Chapter 1
The music was deafening.
She sat listlessly in a darkened corner table, absent-mindedly tapping someone's Zippo on the polished tabletop, the strobe lights turning her movements into a spectacle out of an old-school horror flick. Just about anything could be more amusing than being there.
She was in one of those moods. Had she felt otherwise, she might have been able to enjoy herself, but at the moment, everything was just damn annoying. The ambience, which wasn't really ambient at all, the lights, the people…Well, Melissa was tolerable. She glanced up, idly surveying the pulsating mass of drunken bodies occupying the expansive dance floor. Too bad the girl was nowhere in sight.
She sighed, checking her watch, or trying to, for that matter, given the inefficacy of the lighting. Letting her hand flop into her lap, she tossed the lighter onto the table and pushed herself awkwardly to her feet, cocking an eyebrow at a beer sitting untouched at the end of the table. She hesitated, the temptation to pick it up and finish it off nearly overwhelming. She bit her lip, taking a deep breath as she forced herself to walk away.
Hefting her chic little purse, she deftly ducked her head beneath the strap and positioned the bag at her hip as she began to make her way towards an exit. It was hot as hell, and, God…she coughed as she passed through a cloud of what could only be the worst skunkweed she ever caught wind of…it stank. Damn, when did she become such a prude?
"Bonnie! Hey, Bonnie, wait up!"
She groaned, closing her tired eyes, her shoulders slumping. She grabbed a handful of thick, wavy titian hair, lifting it off her neck to cool herself, pivoting slowly to face her so-called friend. Damn, she really was moody.
Melissa Reynolds, her best friend and roommate, bounced over to her, a goofy grin on her flushed countenance, rich mahogany shocks falling over her face. It was obvious she was a few beers beyond drunk. She gave Bonnie a cursory once-over with glassy chocolate brown eyes, her smiling fading. "You're going home?" she queried, her voice cracking from overuse and reflecting her disappointment.
Bonnie let her arm fall, dropping her hair and tilting her head to one side, again closing her eyes, this time nearly wincing. "Yes," she ground out through clenched teeth. She righted herself, straightening and leveling her passive gaze on her inebriated roommate. She watched indifferently as Melissa began to sulk, cocking an eyebrow when she started to whine unintelligibly. Crossing her arms, she averted her attentions to emphasize that no amount of begging would work.
"Forget it, Missy. I can't stand this." As if on cue, an over-zealous group of frat boys chose that moment to nearly bowl her over on their way to the bar, fresh from the sweaty mob on the dance floor. She stumbled forward, more startled than anything, but the novelty passed, and she did nothing but roll her eyes. Regaining her posture, she glanced back at Melissa fiercely, emphatically gesturing in the general direction in which the apes had disappeared. "I can't stand that."
Melissa wasn't giving up that easily, letting her head flop to one side, pleading with her eyes. "Oh, c'mon, Bon…It's Friday night!"
Bonnie narrowed her eyes, again crossing her arms disapprovingly. "Missy, I told you, this was a bad idea. I do not want to be here. Sometimes, yeah, it's fun to sit around and watch drunk people be drunk, especially when you're the only sober person. But not tonight. Not now." She let her arms fall to her sides, reaching out to give her friend an assuring pat on the arm. "I'm turning in."
She slowly rounded towards the exit once again, catching herself and pausing to eye Melissa over her shoulder. "Hey…you'll call if you need me? Rachel's still here, right? And Stella?"
Missy, still determined as ever, her mouth pouting, nodded forlornly. "Yeah, they're here." She paused, suddenly hopeful at Bonnie's hesitation. "Sure you won't stay for one more hour?"
Bonnie scoffed, shaking her head and mumbling to herself as she headed through the crowd, eager to breathe some fresh air. So much for group support, she thought, angry with herself for even going to a bar at all. Squeezing through the nearest body-choked doorway, she brushed herself off, smoothing the fabric of her sweater and vaguely wondering how long she'd have to air it out before it would stop smelling of smoke. Huddling against the evening chill, she set out for her dorm, mindful of the swaggering passers-by.
****
"You're a real dumb-ass, you know that, right?"
