Remembering Sunday

The metal of the storm door rattled loudly as its edge crashed against the rubber heel of my sneaker. Building up and echoing into my house as I pressed the large white door open, somehow knowing it wouldn't be locked. But the sounds erupting around me only escalated from there as the brass hinges instantly threw the door into a pile of large cardboard boxes that had been stacked inside the entry.

"Kennedy?" I heard my father called as I looked up from the scattered mess around me to see him emerge from another pile just inside the living room. "You're back!" He exclaimed.

"I am..." I dragged softly, once again looking down at my feet. Right where I'd made a habit of kicking my shoes, boxes of varying sizes were now sprayed about like Jenga pieces.

"I've been meaning to call you!" My dad added, swiftly swooping down to fetch the closest box and place it on top a now sideways one in front of the coat closet. Then scratching his balding head, "But I just couldn't seem to find the house phone in well – all of this!"

I nodded knowingly now as he motioned to the vast piles of boxes which I learned had exploded all over our previously pristine living room and seemed to only just begun to spill over into the entryway. "What is all of this anyway?" I dared to ask, following in my father's step and lifting a box up onto the one he'd just relocated moments before. Making a home for my dusty sneakers in the process.

"Your dorm!" He chirped as I peaked at the return label haphazardly slapped to the box at my feet now. Squinting my eyes to try and as casually as possible make out the offensively small letters printed on it.

'Tuscon, Arizona
85721'

"Right..." I pulled, scratching the tip of my small nose. As though any of that was actually supposed to mean something to me in my current state.

"I figured in the next few days or so, if you felt up to it that is, you could go through them and sort some stuff out to go into storage for the summer!" He said smiling at me. And I returned the grin warmly.

Since the accident and having to digest everything, I've been able to tell how hard this has all been on my dad. And even though on moments recently I would have rather beat him with a photo album than actually look through it. I can tell he's trying, it's not like he asked for any of this either. It's just a difficult pill to swallow. And when someone who wants you to remember the life they seemingly single-handedly provided you is standing over your shoulder; well that only makes it harder.

"I think I can do that..." I informed him, causing his grin to grow even wider before he waved me with his rough meaty hands as though to follow him.

"Great!" He exclaimed, "I made a path into the kitchen if you were hungry we can look at what there is to eat for dinner! Any ideas?"

"Uh... No, not really." I made out softly attempting to match my father's vast strides as he swiftly navigated the leaning towers of boxes with ease. Before, being in this house was weird, but not entirely abnormal feeling. Something about the sand-colored walls and hardwood floors felt comforting. And although I don't exactly remember the years I'm sure I'd spent inside its halls, the house felt like home in some obscure indescribable way.

Some things now were a total guessing game, like which toothbrush on the bathroom counter was mine. But other things were not. Some things in my life I found to be innate and almost habitually remembered. For instance, while I had to guess whether I put normal or almond milk on my cereal in the morning, I knew without even skipping a beat that the utensils were in the drawer to the right of the stove, and the bowls in the cupboard left of the microwave.

Why or how I knew that is beyond me, but the more I navigated through this life I didn't yet remember, the more I started to pick up on small things I seemingly knew anyway. And the survey of that house was one of the more prominent ones.

I didn't have to question, even on the first investigation that just beyond the living room was the dining room, which I also had grown an inkling that we never actually used. And even then, a few days in as I followed my robust father around the last cardboard stack I knew exactly how the kitchen would look when it came into view.

Chestnut colored cabinets lined the walls overhead and below. Thick granite countertops were accompanied by a tile backsplash of varying gray, beige, and taupe hues. And a small peninsula jutted out sporting two bar stools which I found myself sliding up onto as my father wrapped around into the heart of the space.

"I was just starting to unload the dishes when I heard the door!" He informed me, breaking the brief silence as he made his way to the still ajar stainless appliance. He glanced at me briefly as he flipped the door down, "Where did you run off too anyway?"

I signed softly, eyes falling to my hands which had naturally begun to twist themselves into knots. "I don't really know," I admitted thinking of how I'd mindlessly found myself in that field just earlier. Looking up as a glass bowl clanged against a pan as it lifted from the wire brackets of the washer. "I guess I just started to walk to wherever my feet felt like taking me."

He hummed softly as he made his way to the cabinet beneath my elbows. "Well good." He nodded, a soft smile and a content expression adorning his tanned wrinkled face. "Maybe getting out of this house a bit will help you relax a little from the stress of everything, that's what you used to do in high school anyway!"

"It was?" I questioned, my brows squishing together as my arms folded on the cool countertop.

