September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (2 page)

The words I need to say are ready and
waiting, but my throat feels as if I’ve swallowed a baseball. I
can’t shove them past the mass, its’ is too big. And then other
words leap into my head:

Quirky grin becomes
friend—

Good friend becomes best
friend—

Best friend becomes
girlfriend—

Who becomes no one at
all.

The lyrics thicken the lump in my
throat. I remember Jake singing this song, the way he used to lean
into the microphone, brushing his lips against the metal. That
powerful voice growling out the angst.

And me. The way I used to hold him:
palms tightly locked behind his back, my head on his chest, dancing
to the rhythm of his heartbeat as he kissed my hair. I was so sure
we’d stay that way.

Deep
breath
, I coax, willing myself to stay in
the moment.
Don’t drift,
Angel
. Don’t. And them more of Jakes words
break through:

A quivering flame lights a
shooting pain.

Down into my brain. Then
you say my name—

And I’m drawn to black
again.

Remember why you’re
here.
To finally get rid of this burden.
To be free of Averys’ secrets once and for all. To make her pay for
what she did.

I’m here, in this place that reminds
me of that first interrogation room, for many reasons. That police
station is miles away—years from this life—and they’re still asking
what happened.

Do they want me to repeat myself?
Because, I won’t. What they are going to get from me is the
unblemished truth. I will tell them everything exactly the way I
remember it.

I won’t chicken out this time. I won’t
surrender through silence, leaving Avery to spin her lies like she
has for the last six years. I won’t let my mind float away when it
gets tough. I’ll stick with the cold facts until the bitter end.
I’ve practiced this time. I’ve had six years to cement every detail
in my head. I won’t forget the details.

The devil really is in the
details, isn’t he?

Maybe, if I tell them all
of it, if I make them understand what I knew and when . . . maybe
they’ll leave me be, let me die in peace, and finally make my way
to Jake. I wonder briefly where that expression comes from:
die in peace
. How was
death ever associated with peace? The death I have seen . . . the
time it’s taken to get from there to here . . . I have yet to find
a morsel of peace in it. Maybe the peace comes after. I hope
so.

“Remember, be as precise as
possible.” Mister Brandon leans in and I notice he’s wearing his
usual overcoat: crisp and white, reminding me of that Colonial guy
from that chicken joint. He wears it all the time.
Who the hell wears a white suit coat?

I’m trying to avoid hearing his voice.
Every time he speaks, it’s like a grating in my inner ear. He’s
turned his head in my direction, speaking across our shoulders,
ignoring the microphone head. His breath reeks of coffee and milk.
“. . . Do not hold back anything as it pertains to your state of
mind and how it affected the events as they occurred to ensure
you’re properly placed in custody proportionate to your needs. The
reclassification we talked about . . .”

What we talked about? He’s
talked about a million different things. Say this. Don’t say that.
Speak. Tell the truth. Omit new information.
I want to scream at him for the double-talk.

“. . . Discuss your current
classification and additional considerations with regards
to—”
Good God, the man can’t stop
talking!
“—the state of Arizona requires
you be placed—”

“Stop.” I shake my head, wishing for
just enough freedom to reach up and plug my ears against the
infection of his voice.

He shrugs, “So long as you’re
aware—”

“Yes. ‘For my case.’” I repeat as
familiar anger heats me—the rage that rises up whenever I think
about what happened—and helps to anchor me, giving me a place to
stand in the sinking sand that is my life.

“Tell us what happened, Miss Patel. As
far back as you can recall, if not from the beginning.” The woman
across from me instructs. She, too, is wearing an overcoat, only
hers is gray.

I look to my lawyer and he nods,
granting permission for me to speak freely. Almost.

My tongue glides over parched lips.
Now that they’re waiting I find myself nervous again. “My mouth is
really dry.”

A long hand belonging to the fourth
person at the table—a seemingly gentle, yet unremarkable looking
man—sets an opened can of Diet Coke in front me. It’s not one of
those little half-sized cans we usually only get on special
occasions, it’s a full twelve ounces; a bribe complete with bendy
straw. My hands stay on the linty arms of the woolen chair as I
lean forward taking the stick into my mouth. The fizzy goodness
oozing up the straw beckons me back to better days—when ignorance
really was bliss and not just a cheesy metaphor. The cool drink
swirls over my tongue, washing away the stickiness of my teeth,
dissolving the constant lump in my throat.

And for some stupid reason, I feel
better.

Drawing a steadier breath,
I reign in my scattered thoughts, determining to try once more to
give my laborious confession. Thinking over my instructions, the
thought strikes me. “Where does something like
that
begin? I know where it all
ended. But a beginning?”

My gaze moves from my hand
to lock eyes with the tight-haired woman. Still nothing; no sign of
emotion. I wish the print on the badge hanging around her neck was
a little larger. Then I could read her name. Maybe address her on a
personal level: try to tell her how what really happened depends on
how you look at it, because the same things can look different to
different people. That the
real
truth about what happened lies in my
perception.

I have to shake my head, remind myself
that another desperate plea won’t matter. What happened—happened.
Whoever this stranger is doesn’t matter. Knowing her name or saying
it out loud is not going to change anything. Because I am the one
who is not a person. Not anymore. And that’s just the way it
is.

Drawing another long drink of soda, I
imagine my brain as a box, sitting alone in a cobwebbed room. There
is nothing in this room, save a small light, a rocking chair, and
my box. I take my seat beside the box and loosen the tightly folded
edges of the memories I’ve stored there. Bringing out those
treasures I’ve kept hidden.