Bonnie laughed half-heartedly, holding Melissa's hair back as the girl leaned over the toilet, her normally caramel-colored skin tainted olive from the effects of too much alcohol, and too much "fun". She reached over her back, fetching a damp rag from the edge of the sink, using it to blot her friend's face and neck in between heaves.
"Oh? How do you figure that, all-knowing one?"
Melissa gasped, her voice raw and choked as she fought to control her retching long enough to speak. "Okay, right now, you're being a smart-ass…" Bonnie winced, struggling not to turn away every time the girl leaned forward. She breathed through her mouth in an effort not to let the smell get to her.
After another minute, the nausea seemed to momentarily pass. Melissa reached out a limp hand to take the rag from Bonnie, unceremoniously wiping the spittle from her mouth, falling back against the tiled wall wearily, her pallor still rather waxy with a thin sheen of sweat covering her brow. She cast a heavy-lidded glance in Bonnie's direction, cocking an eyebrow mockingly, daring her to cast the first stone. But Bonnie knew better. After all, it wasn't like Melissa had never had to do the same for her; Bonnie had put her roommate through more than her share of rough nights in the past. Just not anymore.
She took her time catching her breath, waiting for the spasms to fully subside, so that talking wouldn't be such a monumental effort. She averted her gaze to the rag in her hand, keeping her head tilted back, afraid that the room would start spinning if she moved it. "It was really stupid of you to walk home by yourself. It's the stuff of after-school specials, Bon."
The spunky redhead rolled her eyes patronizingly, letting her head tilt to one side. "Oh, come on, Missy. We're in Erie, for cryin' out loud. What the hell could possibly have happened? I was in more danger of being attacked at that damn bar." With a grunt, she pushed herself to her feet, flushing the toilet before taking a seat on the rim of the tub. "And don't tell me about after-school specials." Yawning, she ran a hand through her hair, eyes heavy with sleep.
Melissa coughed quietly, grimacing at the taste in her mouth. "I'm sorry I woke you up. You should've dragged my drunk ass home with you." There was a reticent pause, before she added, "Not the greatest role model right now, am I?"
Bonnie chuckled softly, waving a hand dismissively. "It's no problem, Missy. What are friends for, if not to make sure you hit the toilet?"
Both girls laughed tiredly, each a little giddy for different reasons. Once subdued, Melissa reached out to Bonnie, gesturing for her to come forward. "Get over here, bitchy."
Still smiling, she complied, sliding off the tub to plop on the floor beside her best friend, their heads touching as they both focused on the opposite wall. Seconds became minutes, and finally, Bonnie ventured forth, breaking the silence. "You gonna be okay?"
Melissa sighed, still playing idly with the wet rag in her lap. "I don't know, Bon." She took a chance and canted her head slightly, looking down on the crown of red hair beside her. "Are you?"
Bonnie frowned, initially intent on asking what she meant, but realization dawned, and she merely bit her lip, looking down at her hands, palms up. She was silent, holding them up after a long moment, as if staring at them long enough would reveal something. Anything. A tingling radiated out from the base of her neck, coursing down her spine, unsettling her. Just as quickly as it had come, the feeling was gone. She sighed, exasperated, and let her hands flop back down into her lap.
She was getting fed up with the never-ending strings of déjà vu.
Shaking her head dismissively, she shrugged. "I don't know, Miss. There are these things…and times that are familiar….so familiar. But I don't know why. It bugs the hell out of me."
Melissa's brow furrowed, her sluggish brain carefully digesting Bonnie's words. "Not knowing, you mean?"
Bonnie let her head fall back again, shoulders slumping. "Yeah. It's just so hard…to be anything….when I can't even be certain. I'm always guessing. Reaching. God, it's never gonna come back."
A sad smile briefly danced upon Melissa's mouth, one hand lightly patting Bonnie's flannel-covered leg. "In time, Bon. It'll come. Just hang in there."
Bonnie summoned her own smile, taking a deep breath. "I'm just tired of waiting, I guess."
Another comfortable silence fell, lifted this time by Melissa, who began to make a staunch effort to get to her feet, using Bonnie's shoulder and the hamper to steady her in her endeavor. "Well, chick, I think I'm too tired to puke anymore."
