Don't Forget Me

by Victoria Stevens

  “Okay,” she said as he stretched out his hamstrings, “How’s this? If you get under thirteen minutes and fifteen seconds tonight, I’ll buy you a muffin from the cafeteria for breakfast tomorrow.”

  “Is that bribery?”

  “It’s incentive,” she corrected. “Blueberry or double chocolate?”

  “Always blueberry.”

  “Come on then,” she said, nudging him in the shoulder. “Show me how it’s done.”

  Luca grinned at her and climbed to his feet, gathering himself ready to start. Hazel counted him in like always, and then he was off, running around and around the track. He was making great time and was well on target to beat his last session when, halfway through his eighth lap, he lost his footing and stumbled. He gave a yelp of pain and tumbled to the ground, hands clutching at his ankle.

  “Oh my God,” Hazel said, breaking into a run. She didn’t slow down until she was beside him in the middle of the field. “Luca? Are you okay?”

  “Peachy,” he said through gritted teeth.

  She crouched down beside him on the grass. “What happened?”

  “I twisted it, I think. I just … I was running, and I just felt it go.”

  “How much does it hurt?”

  Luca moved his foot slightly and winced. “Not too much,” he said.

  Hazel frowned at him. “Don’t be a martyr. Let me have a look.”

  “I don’t know if that’s—”

  “I’ll be gentle,” she promised, and knocked his hands out of the way.

  She began carefully unlacing his shoe, making sure not to touch his ankle, and when the sneaker was loose enough, she eased it off his foot and set it down on the ground beside her.

  “It looks a bit inflamed,” she said absently, running a fingertip across the slight swelling. When he didn’t answer, she glanced up at him.

  He was leaning back on his elbows, watching her closely with an unreadable expression. Their eyes met. Hazel became acutely aware of the way her other hand was resting on his knee, of the feel of his skin beneath her palm.

  “What?” she said, removing her hand hastily. “What are you looking at?”

  He watched her for a moment longer, then shook his head slightly. “Nothing.”

  “Do you think you can stand?”

  Luca nodded. Hazel stood up herself and helped pull him carefully to his feet. He kept his foot lifted off the ground and wobbled slightly, reaching out to her for support. She steadied him.

  “All right?”

  Luca nodded again, but his jaw was set, teeth clenched in pain.

  “Can you walk?”

  “I can probably hop,” he said.

  She offered him her shoulder, and he leaned on it carefully. “Shall I call your mum or dad?”

  “It’s date night. They’re at the cinema.”

  “What about Red? He’s got his learner’s permit, right?”

  Luca shook his head furiously. “He can’t drive without an adult in the car. Besides, I don’t want him to know.”

  “You think he won’t figure it out when you’re limping around the house?”

  “I’ll tell him I twisted it walking home,” he said, grimacing. “He doesn’t have to know about the running.”

  “Fine.” She relented, reaching for her phone, but she was so tired of hiding. “We’ll call a taxi.”

  * * *

  After over two months of struggling, Red had finally started to take some photos that he was happy with. Pretty damn happy, actually, and pretty damn proud too. They weren’t perfect—the lighting and focus were a bit off on some of them, and the compositions left a lot to be desired, but Red knew that didn’t matter. When he saw them like this, all laid out across the kitchen counter, he knew he was beginning to nail Hodgkins’s theme. This was his family, in all of its ugly, honest, wonderful, still-healing glory—and it might be scary to see them so exposed and vulnerable, but Red was dealing with it. He didn’t have a choice; ignoring their problems wouldn’t make them go away. Their dad had already found that one out the hard way.

  So from now on, Red was going to apply Hodgkins’s assignment advice to his entire life and strive to seek the truth in every moment. Honesty was the best policy, right? It had to be.

  He heard a car door slam and when he looked out the window, he saw Luca and Hazel climbing out of a taxi. He quickly put the photos away in his portfolio and went to meet them at the door. Hazel was helping Luca walk, and it looked like he’d hurt his ankle.

