Page 12 of Forget Me Not

I’m curious to see what her brother will be like. Whether he will be another version of Demi or the complete opposite. I love my best friend, but I don’t know if I can handle two of her.

Finishing the rest of my coffee, I set the mug in the sink, opting to wash it later, and head back to my bedroom. Knowing I won’t be leaving the confines of my apartment for the day, I don’t bother changing out of my pajamas and crawl back into bed.

I open my night table drawer, grab a scrunchie from the top and throw my hair into a messy bun. I then move to grab myKindle from the drawer but pause when the journal catches my eye.

I’ve read almost all of what lies between the worn pages countless times. Yet every time I see it, the pull to read it, to read my twin sister’s innermost thoughts, is as strong as ever. Just as though it pains me to read the sadness Lennox went through, it equally excites me because her words within this journal are all I have left of her.

Reading Lennox’s words is the opposite of the fictional world that I planned to spend my day inside. Everything she wrote in that journal is raw, real,personal. Probably never meant for anyone’s eyes but her own. Although, that’s never stopped me.

It’s not a long journal. Five entries total, as if she knew exactly what she wanted to say before she ever wrote it. I’ve read the first four. It’s been five years since she’s been gone and I’m still too scared of what I’ll find in the fifth.

I never got to say goodbye to her. One day she was there, celebrating my getting into med school, and ready to pack up her life to move across the country to Seattle with me. The next, she was gone. Most people have that significant memory of their last moment with a loved one.

The last time we spoke, I was angry with her for not coming out with me. That wasn’t our last real conversation though. That happened earlier in the day. I was rambling about how Seattle was known for the rain, and I was never a fan of it. She laughed and told me I should be grateful for the rain. She said it waters the world around us and allows new things to grow. New life to form.

She told me the rain was beautiful and that there was a hidden gazebo on the trail behind our neighborhood. Sometimes she liked to go sit there and watch the rain. She said it was her favorite place in the world and that one day we’d go together. She was gone before we ever had the chance.

After she died, I searched for that gazebo for a week and a half before I found it. Just off the trail, hidden between a cluster of trees, there was an opening that led to a small field with a run-down white wooden gazebo in the center of it.

I visited it almost every day after that until I moved to Seattle. It was where I felt closest to her. It was also where I learned to love the rain. She was right. Sitting on the splintering wood, I watched the droplets fall onto the gazebo, between the trees, onto the grass below me. I listened to the drops as they splashed against the surface, the only sound in the vicinity. There was a calmness. It was magical.

Needing to feel the closeness to her that only her words can give me, I grab the journal before shoving the drawer closed. Lying back farther and cuddling deeper between the covers, the voice in my head begs me to stop. It tells me that nothing good will ever come from me rereading this again. It tells me to stop reliving my sister’s inner torment. I don’t listen. I flip open the first page.

SIX

DENIAL

CHAPTER

SEVEN

Logan

I slam the journal closed. I’ve read the words a hundred times over and they still have the same impact on me. They’re a reminder that half of me is missing. Gone for no one to ever see again. Unfortunately, that half took any chance of happiness in my future with her.

I was there during the time she wrote about. I was there for the shooting, although my experience was different than hers. I was there when she refused to believe Emersyn was gone, that her mind began to play the cruelest of tricks on her and allow hope to take root. I was there for the funeral, there to hear her screams.

She may not have remembered, but I did. Her haunting cry pierced through the sound of soft cries. Her pleas for Emersyn. Her begging for them to not take her away. Her cries to make it stop. I remember her looking at me as if she had been crushed into a million pieces and I was the only one who could fix it. I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t fix anything.

By the time we got her into the car, she was nearly catatonic. There, but not really there at all. None of us said a word as my mother drove us home. The silence was not one of comfort, it feltsuffocating. I wanted to speak but couldn’t fathom what words I could possibly say in such a moment.

When we got home, I helped Lennox inside and into the shower while my mother cooked us food. After I showered and dressed myself, I walked out to the dining room and saw Lennox sitting at the table with a bowl of pasta in front of her. She stared at the food like she hated it.

She wasn’t eating it, but moving it around in the bowl, picking up the pasta and dropping it back down with her fork. It wasn’t ideal, her not eating, but the fact she was doing anything at all satisfied me enough for the moment.

She continued the pattern as I ate. Swirling the pasta, lifting it up, and dropping it back down. But then the sauce splashed onto her hand. A large splat of red covered her knuckles and dripped down her fingers. Her eyes went wide at the sight, the fork falling from her hand and every muscle in her body visibly tensing.

She abruptly stood from her chair and sped around the corner into the kitchen. I called out to her, but she didn’t seem to hear me at all, lost in her own overwhelming thoughts. I heard the kitchen sink go on from where I sat at the table and continued to eat my own food as I waited for her to come back. Ten minutes passed, and she never did.

I followed where she went into the kitchen and found her still standing at the sink. Her eyes were stock-still on where she was scrubbing her hands raw with the sponge that we used for washing dishes under the steaming water. Her hands were bright red, the skin inflamed. I called her name, and she didn’t acknowledge me.

When I approached her, gently grabbing her arm to pull her away from the sink, she violently pushed me away, causing me to fall to the floor. She started mumbling about how she had toget it off. It wasn’t until later I learned that she was referring to blood. She had thought the sauce was Emersyn’s blood.

It wasn’t until twenty minutes later that my mom and I were finally able to drag her away from the sink. Her hands were cracked and bleeding in multiple places. She didn’t go without a fight. I grabbed one of her arms while my mom grabbed the other and we dragged her kicking and screaming away from the sink.

Her dead weight fell between the two of us, her legs kicking and her hands reaching to slap in any direction she could. She screamed “no” over and over at the top of her lungs as we wrangled her into bed. I crawled in right behind her, pulling her into my chest, holding her tight.

I stayed there until her screams turned to tears and she eventually fell asleep. It stayed that way for a long time. Her getting angry and going on a path of destruction or starting a fight, and me holding her until the fight left her and sleep came. It never came for me though.

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