The Imaginary

FOR MY BROTHER, MARC
– AGAINST FORGETTING.

A. F. HARROLD

FOR MY FRIENDS, BOTH REAL AND IMAGINARY
– FOR BELIEVING IN ME.

EMILY GRAVETT

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Remember me when I am gone away
,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand
,

Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay
.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of the future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be too late to counsel then or pray
.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had
,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you remember and be sad
.

Christina Rossetti

Amanda was dead
.

The words were like a hole through his chest, like a well he was falling down
.

How could it be?

Amanda, dead?

But he'd seen her with his own eyes. She hadn't been breathing. She was dead
.

Rudger felt sick. Felt lost. Felt like the world had fallen away from him
.

He leant on his knees in the park, looking round at the grass and the trees. He could hear birds singing. A squirrel bounced across the path and onto the grass, ignoring him
.

How could this all be so green? How could it all be so alive when Amanda was dead?

It was an awful question with an awful answer: one girl's death mattered so little to the rest of the world. It might break him, might
destroy
her mother, but the park and the town and the world would all go on unchanged
.

But Rudger loved the changes, loved how, when Amanda came into a room, it came alive, her imagination colouring it, filling out the details, turning a lampshade to an exotic tree, a filing cabinet to a chest of stolen pirate treasure, a sleeping cat to a ticking time bomb. Her mind was sparky, she made the world sparkle, and Rudger had shared in it. But now…

He looked around at the park. It was the sort of place Amanda would have dreamt into being a whole new world, but no matter how hard he looked, the park stayed stubbornly parkish. He didn't have enough imagination
.

In fact, he thought, he didn't even have enough imagination to imagine himself
.

He could see the faint outlines of trees through his hands. He was fading. Without Amanda to think of him, to remember him, to make him real, he was slipping away
.

Rudger was being forgotten
.

He felt sleepy, and sleepier
.

What would it be like to fade away? To vanish entirely?

Time would tell, he thought, soon enough, time would tell
.

Birds sang him lullabies
.

The cool sun shone. He was asleep
.

And then a quiet, clear voice said, ‘I can see you.'

And Rudger opened his eyes
.

That evening Amanda Shuffleup opened her wardrobe door and hung her coat up on a boy.

She shut the door and sat down on her bed.

She hadn't taken her shoes off before running upstairs and her feet were wet. It wasn't just her feet, either. Her socks and shoes were soaked through too. Her shoes, and the laces.