Bonnie snickered, reaching above her for the towel rack to hoist herself up. "Well, thank God for that," she muttered, threading an arm through Melissa's to guide her back to her room. They didn't get two steps before the bathroom door flew open, admitting a tall, dark-haired girl who appeared to have only been able to get partially undressed before crashing. Hand covering her mouth, she shuffled awkwardly to the toilet, effectively barring the others from leaving while she spilled the contents of her stomach.
"Or not," Melissa commented wryly, pushing past Bonnie and collapsing by the edge of the tub, her nausea having returned with a vengeance. The petite redhead could only stand by, helplessly throwing her hands in the air, eyes rolling heavenward.
"God, I just love Friday nights with you guys."
****
It'd been easy enough to fall into a comfortable routine when she'd moved to Erie. For obvious reasons, her parents had been somewhat apprehensive when she'd opted for moving away to go to college. She couldn't blame them. Still, having had them constantly hovering over her, monitoring her every move for a solid year…it had been enough to nearly drive her insane. If she wasn't already.
The last psychiatrist she'd been to see had been quick to emphasize that she wasn't crazy at all. On the contrary, he insisted that her amnesia was most likely the work of a very healthy mind trying to move past an exceptionally traumatic event. The most logical explanation, of course, was the death of one of her closest friends, according to her parents. A girl named Elena Gilbert. She'd fallen victim to a car accident in her senior year of high school, a period that constituted the substantial focal point of Bonnie's memory loss. Bonnie, having known no other explanation, had been forced to accept that theory and try to move on, though, deep down, she felt there was something more to it than that.
In her efforts to attain some concept of normalcy in her briefly interrupted life, she shelved any attempt to reclaim what was lost, trudging through her first years of college with dedicated enthusiasm, throwing herself into all that was offered, desperate to make new connections, desperate to fill the void.
For a time, she felt it had worked. She began to feel like a whole person again. Confident. Capable. Hopeful. It hadn't lasted, though. She supposed she just didn't have the stamina for keeping up the façade. Who was she kidding, really? She could never be whole again. Not when a piece of her past was essentially deleted from her mind. She was through being "okay" with forgetting. Now, all she wanted to do was remember.
In Bonnie's situation, however, it stood to prove that one can't always get what one wants. She lived by the motto "good things come to those who wait", though she wondered if the wait would be worth it. She had grown impatient, restless, frustrated. Something was missing. Something important, a part of her. She found herself making bargains to higher powers, just for a chance for the murk to clear, if only for a moment. There was nothing logical in this desire, just as any other want; common sense dictated that if she'd erased the memories herself in the first place, recovery might result in a worse case scenario.
Common sense had never been her forte. Something else was dictating the pursuit of her missing memories, something more demanding than the subtle prodding of idle curiosity, a need to know that seemed to grow more incessant with each passing day. Her parents, then school and the excesses of campus life had diverted her attentions for three years. The pressure building within had climaxed, and now the questions burned, hedging her in, commanding her surrender. Time to relinquish blissful ignorance and prepare to face whatever demons lay lurking.
Logic and reason still teased her on occasion, mocking her in her pursuits. What purpose did she have, what good would her efforts bring? And of course, none of it made sense, per se, but she knew, although she wasn't sure how, that remembering would quell the ache that had festered for far too long. She'd reached a stalemate in her life; remembering would help her to move on.
At least, she hoped so. In the meantime, she had to deal the best way she knew how. The best way, or any way. She just had to deal. And wait.
Still waiting. Dealing. Aching. Burning.
****
"Bonnie?"
Passive brown eyes flickered towards the source of the voice, one brow raised inquisitively, before lowering once more to the photographs scattered haphazardly upon her bed. Her legs, pretzeled for far too long beneath the weight of her body, were numb, one elbow propped on a knee to support her chin as she sorted complaisantly through the pictures, holding each up for a cursory glance before tossing it for another. Her words garbled by a combination of fatigue and positioning of her jaw, her voice monotonous, she spoke without looking.
"You're back already?"
