Don't Forget Me

by Victoria Stevens

  “What about you?” she asked then. “Where do you go to school? I was … hoping we’d end up at the same place.”

  “I go to West,” Red said. “It’s an art school for the gifted and talented.”

  “Gifted and talented?”

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning. “God knows how I got a place.”

  “You’re an artist then?”

  “Trying to be.”

  “Is that why you carry that camera everywhere?”

  Red glanced down at it. It was nothing special or high-tech, but he loved it. “Yep. You never know when you might need to capture a moment. Hey, maybe I’ll show you some of my stuff one day.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “I know how hard it can be, moving to a new place and leaving everything you know behind,” he said then. “Back in February, I was the new kid in town too.”

  “You were?”

  “Yep. We moved here from Sydney.” Red paused and studied her face. “It can be tough, going to a new school, meeting new people. Starting over again. But you’ll get there. You’ll settle in.”

  “I don’t need to settle in,” Hazel said, brow furrowed. “I won’t be here long. This is temporary.”

  “Really? Where are you staying?”

  “With my dad. His name’s Graham Bell?” She gestured toward the houses behind the undergrowth. “His house is the one with the porch.”

  “Yeah, I know it!” Red said. “And I know him too, kind of—my mum works in his restaurant. Have you been there yet? The Anchor?”

  “We went on my first day.”

  “Mum says it’s the best place she’s ever worked. Hey, you should come over for dinner tomorrow and meet her!”

  “Really?”

  “Definitely. She’ll love it—I know she’s secretly disappointed that I’ll never bring a girl home for real.”

  Hazel raised an eyebrow in question, and Red winced slightly. He hadn’t meant to say that, not really. There was just something about her that made him feel comfortable. Too comfortable.

  “It’s because I’m not into girls,” he explained carefully, watching her expression to see how she’d react. “Not in that way. Not romantically, I mean. Or sexually. Shit. It isn’t … It’s not a big deal.”

  “No,” Hazel agreed quickly. “It’s not a big deal.”

  Red had seldom met anyone who hadn’t completely accepted his sexuality—his family and friends in particular had always been one hundred percent supportive—but he still felt a wave of relief.

  “My mum’ll love you. And not just because you’re cool; she pretty much loves anyone. She’s a lot like me in that respect. Superchill about everything. We’re both people people, you know? And she’s the best chef. Everything she cooks is amazing.” He paused, stealing a sideward glance at her. “What’s your mum like?”

  Hazel said nothing.

  “Is she like you? Or are you more like your dad?”

  “I … don’t know,” she said. “I hardly know him. I only found out that he existed a couple of weeks ago.”

  Red nodded slowly. He thought briefly about his own dad; he knew a thing or two about absent fathers himself.

  “I used to have a mum, though,” Hazel added.

  “Used to?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  “I don’t really like to talk about it. Too many people felt sorry for me in London. I don’t want it to be like that here.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” he promised.

  Hazel wasn’t sure why she believed him, but she did. She took a deep breath, and let it out. “Well, I wasn’t very old when she first got sick…”

  Red listened closely as she told him everything that had happened back in England, about everything she’d lost. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t say anything at all until Hazel had finished talking—and then he just scooted closer to her and placed an arm around her as she cried into his shoulder.

  Dear Mum,

  I remember the time we went to the fair. We had chocolate, and popcorn, and lemonade, and fries. You warned me that I shouldn’t eat anything else, but I made such a fuss about having cotton candy that you bought me some—then later, on the bumper cars, I got sick. But you weren’t angry. You just gave me a hug and won me a stuffed animal from one of the stalls to cheer me up. It was a blue rabbit, with soft fur and floppy ears. I called him Justin.

  He was my favorite toy ever.

  I miss you, Mum, but I remember.

  Love,

  Hazel

  6

  The following morning before school, when Hazel told Graham about meeting Red (she didn’t say when or where and, surprisingly, he didn’t ask) and being invited for dinner, he agreed readily.

  “Of course you can go!” he said. “It’ll be good for you to make some friends, especially ones like Red. The Cawleys are a lovely family. I went to school with his parents, did he mention that?”

  “He didn’t,” Hazel said, slightly dazed. Port Sheridan was a small town, but it wasn’t small enough for that to not be a pretty huge coincidence.

  “Well, he’s a good kid,” Graham said. “Go, and have fun. You deserve it.”

  Hazel wasn’t going to disagree with that.

  * * *

  During her free period, Hazel called Red on her cell phone to arrange to meet him at Graham’s house after school, and he was there just after four, as promised, grinning. She wondered if he was always so happy, whether he went to bed smiling and woke up smiling like there was nothing in the world that could hurt him.

  Because their houses were only linked by the beach at low tide, they spent twenty minutes walking to his house, a journey that would’ve been much quicker had Red not stopped so often to take photographs.

  “Well,” he said brightly when they arrived, unlatching the front gate. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

  Red’s house was as big and white as Graham’s, and also had spacious rooms and big glass windows that flooded them with light. Apart from that, though, it was the complete opposite. Red’s was lived in, and Hazel felt oddly safe and calm among the clutter of such a homey, domestic place. It reminded her of her own home in England.

