Waking up while still suffused in oblivion, the memories were like flashes of lightning. My fingers clawed at the purple darkness, inconsolable for something to hang on to. It was spacious, never ending. This had to be a nightmare.
Except, it wasn’t.
I was cold, and somewhere in between frostbitten and burning. The juxtaposing temperatures tore me apart until numbness like no other conquered my soul. My lungs ached due to absence of air, but it was more than that. It felt like they had been gouged out from the inside. These were those types of moments when you cringed with panic in anticipation of glass breaking. These were the moments when you were surprised to find that something that had been moving so slowly, suspended in air for two seconds, would come crashing down so fast. I didn’t want my life to end. The glass was around me now, askew in tiny, sparkling splinters that pierced my still heart. Death. The sound of it was loud in my ears, and then I heard myself scream when the memories came back like lightning -bright and jarring, and loud. It was the kind of light that hurt your eyes in the early morning, except this pain bore into the depths of me. Suddenly my mind garnered a coherent picture. Frozen, yet in motion. I struggled to tag a word to it. It spilled – transient - a dark blue, turbulent and angry. My insides twisted vehemently at the sight of its beauty, even though I couldn’t find a word for it. Smoke and mirrors frayed the edges of my vision, but it managed to scope and crop out a boy, and a million different smiles. And then I was submitting to blindness yet again, until another flash lit, incisive, hitting home. That boy was stumbling precariously, strangled by an arrogant drunken stupor. This pain flashed through me, and then, all I saw was red. Carmine, like liquid ink, bled all over concrete. And yet another boy, a new one; he was saving me from this tormenting anguish, fear, and hatred. I was cold, so very cold. I knew what this felt like. Drowning. If this were a song it would be lost in endless wistful melancholy screaming, its chorus a hush of quiet whispers. It took awhile to realize that it was water all around me, and the purple wasn’t really space - it was gritty, muddy liquid. I woke up. I clawed at the darkness with bloody hands, steadfast for release. I felt as if I was breaking open the heavens when the fierce light cut mercilessly through me, and yet, it was only truly a small thread, slipping through my fingers.

