Part II - Lapsus Memoriae – Memory Lapse
By ani aka Cherished Dreams
Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight.
The third month passes and by the start of the forth month, she vaguely realizes that she's given up the habit of closing her window in the morning, and she no longer smells the gentle scent of the rain waft in, through the cracks of her curtains. Charlie finds her that Saturday morning, knees at her chest, sitting on her bed just staring at the window a slight crease between her blank eyes. When he comes back to check up on her in the afternoon, the window is wide open letting in the slight sprinkle from outside come in. She's pulled the rocking chair up next to the window and fast asleep shivering. He wraps her blanket around her, as he did when she was just a baby and slides the window close. She looks small, vulnerable and fragile.
A strong feeling rises up within him and he leans in to brush his lips softly at her temple. He's not prepared for her reaction. Her lips quiver and her face scrunches up in what looks like pain and she starts sobbing his name. He's close enough that she starts clawing his shirt and she trembles into his arms. It shatters his already broken heart. He makes a call and that night he doesn't leave her.
From that night on, she remembers her dreams (or rather nightmares).
Her memories are slurred together but she distinctly remembers her mother coming through their front door about a week later. It was such a random event that she hopes that it must all be a bad dream. A delusion. Maybe he'll kiss her awake and laugh at her story as he drives her to school the next day. Her hopes are shot down the next day though when she wakes up without him, but with her mother in her room, stuffing clothes into her duffle bag. She's devastated to say the least, she had sincerely hoped he would be back, hold her in his cold arms, his smooth lips at her brow. She bursts into angry tears. She's mad he's not there and her anger is unfortunately directed towards her mother, whose not-so-quiet mutterings about that boy. Her body wakes with a vengeance and she all but kicks her own mother out of her room, her father looking scared from the doorway.
Renee's purpose for being in the house suddenly hits her. She won't leave. Not when he could still return to her. How could he return to her, if she was all the way in Phoenix? He couldn't. Her throat is sore, her eyes are raw. She feels broken, but even she doesn't know whether his return is enough to fix the fissure he left down the middle of her heart. It's sudden in her mind and she hopes she's wrong, and her thoughts downward spiral from there.
She wakes up from her routine stupor at the end of her forth month, when Charlie having had enough bangs his fist down on their small dinner table. He'll force her home to Phoenix, this time, she knows it. Her lips move in defence and out comes enough words to placate Charlie from cuffing her up and Fed-Ex'ing her back. It works, unfortunately the stab of fear his words that shake her, shake more than fear into her heart. It shakes awareness.
At five months, she realizes she's starting to forget the electricity that she felt in his presence. The smell from her bed has long disappeared. She tries desperately to cling on to them and she even begins sitting in his seat in biology. Pitying blue eyes always stare at her as she opts for the seat away from her previous seat by the aisle. She finds that it's interesting to see the same things positioned around the room from a different angle. His angle.
She found unusual dents underneath the table on his side one lesson, and she comforts herself by grazing her thin fingers along them, imagining they were made by him as he tried controlling his thirst during their first class together. She finds herself looking forward to biology because she gets one other kick, beside all these.
"Edward Cullen." Mr Banner says monotonously, calling roll.
"He's left sir." An exasperated voice says from behind her. She doesn't have to turn to know it's from the same person with the sad blue eyes, but she dismisses that.
She feels like a junkie just before a shot. (But she's not addicted to any illegal substances, so she can't really say) Her heart races at his name, something so constant, and there every day. She rides her high as far as it'll go and after the throb of her heart returns to its usual tempo, she slips back in her chair and tries to get through the rest of period and rest of the day.
At six months, she starts getting anxious and scared. She can no longer remember what he looks like. She can only remember the bronze of his hair. What's even worse, she thinks, is that when she remembers the bronze, she starts to see Jacob. It scares her to her core, but it's more than she wants to admit to herself. They're two different entities - a moon and a sun, she muses. Cold and hot. They're on opposite ends of the spectrum and yet, she can't help but notice the similarities between the two. And her relationships with both.
Three weeks into the month, she notices she keeps her window shut tight at night. And she suggests for their next project that they hunt around for a place, she once stumbled upon. She doesn't add that she's trying to grasp her fading memories. The meadow is one place, where images of happiness flit in her mind. She can't help but somewhat betray his memory, by bringing Jacob, but she can't find him otherwise.
After finding the meadow a few weeks later, the dreary weather and missing presence reflects severely on appearance on the once magnificent looking field of long stemmed grass and wild flowers. It begins to pour and feeling loss of the missing piece to the landscape in front of her, she drops to her knees and lets out her sorrow in one piercing shriek.
She loses count of the months past, and she gets anxious, when she finds the voice in her head doesn't respond as she tries being flippant a knife in her hand. When it appears as she walks towards Charlie's loaded gun she discovers that it sounds alien. A bit like Mike or Ben. Maybe even a combination of both. She makes it a new hobby of hers, to listen more carefully in their lunchtime conversations.
As Jacob starts hugging her more and more, she can't help but feel her body doesn't fit in his arms as well as another's, or begin to like the feel of relief slither through her when he releases her from his too warm hugs. It sometimes feels like she's doused into cold water. She soon forgets why she abhorred the Olympic Peninsula for its wet weather and moist air.
Mike accidentally lets slip that it's been about seven months, since they've left. She makes a note of it by letting slip a smile at him. She knows he's flabbergasted as she leaves him to head towards English. When she gets there, she marks it down in her homework diary, that it's been that many months. He also starts walking her to and from classes again. It helps, as he starts to team up with her again for gym (ping pong). She hates using him like that, but she feels he should stop looking like a golden retriever.
She starts feeling a whole bunch of other things other than that for Mike. She feels lighter somehow, less bogged down. Charlie's commented on her humming one time as he helped her with dinner. Jacob's advances seem almost bearable, and she starts feeling like a girl again when Angela invites her over to watch A Midsummer Night's Dream for English.
However, she barely remembers how much he loved her, though in her mind she knows it felt strong, slightly marred by his parting words. At this, she purposely parts her heart in two and stores away the seemingly large chunk that still feels for him. She no longer remembers the exact colour of his hair, remember his face or remember just how cool his touch was. She can only remember warm.
At eight months, the cold water rushing around her and eventually in her mouth and lungs are the closest thing to remembering him - she savours the feeling, his angry, and desperate alien voice in her mind, and doesn't fight it.
Author's Note: Part two of Carpe Noctem. Can be read alone. I'm thinking three-shot. What do you think?