  What’s going on here, then?

  “Well,” Red said, leaning against the door frame as he watched them hobble up the path. “This is … unexpected.”

  His brother just glared at him, and Hazel shook her head in warning. “Could you give us a hand, please?”

  “I’m fine,” Luca said.

  “Clearly.” Red snorted but went to help them anyway. He shifted Luca’s weight carefully onto his shoulder and half-carried him into the house and through to the living room. He dumped him unceremoniously onto the sofa and then reached instinctively for his camera.

  “Really, Redleigh?” Luca snapped. “For fuck’s sake.”

  Red took the shot anyway, grinning, and hung his camera around his neck. “All right, all right, keep your pants on. What do you need? Some painkillers? Ice?”

  “Anything. Everything.”

  Red looked at Hazel. She looked … guilty. What did she have to be guilty about? He eyed the two of them curiously. He had about a hundred questions right now, but they’d have to wait. He left Luca in Hazel’s capable hands and went off to collect some emergency supplies, returning to the living room a few minutes later with a bottle of ibuprofen, a glass of water, a bag of ice for the swelling, and a cushion to elevate his ankle. He waited until Luca had taken the tablets and positioned the ice before speaking.

  “So. You want to tell me what happened?”

  “No,” Luca said.

  Red narrowed his eyes at him and turned to Hazel. “What about you?”

  “He hurt his ankle.”

  “I figured that much, funnily enough. How did he hurt it? Doing what? And where was he? And why were you there with him?”

  She glanced at Luca, who hesitated and then shrugged. Perhaps he was tired of hiding too. “We were at the track,” she said carefully. “And I was there because I’ve been helping him. With his running.”

  “Running?” Red echoed, and what? What? “Luc, are you—”

  “No,” Luca cut him off flatly. “I’m not.”

  “But you’re—”

  “I said no, Red.”

  Red clamped his mouth shut. Shit, this is huge. He sat back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, and watched his twin from across the table.

  “Well. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then don’t say anything.”

  Red was too happy right now that Luca was running again, in whatever capacity, that he couldn’t even bring himself to care about the fact that Luca and Hazel had apparently been going behind his back to do it. How long had they been training together for? A few weeks? Longer?

  “So this is where you’ve been sneaking off to?” he said finally. “You don’t have a secret girlfriend?”

  Luca looked mildly horrified. “Girlfriend? No!”

  “Interesting,” Red murmured. Very, very interesting. “What are you going to tell Mum and Dad?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Luca…”

  “Redleigh,” he countered. “I swear to God, if you tell them anything about this I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Why, though? Why don’t you want them to know?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “Just because, all right?” Luca snapped. “Because it’s not a big deal and if Dad finds out it’ll get his hopes up and I don’t want to disappoint him all over again.”

  Red felt his chest tighten. “Luc, that’s—”

  “Please don’t say anything to them. Not ye
t.”

  And it was that, the not yet, that made Red nod. Because not yet wasn’t never, it was let me figure this out first, and Red could do that for his brother. He looked over at Hazel instead, who was sitting on the edge of her chair—perhaps in case the conversation turned bad and she needed to make a hasty exit. “How is his running, then? Is he any good?”

  Hazel turned to Luca with an expression that was suspiciously fond, and Luca cocked an eyebrow back at her.

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “He’s good.”

  29

  Luca’s ankle, it turned out, wasn’t as badly injured as they’d initially thought. After he’d told his parents that he’d twisted it walking home from school—which neither of them questioned—Claire and Marc went with him to the doctor, who assured them it was just a mild sprain that would be easily treated with anti-inflammatory medication and a few days’ rest from physical exertion.

  By Thursday, though, Luca was restless and eager to get back to his training, worried he would fall behind if he took a day off. He cornered Hazel after school and practically begged her to un-cancel their session later.

  “Absolutely not. The doctor told you to rest.”

  “He told me to take it easy,” Luca corrected. “And I’ve been taking it easy. I’m sick of sitting on my ass all day doing nothing.”

