Remember Me Always

by Renee Collins

  He watches me as I get into Grace’s car, then jogs to catch up with Grace as she walks to her side of the car. He speaks in a low, urgent voice. I can only hear the murmur of sound. As Grace listens, her tense body seems to relax a bit. She gives a single nod. Then she gets into the driver’s seat and slams the door.

  I watch Auden recede in the side mirror as we pull out of the parking lot. Grace and I drive in churning silence. My arms are folded tightly across my chest. I can’t pin down a solid emotion in my mind. I’m not sure if I’m furious, sad, confused, or afraid. All of them, I guess.

  But when I look over at Grace, tears are sliding down her cheeks.

  “Grace. What is going on? If you care about me at all, you’ll tell me everything.”

  She wipes her face. “I know this must be so confusing to you, Shelbs. I can only imagine. I wanted to tell you about Auden so many times, but your mom begged me to keep it secret.”

  “Can’t you see how wrong that sounds?”

  “You need to hear the full story, okay? All you’ve heard is Auden’s side. And I’m sure he’s filled your head with stories about how great life was until your mean mom came along and erased your memory.”

  A knot tightens in my stomach. “And that’s not true?”

  “It’s not the full story. It wasn’t all roses between you two, okay?”

  “What relationship is?”

  She shakes her head. “No. It was different. It was too intense.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There was always so much drama. Huge fights. You’d break up, then get back together again. When you were dating him, I saw you cry more times than you ever had before you met him.” She lets that sink in for a minute. “You didn’t seem all that happy to me.”

  We park in front of my house.

  “Your mama was really worried about you,” Grace goes on. “We both were. She had serious concerns.”

  “I know all about her concerns. She thought he was trying to take me away from her precious Orchardview way of life.”

  “She thought he was emotionally abusive,” Grace spits back.

  “Oh please. I may have just met Auden—again—but that’s ridiculous.”

  “So, because he’s charming and good looking, he can’t have a dark side?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said it’s ridiculous to accuse him of being abusive because we broke up a few times.”

  Grace’s eyes flash. “It’s more than that, Shelby. The warning signs were there.”

  “Warning signs? What, are you an expert now on emotionally abusive relationships?”

  “As a matter of fact, I know quite a lot. More than I want to know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She presses her head back against the headrest. “Did you honestly never realize that Mike was?”

  “Mike?”

  “Yes. Mike. All those years, all the crap I went through. It wasn’t because I loved him. It’s because I was afraid not to.” Her eyes glisten with tears. “He had…maybe still has…control over me. At first it was subtle. Like, if I didn’t text him back right away, he’d accuse me of not loving him and be mad for days. He’d call and wake me up me in the middle of the night to tell me he loved me. And if I didn’t act like I thought it was romantic, he’d get upset. Once he thought I was flirting with the waiter at a restaurant, and he said he was going to kill himself. Every day, I lived in fear of his love.”

  I always knew Mike had issues, but I never saw this side of him. I, her best friend in the world, never knew all that happened. Grace’s words from earlier ring in my ears now. You had your own problems to deal with.

  I open my mouth to speak, but words fail me. Grace squeezes her eyes shut and takes a shaky breath.

  “It doesn’t matter, okay? I’m moving past that now.” She wipes away more tears. “Your mom helped me a lot with that.”

  “Mama?” I ask, dazed.

  Grace nods. “She’d been through it before. With your first stepdad. She was there for me when no one else understood. They all said, Mike’s so sweet. He loves you so much. They didn’t understand the way he used that love to control me. But your mom did. She was the one who gave me courage to break up with him. And when I had moments of weakness and went back to him because I was afraid, she didn’t judge me. She supported me.”

  A sudden headache pulls at my temples. This is too much to take in all at once.

  “I’m so sorry, Grace.” My voice cracks as I whisper the words.

  “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known.”

  My house, the street beyond it, the inside of Grace’s car—it all seems to have changed shape and color with this new revelation. I scoffed at Grace saying she wished she could have her memory erased, like me. But suddenly it doesn’t seem so silly. You’d certainly want to forget pain like that. The thought chills me like a slow winter wind.

  “And you think Auden was this way…? Abusive?”

  “Kind of…maybe. I don’t know, okay? I saw you cry a lot. Your mom said that’s what he was.”

  “Well, did you think he was like Mike or didn’t you?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s not that simple.”

  “You can’t tell me he was abusive because Mama said so. She’d probably say anything to get you on her side.”

  She’s holding back. I can tell. “Please, Grace.”

  “I agreed to let him tell you in his own way.”

  “No, I’m sick of everyone withholding my own life from me!”

  “Fine,” she says. “You want the truth? Buckle up because it’s not pretty. While you were in Denver getting your therapy, your knight in shining armor spent the summer in prison.”

  I roll my eyes. “Prison? Seriously? For what?”

  Grace doesn’t react. Silence fills the car like water. And in that moment, I know it’s true.

  Chapter 20

  I stare at Grace, stricken silent by her revelation. A dozen different questions fly around in my mind, but only one makes its way out in a feeble whisper.

