The Palmer Pool

24 | Remember Me

I woke up when my head clunked against the window as the truck bounced along a dirt two-track driveway in a grassy field.

"What are we doing?"  I asked groggily, hiding my face in my shoulder as I wiped the corner of my mouth to check for drool.

"I want to show you something."

The truck came to a stop in a turn around where the driveway ended and the orange sun burned through the back window.  There was no house at the end of the driveway, only a field scattered with a few trees.  Pete put the tailgate down with a clunk and then opened my door and scooped me up in his arms.

"Whoa!  I can walk," I protested.  My voice sounded raspy and my throat was sore.  From screaming, I realized.

"You had a tough afternoon."  He set me on the tailgate and I watched my blistered, nylon-wrapped feet dangle as unwelcome images flashed in my head.  A mangled fence in a cemetery.  Those threatening eyes peering through black glasses frames.  An arm full of tattoos.  I shivered.

"I didn't bring you here to stare at the ground," Pete teased from beside me.

The sun loomed above a cornfield at the horizon.  Wispy pink and lavender clouds streaked the blazing orange sky.  It was a familiar country sunset, like the ones at my dad's house.  Pete grasped my hand and I focused on the feeling of him beside me, the rhythmic, whirring song of chirping crickets and the fact that I was okay. I was alone with Pete with no one else around to convince that I belonged or to make me feel invisible.  No one to kidnap me and take me on a seatbelt-free, moderate-speed car chase.

"Sunsets are prettier out here," he said.

"They are," I sighed, "there's more sky." 

Our eyes locked and his expression was so earnest and adoring that I cracked a helpless smile and yelled, "Arghhhhhh!" into the sky.

I love you, I thought.  I couldn't say it.  I love you.   It felt ridiculous. And saying it out loud wasn't going to make any of this easier.

"What?" Pete asked.

"Nothing."  I tried to clear the catch in my throat.  "Will you do me a favor?"

"Anything."

"Will you try to remember this exact moment, for as long as you can?"

"Of course.  I'll remember every minute I've spent with you," he insisted. He interlaced his fingers with mine and kissed the back of my hand.

"Sure, but memories kind of melt together.  And after a while you can't tell them apart, you know?"

I knew that over time most of the memories I had of the few days we spent together would become distorted and inaccurate.  I wanted at least one of them to revisit in my mind and know that what I remembered was real and true.

"I guess so," Pete admitted.

"So, I mean, try to remember all the colors of the sky and the sound of the crickets and that, like, late summer-y smell of dry grass and wildflowers and... just everything," I whispered timidly.

"Alright," he agreed.

I looked down at our hands clasped together and painted a picture in my mind of the ridges of blue veins mapping the back of his hand and forearm, then leaned into his shoulder to gaze out at the scene before us.  I took a deep breath and held it, as if time were measured in breaths, thus giving me the power to lengthen a moment.  After I took it all in, I closed my eyes and the scene projected onto the inside of my eyelids.  I'd taken a mental snapshot that would hopefully stay with me forever.  Click.  When I opened my eyes again, Pete was watching me.