Meridian

A Story by Shirl

a boy who loves to remember the past eventually loses his memories, and a girl who hates to remember has to remember for both of them.

Remember used to be his favorite word.

"Remember when we were six and found my uncle's wine stash? We drank a whole bottle of it because we thought it was grape juice. You got your head stuck in your baby cousin's crib, and I was so scared that you were going to stay like that forever that I pissed all over myself and ruined that European rug my uncle got from an auction. Uncle hit me so much that I still have a blue mark on my a*s."

He offered to show me the mark, but I swatted at him, screaming, until he put his pants back on. He laughed breathlessly and fell onto my bed, launching into another reminiscence.

"Remember when I turned twelve, and we went to Alinea for my birthday? We were having my birthday dinner with our families all together, and when we were about to eat the cake, you got up to go to the bathroom, and I saw your bottom was covered in blood. I started yelling bloody murder, screaming for someone to call the ambulance, and you started screaming with me until my mom hit me and took you to the bathroom. They kicked us out of the restaurant after you guys came back. Uncle hit me so much that I got another blue mark on my other buttock. I would show you but..."

I hit him again, saying, "Why did you have to bring that up? Your stupidity gave me childhood trauma, I couldn't walk without covering my butt for a month because you would constantly be staring at it, looking for blood."

He laughed again, grinning. "How was I supposed to know girls' butts bleed, I was twelve."

He lied there for a while, his eyes closed, reveling in memories long gone. I looked at his silhouette under the dim light of my desk lamp. We were eighteen now, about to start college, but underneath the shadows, he still looked like a boy. The boy I first met when I was four.

After a long pause, he said,

"That's the last time I remember our families meeting up like that, together. Before the divorce. Before your mom."

Before I could start to tear up, he quickly added,

"By the way, do you remember what you got for me that birthday? You got me a swan music box that played Swan Lake, in memory of the time our families went to see the ballet together that Christmas in New York City. I think that's when I started to collect music boxes. Do you remember--"

And he would continue like that, staring up at my glow in the dark star covered ceiling as he ranted on about the past, recalling moments that have left my memory a long time ago but still remained in his head, not forgotten. I looked over him as he uncovered these precious memories from the sacred treasure box that was his mind, and I wondered what was the point of it.

I had to ask him, so I interrupted his delineation.

"What's the point of remembering the past? You always do this, talk about the past, as if it's just that important to you. Isn't the present more important?"

He stopped talking and sat up to look at me.

His eyes, dark and smoldering, stared into mine like two shimmering coals.

"To you, the past may not mean anything, but to me, these memories are my meridians."

I stared at him, confused.

"What do you mean, meridian? You mean like in geography?"

He shrugged, "Maybe you'll know what I mean, someday." He lied back down again, shutting his eyes.

I threw a stuffed animal at him, "Hey, don't fall asleep on my bed! Go back to your actual home!"

He turned over and covered his head with my comforter.

"I'm too lazy..."

I groaned, "You're always like this..."

He really was. Many nights, he would talk himself to sleep on my bed, pulled into slumber by the sound of his own voice. I would mutter to myself about how I had to share my bed with an idiot who was obsessed with the past and push him aside while I crawled into my own bed. Then, I would fall asleep too, his back being the last sight I witnessed before I closed my eyes.

Whenever I complained to him that he never slept in his own house, he would reply back saying that the only place he could sleep in was on my bed. I would tell him to stop lying and lock my door at night. But he always managed to sneak in when I was sleeping like a thief in the night and push me out of the bed, waking me up with his talking about the past. I would tell him to go to sleep, too tired to protest his lying by my side. He would stop talking, but he didn't go to sleep. Instead, he stayed awake, looking up at the ceiling with the glow in the dark stars and trace their outlines with his slender fingers. He looked like a blind man reading his future with his fingers, guided by the stars. Sometimes I would watch him and even copy him, holding my hands up to the ceiling, tracing the path of the stars.

But the stars did not like me as much as they liked him. I never did see the meaning in them.

It was he who put the glow in the dark stars on my ceiling. He saw them at the dollar store and bought ten boxes of those stickers. I was horrified when I saw what he had done to my bedroom when I was at piano class. He told me, they were cute, I couldn't help it. I replied, are you a girl, and why didn't you just use them for your room. I grumbled and told him that he couldn't keep on pretending my room was his forever. He grinned and then said,

Didn't you say you wanted to make love under the stars like in the movies?

I remembered inhaling my breath and choking on it when he said that. My face red, I pushed him out of my room into the hallway, I didn't say with you, absolutely never with you! And I had shut the door, sinking to the floor and glaring ferociously at the plastic stars as he said, his voice muted by the door between us, I didn't say with me, I just meant in general.

That that I wanted to make love under the stars, I did say once, dreamily, when he and I rented Boys and Girls starring Freddie Prinze. That scene when Freddie and whatshername made love under glow in the dark stars turned me into a sighing romantic for a brief moment, and I had said, I'm going to make love under the stars someday too. Hormones that clogged my brain function had made me forget who I was talking to, and of course, being who he was, he wouldn't let me forget what I said.

He never did let me get away with anything, and the stars that were on my ceiling were proof of that fact. There were so many... and as I looked up and saw the sunlight hit them, they looked like they were laughing.

I wanted to kill the stars in my room.

But I couldn't.

Because these stars, I knew, meant more to him than he would let on. They were more than just pretty, just cute. To him, a guy obsessed with the act of remembering, these scraps of stars meant more than that. They were a record.

These stars were our memories together. From day one of our meeting until now.

And memories can't just be killed, can they?

Later, I found out, they could be.

I knocked on the door of the hospital room.

"Come in."

I opened the door, and the sickly scent of the hospital that reminded me of fresh laundry and blood hit my nostrils.

I saw him sitting up on the hospital bed, his legs covered by the pristine white sheets. His head was still bandaged, and when he looked up at me, standing in front of him, a look of confusion crossed his pale face.

"Who are you?"

I sighed and said,

"How can you not remember me?"

He looked down at his hands that were holding onto the sheets that tied his legs up.

"I don't know. Have I met you before?"

I sighed and sat down in the chair next to his bed, putting my flowers into the plastic vase.

"I came here yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. And every time, you don't remember me, even though I have spent hours talking to you each time."

He still didn't look up but he said,

"Well, then, can you tell me a story about you and me? Maybe then I'll remember you."

I smiled and said, "Sure. I have a lot of stories to tell. I'll tell you about a boy who was in love with the stars, and the girl who loved him."

After I finished the story, I saw a tear roll down his cheek. That was a surprise to me, because he didn't cry before during the other times I had told him a story about us.

I asked him, "Why are you crying?"

He wiped his tear away.

"I don't know. It just seemed so sad. That I could forget this girl. Forget you. Live like that, every day, forgetting you. And when you leave me today, I'll just forget you when you come back tomorrow."

I took out an envelope from my bag and handed it to him.

"I wrote you a letter this time. For you to read after I leave. So even if you do forget, you'll have my words as memory."

He smiled when he took the letter from my hands.

"Thank you. Not just for writing this. But for staying. For coming back to me."

I smiled back.

"Always."

To you,

Remember when your favorite word was remember?

You might ask, what did you like about that word so much?

I don't know, to be honest.

Maybe it was the way the word rolled off your tongue when you murmured it drowsily as you lied on my bed.

Maybe it was your addiction to losing yourself in the past and pulling me along with you.