In Memory

by CJ Lyons

  And still, I find myself inexorably drawn toward another book, seeking to finalise a chapter in my own, encouraged to continue writing with the words in my mind and music in my ears.

  Aggh, that was so poetic.

  Goodnight then.

  176 Days, 4 September, Thursday

  Thought about making funeral arrangements today and was trying my damnedest to make it cheap.

  175 Days, 5 September, Friday

  And Noah wasn’t at school today eitherrrrrr….

  Used that many ‘r’s to show my dismay. You know, when you’re trying to indicate that you’re kind of annoyed you make the last word in your sentence a lot longer, in a sort of whining fade out. It’s hard to convey that sort of sound in writing, but I’m sure you know what I mean.

  174 Days, 6 September, Saturday

  It rained a little today, weather here is crazy.

  Really want to go swimming… Think the public pool is open still… But I doubt that I could have gone today.

  Maybe I’ll wait a while and go when the indoor pool opens. The only thing I hate about swimming is people seem to think I’m a girl a lot of the time. I guess it’s easy to make that assumption, cause underwater, it’s hard to tell. Mostly cause of my hair I think.

  Terra has been a little crazy about my hair since I was young. She insisted I grow it out and keep it that way. So now my hair goes down to my waist, and I have to wear it up in a high ponytail to keep it from being totally cumbersome.

  Thought about cutting it off last year, after getting sick of the jeers and jokes of the people at my old school. Fairy, queer, fag… Ah, the names go on and on. And all for something as trivial as the length of my hair. Ridiculous.

  Remembering now how that went. I was seventeen, it was last year before we moved here. Might switch tenses now. Yeah, it’ll be better. Eventually, I think I’ll just start doing that without a warning. You’ll get used to it, and then I won’t have to waste paper by forming some kind of poorly written segue.

  Which reminds me, I have to practice the piano more than I have been.

  So much for the clean segue.

  Whatever.

  I was walking home, it was a Thursday, I think. Since school had just let out, there were a bunch of other students around too, bundled up in their winter gear.

  Usually I was left alone, people just let me be.

  Except for this one group of boys. My very existence seemed to them to be a great personal wrong, and so they took great pains to antagonise me as much as possible.

  This included following me home that day, spitting insults about me the whole way. I could ignore them; I was so good at ignoring all of them by now.

  Then their voices got louder, yelling obscenities. I quickened my pace when something slammed into the back of my head. I fell to my knees, instantly putting my hand to the place where whatever it was made contact. I pulled my fingers away with streaks of blood across them, gasping at the pain searing through my head.

  More curses and yells followed this, they were getting closer…

  I got to my feet shakily, stumbling into a run. Was close, close to the clinic where Terra worked, I just had to make it.

  Someone’s hand grabbed my arm, yanking me back. I looked back, there were three of them, the one on my arm grinning maliciously.

  I still remember exactly what he said… “You’re gonna die, you sick freak.”

  Those words still ring through my mind, even now. Wasn’t scared of death so much as I was scared of how they were going to hurt me beforehand.

  Didn’t want to die there, cold and alone in the snow…

  Kept thinking that as they punched and kicked me, burying my face in the snow and telling me I deserved it. That’s the punishment I get for being a queer.

  At that point, I wasn’t even sure about it. I didn’t know if I liked guys or what, but they seemed pretty sure for me.

  They hated me so much, it was terrifying. I didn’t think anyone could hate so passionately, with such violent fervour.

  They laughed as they drove my head into the snowbank. Something stabbed into my neck as they did so, splitting the skin and freeing a hot burst of crimson into the snow.

  Think there was a fence or something in the snow there.

  Once they saw all that blood, they backed off. Obviously their threat about actually killing me was a hollow one. Heard them running away as I managed to get to my feet with my hand clamped to my neck. Don’t think they hit an artery or vein or whatever, but bleeding from the neck is always an alarming sight.

