Memories Never Fade

The familiar hum of the heavy bus tires comforted Ash as he lay back. The alcohol was spreading through his system and the hum was working into his brain. It didn't take long for him to fall asleep. Andy watched his band mate eyes worried waiting for the restlessness to start. Ashley wouldn't talk about it when he was awake but he had nightmares about someone… he talked a great deal in his sleep.

The grass was soft under young Ashley's legs as he leaned back. There was a girl next to him. She sat cross-legged. She was two years younger than him but he didn't notice. She was just Micha. They were twelve and ten and it seemed that forever stretched before them. The pair just sat there catching there breath from the game of tag they had just finished. Ashley watched Micha. He hadn't seen her in a real long time…

The sun began to set and Ashley felt panic. He knew the next image wouldn't be so sweet…

The sun was now low in the sky. Ashley found himself walking jauntily toward the end of his block. He was in high school now. He turned one last time to look back at the neighborhood he knew so well. His eyes latched on a form far behind him. Micha stood on the steps of her house a backpack over her shoulder and a coffee in hand. She looked so everyday to teenage Ashley that he rolled his eyes and began to turn away. The older Ashley inside his younger head fought this. He missed the fiery strawberry blonde curls, the flashing green eyes. He wanted to run up and once again feel the softness of her body in his arms. But this was a memory and he turned away. Ashley was forced to look at the way he had seen her. Hair to curly, waist to soft, chest to small, she wasn't hot, she wasn't popular. Ashley wanted to slap his teenage self. To redo history to run back and walk with her.

Now he was standing beside her at his pool. His was spraying her down with sunscreen. She was laughing at something he had said. It was nice to be with her again. Now that they were in different schools they didn't see each other as much. Yet summer was like it always was. Her mom and she practically lived with them. His mom came rushing out waving a paper excitedly. It was a class list… it wasn't his. It took him a moment… the name at the top Micha not Ashley. He turned to her eyes shocked. She flushed. He shook his head she wasn't skipping TWO grades… but apparently she was. His mom left again and he turned to her. She wasn't looking at him. Now he knew that she was sad, she hadn't told him, she knew he didn't want he around his friends. She was an embarrassment.

"I know better than to talk to you Ash. I know you have cool friends. I'm in honors anyway. You wont even notice." She turned and started toward the pool. Ashley felt his heart splitting. This moment, this moment he destroyed everything… but his teenage self opened his stupid mouth.

"Thank god, they would never let me live it down if they saw me with you. At school, we don't know each other."

Ashley slid from that memory to another one an even worse one. Micha stood in front of him. She hadn't been in the sun lately, her hair and darkened to a rich mahogany. She was dressed in torn jeans and a tshirt that said Jenius. Her face was covered in perfectly done makeup and her green eyes were cold as jewels.

"Waiting for the sunscreen to go on sale?" he asked noting that there were only two cans in the cupboard.

"No, I'm going to camp in a few days." Ashley blanked. A summer without Micha was like… a life without color. He managed to keep her away from his bastard friends and groupies at school but summer was his time with her.

"Why?"

"You wouldn't understand Ashley." His heart skipped, she never called him Ashley, "it's a place where I can be smart and get away from idiots." She turned on her heel and walked out to the deck. Ashley stood frozen as the realization of what the school year had done hit him.

The worse memory had yet to come. Now it flashed bright and vivid into his minds eye. Micha was unconscious on the hospital bed he sat next to. Her usually moon pale skin was a horribly livid red and monstrously blistered. Terror racked him as he watched her. Pain seared throw him. This was his fault. The girl he had been sleeping with had been mocking Micha for her pale skin and her inability to have Ash. Now Micha was in the hospital with third degree sunburn. Ashley sat there for 2 days waiting for her to awake. Terror and guilt racked him for those long, long hours.

He slid with relief into yet another memory. She was leaving. She had skipped yet another grade and was leaving for college a year before him. Her face was blank as she helped her new friend into her truck and she herself jumped up. Ashley had to restrain himself from running after her and grabbing her and kissing her. He wanted to have her in his arms more than he wanted anything but she had moved on and he had to let her.

Ashley awoke with a ragged gasp. He kicked himself out of bed and went to the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels and a package of cigarettes and went to the back of the bus. He stuck his head out the window letting the cold hair sting his face. He inhaled the smoke of the cigarette as he opened the alcohol. He tried to relax, he tried to force old memories away… those memories were more than 10 years old. He had only gotten a swig down before Andy was walking into the room. Ashley glared at the man.

"Ash…" Andy started.

"No Andy."

"Look, we all have fucked up pasts it's why we are outcasts. You know all of our stories. Tell me yours. Let it out of your head."

"Andy… when I was in high school I was one of those douche bags," he said staring above Andy's heads. Andy nodded. The whole band knew that. Ashley had been bullied in middle school so bad that the summer before he went to high school he bulked up and started being like everyone else. After a long silence Andy spoke.

"Whose Micha?"

"WHAT!" Ashley said horrified.

"You talk in your sleep." Andy said simply.