  As Red got them something to drink, Hazel looked around the kitchen and then outside the back door to the garden. Like Graham’s, it was fairly large, with a wooden table-and-chairs set under a dark green umbrella just past the veranda, a few chaise longues farther out on the lawn, and a shed at the bottom. Beyond the grass was a row of hedges and the beach and sea.

  Hazel scanned the horizon. “The beach really does look different from here.”

  “Told you!” Red said, handing her a drink. “Less sand and more sea, right? Wait until you see the sunset later, the colors are completely…”

  He trailed off, frowning. Hazel turned toward the kitchen doorway to see what he was looking at.

  Oh.

  She couldn’t help but stare. The boy’s skin was considerably more tanned and his hair lighter, but his eyes were just like Red’s. Brown and dark and intense.

  “Hazel, this is my brother, Luca,” Red said tightly. Luca’s expression was even, but there was something unsettling there too, a barrier.

  “Wait,” she said slowly. “Are you two…?”

  “Twins,” Red finished with a curt nod, at the same time that Luca muttered, “Un-identical.”

  “You look so alike,” she said—although, on closer inspection, not as much as she’d first thought. Red was taller and leaner, made of more angles.

  “What have you been up to?” Red said to Luca. “Feels like I haven’t seen you in days.”

  Luca just glared. His and Red’s eyes locked across the room until Red finally tore his away and muttered, “Jesus, Luc.”

  Luca turned and left. Hazel stood frozen, waiting until Red started to move a little too briskly around the kitchen again before she spoke. “Did I … do something wrong?”

  “No, Hazel. You didn�
��t.”

  “Then what was that?”

  “We don’t get along,” he answered flatly, and didn’t offer any more on the subject.

  * * *

  Red’s mum breezed into the kitchen a little after five, laden with groceries. She looked a lot like the twins, with Red’s bone structure and Luca’s coloring, and long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.

  “You must be Hazel!” she said warmly as Red began unpacking the bags. “I’m Claire. It’s so lovely to meet you!”

  Hazel found herself smiling at her. Red hadn’t been exaggerating when he said the two of them were similar. “You too.”

  “It’s nice to be able to put a face to the name!” Claire said. “When Red said his new friend Hazel was coming over, I had no idea it was going to be you until Graham mentioned it too. He’s been talking about you at work for days, saying we should all get together. Coincidences, huh?”

  “Coincidences,” Hazel echoed.

  “He was almost as excited as Red was about you coming over for dinner tonight.”

  “And neither of us,” Red said, “was anywhere near as excited as you. Don’t deny it.”

  Claire just laughed. “What can I say? It’s nice to have a girl around for once. It’s tiring being surrounded by you boys all day. Speaking of which—have you seen your brother today?”

  “Briefly, yeah.”

  “How was he?”

  Red looked up from the groceries, and there was a split second of shared, secret pain between them, so brief it was almost imperceptible. “The usual.”

  “He’s not taking his meds, you know,” Claire said. “He just keeps throwing them in the garbage like I won’t notice. And I had to call him in sick again today. The school’s being patient and talking about extenuating circumstances, but if his attendance gets any worse, they won’t let him graduate next year.”

  “Shall we talk about it later?” Red said, looking pointedly at Hazel. Claire glanced over in her direction as if she’d forgotten she was there.

  “Of course. Sorry. I take it he won’t be joining us for dinner?”

  “Does he ever?”

  Another pause. Hazel watched Red’s expression carefully, sure she’d been privy to something extremely personal and private. Claire shook her head and said, “Why don’t you show Hazel the fish tank while I rustle up something for dinner?”

  Red gestured for Hazel to follow him out of the kitchen. “It’s just through here…”

  * * *

  Hazel’s mind was still on Luca when Red dropped her off at Graham’s porch later that night. The rest of her evening at the Cawleys’ had been normal enough, but Hazel had been left curious; there was something off about Luca, something neither Red nor his mother were willing to talk freely about.

  “How did it go?” Graham asked as soon as she came through the front door. “Did you have a good time? How was everyone?”

  “It was nice, Red was great—Claire was lovely, and Luca…”

  She trailed off. Luca was what? Cold? Rude?

  Graham nodded; he obviously knew enough about the family not to need further explanation. “Was Marc there?”

  “Marc?”

  “The boys’ father,” he said. “Which I guess means he’s still away for work. I’m glad you had a good time, anyway.”

  “Me too,” she said, and hesitated. “Did … Did anyone call today?”

  Graham didn’t answer. When Hazel raised her eyes to his, he was studying her closely. She wondered if you could see the cracks in humans the same way you could see them in crockery, the fissures and the fractures, waiting for the one knock that would break the thing apart.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “No one called.”

  * * *

  Later that night, once the tide had crept out far enough that Red could walk across the sand, Hazel met him on the beach as they’d arranged earlier. It was pleasant out, cool but not cold, and the air was still and peaceful.

  “It’s nearly midnight,” Red said. “Aren’t you tired?”

