Here's a part of Chapter One of Remembering Us.
RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 14, 2014
Hope you enjoy it :)
Warning: It's unedited and subject to change.
My steps are slow and my feet are
uncertain.
The edges of the stairway I’m being pulled
down are gray and cloudy from the smoke wafting up from the basement dance
floor.
Kelsey is pulling me somewhere I don’t want
to follow. Why don’t I want to be here? The answer niggles at the edges of my
mind but I can’t pull it to the front. It’s just out of my grasp, like always.
A sweaty shoulder bumps me into the wall
and my hand is pulled from Kelsey’s. Cold foamy beer splashes out of a red
plastic cup and hits my shoulder. Kelsey doesn’t look back to see where I am
and the blonde guy who hit me doesn’t stop to ask if I’m okay.
I steady my feet and take another step
down. The dance floor is packed with people and the music is so loud the
thumping bass rattles my teeth. My eyes scan the dark room - brightened only by
the strobe light hanging in the center of the ceiling – looking for someone.
The lump in my throat disappears when I
realize he isn’t here. He’s not here and a mixture of relief and disappointment
swirls inside of me. I smile and reach Kelsey at the bar. The guy behind it
smiles at both of us and hands us our filled plastic cups, but I wave mine
away. His name is Zander and he’s in my Statistics class. I laugh at something
he says as he and Kelsey leave for the dance floor. The nervousness returns
when I’m by myself and my eyes scan the room. I should leave now, before he
comes.
But then I see him, and I can’t help but smile.
He’s a head taller than everyone else and as he hits the bottom stair he has to
duck his head to make it through the doorway. A small section of his black hair
falls into his eyes and he flips it back.
As if he knows I’m here, his eyes find me immediately and he smiles,
walking toward me.
His smile lights up the room and I am no
longer worried. Kelsey is gone, Zander is a distant memory and I don’t know if
there’s music still playing.
When Adam is around me – my brain flees and
my heart flip-flops. His kisses make me lose my mind and remind me of dark
chocolate, full of all those feel-good hormones.
He’s a few feet from me when he reaches his
arm out like he wants to hug me. I take a step forward but before my foot hits
the ground, I’m bumped to the side. I blink and a tiny blonde is wrapped around
Adam. Her legs are around his waist and her arms are around his shoulders.
She’s completely latched onto him. He smiles at me. His eyes stay on mine as he
kisses her forehead and sets her to her feet.
“Hi, Amy.” The little blonde scowls at me.
Adam’s eyes are laughing at me.
This. This is why I didn’t want to be here.
#
“So who was the
girl?”
I stare at the
ceiling, ignoring my therapist’s question. I hate this room. The walls are
yellow, but not a happy yellow. More like what I imagine baby poop looks like.
And the chairs haven’t been updated since at least the sixties. By the time my
sessions are done, the only thing that’s changed is the imprint of the scratchy
fabric on the backs of my thighs.
Instead of
answering the question, I count the ceiling tiles and multiple the rows. Ironic
that I use math at a time like this when it was a math class that got me into
all this trouble in the first place.
Reliving all
these dreams every week is almost as exhausting as having them in the first
place and talking about them isn’t making anything better.
“Adam?” Dr.
Jamison has lost interest in my silence, again, and turns to him. She’s about
fifty years old and her faded blonde hair that hangs down to her waist is
always braided. She wears flowy, multi-colored hippy skirts and mismatched tops
every time I see her. Sometimes I want to ask her if she has a joint, just to
see what she says.
“Tina,” he says
softly. I stare out the window at the playground that sits empty at the park
across the street. “It was just Tina.”
“Who’s Tina?”
“She was a friend
from home. We grew up next door to each other. She was in town that weekend
visiting other friends from our high school that went to school with me. That’s
all.”
That’s all. It’s
only two words, but they sound so condescending every time I hear them. It
tells me that everything I’m either dreaming or remembering is made up or a
half-truth of what the real life events actually were. It tells me that I’m
being an idiot for believing them over my boyfriend who loves me. Or so I’ve
been told. Maybe I’d believe them if I remembered Adam at all.