***
My eyes are open. I am sixteen years.
I’m not in my bed. That is the first thing I remember. I’m lost in the simple things, how my hair falls across my face, matted to my shoulders with sweat. There is a deep, coursing sensation erratically flowing throughout my being, a slightly alarming austerity that renders itself so heavy and strident I deem it a parasite eating at my bones. Sheltering this dead entity of fatigue and perplexity, I close my eyes momentarily, and then open them again, diffidently. My breath is ragged as I fill my lungs with cold, caressing air. My skin is infused with water, and carefully my eyelashes are pasted into triangles as beads like tears collect at the tips. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of a hand, and become aware of arms that are wrapped around me. Calmly, I run my hands along this forearm. It seems to be overwhelmingly masculine, strident muscle screaming underneath layers of clothes, and even further beneath, I’m intrigued to feel the pulse of a beating heart, warm and violent in it’s unexpected propensity. Darkness envelopes me lightly, but his hands are a straitjacket, and I’m forced to suddenly feel tethered to my body, instead of feeling the absence of my spirit, as if my soul has ripped away from this vessel to shed its skin. My fingers trace slowly up this arm, until they can no longer reach. He’s enigmatic, when I finally glance up, and I find that my eyes will not leave his face, so impeccably beautiful.
This was the other boy, the one that appeared gripped between adolescence and manhood. I remembered him. But I’m still waking up. His hair’s shockingly blond, inhuman. He was too familiar, and my eyes rip away. I feel like a paper boat waiting to be sunk in the ocean’s giant waves.
Wake up. I will myself, wake up. But the pain that comes with biting my lip is too real, and I stumble, out of the boy’s arms. The ground is intense underneath my feet, the gravel biting into my bare knees. We’re in a parking lot. I forget how to use my legs, and they buckle under the pressure. I look up to see a crashing wave on a sandy shore, and realize this is not sweat on my shoulders, it’s water, and my legs, they’re rubbery with exhaustion.
Austin.
The name is a slap as his arms come around me, struggling to keep the charred pieces of me together.
That’s his name.
“Ari, God. You scared me shitless.” He breathes. “Are you still… you?”
I’m shaking, involuntary tremors riveting my body.
“You’re cold,” He says, without question. I stare at the gravel in contempt. He walks away, only to come back. “Here.”
I strangle a fistful of soft fabric, turning to notice that it’s a red, checkered blanket. Hm, it smells familiar. Good, even. I relax, unsure of what to do when the boy sits next to me. Is this really genuine?
“What happened? Are you ok?” Something about him is reluctant. He’s staring at his hand, soft and open against his knee, and I can imagine he feels that he’s holding the whole world in it.
My brows furrow, and I learn how to work my voice. I swallow, my tongue like a dry sponge in my mouth.
“The pictures… who were they…?”
After the ringing of silence is too much for my ears, he breaks it.
“What?”
“I’m so… confused. Who are you?” I take fistfuls of my hair, not pulling, but with rumination.
“No. You’re not serious, are you?” The way he says it is as if he’d become a deflating balloon, pierced by my needle. It wasn’t a question; it was detestation for himself.
“Don’t.” I’m surprised to feel tears brimming in my eyes. “Don’t act like you hate yourself. I know you. You’re Austin. But where am I? Please. The pictures, they… Hurt. They were like déjà vu. I’ve lived it before.”
Austin sucks in his lower lip, and then lets it out slowly. It took awhile for me to realize that he’s crying too.
“So that’s it, huh? You just left me?” I’m quiet while discovering he’s talking to me.
“No. I did not. I’m still here, and I’m still cold.” I say, bitterly, feigning ignorance.
“I’m sorry.” He whispers, wholeheartedly. There’s something more to it than just apologizing because I’m cold. In actuality, it’s like he’s saying it for his own benefit. Or, like he’s talking to something buried inside me, out of reach.
“If you’re still you, I’m so, so sorry.”
The tears that fall from his eyes are diamonds that match how the stars sparkle like glitter against the black contrast of the night sky. My hand brushes his cheek to wipe them away, and a feeling burns into my gut, poisoning my bloodstream. Oh, how I hated grief.
“Don’t cry.” I murmur. “I don’t like it.”
He makes some sound that I think is supposed to be laughter, but just sounds like loss.
“Let’s get you warm.” He says, thoughtfully, not asking me if I can walk. He just picks me up as if I’m a feather, and the way he holds me in his arms is like I belong there, like I had seemed to so many other times. He carries me to the car, a jeep, which I hadn’t noticed before, blasting the heat on full. As my insides thaw out, we drive, and I listen to a frivolous piano sound through the vehicle’s speakers.
The cabin is lit like an airplane's’ runway with bright lights. Again, the gnawing feeling of familiarity fails to leave me.
“So,” he tells me. “I think it’s best for you to sleep, since you’re obviously exhausted.”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Yeah, kind of.” He cracks a smile as we enter a small bedroom, with pale walls, and a bed, and a desk shoved in one corner. “You can sleep here, ok?”
“Hm,” I said, ignoring the pain that stirs again in the depths of me. “It’s nice. I remember it – this is my room, right?”
***

