I snatch my phone from her. “Yeah, I need to,” I say, my heart pounding.
I wisely hadn’t saved Auden’s information in my phone at all. It’s a random number with an unfamiliar area code. My shoulders sink with relief. Pocketing my phone, I head to my room to get dressed and try not to meet Mama’s eye as she watches me go.
On my way to school, I spot a familiar car in my rearview mirror.
“What in the…”
He pulls directly behind me, and my phone starts to ring.
“So, you’re stalking me now?”
“I need to talk to you.” His voice sounds strained, exhausted—like he didn’t get much sleep last night.
“I have to go to school.”
“Please, Shelby.”
There’s a park nearby with lots of trees. We could probably find a hidden place to talk there without worry of getting turned in for truancy, which is a real possibility when your stepdad is drinking buddies with half of Orchardview’s small-town police force. I exhale.
“Holmgren Pond. I can’t stay long, though.”
We park side by side in the empty lot. Seeing Auden again sends a strange surge of emotion through me. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he looks paler than normal. I’m gripped with the urge to hug him.
He comes right beside me. His arms open to take me into an embrace, but I pull back.
“You look beautiful,” he says.
It’s a ridiculous statement. I basically threw on jeans, pulled my unwashed hair into a ponytail, and zipped a gray hoodie over my tank top.
“Why were you calling me so much this morning?” I ask, pushing past the small talk and niceties. “Mama almost found out.”
He scruffs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I just needed to talk.”
I glance to the street as a car speeds by and then grab his sleeve. “You’re reckless. You know that?”
We walk to a little bench beside the pond, partially hidden from the street by a pair of maple trees. It’s quiet except for the sound of morning birds singing in the branches above. The water on the dark green pond ripples softly. It’s a peaceful spot, yet my stomach is in knots.
Truth is, inside, I’m ready to forgive Auden for withholding the story of his arrest from me. I’m sure I wouldn’t want to lead with that either if I were trying to help someone build a picture of me. And besides, in a way, it actually fits with the impulsive, intense Auden I have come to know.
But I can’t help feeling uneasy still. I’m in a vulnerable place. Anyone can tell me anything they want, and I would have no reason not to believe them. I hate the blind, helpless place these gaps in my memories leave me. And feeling this way makes me want to close up behind my wall. It makes me want to push Auden away, resentful of the knowledge he has that is rightfully mine, but it also makes me want to cling to him, as he is my strongest link to that information.
He sits down beside me and leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clenched together. I picture myself stroking his disheveled hair, and I hate my weakness for wanting to do it.
“Okay, you wanted to talk to me. So talk.”
“For starters, I’m sorry. I should have anticipated that we’d be discovered sooner or later. I should have prepared you for that. But I swear to you, I just didn’t know how to do that, otherwise I would have. Don’t you think I wanted you to hear my dark past from me? Do you think I wanted it to come out this way?” Auden rubs his face. “I wanted you to really know me first. Before what came next.”
“I don’t judge you for having gone to prison,” I say, my voice tight. “But the truth is, I don’t really know you.”
“I’m an open book,” he says.
“Grace said we fought a lot.”
His eyes flash. “What?”
“She said she’d never seen me cry more than when I was dating you.”
“That’s not true,” he insists. “She has no idea what she’s talking about.”
“She’s my best friend. I think she’d know.”
“She doesn’t…” Auden presses a fist to his forehead, his jaw tense. “She only saw pieces of what we were, Shelby. Surely you can understand that. Everyone who saw us—Grace, your mother—they didn’t see half of what we really were. And what little they did see, they colored with their own perceptions.”
I think about Mike Jasper, about the years Grace quietly suffered in that relationship. It makes sense that she’d probably see most guys as potential abusers after that. I hold my jacket tight around me against a sudden chill.
“Why should I trust you?”
Auden lowers his face to meet my eye. “Haven’t you felt that what we have is special? Maybe you can’t remember it, but you have to feel it.” He gently brushes his fingers along the line of my cheek. The touch of his skin on mine burns like a flame.
I shrink back a little. Auden is quiet for a moment. We both turn to look out at the small pond in silence. Then he gets a strange tremor in his voice. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, Shelby. We need to go. We need to get out of Orchardview. Today. Right now.”
I turn to him sharply, shocked. But his expression is deathly serious.
“If you really want control of your life and your mind, you have to reach out and take it. Your mother won’t willingly let you have it. Right now, she has control over the narrative. And she always will. Unless you break free.”
“What would leaving Orchardview accomplish?”
“Everything!” Auden exclaims. “Listen to me, last night, I didn’t sleep at all. I kept thinking about how I got a second chance with you and everything I did wrong. Trying to make you remember was a mistake. There’s too much working against us here. We have to put our past aside for a fresh start.”
His eyes are bright with a mixture of desperation and hope. “We get in my car right now and drive to California, to Hollywood. We start living our lives. The memories you lost may be gone, but we can build new ones.”