  The clinic was on just the next block, I just had to make it there…

  One step at a time.

  Oh man, I’ll finish this story tomorrow, I’m gonna sleep now.

  173 Days, 7 September, Sunday

  My gosh, can’t believe I cliffhangered my own diary. Geez.

  I’ll pick up directly from my last recollection and then write about the junk that happened today.

  Only had a few steps left until I got to the clinic. I remember just counting the puffs of breath crystallising in front of me until I got to the door. Think someone asked me if I was alright, they might have helped me get in the door.

  When I got in there, I kept saying my sister’s name, spitting blood into my hand.

  “Terra, Terra, Terra…” Whoever brought me in here, an older man, I think, relayed my gasping words to the nurses on staff. He was kind of fatherly looking, black moustache and hair, silver on the sides. They brought me to a room, and sat me down on a wide chair.

  Terra was by my side eventually, her warm hand cupping my face and asking me what happened.

  I blinked slowly, wiping my mouth on my sleeve. I could still feel the hot blood running down my face. “I got beat up.”

  “I can see that! But by who? Why?”

  “Guys from school… because…” Didn’t want to tell her, I don’t know why. Oh. Because I wasn’t sure if it was true or not. They beat me up because they thought I was gay, when I wasn’t even sure of it myself.

  “You know what? Tell me later. You need stitches, and oh my god.”

  My hand dropped from my neck, revealing the long jagged cut where the fence had scraped it. Blood ran down my neck and over my collarbone, dripping down the front of my coat.

  Terra steadied me, as I almost swayed right off the chair.

  “Aerian. Stay awake, okay?” She grabbed my hand, pressing it to my neck, “Hold your hand here. Keep pressure on that.”

  She called for someone else, saying something about me losing a lot of blood. Guess I did.

  Terra stitched me up herself, keeping me steady. Other people were around, wish I remembered everything better; this part of the memory gets a little fuzzy. I remember being warm, the pain, then sleepy… so sleepy.

  She wouldn’t let me sleep, though, and finally got the bleeding to stop.

  In total, I got 27 stitches in my face and neck. The scars are gone now, except for the one on my neck and one below my right eye. The one on my eye pulls the corner of it down a little more than the other side. The one on my neck is still a weird brown-pink smudge, forever keeping the memory of that day.

  Every time Terra sees it, like when I’m wearing a muscle shirt or something, she turns away with her eyes closed. I know she remembers how scared she felt that day.

  Remembering how close I was to dying.

  Couldn’t die that day, come to think; it wasn’t when Mum said it would happen.

  When I was sufficiently recovered enough, she gave me some juice, and promised a sandwich, then sat down across from me. She leaned forward, her blue-grey eyes soft with concern.

  “Aerian…” her voice is so soothing, like a blanket wrapped around me, “What happened? Why did those boys attack you? What started it?”

  “They… they don’t like me.” I drank some of the juice, looking away from her soft eyes, “…They just followed me from school, and when I went into the alley as a shortcut, one of them threw a rock
.”

  “What aren’t you telling me, Aerian?” Oh no, she knows I’m leaving it out, she knows…

  “Nothing.” I lied, keeping my eyes firmly away from hers, my chest filling with knots. If I looked at her now, I knew I would probably cry, just from the frustration. Tears burned in my eyes, “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing? You call this nothing?” She grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at her. As predicted, two big tears tumbled from my eyes, rolling over the stitches.

  “It’s nothing.” I maintained in a strangled voice, looking away again, very aware of the tears falling hot and fast down my face.

  She sighed deeply, got to her feet, and gently wrapped her arms around me. I clutched at her shirt, burying my face in the crook of her neck, choking out those words. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing…”

  In retrospect, it really wasn’t nothing. This was a huge deal. Now that I’ve seen Noah in pain like that, I know what it was like for Terra that day. Want to apologise to her still, but I just don’t know how I should.

