Red Is for Remembrance

by Laurie Faria Stolarz

  “You gave this to me for protection and strength,” she explains.

  “I want to remember,” he whispers, looking at the X on her neck.

  The girl takes his hand and places it there, running his fingers over her skin. “We need to get you home,” she whispers.

  Shell nods, wanting more than anything to know what home is.

  My heart races. My mind won’t stop reeling. I want to scream at the top of my lungs—Jacob is alive! Trevor is safe! We’re out! We’re free! But it’s comatose-quiet in the van now. I think even my heart is beating louder.

  All I want to do is hold Jacob. I want to jump into his lap and wrap my arms around him until my arms break. But instead I lean back into the seat, sensing how uncomfortable he is by my affection.

  I wipe my tears—a mix of elation and sadness—and try to catch my breath, grateful that my head has stopped whirring, that the ringing in my ears has ceased as well.

  “Maybe we should go to the police,” I say, ever eager to delve back into my role of responsibility.

  “No!” Trevor says. “No police.”

  “Maybe we should just get a little farther away first,” Jacob says.

  I nod, my heart roiling at the sound of his voice after not hearing it for five whole months.

  Porsha makes an attempt to turn on the radio, but the sound is all fuzzy and she ends up shutting it off. I glance over at Jacob again. He tries to smile but then looks away, making my heart squelch.

  I know this is uncomfortable for him, but it’s also hell for me. I mean, why aren’t we talking? Why does my skin itch for no reason? Why can’t I get comfortable in my seat?

  I take another deep breath, telling myself that it’s quiet because nobody knows quite what to say. What do you say? What words will make it real, make it all make sense, do justice to everything we’ve been through?

  I look over at Jacob again, waiting for him to meet my eye, but he doesn’t. Instead, the van ends up swerving to the left and I feel my cheeks get fireball hot.

  “I’m really not comfortable driving the highway,” Porsha says, shifting the van into park.

  I look out the window, noticing that we’re sitting in the middle of an IHOP parking lot. “What are we doing?” I ask her.

  “Pulling over; what does it look like? Does somebody else want to drive?”

  “Let’s go inside,” Trevor says, wiping at the blood on his face. “We can get cleaned up and order some food.”

  Jacob agrees and we go.

  While the guys head off to the bathroom, Porsha and I get seated at a circular table by the window. She asks me about Jacob and I tell her that it’s true. It’s him. He’s alive.

  “How can that be?” she asks, her face a giant question mark. “I mean, are you sure it’s him?”

  I nod. “They never found his body.”

  “That’s insane,” she says, looking half as dazed as I feel. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

  “Crazy or not, I don’t believe in coincidence,” I remind her. “We were meant to come here. I was meant to help you—for so many reasons.”

  Jacob and Trevor join us a couple minutes later. The waitress gives us our laminated menus and we order platefuls of pancakes, hashed browns, and scrambled eggs. But I can’t even think about eating. There’s a rusty taste in my mouth and my eyes sting, like I could cry at any second.

  I take a deep breath, relieved that my awkward energy hasn’t smoldered Porsha and Trevor’s conversation. They’ve been chattering away for the past fifteen minutes at least.

  I open my mouth to say Jacob’s name, to start up some form of conversation, but Porsha interrupts me, announcing that she’s going out to the lobby to call her dad. After she leaves, it’s quiet again.

  “Hungry?” Jacob asks, after a few moments of uncomfortable silence—even more uncomfortable than inside the van.

  I shrug and bite my bottom lip, wondering what happens next. I mean, Jacob is here, sitting next to me, and yet this feels so anticlimactic.

  “I’m starving,” Trevor says, grabbing his stomach.

  “Me, too.” Jacob smiles at me. “I haven’t had pancakes since I can’t remember when.”

  “A comedian.” Trevor laughs.

  I feel myself smile as well, grateful for the break in tension. Porsha returns to the table a few seconds later. “How’s your father?” I ask. “Was he upset? He must have been really worried about you.”

  Porsha shrugs. “He’ll get over it. Besides, I told him you’d be over to explain everything.” She smiles at me and then focuses back on Trevor. “He said you could stay with us for a little while,” she tells him. “He’s got friends who work in Social Services; he’ll work out all the legal stuff. Besides, our place is huge. We have tons of spare rooms.”

  “Sounds great.” Trevor smiles, a tiny visible gap between his two front teeth. “Now, if I can only get used to being called Trevor.”

  “We could rename you,” Porsha suggests, “but I request that it be something that begins with a T.”

  “How come?”

  Porsha hesitates and then rolls up her sleeve, revealing the burn mark. Trevor’s mouth drops open. He shakes his head and gazes into her eyes, not knowing what to say. “I feel like I’ve been looking for you forever,” she tells him.

  It even gives me tingles.

  I smile at the two of them, happy that they’ve found each other—and that he’s finally safe.

  Our food arrives and Jacob and I make insignificant small talk. He tells me how good the pancakes taste, how at the camp he mostly got cold cereal and rice for breakfast. I talk about my coffee—how I’ve been drinking it black lately, how I no longer like the flavored kind. At least I think these are things that I say. I’m not really thinking about food. I’m wondering what’s going to happen now. I mean, where do we go from here?

  I fake a bite of scrambled egg and watch Jacob as he enjoys his pancakes. I want to ask him about his parents—when he plans to call them, if he’s looking forward to seeing them, if he even remembers who they are. “Your parents and I have been in touch a few times,” I say, finally. “I could call them for you . . . you know, so they know this is real.”