"Micha is…" Ashley shook his head, "I don't want to talk about her."

"Ashley her memory is fucking with your head. You aren't the same guy anymore. You need to tell me before it starts to effect the music." There was a long silence before Ashley spoke again.

"My mother's best friend lived next door. Her husband and my father had the same job for alternating times of year, when he was home dad was gone. So the women were always in the house where the men were gone. She had a daughter, she was two years younger than me and her name was Micha."

Andy sighed inwardly. Best friend crushes/loves were always the hardest.

"She was the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. We grew up together. When we were little we used to run around in the back yards and splash around the pools together. I remember coating her in sunscreen every hour or so. Her mother was crazy about it… she was so fair skinned, it was like the moon." There was a wistful quality to his words. "Even when I started school before her she would cling to my legs when I left and tackle me when I came home. She was a genius. She ended up graduating the year before me. She used to have the most beautiful strawberry blonde hair all summer from the sun and by Christmas it would be the color of rich mahogany… We went to school together. We even went through middle school together. Everyone thought we were freaks. It was hard but we always had each other, always. When I went to high school I changed myself to be like all the other boys. I was ashamed of it. I tried to hide it from her... I just ended up forcing her away."

"That summer she went to a camp for a week and it was the longest I'd ever gone without seeing her. I started realizing how much I relied on her. Being without her was like living in a world without color. I had nothing to do but sit there and think about how I'd been pushing her away about how I was going to continue pushing her away. I started drinking then, I was trying to forget."

"That's when I got the news… she was skipping up a couple grades. Now she was in MY grade. She was going to be in school with me. I was horrified, I felt like my life was colliding. My sweet friend couldn't be caught in the psychotic trap of my school life. I ended up shunning her. I had no other way to keep her away. I didn't want her near them… I was ashamed of her just as much as I wanted to keep her safe from them. That summer showed up and she left for 2 months. I realized just how bad I had fucked up. She started calling me Ashley when we were forced together and never talked to me other wise. It took me forever to figure out that she'd been in love with me just like I had with her and that I'd broken her heart."

"She skipped Junior year as well. She was a senior and I was a junior. The guys I was hanging out with started to notice her. They thought she was hot. They wanted to take her to prom. So I ended up asking her because I knew that I wouldn't force her into anything that they would. It was so awkward. We danced and I got drunk, she slapped me, ditched me and ran off. I found out later she spent the rest of the night crying on the phone with her new best friend. She graduated and took off for MIT. I haven't seen her since"

"In many ways high school sucked even more than middle school. I was utterly alone. I realized senior year that it didn't matter what all these retards thought of me. I started using and smoking as well as drinking. I couldn't forgive myself because I'd let the only REAL friend I had ever had go because I wanted to be liked by everyone else. I started realizing how badly I had hurt her as I felt the sting of her rejection."

"You just thought she was your friend Ash how were you supposed to know that she was in love with you?" Andy asked quietly.

"When we were sophomores she almost died because of me. I was dating this girl who was tan, blonde, and had massive fake tits. She saw me talking to Micha after school one day because she was driving to her friend's house in my neighborhood. I told her Micha was like my little sister who made sure I didn't fail high school but she wouldn't leave her alone. I didn't know how much it messed with Micha's head until she ended up in the hospital. She spent all day in the pool without any sunscreen… probably trying to get tan like the other girls. She spent two days unconscious with 3rd degree sun burn. It was the most terrifying experience of my life. I broke up with that bitch but I was too stupid to change how I treated Micha. If anything I pushed her away farther because I had proof of what my life could do to her." Ashley buried his face in his hands for a moment.

"I went off to college because that's what everyone including Micha wanted. I started looking for a band. I let it consume my life because it was easier than thinking about what had passed. Life was so busy until lately that I barely had time to think about it. Now I can't get her out of my head. It's so lonely being out on the road all the time and I find myself wishing I would wake-up and we would just be little kids passed out on her living room floor."

"Ashley…" Andy said, "why don't you just go find her?"

"I already fucked up her life once Andy I should at least leave her to what she has."

"Did you ever think that maybe she is still in love with you?"

"I haven't even seen her in ten years. She gorgeous, smart, funny, she's got everything. She's probably married by now."

"I think you should go see her. I think it would help you. Even if she was married and all that then you would know she was happy and if she wasn't I have yet to meet a women who would turn you down."

"She would hate what I am now. She hates drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, promiscuity, all of it."

"I still think you should find her."

"Forget it Andy, I shouldn't have said anything." He walked back into the bus and lay down on his bunk his mind's eye full of images of the laughing child he had known so well. He couldn't believe he had told Andy all of it. Andy obviously didn't understand though, Ashley didn't expect him to. He hadn't told Andy half of the story. He hadn't told him how cruel he had been, how hurt she had been, how much she had seemed to hate him in those last few days.

Andy watched Ashley sadly. He waited till the man was asleep than snuck over and found his laptop. Silently Andy opened it and logged on. He started digging through Ashley's contacts… she had to be here somewhere.