  “If you start running on it too soon, you’ll hurt yourself even worse,” Hazel said firmly. “And then you’d really screw up your progress. Just give it a few more days, all right? We’ll train again on Monday.”

  He sighed heavily. “Fine, whatever. Let’s do something else tonight then. Let’s … I don’t know, let’s go to Bluehill. It’s got some great views. Come on, I’m going out of my mind. Mum keeps fussing over me like I’m a kid. We can catch a bus.”

  Hazel considered it for a moment, studying Luca’s face as he waited patiently for her response.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “We’ll go.”

  He broke into a smile. “I’ll meet you at seven outside your house?”

  “Seven it is,” she said.

  * * *

  Bluehill, Luca had decided, was a very misleading name for a place that was neither blue nor small enough to be a hill. It was, however, the most popular lookout point in town, particularly with tourists during the dry season. The sun had already set by the time he and Hazel arrived at the foot of the towering mount, and the night had sunk into twilight, leaving the sky a canvas of pink and blue. They had to walk up a winding dirt track from the bus stop, using just a flashlight to guide their way—which took them a while because of his ankle—and when they reached the top, they found that they were the only ones there.

  “Want to sit?” Luca said.

  Hazel nodded. “Sure.”

  He took a plaid rug from his backpack and laid it out near the edge of the hill, and the two of them sat down on it. Below, the lights of the town were sprinkled about, the glow of the harbor and the pier spilling out onto the black sea. The sky above was alive with stars, thousands upon thousands of brilliant white pinpricks.

  It was so quiet Luca could hear Hazel breathing. He wondered if she knew how attuned he’d become to her every movement these past few months, how closely he listened to every word she said. If she realized that he noticed every smile, every laugh, that he’d begun to catalog them away in the back of his mind without even meaning to. Without even wanting to. He hoped she didn’t realize. He hoped she’d never realize.

  “You haven’t seen stars until you’ve been to Bluehill,” he murmured then, to break the silence, to divert his thoughts.

  Hazel tilted her head to stare up at the sky in wonder. “It’s really beautiful, Luca.”

  “Redleigh used to say that the stars are spy holes for heaven,” he said. “So the people we lose can still watch over us, even when they’re gone.”

  “I like that.”

  “So do I. It … helped a lot, after.”

  “After?”

  “After Ryan,” he said heavily. Hazel said nothing, and suddenly Luca wanted to tell her everything. He was sick of hiding. “Back in Sydney. He was my best friend since before I even knew what that meant, and we were inseparable all the way through school. Just me and him. But then last year he … he died. Sudden cardiac death. We were in the middle of a training session. Coach had us running laps, the whole team together, and one second he was sprinting past me and yelling at us all to catch up, and the next … bam. He just dropped straight to the ground. And we thought he was messing around at first, playing a joke—classic Ryan, never taking anything seriously—but then he didn’t get up and … and I knew something wasn’t right, so I went to him, but I couldn’t get him to respond and we tried to resuscitate him but we … but I…”

  He exhaled. “By the time the ambulance arrived, he was gone. He died. Ryan died, and it was really, really shitty, and I haven’t … I don’t know how to—”

  “Luca,” she cut him off. “I knew. About Ryan, about what happened, I already knew.”

  He stared at her. “Did Redleigh tell you?”

  “No—you told me, at Kayla’s,” she said. “You were drunk, and we were outside. You told me about him, and you asked me not to tell anyone. So I didn’t.”

  “You knew?” he said. “All this time, you knew?”

  “Luca, I’m so sorry,” Hazel said, suddenly on the edge of tears. “I should have said something. You have every right to be angry with me.”

  “Angry?” he echoed. “Why would I be angry?”

  “Because I knew and I never told you what happened at the party?”

  “Hazel,” Luca said slowly. “You knew, and you still treated me like I was normal. Christ, you made me feel normal. Why would I ever be angry about that?”

  “I figured you didn’t need the fuss,” she mumbled.

