by Rose Fall
---
I squinted at the bright afternoon sun, attempting to readjust to the silent breeze, all of the turbulent noises that interrupted it, and the people who unknowingly violated the silence and solitude I’d been growing accustomed to.
“Look who’s brave enough to come outside! Hey, an inch today maybe a whole foot tomorrow.”
I eased into the sand beside Rachel, looking back at the porch steps, which were at least a yard away. I had mostly stopped keeping track of time, but I knew I hadn’t ventured out of the house in a long while. For a while, the house really had felt like an island, one where time was suspended and I could pretend that what was true wasn’t. But even I couldn’t dream forever. And when I’d looked at the date today, I’d realized that I needed to suspend my wallowing. I knew that what Rachel was suffering through today was so much worse.
“Thanks for the support,” I rolled my eyes as I cleaned my sandy hands on one of her legs.
“What? You want to talk about your feelings?” She asked in a tone that indicated she wouldn’t hear of it even if I did.
“How’d you know?” I smiled.
“It’s today isn’t it?” I said quietly after a long pause.
I could see the way her face hardened, her emotionless expression indicating that she was experiencing a rollercoaster of them deep down.
“Wait,” I said, knowing that though she was less than an inch away from me, I’d begun to lose her the moment I’d acknowledged something both of us knew not to.
“Forget I said anything, I’m sorry,” I murmured apologetically for what felt like the millionth time these past few days.
She seemed to relax only the slightest bit, but I was apparently unable to keep my mouth shut.
“But why do we always pretend? It’s not like you can ever forget…” This summer had evidently become the one where no secret was left unexposed, and Ash’s observation about her fear of water had made it apparent that this one could not be ignored much longer.
“I could try if you’d shut up,” she said coldly.
“He was your brother…” I said stupidly, already afraid that I’d said too much.
“Do you honestly think you know that better than me?” She snapped back.
Finally, I had no words left, I felt my ‘I’m sorrys’ had grown empty, worthless like the regrets that brought them on.
“Even without a calendar I’d know. I can feel it, I get dreams about him. Well, nightmares. I haven’t been able to sleep.”
“I didn’t know…you never told me,” I said sadly.
“There’s a lot I don’t tell you, Eli. For good reason,” she replied matter-of-factly.
I wasn’t sure if she’d meant it, or if she was saying it just to hurt me, but I was surprised that it stung all the same.
“You haven’t been paying attention to anyone but yourself,” she shrugged. “Probably wouldn’t have told you if you’d asked.”
The silence was filled by a wave rushing towards us. It slowed before it reached us, transitioning into a tranquil flow, but I was suddenly stricken with anxiety as I looked towards Rachel. She inched her toes towards the water. It barely touched her feet, but I caught the shiver that made her retreat the slightest bit, though she continued to look straight ahead.
“Maybe you should talk to someone…your parents…”
“The mother of all ideas,” she smiled bitterly.
“I’m worried…” I whispered, aware that I had always been the one with more words.
“Oh, no more Jessie and now I’m your next project? Goody for me!”
“Rachel...” I said uselessly.
“You’re worried! Because my behavior is sooo concerning! Maybe I’m the one who’s suicidal! Yeah, maybe I’ll go and try to drown myself, cause that would be poetic justice.” She paused. A mischievous glint came over her eyes, her playful expression reminding me of those self-destructive rebels that always died in tragedies.
Her smile grew more amused as I became more panic stricken; I began to think she would jump in right then, just as I prepared to grab her, she let out a large sigh, “I’m not that noble,” she said, rolling her eyes “I’m a bitch, remember?”
I waited, attempting to separate her games from the truths in between.
“…Just trying to get over a stupid fear,” she mumbled, “It’s pathetic. What, am I going to be afraid of water my whole life? Do I think something’s going to swallow me up if I jump in there?”
“No,” She murmured, answering her own question. “Of course not, I’m not an idiot. But it doesn’t change anything.”
“It’s going to take time,” I tried to say encouragingly.
“It’s been five years! I’ve been here the whole summer and this is the closest I’ve been to the water, in case you didn’t notice.”
“You should have said something. You never talk about it; you act like it never happened. How was I supposed to know? I thought you were okay.”
“How could I ever be okay again when I failed so badly at protecting him? He was just a kid. A kid that would have been a year older today; he would have had a million more birthdays to look forward to. He could have been anyone, done anything and now no one will ever know him because ten fucking minutes was too long for me to watch my own brother.”
My eyes widened in alarm, I was trying to hold on to her, grip my arms around her so she could have some hold on the present. Her eyes were so far away and I
could almost see her reliving the moment, willing the scene to change so that he could be part of the present instead of a painful reminder of past regrets. She pushed me away as I tried to hold on to her, and my arms froze as I ran out of ways to comfort her. Then I noticed Ash’s horrified face on the porch.
I quickly gathered enough to realize she’d heard more of the conversation than Rachel would have ever wanted her to know. But it was too late.
“Don’t give me that look. Some loser just dumped you and your mom’s a whore. I feel sorry for you.” I felt the jagged edges of each word as if they’d been meant for me. Ash retreated into the house faster than I could react and Rachel remained unmoved, as if the words hadn’t even come out of her mouth.