  “Why?”

  “That’s for Auden to tell you, okay? I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve cried enough.”

  “Grace—”

  “I’m going home. Talk to Auden if you want to know more.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  She refuses to look at me. When Grace digs in her heels, there’s very little that can change her mind. I wordlessly get out of her car. She drives off as soon as the passenger door shuts.

  I turn to my house, numb. A gust of cold wind brushes past me. The pathway to the front door glistens from the rain. The memory of Auden re-creating our first doorstep scene glows through the haze of my mind, then vanishes. I swallow hard. Shouldering my bag, I walk slowly inside. I bypass Mama and Blake and go straight into my room.

  I sit on my bed, tense in every joint. Almost instinctively, I pull out my phone. There are four missed calls and six frantic texts from Auden.

  We need to talk. Please call me.

  I need to explain what Grace told you.

  Call me as soon as you can.

  And on and on. I turn off the screen and toss my phone to the side. I have a headache, and even though my stomach is empty, I feel like I’m going to throw up. I press my hands to my face and lie back on my bed. Focus on breathing. Repeating the words from therapy should help. Slow, deep, complete breaths.

  But it’s not relaxing. I’m jumpy. Tense. I don’t want to sit. I need to move. If I were sportier, I’d probably go on a run to clear my head. I glance at my tennis shoes on the floor and grimace. A walk will have to do.

  Outside, the cool air fills my lungs in a bracing but pleasant way. The slight smell of burning firewood mixed with wet ground tingles my nose. I draw in a long breat
h. It does feel better to be outside and moving. I need to think. I need to make something of this chaos.

  A buzzing in my pocket robs me of any hope for clarity. Out of habit, I pocketed my phone on my way out the door, and I’m wishing I hadn’t. I know who it is before I check. Staring at his glowing number on the screen, I almost turn off the phone. But emotion rises up in me, above the confusion and shock.

  Anger.

  I answer.

  “Shelby?”

  “I wasn’t going to answer,” I say.

  “I’m glad you did.” His voice sounds different than usual. Or maybe I simply don’t know what usual is anymore.

  “Where are you right now?” he asks. “Can I come to you?”

  “We can talk over the phone.”

  “But I want to see you. I want to be at your side.”

  I stop. An image drifts into my mind of Auden at my side, wrapping his arms around me, his lips brushing against my throat. The fantasy takes my breath for a moment, but I start walking again.

  “I’m not ready to see you yet.”

  “Shelby. Talk to me. Tell me what Grace said. I can explain everything.”

  “I’m sure you can.” The venom of my words startles me. Auden has been the voice of truth in recent weeks, the only one I really trusted. But now I feel like I’m free-falling again.

  “Don’t do this,” he pleads. “Don’t shut me out. Remember that night by the lake.”

  “That was one memory. How many others are there that I don’t know about? Obviously, there are plenty of not-so-great ones if they were taken by the therapy.”

  “I wasn’t planning on hiding anything. But did you honestly expect me to start with the bad memories?”

  “I don’t know what I expected. It’s not like I’ve been in this situation before.”

  Auden sighs. “This is a mess.” He sounds so despondent. It softens me a little. My pace slows. There’s an empty bench ahead under a large cottonwood. It’s a bus stop with only a morning and night pickup. I wipe the water droplets from the metal and sit down.

  “Grace didn’t tell me much.” I say. “She was upset. She told me…she said…that you spent the summer in prison.”

  A long silence follows.

  “Is it true?” I ask, hugging my knees to my chest.

  More silence.

  “Auden. Tell me.”

  I can barely hear his voice when he speaks. “It’s true.”

  Even though I believed Grace, having Auden confirm it brings a burning sense of betrayal in my chest. A betrayal of the image I had built of who Auden is.

  My voice becomes stronger. “Why?”

  “It’s…difficult to explain.”

  I laugh bitterly. “Somehow I knew you’d say that. Does everyone think I’m stupid? Do you guys think I can’t handle whatever happened?”

  “It’s not that straightforward.”

  “I’m willing to bet it is,” I say, teeth clenched.

  Auden exhales with frustration. “It’s not like I murdered a cop or robbed a convenience store at gunpoint, Shelby.” He pauses. “Sometimes good people make bad choices, and the results are worse than anyone expected.”

  I don’t have a response to that. Auden continues. “You have no memories of me. Which is why I wanted to wait to tell you. How else can I rebuild the events and circumstances so that you have the full context like you did then?”

  “Oh, so I was fine with you going to prison?”

  “Of course not. But you understood why. You understood because you had lived all that led up to it. And because you understood me.”

  I strain to think of a possible scenario that would make sense with the Auden I have come to know and come up blank.

  Blank. Erased.

  My throat tightens. “Well, I want to understand right now. I need to.”

  Auden is deathly quiet. I don’t even hear him breathing.

  “You need to tell me,” I press. “Or I’m going to start imagining the worst. You said I understood once. Well, I’m still the same person. I’ll understand again.”