Austin

I swallowed, giving her a curt nod. Oh Ari. My Ari. You’re gone. I wish you were here, just so I could say I told you so, and it hung now, caught in my throat like coiled brambles.
I knew you wouldn’t be able to withstand getting your memory erased.
I looked at this new girl in front of me, and against my will, I felt bad for her. She was in a new world now, and could never go back to her human life. She shook out Ari’s long hair, and at that, I had to turn away to ignore the caustic, superfluous tears that stung my eyes. It was hard to deny that she wasn’t Ari anymore, even though she was.
“Ariel,” I swallowed, looking at her. She started at the name, even though the sound of it cut into my cheeks, foreign and alien. I’d only called her by her nickname, and now, she couldn’t even remember that. My stomach tightened, and the realization that she was no longer my Ari suddenly bore into me with such stark, feral pain, beginning to carry with the oxygen in my blood.
“Hm?”
I set the blanket down next to her, gently this time. What if Ari was still locked inside her? I’d be making her miserable. And then I saw it in her eyes. A deep, unspoken hurt.
“Are you ok?”
She took the blanket, brushing her hair from her eyes. She was hiding something; I knew that look.
She shrugged, biting her lip to suppress the debauchery of thought that was trying to assert itself in her new mind. “This is weird.”
“I’m sorry.”
Without thinking, I leaned to hug her. Hugs with Ari were more then friendly. They completed me, her small body tight against mine. They were unspoken poems of love, of unrequited love. I missed it already, because for the first time it didn't serve as an epidural to the immense pain in me. Her voice was soft against my shoulder when she spoke, uncertain.
“I think… you feel I’m a different person, but I’m not. When I look at you, I remember you. It’s strong, what I feel. I just don’t…”
Before I knew what I was doing, who this girl was, I was kissing her.
I lost myself, thinking that she controlled these fingers weaving in my hair; her lungs exhaled these breaths she breathed. So I pulled away, worried.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
She looked so immensely afraid. Her eyes were full of misery.
“I felt it.” She said. “I’m still me, I’ve felt that before.”
I knew what she was talking about. The feeling churned in my blood, ridding me of my lugubrious qualms. This was some mysterious feeling that only few got to possess. Except this time I think we both felt the poisoning effect of it, of the wanting something we just couldn’t have. It was a disease now, not something to cherish.
I inched toward her again.
“Tell me,” I whispered. “Do you feel it now?”
My fingers ran along her forearm, and she closed her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her green eyes bore into mine, and so I glanced at her arm, riddled with scars and veins, like train tracks, she’d once told me.
It helps me know where I have to go, but I’m still tethered and earthbound for your sake.

I shivered, I remembering that I used to kiss them, and she wouldn’t be flinching away from my touch, or losing color in her face. Recollections of the time I’d seen her with those scarlet tears running down her ivory skin made my breath catch sadistically in my throat. Now, she couldn’t even let me touch her.
“Stop.” She choked. “Something’s telling me I can’t have this.”
“But you want it?” My voice was low in her ear.
“I know that I loved you.” She said this harshly, with a severity not unlike her old mind.
It was like flicking on a switch, in the dark, and suddenly, that object you couldn’t see, bundled in the recesses of the room, became clear, trenchant, strong, strident and everything. Our love sat in these recesses, bent and broken, like a tortured fallen angel.
I kissed her carefully, cherishing the very feel of her own lips against mine, diffident and vacillating.
I eased up on my elbows, watching her.
“You’re you.” I couldn’t hide the silly grin on my lips.
A chary, strangled grin danced on her face as she blinked away the water that lingered on her cheeks.
“I always was.”
My laughter was light.
She watched me, her eyes calculating, and I watched her back, knowing that I’d remember this for the rest of my life.
“What’re you thinking?” she whispered, though the dim light was our only audience.
“I’m thinking,” My hand found hers, “That you are tired, and need to sleep.”
“I am.” But the light failed to sparkle in her eyes.
I hopped up, too bouncy on my feet.
“Good night, then.” I switched out the light, waiting for her to tell me to stay, but she didn’t. She didn’t know it, but I stood in her doorway until her breaths were slow and even, soft and beautiful, and then I sat by her, until I was tired myself. Even if it was a disease, this feeling was everything; this feeling was better to be felt painfully than not at all. I would never forget Ari; she’d always be everything for me. I walked to my room in a daze, collapsing on my bed without any other thought than wishing it would swallow me whole, this heavenly feeling.

***
Ariel

He lingered outside my bedroom. I watched him, but he couldn’t see that my eyes weren’t closed in the darkness. I kept my breathing even, every muscle in me screaming for him to come back. I’d never felt this before, this wanting.
And then slowly, the floorboards creaked under his feet. I closed my eyes, and I heard him pull up a chair, a gentle scrape against the hardwood flooring. He was here, watching me. My insides stirred as his gentle fingers ran against my hair, and he sighed.
“Oh, Ari.” He was crying. I wanted to wake up and tell him I was back, that I was his. But I couldn’t.
“I miss you. Come back, Ari. Please.”
What had he done to me?
Against my will, my hand moved to his, sleepily, and he sighed again. He leaned in closer. I could feel his breath tickle my hair against my neck.
“If you’re here, I love you. If you’re really you.”
Something inside me screamed for release. He couldn’t really believe that I wasn’t here, like I was dead or something.
It was quiet for the rest of the night; the only sound was his heart beating close to my ear, wilder and more inhuman than I’d realized before. It seemed to be kicking like a rabbit. And his fingers; they gracefully traced scars that would be in me forever. This was fragile love. And it was still unrequited.
After a while, when I’d thought he was asleep, because I almost was, he got up, his joints popping as he stretched, kissing me gently. I would never forget the low sound of those retreating footsteps. They made my ears bleed with regret.