  “Thank you,” he said. “And thank you for not telling Maddie and Hunter. I couldn’t do it again, you know? I couldn’t be the guy with the dead friend, not here too. I had to try and be myself. You’re the only one who knows what that’s like, Hazel. You just get it.”

  “Luca, wait—” Hazel began, but Luca cut her off.

  “No, no, you understand, and that means I don’t have to feel so alone.”

  “You’re not,” she promised him.

  He smiled gratefully and then shook his head. “What is it about the truth we’re so scared of anyway? How bad can it really be? It’s not like we haven’t both been to hell and back already.”

  A movement on the blanket caught Luca’s eye. He glanced down and watched as Hazel slowly, gently inched her hand across the ground until it covered his. He stared across at her, eyes widening slightly. She looked at him, and he looked back at her. Hazel lowered her gaze first, a slight smile playing on her lips.

  Heart racing, Luca turned his attention to the stars again. A few moments later, without saying a word, he threaded his fingers through hers so that their hands were well and truly intertwined.

  * * *

  When Luca woke up on Friday morning, he lay in bed for a long while, staring up at the ceiling. Three hundred and sixty-five days. A year. It had been one whole year since the day that Ryan died. It felt more like months, though, still. Weeks. Days, even, since it happened.

  Three hundred and sixty-five days. That was eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty hours. That was five hundred and twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes. That was more seconds than he was even willing to contemplate.

  After Ryan died, Luca was surrounded by people telling him there was no right way to mourn, that he could cry, and he could get angry, and he could point-blank refuse to believe Ryan had even died, because all of that was normal. But that had just made it worse, somehow, because Luca didn’t know how to mourn. He didn’t want to cry, and he didn’t want to get angry, and he couldn’t kid himself into thinking that Ryan was still around because he wasn’t around and everywhere Luca looked he was reminded of it.

  He hadn’t known what to
do. He still didn’t know what to do. He and Ryan used to have their whole lives mapped out together: college and traveling and racing and their future families. And then suddenly, without warning, he was gone. That had hit him hard, realizing that out of everything he’d ever planned for himself in life, everything he ever thought he wanted, there wasn’t a single scenario that didn’t have Ryan in it.

  The thing about remembering Ryan was that once Luca started, he couldn’t stop. It was all he could think about, like his mind was set on punishing him for still being alive. Lazy days at the beach, running together, goofing off in class … even the bad memories were good.

  They were going to travel in Europe. They were going to break a Guinness World Record. They were going to climb Mount Everest, go on safari, see the northern lights. When Ryan died, Luca forgot about all that. He forgot about everything he ever said he wanted from life, because suddenly none of it mattered—and he thought it never would again. He put his life on hold because it didn’t seem worth living without Ryan.

  But it was, and Luca needed to start remembering that. He needed to start remembering all the things he wanted to achieve. He needed to start remembering how to live his life the way he had when Ryan was still in it. He needed to let go and start living again.

  Luca marked the day off on the calendar with an X, the same way he’d marked off all the days before, and put it back in his nightstand. Out of sight, out of mind.

  “Three hundred and sixty-five days since I lost you, buddy,” he murmured as he kicked back the covers, ready to face a brand-new day. “Reckon it’s probably time to stop keeping count now, don’t you?”

  * * *

  School that day was easy, because to everyone else it was just another Friday in late November. Luca went to classes, keeping his head down and focusing on the page, but his mind never really drifted far away from Ryan. He kept asking himself questions he didn’t want to know the answers to: Where would Ryan be now if he hadn’t died? What would he be like? What would their lives be like? What would Luca’s life be like?

  Home was harder. His mum and dad knew what today was; Ryan had been as much like a son to them as he’d been like a brother to Luca. Dad had definitely been making a concerted effort since the apology the other day, but that evening both of his parents were more careful, more gentle, as if they were scared he might suddenly shatter into a thousand pieces all over the kitchen floor. Luca wished he could reassure them otherwise, but he wasn’t even sure himself whether he could hold it together.