“We’re not characters in some dramatic old movie,” I say. “This is real life, and we’re teenagers. We’re not going to run off into the sunset together.”
“Why not? What is keeping you here, Shelby?”
“My family, for one thing.”
“A dominating mother who would rob you of the one thing no other human should be able to take from you—your mind.”
“She’s still my mother.”
Auden scoffs. “She’s everything I despise about Orchardview embodied in one person.”
His words throw me. I knew he didn’t like Mama, but I never heard him speak about her with such contempt.
“This is a small town,” Auden says. “And I don’t mean size or population. It’s a small place filled with small people and small dreams. If you stay here, it will destroy you. You’ll wilt in the smallness of it. The potential you have will be wasted, poured into some undeserving idiot who could never begin to understand what an incredible woman you are.”
There’s a lone mallard duck on the water, paddling in a quiet circle around the edge of the tiny pond. He goes around and around. My chest feels tight.
“I won’t let that happen to you,” Auden says.
Something in his tone makes me bristle. “It’s not your decision to make.”
“When are you going to stop being afraid to live your life?”
“I’m not afraid,” I say, angrily.
“You are. You’ve always been afraid. And I don’t blame you, growing up with a woman like your mother. You never even let yourself entertain the idea of stepping out of line.”
I stand abruptly. “You know what? I’m sick and tired of everyone telling me what I think and feel. I know I don’t remember everything from last year, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know who I am.”
There’s a painful hollow feeling in my chest and in my heart
. I start walking away, because I know that if I say anything else, I’ll probably start crying.
Auden runs after me. “Shelby, wait.”
“Leave me alone.”
He keeps pace at my side. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t talk to you like that. I’m sorry, okay?”
I turn to him, arms folded. He hangs his head. “I run my mouth before I think things through. But I meant what I said about us leaving. It’s the only way we can ever really get back our love. By starting again.”
“I can’t just pick up and leave. It’s not realistic, and you know it. Even for a reckless, dramatic guy like you. We have no money. We don’t know anyone in California.”
“That’s small-town mentality talking. Believe it or not, you don’t have to know everyone who lives on your street in order to survive.”
His condescending tone stokes my temper. “Well, I don’t even really know you, the person I would potentially be living with, so that definitely makes it a terrible idea.”
“Shelby—”
“What?”
Auden wordlessly searches my eyes. It’s that same intense stare that first drew me to him. As if he were staring into my very soul.
“Forgive me. I know this is a huge request I’m making. And it probably feels totally out of left field for you…but it’s really not. We did talk about this before. There was a time when you were ready to pack your bags and come with me.”
The suggestion pulses in my mind, but I say nothing.
“Will you at least think about it?” he asks.
“I should get to school.”
“Shelby.”
I exhale. “Fine. I’ll think about it.” His body relaxes a little, and I point at him. “But I’ll need space. You can’t call me ten times a day.”
“I can give you space.”
“I’m not sure you can,” I say, raising an eyebrow.
He covers his heart with his hand. “I promise. No more than two calls a day.”
I widen my eyes, and he holds up his hands. “I’m kidding! You can be the one to call me first. I swear.” Auden gives me outrageously effective puppy-dog eyes. “Can I at least hug you goodbye?”
“You’re unrelenting,” I say, but a smile creeps over my lips. Auden grins as if he’s won an unspoken battle and pulls me into his arms.
Any resistance melts the moment he holds me. I won’t tell him this, of course, but as his hands slowly tighten around me, I’m completely lost in the embrace. Lost in the best way.
As we break apart, he presses a kiss to my cheek. My heart pounds the entire drive back to school.
Chapter 22
I told Auden to give me space, but it proves a useless request. I think about him constantly, which is almost worse. There’s no hanging up on or running away from your mind. And there, in the hazy regions of my imagination, I allow myself to wander into a hundred impossible scenarios.
Like getting my memory back. Challenging Mama with the truth. Breaking free and being with Auden in any way I choose.
It can never happen, of course. Auden was right in at least one respect—there’s no point trying to fight to get my memories back. They are gone forever. I knew this from the start. The only reason I can remember that kiss by the lake is because it wasn’t fully erased. That’s why I saw the flicker of it during that last treatment. The other pieces of my past have been buried in the pristine emptiness thanks to the neural restructuring capsule.
The rest of the week crawls by slowly. Grace is avoiding me. Mama’s extra busy at work. So I’m left alone with my thoughts. I would be lying if I said I don’t check my phone regularly. I would also be lying if I said I’m not slightly disappointed that Auden obeys my command not to call or text. Each time I find my phone screen blank, I feel a little crestfallen. It’s infuriatingly pathetic of me.
At least I honor my promise to him as well. I think about what he said. About getting in a car and not stopping until we get to California. I think about it more than I want to admit to myself. I can imagine us living in some ramshackle apartment in South Hollywood. I’m waiting tables, memorizing a monologue on my lunch break for the audition I have next week. Auden’s going to film school on a scholarship. We stay up late together, eating Chinese takeout in bed and watching the movies he’s been assigned as homework.