***

The early morning sun pierced my closed eyelids. I groaned, rolling over. Images of last night pieced together like a stained glass window, and I cried. The tears ran for reasons I didn’t understand, and reasons that I did. There would always be something in me that I would wake up to every morning, from now on, this gut wrenching misery. I remembered last night. Apparently, I wasn’t Austin’s to love. I had trapped the person inside me, and he would forever yearn for that girl despondently. My pillow muffled my sobs, but they weren’t soft enough. In the room across from mine, I heard plates bang against one another, in a cacophony that only meant a late breakfast. He was right across from me, and he was real. He probably heard me crying like an idiot. I took a breath, willing the tears to stop, wiping my cheeks with the sleeve of my shirt. My eyes were probably red, my cheeks tearstained, and I was sure my breath would hitch. But I didn’t care. He was still here.
I found my way to the kitchen in a fog of deja-vu, like I had a million times before.
I’d been happy then.
My socks brushed against the tile in a whisper, and I realized quickly that he had bionic hearing.
“Good morning,” He said, to the eggs cooking in the frying pan. And then he turned to face me, his mouth twisted in worry.
“Or not… what’s wrong?”
I shook my head, sitting down. He raised his eyebrows, setting a plate in front of me. I didn’t feel like eating.
He sat down across from me soon after, trying to make me smile.
“Your hair looks beautiful this morning.”
I snorted. “Thanks. And for making me breakfast. You didn’t have to.” My voice was dejected and bitter.
“Well, I did.” His brows furrowed in contemplation.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You already have.”
“Well, can I ask you another question?”
“You already have.”
He laughed. “I’m going to ask you something.”
I smiled around a bite of toast. “Ok.”
“What’s wrong? You aren’t always this quiet.”
I sighed. “I’m guessing you would know that, right?”
He stared at his breakfast blankly.
“Well. What did you do to me?”
“You really can’t answer a question with a question. But to answer it, I erased your memory because you wanted me to. I didn’t think that you would forget…everything.”
“I thought I was dying. It was…” I shook my head. “I was cold. It was dark. And…there were pictures, like flashes. They hurt.”
He didn’t bat an eye.
“I know.”
“What do you mean, you know? You can’t possibly know what that felt like!” I was surprised at the sudden jolt of heated anger inside me.
He flinched. He’d actually grimaced, at my yelling at him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just… it was hard. And I’m confused…”
“I know. What I was trying to say is that, those pictures? I had a feeling you would see them. They’re your memories.”
“I knew I remembered something like that happening. Who was that… boy? He was drunk… and there was red…” I strained to remember the details. Austin’s face was sharp, twisted in derision at the mention of that picture.
“You were trying to forget that.” He said bitterly.
“What did you want me to keep?”
It was unexpected, even for him. Perhaps he thought I would press on further, but he was right. Even still I did want to forget it. But the ghostly feeling of wanting this something was so bad, it was almost as painful as seeing that blood.
He was silent, his body tense.
“I can’t speak for you. It’s what you wanted to keep.”
“So are you saying that I was crying this morning because the horrible feeling that was inside me - related to you - was something I wanted to keep?”
He started at that.
“I can’t speak for you. I’m sure you didn’t feel like that before, anyway.” He got up to hide something painful on his face.
“You love to contradict yourself, don’t you? Can I ask you a question?”
“You already have. Two of them, actually.”
I rolled my eyes, and he laughed.
“Go ahead.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“A lot. But it depends on what you’re talking about.”
“Do you hate me?”
His face twisted into a strange expression. I could tell he thought that was absurd.
“If I hated you, I definitely wouldn’t have made you breakfast.”
“So I was thirteen, and now I’m…”
“16.”
