Synopsis
Jamie Richards has lost a lot. Her father died four years ago and her mother is consumed by her career. Jamie finds an escape through her artistic passion and her first love—the one person who hasn't abandoned her, Erica Sinclair.
Overwhelmed by their own harsh realities, Jamie and Erica create a world of their own in an abandoned park—a place they call "Wonderland." Jamie idolizes Erica until the two grow closer, and she realizes that her ideal image of Erica is nothing shy of fiction. When cracks beneath the exterior become more prevalent, Jamie begins to question the love she thought she had for Erica, and if that love was ever reciprocated.
And then it happens. A shocking event occurs that changes Jamie and Erica's relationship forever. Jamie knows that there's no escaping this reality—she'll have to find a way to move forward without hiding behind her sketchbook.
remember me
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REMEMBER ME
© 2014 By Melanie Batchelor. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-908-7
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: May 2014
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editors: Sandy Lowe and Cindy Cresap
Production Design: Sandy Lowe
Cover Design By Lee Ligon
Acknowledgments
I want to thank my family and friends for all their support, with a special shout-out to my fellow teen writers who have given me encouragement as well as advice. A huge thanks to my writing instructor, Mark, for helping me polish this novel as well as find the perfect publisher for it. And of course, I would like to thank everyone at Bold Strokes Books, especially Sandy, for her editing advice and patience with my newbie questions.
I know it’s a cliché, but I couldn’t have done it without you guys!
Dedication
For my mom, who was always by my side with support, advice, and coffee.
September
tore through the calendar
as if time were always meant
to flow this way.
Mementos of summer
gather atop my chest of drawers,
spread out
like an art show of our past.
Since August,
the value of the pieces
have all increased.
Today is
the aftermath
I was not prepared for.
How can I face
another school year
when everything has changed
so drastically?
I know that I have to move forward
but my mind is still stuck in summer.
LAST JUNE
The sun taunts us
from outside the classroom window,
gleaming of freedom,
the sure sign of summer,
while we review America’s 19th century—
the Civil War, Lincoln, and
Manifest Destiny.
Mr. Williams is the only teacher
who still cares on the last day.
He wants us to write a review
on the battles and bloodshed spent;
the glorious people who got us from there to here.
He’s a good teacher,
a passionate teacher.
I’ll miss him
when sophomore year comes to an end.
Students glare at the clock,
willing time to fast-forward.
A few guys in the back joke about bikini season.
The girl beside me files her nails.
I study my notes.
They’re filled with scribbles and timelines,
beginnings and ends of eras,
doodles of Lincoln and Carnegie.
When the final bell rings,
the ticking time bomb goes off,
and everyone races
to escape this place.
In my mind,
students jump,
flinging papers in the air.
They clap and sing and
congratulate each other on surviving.
Mr. Williams blasts “Another Brick in the Wall Part Two”
from an old boom box,
and we dance our way home to Pink Floyd.
But that sort of thing
only happens in movies—
a designed, deception of reality.
Here at Greenwood High,
we scurry to leave.
Forget about battles and bloodshed,
they think, pushing their way
through the door, past me.
I’m off to the beach!
Erica takes a drag of her cigarette,
decorating the clear summer sky
with clouds of gray smoke.
We hide away in Wildflower Park,
taking refuge on a rusty metal jungle gym.
She celebrates the end of the school year
with a pack of Marlboros.
I commend myself on mediocre grades
by sketching trees from the surrounding forest.
“I like it here,”
Erica says between drags.
“Thank God it’s a forgotten paradise.
Can you imagine actual
‘Mommy, I need this; Daddy, I want that’ kids here?”
I continue detailing the trees,
drawing every inch of bark, every string of leaves.
“We’ve been here so many times
but we’ve never seen signs of life.
Even the birds have abandoned this place.”
She grinds out her cigarette on the nearby slide.
She’s slouched up against my side,
facing the parking lot while I face the evergreens.
Erica and I have come here after school
since the beginning of last semester.
Sometimes she brings a book,
but today she just has
tobacco, her thoughts, and me.
I used to come here
when I was little.
My parents would bring me.
Dad would push me on the swing
while Mom took videos as I screamed in delight,
“Look, Daddy, I can fly!”
I don’t remember seeing anyone like us,
smoking and sketching,
when I was one of those kids
that Erica so dislikes.
Then again, maybe they were there all along,
and I just didn’t care about anything more
than my newfound wings,
as I clung to the ignorance
of a six-year-old child.
Just like the rest of the town,
I forgot about this park.
It was old, rundown, and they wanted
an updated version.
But unlike the rest of the town,
I had Erica to reintroduce me.
“Wildflower is too peaceful for kids,”
I say, more to agree with Erica than
to express my own feelings.
Her black hair presses against
my arm,
smelling of cigarettes and coconut shampoo.
“You think it’s peaceful now,
you should see this place at night.
It’s incredible.”
We sit in silence.
She lights another cigarette.
I put the finishing touches on my forest,
inhaling Erica’s distinctive scent,
just as addictive as nicotine.
I follow Erica to her house
in an attempt to spend
as much time as I can
next to her,
avoiding my own
lonely home.
She hates,
she hates,
she HATES
her townhouse.
The barred windows
and paper-thin walls
scream reality
and Erica is more
into fiction.