"Oh, all the time!" He brushed off, his smile spreading wider exposing his teeth. "Anytime anything was on your mind there was never any hope of getting you to talk. You'd always just throw on a coat, say you'd be back, and head out the door."

I huffed softly to myself as he let the cupboard door slap shut and retreated back to across the kitchen. My lips contorted in an ambiguous manner as I watched the elder man move effortlessly through his actions.

"And you trusted me to just up and do that?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Of course!" He basically laughed. "You were always honest with me if you'd ever gotten into trouble, and well, I raised you after all, so I'd be damned if you didn't have a good head on those shoulders."

That remark, though it made me laugh, settled thickly in the bottom of my stomach. I'm sure it was true. As I watched him smile over at me for a brief moment, his eyes radiated nothing but pride and happiness, and although my stomach was twisting itself into a friendship bracelet of guilt and confusion; the look in his eyes dulled the pain, even if just slightly.

He looked so happy then to talk about the version of me he'd known so well, that knew him just the same. The little girl who'd grown into a seemingly independent college student whom he didn't have to explain anything too.

I looked down at my hands again, crossed over sun-kissed arms and painted with small scattered freckles, and I thought to myself about the past few hours I'd had. Since returning small bits of me had been coming back, realizations or epiphanies. But never as full or as vivid as I'd experienced that afternoon.

The memories I'd had – well, experienced really – of Alex and I were so drastically different than any other small bit of information I'd collected beforehand in ways I couldn't even begin to describe in a manner that would do the sensation justice. It was like flipping through television channels in my mind and falling smack dab in the middle of a movie I knew I'd seen before and yet knew nothing about. Where I didn't know or understand the plot line, or any of the actors, and yet I was the leading role. And everyone around me had the script encrypted into their memory.

I knew these were my memories, and I was the girl whose eyes I was watching them through. But more than anything it felt like I was watching home films from a first-person point of view. And the more I thought about what I'd experienced that day, the more I began to contemplate the idea of sharing that with my father. The boy I'd remembered – Alex.

I didn't even realize the mental manhole I'd fallen into till the clashing of pans and my father's voice pulled me out of it. Halting any and all developing intentions of entertaining such an idea of sharing.

"You alright kiddo?" My dad asked as he pulled a frying pan from under the peninsula.

I nodded, giving my head a small shake as I fluffed the haze from my eyes and unraveled my arms. "Yeah, my head just hurts..." I softly informed. Pressing my hands on the slick granite and flopping my feet to the floor. "I think I'm going to go lay down 'till dinner."

He nodded softly as I turned my back on the kitchen and began to weave back through the boxes and clutter filling our home. Without even thinking, I wrapped my hand around the wooden railing and ascended the stairs making my way towards my bedroom.

I don't know how I knew, or why it was then my feet decided to carry me to the third door from the stairs. The thin white wood with a prominent black 'K' painted smack dab in the center of it. But as I ran my fingers down the grooves in the thickly laid paint, the sides of my palms lightly brushed the edges of a few faded photographs I couldn't have been bothered to look at just yet.
Instead, my hand continued its venture, taking in the soft indents of the grain before it reached the round silver nob.

I'd yet to be inside my bedroom since I'd returned home. Mostly from fear. I was afraid of what would happen if I ventured through that door. I was fearful of being surrounded by everything I once valued so highly I desired to keep them as close to me as possible and wake up surrounded by every morning – and remembering none of it.

But now, after all that had happened that day, and those few things I'd begun to remember I felt differently.

Anxiety still contaminated my blood with every pump of my apprehensive heart. Fear of stepping through the threshold and examining all that laid behind it and remembering nothing still filled my mind and stalled my hand at the nob. But with every second I remained on the other side of that shut door, I kept myself from possibly remembering who I was.

Maybe now that the memories had started to flow without even trying, they would just keep coming. And If I had any hope of remembering who I was beyond a girl with a sugar addiction and a possibly alcoholic friend, I needed to take some initiative.

Above all other feelings that came with forgetting every aspect of who you are, frustration was by far the most prominent. Behind the guilt, sadness, confusion, and all too real headaches. The feeling of being so completely frustrated with myself had begun to slowly consume every breath I took in this new empty life I'd woken up too. And I wanted more than anything to make it go away.

And I truly do believe looking back now, that the desire to rid my mind and being from the never-ending frustration was just strong enough in that moment to trump the fear that had been keeping me in the hallway those past few days.

And finally, I built up the courage or frustration should I say, to wrap my nimble fingers around that glistening nob and turn it gently, pushing my bedroom door wide open with creaky ease.
In a matter of seconds, I was consumed with the soft yet prominent scent of sandalwood and vanilla that pulled me slowly across the threshold by my nose. And I was greeted on the other side by light grey walls, their color only making its presence known in certain sections while the majority was masked by an eclectic collection of posters, photographs, drawings, and painted crafts.