“Sixteen. Mmm… and that suddenly means to you, that I’m not the person I was before.” My tone took on a bit of accusation.
“You were awake last night, weren’t you?” His sigh was a mixture of relief and irritability.
“Maybe.” I smiled.
He chuckled, getting up to rinse his plate, as if I hadn’t spoken.
“What was that about? So you think I’m not your Ari? You think I don’t remember you calling me that?”
A strangled smile fell from his face.
His exhale was sweet, as he leaned against the counter. I had never seen misery like that in a posture before, especially since a smile to me was always just a smile. I thought fancy just rained like grace.
“Stop playing with me like that.”
“I’m not. I’m still your Ari. I’m still me.” I joined him at the sink, rinsing my plate.
“My Ari never told me she loved me.” His expression was blank except for a faint anger in his eyes.
That was an undeniable stab.
“Are you angry with me, because I said that?” Tears welled in my eyes. “I’m really nothing to you anymore, am I, and it’s just because I don’t remember? You should be blaming yourself. You’re the one that did this to me.”
He bit his lip, torn between anger and despondency. I had hit a nerve, just like he hit mine.
“You,” his breath was strangled, yet explosive. “Will always be everything to me. And I never said I blamed you for this. You don’t have to slap me with accusations.”
“I’ll always be everything to you…” I hissed at him. “Right. That’s why you couldn’t tell me you loved me last night, because you’d be lying. That’s why, when you thought I was asleep, you thought I was some… parasite that kept your ‘Ari’ from you.” The words were spat out maliciously, like profanity. “And you think that’s just me talking, that it’s not her.” I could see how much that hurt him, and immediately, I regretted it. All of the anger was lost within his features. He was staring at me, with disbelieving, tearful eyes.
The tears were coming. I couldn’t blink; otherwise they’d fall. I couldn’t see, and they threatened to spill over, pressing on the edges of my eyes, ready to drip down my lashes. I dropped the plate, and turned away from him. This couldn’t be any more brutal.
I left the room silently, closing the door quietly. I remembered that quiet was so much more brazen than noise.
I trusted my bed to catch me as I fell on it; blind, praying that he hadn’t seen my tears fall. I heard him sigh in the kitchen, and then I heard him walk to my doorway, and there, he just paused. And then, he opened the door.
“Ariel.”
“My name is Ari.” I whispered to my desk, so quiet that I thought he hadn’t heard it. And then I remembered he heard everything.
“Ari…” A sob escaped my throat, ruthlessly loud, and out of my control. He shouldn’t be saying my name with such sincerity, with such beautiful care.
“I am still myself. Why can’t you see that?”
“I never said I didn’t.”
His touch was light, even though I couldn’t see the fingers it belonged to. Slowly, ever so slowly, so mesmerizing, so careful, he slid his arms around me, memorizing me, his breath against my neck. I sighed, the emptiness inside me beginning to fill with his compassion. I didn’t look at him, too immersed in the smell of his newly washed clothes. But he was looking at me, his gaze heavy on my face.
“Don’t cry.” He said quietly, copying me from last night. “I don’t like it.”
And then, ever so gently, as if I was tenuous, he brushed my tears away. I leaned into his shoulder, and he smoothed my hair.
“What else haven’t you told me?” I asked him.
“Who I am.”
“Who are you?”
“Guess.”
The only memory I had of him was his soft, downhearted expression as he picked my bloody body up from a sidewalk, somewhere in some foreign city. I held on to it, and let the feelings submerse me. And then it happened. The air seemed to rip as I focused harder, catching glimpses of feathers, and moist, runny sand on a beach. Then there were slamming doors, and hospitals, with heart monitors reading taciturn, lethal death sentences.
“Someone died. And all I see is feathers.” I looked at him.
“Good. It’s working.”
“What is?”
“I placed... a sort of filter in your mind to weed out more severe memories, or ones that are crucial, that define you as a person.” He paused, stopping himself from what he’d wanted to say. Instead he said, “Concentrate on the feathers. What do they mean?”
