MEMORIAM (22 page)

“I am not going to the secretary, I am going to the weaponry for another session of Memoriam. You can watch me. I promise.”

“You’ll kill me!” she raged. “I didn’t make it all this way to be murdered! I want to live!”

I had to do something quick before skryers came. I watched her footing like Trent taught me weeks ago. All I had to do was disarm her and then make a run for it. She would inevitably chase me or leave me be. Maybe she would come to her senses once I was out of sight and realize her mistake. Why on earth was she doing this? She was fine when I talked to her a few weeks ago.

I swallowed and took a deep breath, my limbs shaking. I made a lunge for it and ducked underneath Mary and hit her arm from underneath, shooting it up. She screamed in rage and I grabbed her arm, twisting it behind her back, trying to reach the gun. She threw her head back but missed.

I went in again. This time I managed to wring the gun from her hand and throw it to the ground. A crowd surrounded us now. People were yelling, spitting on the ground and cursing loudly. Mary grabbed a bunch of my hair and pulled, seething as I screamed in agony and spun around, trying to get my hands around her waist. I pulled her down to the ground and kneeled on top of her. She kicked and kneed me in the backbone, grabbing me with one of her free arms. Her nails dug into my arm and she threw a punch. I knew I was dangerously bordering on losing control and I needed to rein myself in before I would regret it.

I locked her arm in my elbow and flipped over, holding her down on the ground. I had to get away. There was yelling and a blur of of white through a sea of charcoal uniforms. That was a bad sign. The skryers could not get to her before me. I didn’t want either of us to get lashings. Mary had obviously not seen the skryers or she would be trying to run. I got off of Mary’s back and tried to push my way through the crowd, but the people blocked me.

“Please,” I said, shoving against a small man. He pushed me back to the ground. “We have to get out of here!” I said, panicking.

The skryers made their way into the circle that had formed. One of them seized Mary, who was howling. She had blood trickling from her hairline. The other one came over to me and grabbed my wrist. He glanced at my two symbols, the Pax and ‘H,’ then dropped it again, walking away.

“Wait...what are you doing?”

The skryers ignored me. I grabbed one of them and pulled him around. He turned and threw me to the ground. I hit the tile and winced. The crowd slowly parted for the skryers dragging Mary away. I raised my groggy head.

“No!” I screamed. “Stop them! Somebody!” No one moved. They had let the skryers pass, yet blocked me. What did that say about us? That the Pax had turned into animals like the Trux? That couldn’t be it. It just couldn’t. I didn’t want to believe that.

I tried to shove through the crowd. I had to find Mary. She was already getting lost in the crowd. Everyone was moving and Mary’s red hair was vanishing. The hand gun was nowhere to be seen. That thought disturbed me: someone in this crowd now had a gun. I wanted to find Mary but I had my Memoriam session. I kept going back and forth, sick to my stomach, deciding what to do. I finally went down the hallway and got on the lift down to the weaponry.

Trent was waiting for me when I got off the lift. We walked down the hall together. I thought of Vince’s suggestion –
find
another entrance.
Where would another one be, other than the lift?

“Bad day?” Trent asked.

“Fight,” I said.

“With who?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Mary was gone now. There was nothing I could do to help her. The thought stung. Trent and I entered the Memoriam room. Chills rose up my spine as I went over to the chair and got in. Trent hooked me up and went over to the screen.

“You ready?”

“Yes,” I said. I felt that same familiar pinch in my arm and felt myself become drowsy.                   
Here we go again
.

I was staring at an image of me on a beach. There was a click and another picture appeared, one of me with a shaggy dog. The dog was licking my chin and I was laughing. The clicks continued, showing pictures of me with people I did not recognize. The pictures began speeding up. One of Sam and I flashed by, too fast for me to get a closer look. Soon, the pictures flew too fast for me to see. They vanished, and instead, everything around me grew brighter until I was able to see where I was.