Another impossible scenario. And ridiculous too. It’s a montage set to music in a romcom, not real life. I barely know Auden. And if Grace is right about us arguing a lot, living together could prove disastrous.
So why does my heart ache when I think about it?
At play practice on Thursday, I stand offstage watching the Romeo and Tybalt fight scene. Cam and Peter Jones are using rulers for swords because the techies haven’t finished making the actual props yet—cardboard swords spray-painted silver. They’re not exactly realistic, but it’s what the budget allows. Mr. Lyman has always had to fight an uphill battle when it comes to funding for the theater program. Probably because theater has always been one of the last things anyone cares about in Orchardview.
That’s when it hits me. Performing in this play will be the highest point of any theater career if I were to stay here. This small stage with its ancient curtains and creaking lights and two-dimensional sets, painted by ninth grade art students. This is as good as it will ever get.
I peer out at Mr. Lyman, who watches the scene from the front row of the audience. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I could swear I see resignation in his eyes. He’s given in to weary disappointment. The sight of it makes me shiver. He is a ghost of who I will become.
I linger on the stage after practice. It’s partly to avoid Cam, who inevitably tries to get me to hang out this weekend. But I also can’t stop watching Mr. Lyman. I’m gripped with a mixture of fascination and terror. I meander my way through the parting cast members until I’m sitting in the auditorium next to him.
He looks up from the notes he’d been making, and his eyebrows rise. “Something wrong, Shelby?”
We’re mostly alone. Ana Guererro is passing out orders to a few techies about where to put the set blocks, but they are heading to the back room. I press my lips together and lean back.
“Nothing’s really wrong. I just had a question.”
Mr. Lyman removes his dark-rimmed glasses. “Shoot.”
“You’re not a local, right? I mean…you haven’t lived here all of your life.”
He blinks. I’m pretty sure he’s taken aback by the question, but he tries to appear otherwise. “I’m not a local, no. But I grew up in Gainesville.”
The information surprises me. Gainesville is another small Colorado town about an hour away. Like Orchardview, for the most part. Maybe a tad bigger. I process this information slowly.
“So…you’ve never lived in New York?”
He taps his script on his lap, as if he were straightening the pages, even though they’re spiral bound together.
“No,” he says. There’s a note of shame in his voice, and I instantly regret asking.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Nothing to be sorry for.” Mr. Lyman turns up a tight smile. “It’s on the bucket list. All I need is a big raise from Principal Nelson.”
A heavy silence falls between us. The way Mr. Lyman looks at me, I’m almost positive that he understands why I’m asking. I dare to venture forward.
“If you could go back…If there had been a chance for you to get out of Colorado, to go after your dreams…would you?”
“Do you want to get out, Shelby?”
My throat tightens. “I was just wondering.”
Mr. Lyman ponders for a long silence, then he leans forward. “Listen to me, Shelby. I’ve built my life here. There’s no point in me looking back. That’s not really what you’re asking anyway, is it? You’ve seen your life here in Orchardview, and you’re asking
if it’s worth the risk to leave everything you know, every comforting and predictable thing that’s surrounded you since you were a child.”
My eyes sting, and I nod.
“I can’t answer that question for you,” Mr. Lyman says, standing. “But you should answer it for yourself soon so you can apply to schools that will give you the kind of college experience you dream of. So you don’t end up forty-five and wishing you had pushed yourself to explore a different path.”
Mr. Lyman gives my shoulder a little squeeze and turns to leave. He thinks I’m talking about college, but his words still cut right to my heart. As I watch him go, two tears escape and slide down my cheek.
• • •
Words have a way of rooting themselves in your heart. Once they take hold, there’s no shaking them. They grow deeper, more entangled in your reason and hope. Until a question becomes a decision. And a thought becomes a conviction.
Mr. Lyman’s question rings in my ears for days. Is it worth the risk to leave everything I know? If Auden is telling the truth, I apparently thought it was worth it at one point. What made me come to that decision? Was it my love for Auden, for acting, or did it go much deeper than that?
Maybe I decided that the only way to finally be able to stand on my own was to leave Orchardview and everything I know. Maybe I believed that in California, I would find and become who I truly am, deep down inside. The real me.
At Sunday dinner, I find myself observing Mama and Blake in a way I never have before. I study each move, each shift of expression, each word they say to each other, each laugh, each touch.
They are fundamentally different from me. I can see it so clearly.
As an angry middle schooler, I imagined that I had been adopted. No way could Mama and I come from the same blood. I know that’s not the case, of course, but maybe some traits run deeper than blood. There’s more to who you are than the woman who gave birth to you and your hometown.
Mama sees how different I am, but I think she dismisses it as a teenage phase. She’s never seen even a glimpse of the real me. She’s never even tried.
Remember Me Always Page 14