Right inside the door I stepped towards a large, open closet with two bi-folding doors painted the same color as the one I'd just pressed open. And as I made my way around to the front of it, I found a long white dresser, clothes still spilling from its drawers and onto the floor where I must have last left them.

Placed on top, I found a small display of a few framed photographs I didn't bother to look too closely at and two large candles with their lids missing I assumed to be filling the room with the familiar custom scent I felt in my core belonged to myself.

Continuing on my slow adventure of my own sleeping quarters, I hesitantly moved onto the white mirrored desk between two rather large windows. I ran my fingers across the slick glass that topped it, gazing quickly at the concert tickets and movie stubs I'd shoved beneath it, smiling at their presence although the headache in the front of my head remained dull and constant from before. That was until I moved right past the bookshelf overflowing with an obnoxious number of knickknacks and mementos and swiftly stepped to the small nightstand just beside my bed.

On it I found a petite, tea light sized scented candle, and two photographs encased in glass. Subconsciously, my mind reached for one of them. A small black, perfectly squared frame with a rather poor-quality photo collage type image inside. Squinting at the picture, I couldn't help but brush the tips of my fingers down it as I sat on the very edge of my still unmade bed, the pounding in my head slowly beginning to increase in intensity.

Four small photos were cropped together, a progression of one short scene and the closer and the longer I looked eventually I came to the realization that one of the two girls shown in the image was me. I was sat in a brightly colored stripped hammock with a tanned blonde girl.Scrunching my lips, I stared at the smiling figures as they – we, I guess – progressively fell off the hammock in our fits of laughter captured in these four tiny images.

I almost let out an audible whine as a stabbing pain shot through the front of my head straight to the back of my skull. Shutting my eyes, I reached with my free hand to rub the small space between my thin brows and grimaced. The pain pulling me from the bedroom I'd just rediscovered and into a world, I knew but couldn't remember.

"This is literally so unfair Em!" I whined, throwing myself down onto my puffy comforter as I pressed the large beige house phone to my ear. "How can he just rip me away from my entire life – and right before high school!"

A muffled sigh came from the other side of the phone as I rolled to my stomach. My long brown strands softly falling to my cheeks as I pouted to no one at all. "I don't know..." My best friend quietly muttered from the other end of the line. "Did he give you any warning at all?"

"Like no!" I proclaimed rather dramatically. "I knew he hated this house once Jake and mom moved out and all - but moving to a completely different state is just totally ridiculous! He can't actually expect me to do that can he?" I exclaimed to the blonde.

"I don't know, Kenn" She whined in agreement, which only made the sinking feeling in my stomach feel even heavier. So heavy in fact I was almost certain it would leave a lasting dent in the memory foam beneath me. "How am I supposed to go to high school without you, we never do anything alone!"

"Exactly!" I shrilled back. Crawling just slightly up my bed I grabbed hold of the nearest pillow my stumpy arms could reach and dragged it under my upper body. The soft pink fluffs not doing nearly enough to comfort the complete and total tragedy I was currently going through.

After my parent's divorce finalized, everything was supposed to be great! It was just supposed to be me and my dad against the world, and now it just felt like the world and my father were only conspiring against me.

I came home from school, feeling so excited for summer being right around the corner and thinking I'd just be able to goof off and do absolutely nothing with Emily every single day. And instead, I came home to my dad packing the fine china from the large glass display it never – ever – left and stuffing them in boxes.

And as hard as I hoped he was finally just taking the gaudy stuff down and sending it off to my mother. That dream was quickly crushed when he sat me down at the dinner table and told me he'd taken a slightly better job offer in Baltimore, and we'd be moving in just a few weeks. Destined to downsize from the beautiful childhood home I'd grown to know and love for something subpar and suburban within driving distance of a city that could never compare to Boston. At least not to me.

And this was all to go down in a matter of weeks!

"This is so unfair!" I spewed again for what was probably the millionth time in just that brief phone conversation alone and I pushed myself to my feet. "How on Earth did he think that this would just be okay to spring on me after everything else I've had to deal with this year!"

"So unfair..." She agreed yet again, I knew deep down as upset as I knew she was, and we both were, that to some extent she would have normally called me dramatic. But in my defense, if there were any time for a teenage girl to be dramatic this was that time!

Emily and I had basically been attached at the hip well – our entire lives! And now that was alljust going to be ripped out from under me, and I didn't have a single ounce of a say in the matter. No matter how loud I screamed or how big of a temper tantrum I threw, I knew all attempts would be proven futile in mere seconds.

