“Hi.” I greet her with a genuine smile, for I’m overjoyed she’s here, knowing that it wouldn’t be as awkward as it is when she’s not.
“Oooh pancakes.” She sniffs around then, looking as excited as ever, she says, “I got you something,”
“What is it?”
“Do you remember how I told you that your parents burned everything that reeked of ‘Evelyn’ in your old house in Liverpool?”
“Yeah?” I wonder where she’s going with this conversation.
“Well, they didn’t burn everything ‘everything’. I managed to steal away something they didn’t even have a clue about from the very start. Something extremely private that belonged to you before they could get a hold of it and find it.” She places her handbag on the dining table and starts rummaging through it.
“What is it?” I eye her curiously, my heart pounding wildly at the idea of getting back something that belonged to Evelyn.
Finally, she retrieves her hand from the purse, but it’s no longer empty like it was before it was placed inside. Her hand is protectively tightened around the item she stole and while she was eyeing it with pride, my mouth was wide agape and my hands were shaking as they reached out to take it from her.
“Your diary.”
______________________________________________________
1/1/2015
Dear diary,
I never thought I’d be one of those people who’d actually own a diary, but here I am. People always assume they’ll never be placed in certain situations and fail to notice that we do not always control everything. For me, I bought these empty pages for five pounds so that I’d start filling it because I just can’t take it anymore, and I couldn’t help but feel that it would make me feel better if I let it all out. A person can only take too much, and if I can’t open up to my friends and family, then at least a bunch of papers would hopefully do.
Since my memory was never a keeper, I decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I wrote down certain events- memories- that I never want to forget even if they weren’t appealing. Despite the fact that I don’t remember a definite second, minute, hour, day or year, all I know is that it started with three teenagers at middle school- three best friends- and it only ended with two. Think of it like the sand, the sun and the beach; the three of us were mostly together, but two of us managed to stick through it all, while one of us managed to slip. No one meant for it to happen- it just did. As evil as I sound, I knew the reason wasn’t because of the age gap- it was only two years or so- even though that’s what I’d always say. You’d never find the beach and the sand separated, but the sun is temporary- it blinds you in the morning and drowns away in the night. The first two resemble Adam and I, while the latter one is Adrien.
My breath hitches in my throat at the name of my ex fiancé. Throughout my reading, I’d assumed Evelyn was talking about Adam, Lexi and I, but never, in a million years, would it have occurred to me that I knew Adrien before my accident- before my memory loss.
My heart pangs in my chest from the words. How could Adrien do this? How could he show up as a transfer student in my college and make me believe that, out of all the other girls, I was the one who truly had his heart- the one who made him ‘stop and stare’? How could he act like a stranger? How could he make me believe we were two strangers who merely fell in love, when he was my best friend before all of this? How did he have the audacity to accuse me of being the sick person when he took advantage of my memory loss to make me believe he’s my night-in-shining armour who appeared out of nowhere? More importantly, how come he’s older than me and was still in the same college year as I was?
Before my fingers reach for the pages of the diary, willing to flip through them aggressively as I felt desperate to know more, a knock on the door startles me. Currently, I am lying down on my new bedroom’s floor with my legs crossed and my eyes fixed on the diary. Once Lexi handed me the diary, I wasted no time in running upstairs to my room and inspecting it like some good clue I picked up from a crime scene. I didn’t realise that I spent two hours upstairs in my room until now. Even though I haven’t read a lot, I spent the first hour hesitating if I should open it or not because even though I’m the one who wrote it, it still seemed private. Realistically speaking, it belonged to Evelyn, and I’m no longer her- I’m Evangeline; the only thing we have in common is the body we both shared by living completely different lives in.
“Can I come in?” My rapidly beating heart starts beating even harder at the sound of his voice.
“Yes,” I respond after a few attempts at trying to tone down my heart beats.
“Sorry, I know I said I’ll leave you alone, but I found the door at the bottom of the staircase unlocked,” he explains.
My gaze travels to his hands, and my heart melts at how evident it is that he still cares about me even when I’m no longer the person he knew.
“I got you this ointment I found in my medicine cabinet; it