And the ability is still
there. I can feel the ache and hope, dulled by meds and buried
under nausea for sure, but I can still see it and put myself
inside. And I know . . . it’s going to hurt to go back to that
place. But it’s the least I can do. For
him
. But I would be lying if I said
I was doing this just for him. Being back there with Jake was the
only place in the world where I felt right. Like I fit, on the
inside.

My minds’ eye draws out the memories
in random pictures, like overfilled photo albums with no sense of
order. It’s moments as portraits stuffed into each page and I can
look at the images and remember the time and place just as easily
as if it were scrawled in scorching detail across the backs and
borders of every single frame.

The room around me seems to shift and
my body becomes lighter as I am lifted from this place. The
photographs grow larger while the room around me gives way. Time
folds in on itself as I slide inside the memories. I will watch the
people and places, hear the voices and take in the shimmying smells
they hold.

The table before me in this little
room becomes a shiny, linoleum counter-top. The chair I’m in peels
away, morphing into a spinning barstool. My hands are no longer
bound, but free, twirling my long brown hair. The walls crack and
break apart, floating up into a swirl that crashes back down,
rearranged.

I am back where it all began. I’m
fifteen, again. In another town. Another life. Back in
Carlisle.

+ + +

2

—
Avery

Angel completely ignored me for the
millionth time.

It’s killing me.
And it doesn’t matter.

I waited for her to show up in that
corridor. For hours and hours. You know, it takes a lot of fucking
effort to ignore someone who’s in front of your face.

But Angel did it.

Once I reach the end of the hallway,
instead of turning like I planned, I flip back around and head for
the door that’s now closing. There’s a small window in the
top-center of the door. I use it to steal a peek inside. There are
four people around a table. Angel and three suits: the idiot
lawyer, a lady with really bad hair, and a tall skinny
guy.

Angel turns toward the door and I
shrink under the window. I’ve been hoping to grab her at just the
right moment; a second when she isn’t expecting me. Maybe she’ll
falter and let herself notice me, since she’s hell-bent on acting
like I don’t exist. Right now, though she’s expecting me to be
hovering.

It doesn’t matter.
Maybe if I keep saying it, I’ll start to believe
it.

I don’t know why everyone is so
hell-bent on getting Angels’ side of the story. She never knew
anything. If she’d had a damned clue we wouldn’t have ended up in
prison. Then again, I was the reason she didn’t know anything. I
went out of my way to ensure that she didn’t.

From time to time, when I had to give
her the bald-faced lie she needed to cope, I’d wonder if she
suspected. But after everything came down and she completely
withdrew from the world, then I knew for sure: she never had a
clue.

Which made me really fucking sad.
Angry too, because I knew everything without anybody having to lay
it out for me.

Angel never was one to pick up on
subtlety, though. Matter of fact, she’s gifted in the art of
ignoring anything she doesn’t like. Like me.

No, she always had to have shit
spelled out to her; unless the shits name was Jake. He was her
everything—greatest strength and biggest weakness. There were never
any walls where Jake was concerned.

I think he was our biggest problem. If
she’d never met Jake, none of it would have happened.

+ + +

3

—
Angel

Carlisle was situated near the
Arizona/New Mexico border—a stone’s throw from Zuni Indian
territory. In and of itself, the town was no more than a speck.
Nothing special, except that it was also home to the greatest
progressive rock band the world has never heard of. It was the womb
that grew and gave birth to Analog Controller.

My all-time favorite band. They began
as three high school kids who all had more musical experience than
most people twice their age. They were Jake Haddon, Maxwell Sims,
and Andrew Greene: the weirdo’s who stayed at home to practice
instead of playing outside, who read comics and poetry instead of
playing video games. But when they got into high school, suddenly
they were cool because other kids found out what they could
do.

Before Jake was mine, he was their
singer and he had magic. Being around him was like having my own,
personal Houdini for those first two years; he was always
disappearing and resurfacing months later. His gifts as a leading
man spoke a simple truth that changed inanimate objects. His voice
brought things to life. He was a living, breathing splendor. Beauty
incarnate, from the inside out. And Jake was smart. He was a poet
and a song bird. He could make you feel things. He was much more
than my boyfriend; a gregarious rock star, an undiscovered genius
by the age of eighteen.

Analog Controller had played at a
house party I attended over the summer before I started high school
and I would like to say that I loved the band from that moment, but
I didn’t. Their instruments took up most of the living room—that’s
what I remember, because I tripped on a power strip, and hit my hip
on a speaker. I don’t remember whose house it was, but someone told
me that they couldn’t play in the garage because there was one
shitty neighbor who would call the cops. I remember that I liked
the music, though I wasn’t really capable of following, what with
all the fuzzy naval wine coolers pumping through me.

When we first started talking, it was
about two years before we got together. I was barely fifteen. Jake
was nearly four years older than me, so he had already graduated by
that time. The day me and Jake officially met was at Joes Pizza
Pub.

Avery was my best friend at that time.
We were there hanging out after school. She was treating me to a
slice of my favorite cheese pizza because I’d had a really bad day.
In high school, nearly every day was like that.

The bad started with necessity. Me,
rushing to the bathroom, intending to pee and make my bus before it
left without me. But when I clambered through the heavy swinging
door, Samantha Marris was there. She’d made it seem like running
into me was the highlight of her day. It probably was. Long story
short: I ended up doubled-over in the furthest stall, trying to
figure out how the waist of my pants was able to sustain my weight
without tearing. Suddenly she dropped me. I turned back to find
Avery with her fists in Samantha’s hair. It was a blur of shoving
and scratching for a few seconds, until Avery got a good hook into
Samantha’s gut.