I was brought back to my old self, sitting on a windowsill, overlooking a waterfall in the local woods. A massive, white bird flew in the distance, hazy and incomprehensible. When it turned, I thought I recognized Austin’s face.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” My eyes opened.
He chuckled.
“You’re my guardian angel.”
“You seem so sure.”
“You mean you’re not?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“But, you’re an angel?”
“Yes.”
“Holy….”
“Yes, I am holy.”
“It’s an expression of surprise.”
“I forgot that’s what humans used to say.” He laughed, sarcastic. I giggled, shoving him lightly.
“So what happened? Did you die?”
A strangled noise sounded from his throat. “No.” His tone had that serration to it yet again. “I didn’t.”
“Who did?” I was merely curious.
“You were trying to forget that.”
“I want to know. I don’t want to forget that.”
“It hurt you, a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
At that, he looked depleted, running his hands through his hair.
“You’ll hate me, if I tell you.”
“Well, you don’t hate me.”
“You don’t understand,” He was obdurate, and solemn. “You cried for days. You hated me. I don’t want that again.”
“Did you kill them?”
“Ari, I don’t really know. You seemed to think so.”
“Who was it?”
“I really shouldn’t tell you.” He was pulling away, so that I could see every fiber of his being screaming how he’d soon react to the odium he thought he deserved.
“You know what?”
“What?” He sat up, like a cat did, paranoid at suspicious noises.
“You do a lot of things you’re not proud of, Austin. But you have a good reason for doing it. And obviously, I hadn’t hated you before last night, am I right?”
He nodded.
“So…tell me. Who died?”
“Your parents.”
His voice was strangled, choked. This wasn’t a stab; it was the return of sickly, haunting feelings that inundated me. I closed my eyes, willing air back into my lungs. I felt his gaze on me. Then I looked back at the monitor. The monitor with its ugly green line scratched against its black background, unmoving. I watched it until it burned a hole in my vision, and I could almost hear the ring that it pronounced. But it wouldn’t let me see my mother in her last moments. There was a wall. And then… I was standing in a room, held by doctors as they shot electricity through my father’s heart again, and again. His body convulsed; seizure- like, underneath the massive metal paddles. The green line flickered, and then descended yet again, and I collapsed with a heap on the floor. Austin, his face was younger then, so much younger, and he moved to console me, only for me to push him sadistically away. I knew he’d had some part in this being his fault. I cringed, broken.
“What happened to them?” My voice was erratic, more than I thought it would be.
“Car accident. I was only allowed to save you.”
“And you thought that erasing my memory would make it any better? I was thirteen… and now, now I can’t remember them…”
“I’m sorry…”
“How could you let them die?” I looked at him, while ire and tribulation played tug of war with me. “How could you be so selfish?”
My hand met his face with a sickening impact.
He was lost in some horrid memory I knew I didn’t want to relive, his hand up quickly to catch mine, before it retracted. He held on to it tightly, almost pleading forgiveness. My hand turned red, shaking at his tight grip, and he let it go, standing up. I stared at my shaking hand as its color returned, and the pain went away. And then I looked at Austin, who looked as if my anger had battered him more than my slap. He’d let me hit him. He let me….
“I’m sorry,” he said, “That I did this to you, that I made you forget them.” And then he left, before I could call him back. And I heard him linger. He always did, because he knew me. While he heard me crying, I knew he was thinking it was because I hated him. But it was because I hated myself for hurting the only person I had left. Love was like a disease, I reasoned. It poisoned you, but it was better to die with it, than feel nothing at all. I felt nothing except for how much I wanted this heavenly feeling to swallow me whole.