My mouth hung open as I stared at her in astonishment, and she turned only to shrug at me before returning her gaze to the water. It made me wonder if she thought I found her words acceptable. I wondered if I had ever looked to anyone the way she did to me in that moment. Somehow I knew I had, and it made me think that for us, hope would never be anything more than an illusion.
Memories Will Haunt You
Haunted
I stopped dead in my tracks, staring at the dark cloud ahead of us. I could hear my heart pounding.
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m not going in there.”
He had been walking ahead of me, he was almost at the front door when he turned around.
“Come on, don’t tell me you’re afraid of ghosts!”
“Don’t tell me you’re not!” I protested.
“There are already so many dangers in our world, why are you going to worry about the ones in another one?”
I continued shaking my head. His reasoning made no sense to me anyway. Anyone that had ever been in that haunted house came back a different person.
“Come on Ash, I promise I won’t let anything hurt you.”
He walked back towards me and took my hand. Stupidly, I followed him into the dark.
I wondered now, if this was the moment where it all went wrong.
“Look,” I said, trying to put some measure of confidence into my words. “I did something really awful and I wish I could take it back but I can’t. So I’m just going to tell you. When I‒”
He used his fingers to cover his ears and started screaming, “La la la la I can’t hear you!!!!!!” at the top of his lungs, just like I had done the day before.
I stared at him in bewilderment, waiting for him to stop. Eventually he did.
“Don’t tell me, o
kay?”
I stared at him in confusion. “What? But‒”
“No. No buts. I don’t want to know. Please don’t tell me.”
He gave me a disapproving look when I tried to argue. I protested halfheartedly, it wasn’t like I wanted to tell him anyway.
“Okay,” I agreed reluctantly.
I sighed in frustration, trying to shake the memory out of my head. I was growing accustomed to these interruptions; no matter what I was doing my mind always reverted back to thinking about him. I especially couldn’t shake that memory. I couldn’t stop wondering what might have happened if I hadn’t used his ignorant protest as a reason not to tell him the truth. Where would we be now? The diary hadn’t helped either, reading about Ash and Julian made me wonder how it all could have been different if I were more like her. Her life seemed so much simpler, her relationship a lot less dysfunctional, especially since its downfall was more my fault than hers.
I’d only opened her journal to pass time while I waited for her (and maybe to try to decipher what was real from what wasn’t). The entry I’d been reading, “Haunted,” made it a little obvious. It was written like a story rather than a journal entry, and then I realized it wasn’t the first time I’d seen an entry like that. It still puzzled me the way she mixed reality with fiction, but who was I to tell her how to organize her diary?
I hadn’t seen Ash since Rachel had yelled at her this morning, and I was starting to get worried. I’d found the entry she’d written about her and Julian’s breakup.
July 26th, 2015 Ackey Breakey Heart
I lost Julian. The rest is too sad to tell.
I was fairly certain she wouldn’t be mad at me for reading her diary this time (afterall, there were no secrets left between any of us). And in my defense, I was at least partially using it to try to guess her whereabouts, she’d been gone since this afternoon and I was starting to get worried. I’d debated going to check if she was with Julian, but this entry made me doubt the possibility. Besides, I figured the only person he wanted to see less than her was me. I glanced back down at the diary, figuring there was nothing more I could do but wait.
I tried to make my steps as quiet as possible, irrationally thinking that this would keep the ghosts from knowing we were here.
We were standing in a dusty living room now. We had only the light on Julian’s phone to guide us. I had a firm grip on his hand; if anything tried to get me, it would have to take him too.
“Aaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!” I screamed before I even knew what had scared me. I was completely hidden behind Julian now and almost on the verge of tears.
“Relax, it was just the front door,” He whispered, the quiet of his voice a calming contrast to my ear-splitting scream.
“We’re stuck?”
“No, we’re not. It was just the wind, no ghost. Let’s go upstairs.” He was already pulling me towards the creaky staircase before I had a chance to protest. The last thing I wanted to do was go upstairs, but I certainly didn’t want to be alone, not even for the brief seconds it would take me to run down the stairs and out the front door.
I carefully avoided the holes in the wooden steps, hoping that the whole thing wouldn’t crumble beneath us.
Julian led me to an empty room directly ahead of the stairs. There were two wide windows in front of us and the intense brightness of this room was an apparent contradiction to the rest of the house. I felt a lot less frightened here; I could see the surrounding houses, and I felt like part of the world again.
“There are no ghosts here.”
I stared quizzically. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to this room or the entire house. Either way, I wasn’t ready to go that far. But he sounded so confident. I noted the way he seemed comfortable here.
“You’ve been here before,” I stated.
“Fear is in your head. The world is only as scary as we make it,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken.
I smile escaped me. I walked towards him and stared up into his eyes. Maybe he was right, maybe the only thing we had to fear was ourselves. I placed my hand on his neck and pulled him towards me. Then I kissed him.
