scared the shit out of him.”

  The man, Phil, hacked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat loudly into the gutter. “True. What a pussy,” he said again, and the door banged shut behind them as they went inside.

  The breath Luca didn’t even know he was holding came out in a rush. He realized he was shaking. A siren wailed in the distance, and Luca had never felt so out of place. Missing home was like that—it came and went in waves and then hit you hard when you least expected it. Shit, he missed Sydney. He still woke up every day wishing he could go back there. That he could reverse time to before.

  He leaned against the wall, resting his head against the rough brickwork, nursing his hand. It was throbbing now, as was the right side of his face from where it had connected with the bar. The minutes ticked by and little by little his breathing and heartbeat slowed down to a steady rhythm, and his mind began to clear. He felt weary and nauseated. Hollow.

  Every time Luca got in a fight, there were a couple of minutes afterward where he felt good, filled with an odd sense of complete calm. It never lasted long, but it was worth it. That’s why he kept coming back for more. The aching, the stinging, the fear, it was all a distraction from the real world and himself.

  The pain was worse now that the adrenaline was gone. Luca inspected the damage. Several knuckles were grazed, blood oozing sluggishly through his skin, and his entire hand was swollen—by morning, it would no doubt be mottled with dark bruises. His face, too. God, Redleigh was going to be so pissed. Luca still remembered how he’d reacted the last time he caught him with bruised fists, so disappointed, so betrayed, so let down. You promised you weren’t going to fight anymore, he’d said. You promised, Luc.

  Luca was so tired of breaking promises. He couldn’t keep on living like this. He didn’t want to keep on living like this.

  He just didn’t know how to stop.

  12

  When Luca walked into the Cawleys’ kitchen on Saturday afternoon, his hair was mussed up from sleep, dark circles were under his eyes, and there was a purple bruise blooming across the right side of his face. He was still wearing his pajamas, despite the fact that it was the middle of the day; he’d obviously had a late night.

  Hazel’s eyes widened at the sight of him. Luca glanced over and caught her staring, and pulled the fridge door open forcefully. Hazel could see that his hand was battered—there were bruises and cuts all along his knuckles, scarlet and swollen and raw.

  “Jesus, Luc,” Red said as he noticed too. “Were you—”

  “Redleigh,” Luca said sharply, a warning. “Don’t.”

  “Are you serious? Has Mum seen you? She’s going to kill you!”

  Luca kicked the fridge shut and stalked out of the room. For a moment, neither Hazel nor Red spoke. Red seemed frozen, staring out the doorway after his brother.

  “Do you think he was in a fight?” she asked eventually, and Red nodded.

  “He’s in trouble,” he said, voice heavy.

  “He’ll be okay,” she assured him, even though she wasn’t convinced that was true. “It was only one fight, Red.”

  He just shook his head. “I wish.”

  * * *

  It took Red a while to perk up after the Luca incident, but Hazel managed to bring him around eventually. The two of them spent the rest of the afternoon out in the garden, playing cards and drinking lemonade. Hazel was the most relaxed she’d felt in a long time, and the realization made her feel sick—that she could sit there and enjoy herself so easily like everything back in England had never happened.

  When Claire found out that Graham would be at the restaurant until closing, she refused to let Hazel go home without having dinner with them. It was the kind of motherly concern Hazel hadn’t had in years, and she found herself fighting back tears as she agreed to stay.

  Red had been right that night on the beach: Claire really was a phenomenal cook. Tonight, the three of them sat around the kitchen table and ate prosciutto-wrapped salmon on a bed of lemongrass-and-chili rice. Like the last time she’d eaten at Red’s, Hazel was reminded how sick she was of takeout.

  After dinner, Hazel said her goodbyes to Red and Claire and headed down the road toward Graham’s house. The sun was just beginning to set, bathing the streets in the soft orange glow of dusk. It was a pretty neighborhood, Hazel thought as she walked. Quiet and peaceful. The houses were all the same: big and angular with slanting roofs and meticulous front gardens. She crossed the street, took another right, and noticed that there was a bright light shining through the trees up ahead. Hazel remembered passing a community sports field with Red on the way to his house that first day—it must be the floodlights from that.

  Curious, she walked in the direction of the lights until she arrived at the open gates of the stadium. She went through and came to a stop at the edge of the illuminated field. It was empty. Except no, wait, ther
e was someone there, tucked away in the farthest corner. Hazel knew it was Luca the second she laid eyes on him; she recognized him by his sandy-blond hair. He was sitting on the grass in the middle of the running track, his legs stretched out, scowling down at the ground.

  Hazel felt a pang of sympathy for him. Red had told her that they’d moved to Port Sheridan because of something that happened to Luca in Sydney, but she didn’t know what. She did know that it had hit Luca really hard—not because of his anger, or the way he pushed everyone away—she knew because sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, his eyes went dark and it was clear that he was remembering. It was the same helpless, hollow look that filled her own eyes when her thoughts turned to home.

  It was that that made her step forward out of the shadows and walk over to him—knowing that deep down, underneath it all, Luca felt the same sort of pain she did.

  “Luca?” she said when she was close enough.

  He started at the sound of her voice but didn’t respond.

  “Luca,” she repeated, this time less tentatively, and he looked up. He didn’t say anything right away, and Hazel didn’t push him. She just waited.

  “I used to be able to do ten laps around a track this size in twelve minutes.”

  “So why can’t you now?”

  “I’m not a runner. Not anymore.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “It doesn’t matter!” he snapped. His eyes flashed with familiar anger and irritation. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Hazel exhaled, trying not to lose her temper at his defensiveness. How could she understand, when everything about him was shrouded in mystery?

  “Look,” she said. “If it’s that important to you, just ask someone for help. That’s how it works, isn’t it? A problem shared is a problem halved?”

  Luca glared up at her. “Who am I supposed to ask?”

  “Anyone! Your brother? Hunter? Maddie? Even I could help, probably.”