***
Austin

The memories were parasites. Kate’s arm was bloody and broken, her limp body lying across her husband’s shoulder. Joe. Oh, God. I never knew them. The only thing that I knew was Joe's voice as the blood rattled in his throat. I was awestruck to find that he was still breathing. I'd called an ambulance, and the police. But I couldn't save them myself. And he looked at me, with those pleading eyes, and said, “Please. Please, save our daughter. Tell her we love her.”
My wings had been out then. He probably thought he was hallucinating. Ari. I would never forget her long, beautiful hair as it spilled over her shoulders, her eyes fluttering…her lips parting to speak after I’d healed her.

A sob, almost too life-like, brought me back to my lazy, overconfident posture and closed, pained eyes. Ari probably thought I was a jerk for looking this way. She had no idea.
The chair across from me scraped the tile in raucous contemplation. Ari sat down lightly, toying with her fingers until they turned blue.
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper. That was exceedingly rude of me, and I’m sorry for hitting you.” She continued to wring her hands.
“Stop it.” I placed my hands on her clenched fists, and slowly, they loosened, and I watched her circulation travel properly again. “You don’t have to apologize, you know. You have every reason to pack some bags and leave now, if you want.”
Ari’s intense look cut up my sympathy and pain and reconstituted it as dread.
“Austin, why are you so adamant on the unrequited aspect our relationship?” She breathed this all plainly, as if it pained her, and it took me off guard, reminding me of her old, guarded self.
“I’m not your father, or your mother, Ari. Yes, I’m your guardian, but I won’t be your lover if you can't love me.”
The crease in her forehead deepened with my sincerity.
“Lover,” She whispered, as if to taste the benevolence of it on her lips, and feel the angles of it that cut bitter in her cheeks. “That’s so… saccharine.”
I closed my eyes to hide the electrocution her whisper had offered me, wondering if she really meant it.
“Yeah. I think so too.” I looked up at her, still plagued with the memories of her parents.
“What was it like?” She whispered, as if reading my thoughts. Her breath was a shard in her ribcage, and it set me alert.
“I mean it must be terrible. But, the memories, do you think about it every day? I see it in your eyes now. Is it me or them doing that to you?”
I sighed.
“Honestly, it’s a little of both, Ari. God, do you know how much I love you? I mean, do you really know? I would give you anything. But I never know what it is that you want. You’re so mysterious in that way. It’s just…”
She leaned over and kissed me lightly, right below my eye, and a slight pain echoed in its wake, regardless of the care she took in the gesture.
She whispered to the linoleum. “But I just… I don’t want any secrets. And there are a whole lot of them in the air.”
I brought her in for a tight hug, one that reminded me of the person I wasn’t - the person that the old Ari had made me into.
Her mild unease brought a flash of red to her cheeks.
My thumbs brushed across her cheeks as she smiled carefully back to me.
“Thank you,” She whispered, breathless. “I needed that.”
I leaned forward so that our foreheads were touching, our noses, and then again, our lips. This kiss was sweeter, establishing the care we had for one another.
“Secrets,” She said, placing her hand on my chest. “You know that they’re those, too.”
I cradled her to my chest then, rocking her slightly.
“Now, I don’t want to tell you any of that. I can't lose you, not now.”
“I’m sorry I hit you,” She spoke softly in my ear. “Can you tell me now?”
I stroked her hair, shaking with laughter. “You can hit me again. I’m not worried about that.”
“What is it that you have to tell me? You don’t seem like such an unrequiting guy.”
“Guy?!” I looked at her, incredulous. “Do NOT put me in the guy category.” Her laughter was like rain and wind chimes.
“What are you talking about?” She stared at me, her green eyes intense.
“A couple months ago,” I began - deciding that I could at least tell her this - “You were very pent-up and ardent on this new philosophy of yours that each man, boy and male human entity, or in my case inhuman,” I noticed the smirk at the edges of her mouth, “Belonged in a certain category. Despite the age, the good-natured, loving, caring, and thoughtful of my gender belonged in the category of ‘men’. And those that possessed a deplorable lack of common sense in how to treat women, children and their counterparts with respect and dignity, let alone love, belong in the ‘guy’ category.”
“Do they now?” She whispered curiously. “Who knew that ‘guy’ was such a potent word.” But she didn’t deny that I was one. It hurt - pretty awfully.
“Well,” I said, as I listened to her breathing ebb to less of a harsher intake, “It’s time to meet the in-laws.”
“What makes you think I have this ring on my finger?” She dangled her hands in front of my face. “But sure, I’d love to meet your family.”
“And Jeff, too. I thought you’d be happy to know that.” I thought for a while recognition flooded her features. “He’ll be upset when he realizes that he the only one that you really would remember. And he was there at your mother’s funeral, you know. But you don’t like remembering that...” I trailed off as the disapproval in her eyes grew deeper.
“Yeah,” she said, sourly. “The um...” her fingers circled around her head, still graceful, but like runaway birds. “Filter.” she finished.