  Maybe tomorrow I’ll cook her a nice dinner and when she inevitably asks what all the fuss is about, I’ll tell her it’s an apology dinner.

  It sounds like a good plan.

  But I am wayyyy tired now, so I shall retire.

  172 Days, 8 September, Monday

  Perhaps one of the most singularly frustrating things about writing is that it is virtually impossible to depict every minute detail about what is happening.

  For instance, while I am writing, somewhere, he got hit by a car, and he made a cup of tea, and he bought a pack of pencil crayons from a guy who had stolen them from a drug store that went out of business, and put them on a shelf in the office supply store, when all the while he’d stolen the pencil crayons for his younger sister, who had bought her own at the office supply store and the thief met her there, and absentmindedly put the pencil crayons down and the went to lunch together.

  Do you see my point? If we were to write everything that was happening in relation to other things, writing would be nothing but run-on sentences. That’s why it’s difficult sometimes, to choose only the relevant details to include.

  And time is also irrelevant. We can write about the past and the future simultaneously, for they are the same thing, depending on the perspective in which you perceive a single event.

  Therefore, everything written must be taken as the present, as there is no way to disprove it isn’t, and the written word always becomes the read word, which exists solely in the present.

  I think about that when I put a date on my writing. Who’s to say I wrote the correct date? Only I would know. Could lie to the page and pretend it’s yesterday, and no one but me will know the difference because they’re not here. Writing is the ultimate form of lying to the world.

  I hope he’s at school tomorrow. Maybe he was vacationing with his family over the weekend, so he’ll be at school tomorrow, definitely. Yeah.

  171 Days, 9 September, Tuesday

  He wasn’t at school again. I kinda feel disappointed. Where is he…?

  And this many absences at the beginning if the year can’t be good… Maybe when he comes back to school I’ll help him catch up. It’ll give me a reason to talk to him anyway.

  Today I stayed an extra hour at the hospital to go chill with some of the older residents. Met the new nurse, her name is Gertrude. Yes, she’s old. I don’t think any parent would name their child Gertrude nowadays. I guess if you do… um… way to keep the past alive?

  Ehhh… I really should cook that nice dinner for Terra… Made stroganoff for dinner tonight. I have to buy more cornstarch tomorrow.

  170 Days, 10 September, Wednesday

  Suppose it would be good for you to know more about why I have to work at the hospital. Terra and I live together, just the two of us. Our parents died a long time ago, I was about ten. Mum died first, then Dad after her.

  I really don’t know the circumstances of their deaths, and to be honest, it doesn’t bother me very much. I’m happy with Terra. She’s raised me well.

  So we have to work to make all of the income for my house. Occasionally, I do wonder what it’s like for all the other people at my school. They must not have as much to worry about, since their parents are supporting them. I do get annoyed when I hear them gripe about how hard their lives are, I just assume they don’t have to work to keep their house.

  Of course, when you make an assumption, you make and ass out of you… and… umption? ………yeaaaahhhh. That doesn’t really make any sense. Should have worded that more carefully.

  Was only assuming they don’t have to work harder than me, but who knows, right? Maybe they have an unhappy home life, or live alone; can’t really judge people based on how I see them at school.

  So I do my best to be nice to everyone I meet.

  If Terra ever asked if I minded working to stay here, and pay for stuff, of course I would say no. She works so hard, I have to help her as much as I can.

  169 Days, 11 September, Thursday

  Hahaha. My day today certainly was interesting.

  Didn’t have work at the hospital today, so I ended up going straight home after school. Had a lot of free time I don’t usually have. Decided to make some tea and toast and read the paper. Was in a weird mood, where I wanted to be in the living room. It’s weird, I get like that sometimes.

  Anyway, when I was reading the paper, I came across an ad in the Classifieds, requesting help at the Fine Arts Centre. Called them up and they said if I could get there as soon as possible it would be great.