  “Okay,” he says, finally. “I’ll tell you how I got in trouble.” He releases a shaky breath. “It’s really complicated, and I’ll spare you all the unimportant details. But basically, I tried to run away. I wanted to go to California. My dad was against it, but I left anyway. And…I might have taken his credit card. Anyway, I told you that he and I don’t have the best relationship.”

  “He pressed charges against you?” I ask, surprised but also filled with a rush of empathy for him.

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I survived. Got out early on good behavior, actually. Truth is, I shouldn’t have gotten jail time in the first place. It was an overzealous judge. He wanted to make an example of me.”

  I think of how I let Grace down when she needed me, and my heart jumps into my throat. “I probably wasn’t there for you through all of this, was I? Too caught up with my own problems.”

  He’s quiet for a moment. “It was a complicated time for both of us.”

  I can’t decide which is worse, the fact that I wasn’t there for the people I cared about most when they needed me most or that I now can’t remember any of it at all. The thought makes me want to cry. Suddenly I feel like curling up in a ball on my bed and sobbing my eyes out. A good, long cry to drown out this aching emptiness in my own memory.

  “I want it back,” I say. “I want my old life back.”

  “I’d do anything in the world to give it to you.”

  I turn my eyes upward to keep the tears from spilling out.

  “Shelby. Please let me come to you. Leave your house. Meet me at the usual spot.”

  “I’m not at my house. I’m just not ready to see you yet.” The words feel sharp coming out of my mouth, but I can’t hold them back. “I care about you, Auden. I was actually starting to care for you a lot. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re a stranger to me.”

  “I’m not. You know me, Shelby. You’ve felt that what we have is special.”

  “I don’t know what I feel,” I say, shakily. “I need time to sort this all out.”

  “How much time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll wait,” he says, a broken sadness in his voice.

  • • •

  I dream of darkness. Not the soft, indigo of night. I dream of the kind of darkness of being trapped in a windowless room. Of a thick, suffocating void. And around me, I see the color blue.

  I’m crying. Hard. Though I don’t know why.

  Then, beside me, a light appears in the blackness. The light is round and too small. It moves gently up and down in a strange, rolling way. For some reason, I know it’s higher than it should be.

  The moving light draws closer. Closer still. Except it shouldn’t be here.

  A terrible sense of foreboding engulfs me. Despair, terrible and complete. I’m drowning in it. It’s all wrong. So wrong. The light disappears, and I scream at the top of my lungs.

  My eyes snap open with a deep, guttural sob. Darkness still surrounds me. It feels like someone is standing on my chest. The despair and panic linger from my dream.

  I rub my face and try to catch my breath. It’s not real, I repeat to myself over and over, though I’m not sure I can pinpoint what I’m so afraid of. I rip off my blanket and stumble through the dark hallway to my bathroom.

  Clicking on the light and shutting the door, I slap my hands down on the countertop, squinting at the sudden brightness. I’m shaking, breathing raggedly. My cheeks are red and splotchy from the tears. I splash some cold water on my face and try to calm down.

  The clock on the wall reads three thirty. I’m not going back to bed. I won’t risk another dream. Still breathing with
effort, I stumble into the living room. A beam of pale yellow from the streetlight outside drapes across Mama’s big armchair in the corner. I suddenly feel six again. Grabbing the blanket from the couch, I wrap myself in the softness of Mama’s chair. It’s warm, and I’m small in the big leather folds. I breathe in the familiar smell of our house, and for a brief flicker, I feel safe. Or at least a little safer.

  A hand on my shoulder wakes me. I blink back the sleep and sunshine in my eyes and Mama’s frown of concern comes into view.

  “Are you okay?”

  My dream surges back. I sit up, rubbing my face. “Um…yeah. I’m fine.”

  “Did you sleep out here?” Her concerned expression shifts to alarm. “Was it a nightmare?”

  Mama remembers the nights my panic attacks woke me, screaming and sobbing. I breathe a sigh of relief that I kept myself mostly under control last night.

  “No. Just a little insomnia.” The lie comes easily.

  Mama searches my face, and then straightens. “Well, it’s time to get ready for school. You’ll be late.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I watch her as she goes to make the morning pot of coffee. Grace said Mama helped her through her breakup with Mike when I couldn’t. I ponder this as I fold the blanket and drape it back over the couch.

  “Oh by the way,” Mama says, stepping out to meet me as I head to get changed. “You should put your phone on silence. It’s been ringing all morning.”

  I freeze. She’s holding my phone in her hand.

  “Who’s calling you at this hour on a Monday morning?”

  Panic grabs me. I didn’t hear from Auden all weekend, but there’s no doubt it’s him. My mind has gone blank as to how I saved his contact information in my phone. Surely I wouldn’t have been so stupid…

  In slow motion, Mama raises the screen to show me the number.

  Chapter 21

  “I’ll turn it off,” I say, reaching for the phone.

  But it’s too late. Mama presses the button and the screen illuminates. Her brow furrows. My breath stops in my chest.

  “Are you getting calls from telemarketers again?” she asks, handing it to me. “I told you to get online and fix that.”