She digs in her jeans pocket,
then curses under her breath and
bangs her fist on the front door.
“Bea, I forgot my key!”
Beatrice Brooks was
Little Miss Beauty Queen in the ’70s,
the go-to gossip girl in high school.
Now she’s a cubical worker
and the foster mom of my best friends,
my only friends,
Erica and Asher Sinclair.
Inside the house,
the cold air touches me.
It’s deadened and hollowed—
a bit bleak, a bit empty.
Corpses of forgotten items
decorate the hallway:
takeout cartons, deferred bills,
shreds of torn-up wrappers.
The air is still stale
when we enter her bedroom.
She lies on the bottom of the bunk bed.
I peer over the top
and see the sheets are made-up and clean.
“Doesn’t Taylor sleep above you?”
“Oh, Bea kicked him out,” she says.
“She hasn’t gotten a replacement yet.”
My hand shakes
as my fingers run over cotton
I forgot
these things
could happen.
I sit on the edge of her mattress,
Not sure of what to say.
I’m not good at talking.
“Lie down next to me,”
she says.
This is one of those times
I wish I knew
what was running through her head.
Lie down next to me.
How much does that mean?
I want to do more than that.
I want to touch her,
kiss her,
be with her.
For now,
I lie down.
Asher
rolls into the room
on his skateboard.
His long black hair is
pulled back in a ponytail.
He’s got one earbud in,
blasting Guns N’ Roses so loud
I can hear it from Erica’s bed.
“Ooh, am I interrupting something?”
My cheeks burn,
but Erica
is expressionless,
as if she’s stone.
“Go away, Asher,” she says.
He sticks his tongue out
like a child.
“It’s my room too.”
I giggle. I can’t help it.
Erica is
less than amused.
In fact,
I’m not sure she heard him
at all.
I met Asher
the first time I came to their house.
“Hey, it’s better than being locked in a closet,”
he joked (he always jokes)
when he caught me eyeing
their broken home.
Coming from upper suburbia,
I was surprised
this neighborhood existed
so close to my bubble,
the one I was always
trying to pop.
Erica glared at Asher.
I guess
she didn’t think that memory
was anything to joke about.
Of course,
back then I didn’t know
Asher was referring to their old life
with real parents
in a place that they once
called home.
The door swings open
as Asher leaves.
Sounds of life
creep through the open door.
The thud of pans falling,
a TV screaming,
a woman cursing.
The door’s mouth closes
and swallows the sounds.
Walls keep in the quiet
and we lay
in silence
until Erica asks me,
no,
tells me, to go.
I pull on the metal knob,
hear the sounds of the real world.
I peer back at Erica.
She looks straight up,
eyes focused on nothing,
waiting for the door
to close
once more.
Angela Richards
is an accounting consultant.
Every day she dresses
in blouses of rich blues or purples,
a jet black pencil skirt,
and tops her façade off
with two-hundred-dollar heels and a Chanel briefcase.
As a child, she was
a victim of poverty,
a victim of a negligent family,
a victim of a shaky life.
She began her future
with a college scholarship,
then on to an entry level job
where she worked her way up,
further away from us.
Now she’s a successful businesswoman,
the mother of Jamie Samantha Richards,
and lives in Greenwood, Virginia.
It all sounds
so perfect
on paper.
She’s not perfect.
She’s defective,
flawed,
human.
She’s a widow,
his widow.
She’s a mother,
my mother.
She’s still
a victim
of this world
but the evidence
is harder to find.
I see myself
Spending the summer
listening to “Bohemian Rhapsody” with Erica,
laughing and joking with Asher,
with my sketchpad and pencil in hand,
drawing whatever happens to be
in eyesight or mindscape.
Asher hanging at the skate park.
Erica’s dark green eyes.
Pieces of the forest.
Anything, everything.
Capturing these moments, these memories,
my version decorating
pure white paper.
My mom
sees things differently.
She wants me to join
a camp or a class;
some sort of constant activity.
“I don’t want you wasting the summer away,”
she says as we walk down the cereal aisle of Superfoods.
Translation:
she doesn’t want me sulking around the house,
friendless and alone
like last year.
I grunt in response,
and toss a box of Lucky Charms
in our shopping cart.
She puts it back,
and picks Special K off the shelf.
“You’ll thank me when
you’re a size two.”
I wonder
if she’ll ever learn
that I don’t want to
turn my life int
o a schedule,
squeeze into doll-sized jeans,
or mold myself
to fill her stilettos.
Strangers
think the best of us.
I am The Average Teenager
with ripped jeans,
arms crossed over my chest.
Foot-tapping, gum-chewing,
not-quite-mature-yet.
She is The Caring Mother—
picks the healthy foods,
cell phone on fire with messages,
a genuine hands-on-her-hips
woman of conviction.
No scruff in the image.
I refuse to sign up
for a tedious class
or a patronizing camp.
Mom is not pleased.
Apparently,
I am missing out on a
“constructive” and “character-shaping”
opportunity
that would conveniently fit with
her work schedule.
It’s too bad
we can never agree on anything
anymore.
Instead
I find a list of drawing exercises online
and pursue an activity
that I actually like.
LIST OF DRAWING EXERCISES
1) Draw someone or something that you miss.
I miss my dad.
Before the car crash,
I loved him,
Remember Me Page 1