  I hurried over there, naturally, and was greeted by a group of old ladies. Apparently, they were setting up a Drawing class in the studio in the Fine Arts Centre, and needed someone to help carry things and stuff like that.

  The teacher of the class, Ruth, reminded me of the stereotypical kind old woman. Her hair was thick and snow white, and was piled on top of her head in thick curls. She smelled of cookies.

  All the ladies liked me very much I think. I could tell they were the kind of… frisky types.

  Since it was so hot today, I opted to wear a white muscle shirt to deflect some of the sun, which apparently they liked rather a lot. Was getting some boxes from the top shelves when I first noticed the group of redheads, Bethie, Mary, and Marian, all giggling behind their wrinkly hands.

  Couldn’t help but blush when I figured out they were… checking me out. Old ladies! Really! I find this pretty funny now, but I was genuinely embarrassed earlier.

  Those old ladies. Geez.

  After being looked up and down by them for a while, I finally asked lightly what they were looking at.

  “Well, you, of course.” Bethie replied unblushingly, “Have you ever considered modelling, dear?”

  I have never considered it in my life. Told them so, and they all tittered in appreciation.

  Guess I’m okay, looks-wise. I’m not someone who makes babies cry or anything. I’m pretty tall, I’ve heard that’s a good thing. But I’m not really in shape, I don’t have amazing abs or crazy awesome biceps. Honestly, I’m pretty average.

  I think my best feature is my eyes. I like my eyes.

  Apparently, according to Bethie, my best feature is my ass.

  Her telling me this was the most embarrassing part of today for me.

  The best part was the pretty big wad of cash from the ladies for helping them. I restocked the whole kitchen with it.

  At least I had an amusing day. Terra had to work really late, so I’m waiting up for her.

  But I’m falling asleep just sitting here… jus _t sleep

  168 Days, 12 September, Friday

  No time to write today. Emergency, I’m at the hospital.

  167 Days, 13 September, Saturday

  I sighed, rolling over and glancing at the alarm clock with my book laid open on my chest.

  10:36 Pm

  It changed to 10:37 as I looked at it, seeming more significant than usual. That was a w
hole minute of my life, idly spent reading a book I had read several times before. It brings to mind the quote ‘Live life to the fullest and enjoy every minute.’

  Don’t know who said it, and I probably got the words wrong, but either way, it’s impossible. In order for me to live life to the fullest is to not enjoy every minute. Enjoying every minute takes meaning out of them. In order to truly appreciate the joyous moments in life, we must embrace the painful ones and keep them in memory.

  10:43 Pm

  I heaved myself out of bed, meandering out of my room and downstairs. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard a scuffling sound just outside the door. Figuring Terra was home and couldn’t get the door open, (the lock sticks) I opened it.

  The person standing in front of me was very clearly not my sister.

  It was Noah.

  Hadn’t seen him for about two weeks (estimation) and yet here he stood, effectively taking the breath right out of me by his appearance. His shoulder-length black hair was matted and tangled, jostled every now and then by his trembling shoulders. Could see deep cuts on his hands and forearms where his shirt was torn. These same cuts streaked around his chest and –alarmingly- his neck. He wasn’t wearing shoes.

  I swallowed, managing a small sound.

  This made him look up at me, his immense icy eyes inherently pleading with me in the centre of his damaged face. His beautiful face.

  Reminded me of a flower, crushed by someone’s boot.

  Bruises coloured his otherwise paper white skin, each one seeming to intensify in saturation as my gaze passed over them. They were especially dark around his left eye, the one he’s blind in. Dried blood lined his face in smudged cracking patterns. His lips were plump and swollen, bleeding from a split on the bottom. Shakily, they parted, and his voice slithered through, as if it had been broken as the rest of him.

  “I’m sorry, Aerie. But I didn’t know where else I could go.”

  Wanted to suggest the hospital, but the words wouldn’t come.

  He looked around nervously, swaying on the spot, “May I… May I come in?”