Huge buildings towered over me, one by one, lining the center path. I was in Stoclo, Rinfero’s capital. It was strangely empty. I walked down the path, glancing back and forth at little fabric shops and empty play parks for children. A swing at the play park was empty so I went over and sat down, rocking back and forth. My hands scaled the cold metal chains that were linked individually until I rested my hand on the hard leather seat. The swing began to shake. I got off the swing to see the whole play park shaking. I backed away, running back to the safety of the center path. Within seconds, the play park crumbled, falling to the ground and turning to ash.

I continued to walk down the center path, pausing when the path split off, the one on the right continuing through the city, the left turning into a small dirt road. I squinted through the sunlight, gazing at the two paths ahead of me. When I took a few steps in the direction of the dirt road, a gate appeared, blocking its entrance. I was stuck. My decision had been made for me. I had to stay on the path through the city that seemed to run on for miles.

A plot of land on the path up ahead had nothing but a small cradle in the middle. I could hear crying coming from the cradle, but I did not go over. The sky grew darker as I walked. Further down the street was another small play park with broken swings that hung there like old fruit, waiting to be picked. This weird feeling that there should be others with me kept ringing in my ears. Why was Stoclo empty? I looked ahead and saw a man. Was it the Head who I saw? As I grew closer, I realized the man wasn’t the Head. He was a stranger. He began to follow me as I walked.

I continued down the path, passing a large school with children playing in the yard. An electric fence wrapped around the yard where a small girl with dark brown hair swung on a set of swings. She was talking to a girl with blond braids. The blonde girl stood up and left. The dark-haired girl hopped off the swings and walked over to the fence where I stood.

My throat tightened and I backed away, letting go of the fence. It was like an electric shock had run through me. That little girl had my eyes. This was me. The man who’d been following me was still there. This was all me. It was my life. I swallowed and stepped off the border around the schoolyard, walking swiftly down the center path. There was a nursery up ahead on my right where I could see Sam through the window.

“Sam?” I asked. What was he doing here?

I broke into a jog. The man followed. My jogging turned into running as I hurried down the path. I glanced to my left and saw a younger version of me playing a piano. My throat was tightening even more. It was hard for me to breathe. The sky was an angry violet, wind picking up debris and sending it everywhere. The path became difficult to see because of the flying debris.

Suddenly, a body appeared on the ground in the middle of the path. I ran over, my hand covering my mouth. It was an older woman. Her eyes had rolled back in her head. Everything was closing in on me. The man was running after me now. The path had no end.

I blinked furiously and found myself in a meadow. The little brown-eyed boy was sitting next to me on a blanket.

“How come you don’t come home as much?”

“Because I grew up. I have my own place now.”

“Yeah, but why? You can stay with us.”

I laughed and ruffled the boy’s hair. “I know, James, but that’s not how grown-up things work.”

“Why?”

“Well,” I sighed, “because it’s part of life. We all have to grow up.”

“I’m already grown up,” he said confidently. “I am just going to live at home as a grown-up for now.”

I smiled and reached over, pulling him onto my lap. “Come here, you.” I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed him tight. “I love you.”

“Yeah, I do too,” he said nonchalantly, staring at the setting sun. I let go of him and watched as he took off through the meadow, soon disappearing through the tall grass.

“James, wait for me!” I got up and folded the blanket, taking off through the grass. “James?”

He wasn’t coming. I weaved through the grass. “James!”

There was no answer. The sun was gone now. The sky was a dark amber and night was setting in. I stopped walking and listened to the silence, waiting to see if I could hear him.    “James?” I called out again. “Mother said I have to keep an eye on you! This isn’t funny. JAMES!”

There was no reply.

I pushed through a clump of grass and jumped back in surprise to find Sam. “Hey, your mother said dinner was ready. Where is James?”

“I can’t find him.”

“What?”

“He ran off,” I exasperated.

“We’ll find him.” Sam rubbed my back as we walked. He stopped and I turned back to ask him why but he waved me off. “I’ll catch up. I just want to check something.”

“Okay,” I said. I felt uneasy. I passed Sam and walked through the grass, losing him behind me. That’s when I heard a gunshot. I panicked and ran back through the grass to find Sam. He was holding a gun, pointed at me.

“Time to run,” he said with a smile.

I scrambled through the grass. My mind was spinning. Sam was coming to kill me. He really had been using me all this time.