My whole life as I'd known it had been torn apart that year and all I had left was my best friend and my finally perfect bedroom. And now, it was only a matter of weeks, no days really, before that too would be stripped from me and I'd be left with absolutely nothing to hold onto to my sanity with.

I looked around my room and grimaced at the idea of someone else living in what I'd spent so long to perfect. Whoever it would be would only destroy it. They wouldn't care about how much time I'd spent and how much I annoyed my father in order to find the most perfect shade of lilac to ever exist for its walls.

They wouldn't care how innovative the chalkboard I'd painted over my bed was. They wouldn't know when to shut the shades in the summer so the room didn't get stuffy, or to toss a sneaker in the door to keep the draft from making it slam. They wouldn't know the patch under the carpet by the closet where the wood panels squeak in the winter. They wouldn't know anything about this room.

This was my room and soon enough someone else would be living in it and mucking it up with whatever garbage they brought in with them. Some teenage boy would probably get it and ruin the perfect scent I'd finally managed to have linger without ever having to light a candle. Taint it with dirty socks and hockey pads and mud-caked soccer cleats and ruin everything I'd done to make it my picture-perfect dream room after all these years. And the worst part was, I wouldn't even get to enjoy it now that I'd finally perfected it.

I'd just have to leave it to let the carpet be rotted away by stale boy stench and filthy laundry.
Sighing loudly down the now silent phone line, I walked over to my bedside and picked up the newest addition to my impeccable collection. Four small photos I'd mashed together of Emily and me just a week or so before when the sun had finally heated the New England air to hit 70 degrees, and all hell broke loose in Essex County. Pools were opened, jeans were shortened and sneakers had been ditched quickly for flipflops.

It was a perfect day sitting on Gracie's pool deck with all our friends, and it was what I thought to be the perfect start to what was supposed to be the perfect summer. And now I stared down at the photos of Em and I falling off the hammock, the laughter still ringing clearly in my ear as I stared at it, but I couldn't feel the warmth the photos provided me when I'd slid them into their slick frame.

Instead, I felt cold and empty. Everything I'd been smiling about in those photos wouldn't be even a possibility soon enough. I wouldn't have my perfect summer with my best friends. I wouldn't have more pool day's lounging around with Em and Gracie. I wouldn't get the movie-esc first day of high school me and Emily had been talking about and obsessing over since sixth grade.

Soon enough, all I'd have to feel close to this place, and this room and Emily herself would be these photos in this small black picture frame.

"You'll still be my friend Em, right?" I asked her tentatively, hands shaking ever so slightly as I sat on the edge of my bed. The anger I'd been feeling just moments before had quickly dissipated into crippling fear of yet another giant change about to shake my life up.

"Always." She said, quickly and with certainty, her tone never wavering. "You're my ride or die Kenn, till the end!"

Her remark gave me the slightest ability to smile as I nodded, even though she couldn't see, I knew she could picture my reaction better than I could even act it after all these years. "You'll always be my favorite sister, I hope you know that."

"Shut up, twinnie!" She laughed fully then, I could practically hear her shaking her head nonchalantly. "You're moving, not dying, and if you think a few state lines are going to get rid of me that easily well, you're crazier than the cast of Laguna Beach!"

"You're right, you're right!" I managed to giggle, feeling slightly better – but just slightly. Emily was my best friend in the entire world, and more than anything, more than leaving my house, my school, or my perfect room, I was terrified of having to live my life without her being no more than two blocks away at all times.

Her reassurance filled me with a mild sense of comfort that moving wouldn't completely wash her from my life. But deep down I knew being states away would change everything for us in some way or another. And even just telling myself that, I lost any ability to stop the tear that had slowly been building from slipping onto my cheek from the edge of my baby blue eyes.

Blinking, and wiping at my face, I almost didn't realize I had slipped from the memory almost as seamlessly as I had slipped in. Hands shaking, and slightly damp now from the streams that had been pouring down my face for what must have been some time now, I reached out to place the frame back where I'd snatched it from. Head aching from the flashback.

In the small clean strip left on the dust-coated nightstand, I placed it back down perfectly beside the most ridiculous photo of Jack and Alex I'd taken our sophomore year. I was quick then to finish wiping my eyes before letting my head smack my stale pillow and my hands mindlessly find the edge of my puffy back comforter, pulling it up over my shoulders.

It all happened so quickly, shutting my eyes and swiftly drifting off as I silently prayed for a moment of rest that was absent of nightmares or any more memories for that day. I almost didn't even realize what I'd remembered without even thinking about, I knew the name of the boy in the other photograph.

That I somehow remembered Jack Barakat.

Notes