  “Not really.”

  “Insomnia again?”

  “It’s not that I can’t sleep,” Hazel said. “I can sleep if I want to.”

  He turned his head to her, brow furrowed. “Why don’t you, then?”

  “My dreams.”

  “Nightmares?”

  She nodded. “About her. About Mum.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “When I was seven I watched a movie about alien abductions,” he said. “Kept me up every night for months. I was so scared of sleeping alone that we had to put my bed in Luca’s room. Of course, that’s not the same.”

  “Monsters are monsters,” Hazel said. “It doesn’t make a difference if they’re from space or your mind.”

  Red murmured his agreement, turning his gaze up to the sky. She thought she could probably watch him for hours; he was so relaxed, so at home in his own skin. The opposite of her.

  “Luca has trouble sleeping too,” Red said. “Sometimes I’ll get up for water in the middle of the night and see him sitting on the garage roof.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, without knowing quite what for.

  “Monsters are monsters,” he murmured. “We all have them, huh?”

  Hazel found Red’s hand on the sand, squeezed tight, and said nothing.

  7

  When they’d moved to Port Sheridan, the first and only alteration Luca made to his new bedroom was to push the bed away from the center of the room and back against the far wall. From there, he had a perfect view out the large bay window without even having to raise his head from his pillow.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d drawn his curtains—he found comfort in always being able to see the world outside. When he couldn’t sleep, Luca would gaze at the constellations as they edged their way across the sky to prove to himself that the world hadn’t stopped turning. At dawn, he liked to watch the sun rising, chasing away the remnants of darkness as it crept up from the sea. He focused his attention on the vivid colors instead of on the ache that had long settled inside him.

  * * *

  That morning, the sky was a startling shade of bright blue. Luca fixed his eyes on a solitary cloud in the middle and began counting backward from a thousand. When he finished, he sat up in bed and pulled out the worn calendar from the bottom drawer of his bedside table, using a red pen to draw an X through the box bearing the day’s date. Wednesday the 31st of August. Two hundred and seventy-nine days. Time was a funny thing, wasn’t it? Fitting itself into seconds and minutes and months; one week running seamlessly into the next; days melting into one another. The really funny thing about time, Luca thought, was how people always thought it was endless. They never seemed to have enough of it, yet they always thought they’d have more.

  He put the calendar back in the drawer and padded out of his room toward the bathroom. The house was so quiet that he could hear the clock in the kitchen ticking; his mum always drove Redleigh to school in the morning and then went straight on to work at the Anchor, so Luca never had to interact with anyone first thing. He needed that, needed the space and the silence to gather himself together for the day ahead.

  He turned the water on in the shower and stood back to wait for it to heat up. When the steam had fogged the bathroom mirror enough for him to pretend his reflection didn’t exist, he shrugged off his T-shirt and boxers and stepped under the spray, wincing as it scalded his shoulders. His skin was pink and blotchy when he finally emerged, the temperature of the water just shy of dangerous, the sting just shy of comforting. He toweled off, went back to his room, and pulled on his uniform. He’d never bothered to customize it the way his classmates had—standing out only meant drawing attention to yourself, and he’d perfected the art of blending in.

  Downstairs on the kitchen table, his mother had laid out his breakfast for him like she did every morning. One piece of toast, lightly buttered and cut into four triangles as if he were a child, a glass of orange juice, an
d a bowl of cornflakes with the milk on the side so the cereal didn’t get soggy. Beside the cereal, lined up next to the spoon, were two small pills—each inscribed with a little M.

  Luca didn’t bother sitting down. He ate two triangles of toast and drank a little of the juice and poured the rest down the sink with the milk, tipping the dry cereal back into the box in the cupboard. Finally, he picked up each of the pills from the table and weighed them in his palm. They felt like air. Felt like air and tasted like nothing, but changed everything. Made him numb. For a second he considered actually putting them in his mouth today, then tossed them in the trash can along with the rest of his toast.

  * * *

  The walk to school was long, but it was less claustrophobic than taking the bus. Luca took the scenic route through the backstreets, arriving just before the final bell rang. When he reached homeroom, he paused outside in the empty hallway to take a deep, steadying breath. He braced himself and pushed the door open.

  The room was full and loud, students making the most of their final few minutes of freedom before the school day started. He spotted Hunter and Maddie in their usual places, and … what? That English girl Red had brought over last night was next to them. What was her name? A color. What was she doing with his friends?

  She was the first to notice him approaching, and her eyes widened. Shit. He lowered his gaze to the floor as he waded through the desks.

  “Morning!” Hunter said as Luca slid into the empty seat beside him. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine,” Luca answered, the lie bitter on his tongue as he turned his attention to the front of the classroom.

  8

  Hazel couldn’t stop stealing glances at Luca. Red’s brother went here, to Finchwood? How had she not noticed him in class before? Granted, she hadn’t known he existed until last night, and he hadn’t stuck around then, but still. He didn’t look Hazel’s way once. She wondered if he even recognized her.

  “I didn’t know Luca went to school here,” she muttered to Maddie as they packed up for their first class.