***

Ari

He had me blindfolded, as if maneuvering uneven ground of surfaced tree roots and muddy hills wasn’t enough. He didn’t want for anything to surface too drastically; Austin’d said that there was too much history among this trail.
Instead of the trees I tried to focus on the personality of his hand guiding my arm with a firm, sedulous care - for once I was not tenuous, as I’d been since I’d met him, for the apparent second time.
This trail must be caustic - even for him.
As we climbed up the hill I savored the catches of my sneakers against the roots and his tighter grip on my forearm, I savored the smell of the pines and the gentle caress of the wind against my forehead, and the sticky feel of my hair matted to my shoulders with sweat.
I memorized my screaming muscles as they powered up the slanting earth. I measured every harsh intake of breath as he continued, a near stride ahead of me, pushing me farther.
“You used to be faster,” He breathed. “I guess I did work you a bit hard last night with those waves.” I could almost hear the chary grin on his face.
Finally we stopped, and for a little while, he let me take in the sounds around me: his harsh breathing, winding in full and swelling in his lungs, the hiccups of the birds as they argued indefatigably in the trees. His thumbs for a little while took to resting against my cheeks in a caress, and I memorized the churn of heat that flushed through my cheeks - the feel of his skin analyzing mine.
“There was a time,” He whispered. “When people forgot how to love you; they consumed drinks like liquid happiness, and they battered you.”
His voice broke. This was too sudden. I felt something wet against my palm as I brushed his face. Damn it, those tears of his.
“He beat you bloody, Ari. He beat you, and you told me off when I tried helping you, when I offered protection. You didn’t want that.
“This house - this road, these woods... they will be your celestial ghosts. You’ll walk through them and catch glimpses of your past that I won’t be able to save you from.”
His fingers started to press, almost as if like knives into my skin. His sedulous care dropped away, as he drew closer.
“Ari, I’m sorry. I won’t be able to protect you from everything.”
He pressed his cold lips to mine as he drew away my blind fold.
The drunken boy stood at the doorstep to the cabin, and finally, my knees and vision gave out in unison.

***
Austin

I caught Ari by the elbows as she fell backward, staring at some apparition of her own imagining, her gaze the jaded expression of a corpse. The heart-wrenching worry I’d had before erasing her memory the night before resurfaced, even though Brionna had prepared me for it over and over again - knowing that if I hadn’t erased her memory, it’d have been more than plausible for Ari to do it herself, once gaining enough bearing on her abilities.
Her breathing was the only thing that had me sure she was alright - even though Brionna warned me that she’d be in sheer agony every time these apparitions occurred.
When she resurfaced, it was much like she had last night - a painful and guttural gasp of air imploding in her torso, twisting and winding, a vivacious and robust entity.
She took a while to regain her surroundings, and said nothing. She barely looked at me, and continued with shaking legs up the steps. A frightened knot sat sadistically along the curvature of her back, radiating through her shaking hands.

As we stepped inside the cabin I recognized the scent of baking muffins and cookies mixed with the sheltered smell of just-opened books and paper. My steps were heavy against the wooden floorboards. She only allowed me my hand at her elbow now, every time I stepped closer, she countered it with a step in the opposite direction. But I could see it in her eyes, that aching and swelling desire, smoldering like an eternal fire. She was trying.

I saw the back of Jeff’s tousled head leaning against Allie’s shoulder as they lay tangled together, watching a re-run of “The Little Mermaid” - something they’d watched too many times over that they knew the exact dialogue without trying.
“My sister and Jeff,” I whispered at her ear, close enough to kiss it. Her eyes widened.
“Jeff?” I said aloud, and I almost kicked myself for not warning her beforehand. “Jeff, damn it. Is that you?”
He shot up, a look of disbelief on his features.
“Austin, you’ve got to be shitting me.” He brought Ari into a rib-shattering squeeze. “He did that to you?” Jeff stared at her. “How would you let that happen?”
“You’re not talking to someone who had control over the ordeal.” I interjected. “You’re talking to her older self. She’d have been about 13 now?”
Allie poked her blond head up from her perch on the couch as Jeff’s fist met my face - knuckles meeting my cheekbone, until I heard an audible pop and felt, seconds later, the searing pain at eye, radiating into the recesses of my skull.
And why hadn’t I seen that coming?
“My God.” Ari caught me as I stumbled backward, her hands sheltering my face. “What the hell is wrong with you Jeff?”
“I’m fine,” I mumbled beneath the swelling, moving my jaw as little as possible, wincing as her fingers pressed at my cheek, a near fraction of a millimeter.
“Allie, do mind getting your ass of a brother some ice for his face?” Jeff breathed, and she came up behind him, one already in hand, eyeing Ari curiously.
“So you don’t remember me at all then?” She whispered, as Ari stared at her blankly, and then again with equal curiosity.
“We were good friends.” She said. “I remember loving you like my own sister.”
At that, my sister’s features softened.