“What I should have said is that I’m here for you. And if you ever need me to tell you how incredibly beautiful I think you are, I’m at your service.”
I stared back with astounded eyes. Those were better than any words I’d ever heard before.
Somehow, Jessie had gotten me to confess my disappointment at his handling of the whole bonfire incident. I hadn’t even realized how much it bothered me until I’d said it out loud. I kept admitting things to him I didn’t mean to, but he never used it against me. And even if his response hadn’t been right the first time, it had been perfect just now.
A familiar smirk face over his face. “I could show you too,” he winked. And just like that he was back to his normal self.
I continued staring at him like a weirdo. For once, I wasn’t quick enough to recover as he made his abrupt transition from intense to playful.
Eventually, he looked away. Then, he kicked his legs up, sending the porch swing flying. I barely had enough time to grab the mug that had been sitting between us. It had become something like a tradition now that Jessie would make me a cup of tea whenever I came over. The reindeer mug was practically mine.
“Watch it,” I half-heartedly murmured.
He looked over at me. “You really like that mug?” He asked.
“More than I like you,” I said smartly. I was relieved that we could fall so easily back to our usual banter; I didn’t want to be serious anymore.
He leaned towards me. The porch was dim, but I could still feel his eyes.
“We both know that’s not true,” he whispered.
I closed the journal in frustration, deciding it was time to give up. I hadn’t seen Rachel in a while either, and I’d realized she left her phone in the living room, so
there was no hope of reaching her. I was suddenly struck with the fleeting thought that perhaps her and Ash had gone to try and kill each other.
My eyes widened when the front door burst open. Though I blinked furiously, I couldn’t seem to correct the scene before me. Rachel’s arm was flung casually around Ashton’s shoulder as they stumbled through the front door giggling and singing a drunken, terribly off key version of the latest pop song.
I was frozen on the couch, my mouth almost to the ground, my eyes so wide my eyebrows blended into my hairline.
---
“Keep drinking,” I interrupted tensely in the midst of Rachel and Ash’s drunken conversation.
This was the third glass of water I’d given her but nothing had changed, and I began to grow very nervous at the thought that Ash’s first time getting drunk was with Rachel.
“You should have seen her dancing on the dinner table; she skipped right into their fine china, that’s how she got that cut on her leg. Man I hope I remember that tomorrow,” Rachel mumbled on as I found the large gash on Ash’s foot, covered in a mess of dried blood.
“I can’t even feel it,” she proclaimed cheerfully as she raised her glass of water to Rachel.
I was still too disturbed to react, even as she spilled half of the icy water on my head before managing to set it back down on the table.
“Any tattoos you want to tell me about? Do you have a man in your trunk or a gorilla in the closet?” I asked, alluding to The Hangover.
“I think it was a tiger…” Rachel chimed in as Ashton, oblivious to the reference giggled, “How would we have sneaked it in?”
I stared hopelessly at Ash after I’d bandaged her leg. Her eyes remained unnaturally red, her jaw slack in a way made her seem both completely oblivious and happy, and I wondered if alcohol was the only thing Rachel had introduced her to. I couldn’t even bring myself to ask the question I’d been wanting to since she’d stumbled through the door, ‘What were you thinking?’
“Do you want to see the sand castle Rachel and I built?”
“Hate to break it to
‘ya, but it’s more like a giant pile of sand,” Rachel said as she sprawled herself across the couch, her limbs spread wildly so that she resembled a giant starfish.
Ash made a face, her expression changing just as quickly back to that wide eyed stare, “We left our boom box!”
“It’s not ours!” Rachel shouted back, but in a calmer tone. Thanks to all the years she’d had to build up tolerance, she was clearly not as affected as Ashton.
“Wait,” I said, trying to process this, “Were you guys the ones making all of that noise outside?”
“Oh,” Ashton began to whisper, “Rachel thought we shouldn’t wake you from your nap, so we stayed outside for a little while.”
“I wasn’t taking a nap!” I exclaimed, trying to dismiss her nonsensical explanation.
“I thought someone was having a party!” I added.
“We were having a party, a party for two,” Ash was laughing so hard at her own joke she started coughing.
“Well, why didn’t you just go outside and check?” Rachel, apparently the voice of reason, questioned.
I swallowed, thinking of the reason I’d been unable to venture outside of the confines of this house for days, and how what happened with Rachel this morning had only reinforced my current fear of the outside world.
I found myself unable to stop thinking of him again as Ash and Rachel’s exclamations seemed to fade out.
“Have you turned into a kleptomaniac or something? It’s wrong to take people’s diaries and read it like it’s a soap opera,” Ash said, noticing her diary where I’d been sitting.
“Sorry, Ashton,” I said as I tried to snap out of it, sounding a bit like a child who’d just been reprimanded by her teacher.
“I’m flattered you find my life so fascinating though!”
I smiled distractedly, watching her trip onto the couch as she attempted to pull it out from under where Rachel lay.
“As of today, I find your life quite fascinating too,” Rachel said, easily pulling the diary out of Ash’s hands. They began a tragic game of tug-of-war, in which drunken Ash could not seem to keep the thing in her hands.