  Jacob doesn’t respond right away, and so I feel bad about the suggestion—like maybe I’m pushing too much and trying too hard. But then he finally looks at me and smiles. “That would be great,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper.

  I smile too, continuing to push my food around on the plate, noticing a huge pit growing in my stomach by the moment. I know I should be happy—and I am—but there’s a sadness, too.

  This just isn’t how I thought it would be.

  “I hope being with my parents and seeing stuff from my childhood will help me remember,” he says.

  “They live in Colorado,” I say, accidentally dropping my fork. It clangs against the plate. I snatch it back up and do my best to muster a smile. It just never occurred to me—that Jacob would be leaving me again.

  “I’m not leaving you,” he says, as though reading my mind. “I want to spend time with you as well. I want you to fill me in on stuff—what we did together, all our old memories.”

  My heart does a somersault inside my chest, reassured that we’re obviously still connected. A part of me wants to jump up and down. But there’s another part that can’t help feeling sorry for myself. He looks at me with those slate-blue eyes and I just want to crawl up inside him and stay there forever.

  But he doesn’t know who I am.

  He doesn’t remember the time we drew henna on each other, or when we first kissed. Or that night on the boat in his room when I first told him I loved him.

  “Are you okay?” Jacob asks, obviously sensing my funk.

  I nod and bite down on my bottom lip, fighting the urge to cry. />
  “I will remember.” He touches my shoulder, sending tingles down my back. “I want you to help me remember.”

  I touch his hand, fighting the urge to tell him how much I love him. “I’d like that,” I say instead. A stray tear rolls down my cheek. Jacob wipes it with his fingers and I stop myself from kissing his hand.

  But then I kiss it anyway.

  Jacob reaches into his pocket and places the cluster crystal rock into my palm—just like old times. I clasp it for strength, running my fingers over the smoothened edges—where the crystal has healed itself over.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he whispers.

  “I know.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod, knowing that Jacob and I are destined to be together, that nothing—not time, place, or lack of memory—will ever keep us apart.

  It’s been two months since I found Jacob, and nearly seven weeks since I’ve seen him last. His parents ended up flying out here right away. They couldn’t have been more shocked or elated to see him. His mother especially was a huge gush of emotion. But Jacob didn’t remember them.

  They stayed at a bed & breakfast just down the road, trying to get reacquainted with the son they thought they’d lost. But then they took him back home—to Colorado—only a few days later.

  Now that he’s there, he’s started recalling bits of his childhood—where he went to kindergarten, a tree fort he built with his dad, and the time he made vanilla brownies with his mom; how they ate all but the entire pan before his dad even got home, how they both ended up sick for hours after.

  Before his parents took him back, he told us about his experience at the camp. He told the police about it, too—about the stealing and the brainwashing; how there are runaway minors living there; and how campers are kept captive. It was a little crazy here after the news came out about his survival, but the irony is that, even though Jacob ended up turning the camp in, he also feels grateful for it—for them. He knows that if it wasn’t for the campers following the boat and pulling him out of the ocean after the fall, he wouldn’t be here right now.

  And so I’m grateful for the camp as well.

  It nearly kills me not being with him now, but we’ve been talking on the phone, e-mailing incessantly, and writing each other letters. I didn’t follow him out to Colorado because I wanted to stay and continue school. I wanted to give him time to remember.

  And now he has.

  He called me the other day, telling me that he remembered our white candle spell—every inch of it, from the rose oil to the moment we kissed. He also remembered the first time he told me he loved me—one night in December when all the stars were out and we lay in the snow, making snow angels and laughing at each other’s stupid jokes . . . his impersonation of Keegan, the hippy resident director of my dorm at Hillcrest.

  He asked me if I’d consider coming out to Colorado for spring break. Consider it? I almost hung up on him right then, eager to call a travel agency to book a ticket.

  I’m just about finished packing. My flight leaves in three hours. Amber is going away, too. So is Janie. They’re actually vacationing in the same place. A group of about twenty Beacon students, including PJ, Tim, and Janie’s boyfriend Hayden, are headed to Cancun. I’m glad Tim doesn’t hold anything against me after my stint of temporary insanity. He’s actually been a really great friend.

  So has Porsha. She’s doing so much better now; her father couldn’t be more pleased—so pleased that he finagled Trevor a place to stay. Having taken in foster kids in the past, friends of the president, who live just down the road from the college, welcomed Trevor into their home and gave him his own room. Sadly, Trevor’s real mother has no interest in being a part of his life, and his birth father couldn’t be found.

  I hope I’ve taught Porsha enough so that she’s better able to deal with nightmares if and when she gets them again. But it seems now that her nightmares have stopped, the possibility of having more is the furthest thing from her mind. Instead, she and Trevor have been enjoying just being normal again—going to school, going to the movies, practicing magic—practically joined at the hip.

  It reminds me of how Jacob and I used to be . . . how I hope we’ll be someday soon.

  Last night I had a dream about him—that we were sitting up in one of those ski lifts, looking down over the slopes. It was daylight out, but you could still see the stars and the new quarter moon, like they were just beyond our touch. Jacob took off his glove and drew the rune for partnership over my lips with his finger. And then he kissed me and it tasted like apple cider mixed in champagne—all sweet and bubbling inside my mouth. It felt like I had fallen out from the bottom of my chair, that I was tumbling through the sky, past the mountains, toward the earth below. But, when I opened my eyes, we were still sitting in the lift and he was still kissing me. And it was nighttime now—as if we’d been kissing all day, as if our world had just stopped while everybody else’s kept moving forward.

  I run my fingers over my lips, still feeling a tingle there, hopeful that my dream is a premonition for what’s to come.

  THE END