Melissa grunted with mock disbelief, one hand upon the doorjamb as she leaned in the doorway, dark eyes cataloguing the scene before her. "Bon, it's nearly 2 in the morning." She made a half-hearted attempt to sound offended, slipping into the room and looking down on the mess that surrounded her friend, pausing beside the bed and placing a hand on her hip. Craning her neck this way and that, squinting in an effort to focus on any one of the photographs, she mumbled, "Would you rather we'd not come back at all?"
Perhaps on a different occasion, Bonnie would have summoned a smile for her friend to cover the unintentional coolness of her remark, but at the moment, she was too engrossed or, rather, too apathetic to bother. Her shoulders heaved with a sigh, pausing to examine one photograph a little longer, straightening to reach for a tumbler of amber-colored liquid on the nightstand next to her bed.
Melissa frowned, watching with mild concern as Bonnie finished off the contents of the glass before returning it to the table. She let the silence linger, still waiting to see if Bonnie would give her a response, until at last she settled carefully on the edge of the bed, peeking over her roommate's shoulder. "What are you doing, Bon?"
While she awaited an answer, she casually lifted the glass on the nightstand to her nose for inspection, brow lowering as she sniffed.
"It's apple juice…Mom."
Melissa grimaced, putting down the glass and folding her hands in her lap with a sigh. "I'm just, you know…checking. You seem," she paused, searching for the right words. "I don't know, down. Wanna talk about it?"
Bonnie was still concentrating on the same picture, having resumed her previous pose, this time with her cheek in her palm. Melissa examined it with her, leaning in to rest her chin on Bonnie's shoulder affectionately. A group of kids, one of them Bonnie, looking a lot happier than Melissa had ever known her to be, with a sparkle in her big brown eyes in spite of the perm; on one side of her stood a tall girl with long, dark hair, and a beautiful olive complexion, one brow cocked in mild amusement, one corner of her mouth tilted in a wry smirk; on the other side, a flaxen-haired beauty whose presence seemed to drown out the other people in the photograph, bright eyes shining, her smile and countenance radiant, hypnotic.
"I remember the day this was taken. I remember eating a bagel during the ride to school…blueberry, with nothing on it. I remember I was nervous about my hair, because I'd just gotten a perm." At this, Melissa couldn't help but smile, though Bonnie's voice belied no emotion while she recounted the story of the picture she held. "And I remember thinking how happy I was to get to see Elena again because she'd been away for the summer…"
Melissa stiffened, suddenly aware of the sadness coating Bonnie's words.
"But…dammit, something else happened…something important…" The petite redhead's voice finally broke, quiet sobs shaking her small shoulders as her head fell forward. Mildly shocked, Melissa could only look on, rendered speechless by this sudden lapse, having never witnessed any like it before. Always ambivalence, perhaps a lingering melancholy, but never anything more. Seeing Bonnie cry unabashedly…it scared her. She moved to lay a comforting hand upon her roommate's back, feeling her own tears stinging her eyes.
An angry cry shattered the quiet of the room as Bonnie lashed out, her arms violently sending pictures into the air, legs kicking out from beneath her to shove the majority that lie on her bed onto the floor. Melissa had gotten to her feet unconsciously, eyes wide and glistening, heart pounding in her ears. Bonnie's tantrum ended almost as soon as it had begun, anger quickly surrendering to despair as she hid her face in her hands, errant copper strands escaping from the loose bun at her nape to shield her profile as she openly wailed. It was enough to cause tears to finally spill down Melissa's cheeks, her chin trembling; God, how she ached for her, how she wished she could help her…
Bonnie rocked on her mattress, speaking when she could, keeping her face hidden. "They aren't helping, Missy…N-nothing's helping…"
Melissa recovered, rejoining Bonnie on the bed and wrapping her arms around her trembling frame. "Bon, shh….It'll be alright. It's gonna be okay."
Bonnie didn't have the heart to disagree, burying her face in Melissa's shoulder to muffle her cries. It didn't matter what anyone said. Nothing would ever be okay.
Ever.
Memories are just where you leave them
Drag the waters 'til the depths give up their dead
What did you expect to find?
Was it something you left behind?
Don't you remember…
Oh, hold me now, I feel contagious
Am I the only place that you've left to go
She cries her life is like
Some movie, black and white
Am I just making lines
Over and over again she cries…
FUEL