I burst through the field of grass, praying I was safe as I ran up the steps of a small country house. The door swung open and I ran in, trying to catch my breath. There was a group of people seated at the table in the room to my left, all watching me. I stepped back.

“Sorry I-”

“You’re late.” The boy who said it had shaggy, dirty blond hair.

The older woman sitting next to him swatted his hand. “Really, Michael. Stop it.”

I pointed at the woman in confusion. She was the one I had just come across in Stoclo, but now she was alive, sitting here at this table. Her wavy hair brushed against her chin.        “You’re....you’re dead. I saw you...on that path.”

“We saved you a seat.” She pointed to the chair next to her. I glanced back at the front door then went and sat down, shaking all over.

“But Sam’s coming,” I said.

The woman laughed. “All right, now we can eat.”

The little boy, James, who I had seen countless times, was sitting at the table, too. A young girl with hazel eyes and dark brown hair like mine sat next to me.

She smiled, revealing several crooked teeth. “I lost another one today.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh.” I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to act.

“It’s been a long time,” the woman said to me.

“Has it?” I asked. The woman nodded. There was a pang of nostalgia in my chest. It felt like forever since I had seen her. I wanted to hug her.

The scene changed again. Now I was at the top of a grassy hill, and James and the young girl were rolling down, letting out bursts of laughter as they chased after one another. The same woman from earlier was sitting next to me. Her hair was greying at the roots.

“The kids miss you.”

“I miss them, too,” I said.

“They thought you had abandoned them for someone else.”

“I would never do that.”

“I know. They don’t understand the concept of you living somewhere else.”

I smiled at James and the girl; they were throwing fistfuls of grass in each other’s hair.

“It’s been two years since he left. It still feels like yesterday.”

“We are going to be okay, Mother.”

She smiled, but I still saw pain in her eyes. “I’m glad you’ve come home.”

“Me too.” I turned my attention back to the kids. The girl’s braids bounced as she jumped over James as he rolled.

“You know, it’s days like these where I wish I could freeze time and make them stay young forever.”

I watched this woman...this woman who was my mother; her aging body, her frail hand resting against the warm grass. She was getting old, I realized. She wasn’t always going to be around for me or any of the children. It had suddenly grown quiet. The birds stopped twittering. Down at the bottom of the hill the children had disappeared.

“James? Julia?” I stood up, alarmed. My mother was gone, too. “Mother?” I placed my head in my hands and clenched my fists. “Why?” I whispered. “Why did you leave me like this?”

Tears sprung to my eyes and slid down my cheeks, landing in the grass.

“We can’t stay forever,” my mother said, even though she was nowhere in sight. “We all have to learn to let go.”

“It’s not fair. We had so little time together.”

“I’ll see you again.”

“No you won’t. You’re gone, and I’m here to pick up the pieces.” I let out a strangled sob and hid my face in my hands, my shoulders shaking as I cried. I wrapped my arms around my waist, hoping that if I held tight enough then I would not fall apart.

It was then that I heard a different voice yelling at me. “Look at me!” it said. I cried even harder. I didn’t want to look.

“I c-can’t do it.”

“I’m right here. Open your eyes.”

I raised my head. There was a large mirror sitting in front of me. I stared at the reflection of me. My eyes were bloodshot and my frame was thin. I reached out and touched the mirror, sliding my hand over those tear-stained
cheeks
, slight smile, and wavy hair.

“Me,” I whispered.

“I’m here for you. I’ve been here the whole time.”

“I thought I lost myself.”

The reflection of me shook her head. “I’ve been here for you.”

“Why won’t you show yourself?”

“I have. We are the same, Vi. You never changed.”

“But my memories, they’re missing.”

“You’ll find them again. You just have to look in the right places.”

I bit my lip and turned away from the mirror, picking myself up from the carbon floor and examining the small bedroom I was in. I went over to the window and looked at the ocean, the waves crashing up against the jetted rocks. I breathed in the sweet salty air and listened to the waves, running my hand along the windowsill where a variety of coarse shells were laid out. The wind played with my hair as I listened to the seagulls crying overhead.