Remember Me Read online

  Synopsis

  Jamie Richards has lost a lot. Her father died four years ago and her mother is consumed by her career. Jamie finds an escape through her artistic passion and her first love—the one person who hasn't abandoned her, Erica Sinclair.

  Overwhelmed by their own harsh realities, Jamie and Erica create a world of their own in an abandoned park—a place they call "Wonderland." Jamie idolizes Erica until the two grow closer, and she realizes that her ideal image of Erica is nothing shy of fiction. When cracks beneath the exterior become more prevalent, Jamie begins to question the love she thought she had for Erica, and if that love was ever reciprocated.

  And then it happens. A shocking event occurs that changes Jamie and Erica's relationship forever. Jamie knows that there's no escaping this reality—she'll have to find a way to move forward without hiding behind her sketchbook.

  remember me

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  REMEMBER ME

  © 2014 By Melanie Batchelor. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-908-7

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: May 2014

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Sandy Lowe and Cindy Cresap

  Production Design: Sandy Lowe

  Cover Design By Lee Ligon

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank my family and friends for all their support, with a special shout-out to my fellow teen writers who have given me encouragement as well as advice. A huge thanks to my writing instructor, Mark, for helping me polish this novel as well as find the perfect publisher for it. And of course, I would like to thank everyone at Bold Strokes Books, especially Sandy, for her editing advice and patience with my newbie questions.

  I know it’s a cliché, but I couldn’t have done it without you guys!

  Dedication

  For my mom, who was always by my side with support, advice, and coffee.

  September

  tore through the calendar

  as if time were always meant

  to flow this way.

  Mementos of summer

  gather atop my chest of drawers,

  spread out

  like an art show of our past.

  Since August,

  the value of the pieces

  have all increased.

  Today is

  the aftermath

  I was not prepared for.

  How can I face

  another school year

  when everything has changed

  so drastically?

  I know that I have to move forward

  but my mind is still stuck in summer.

  LAST JUNE

  The sun taunts us

  from outside the classroom window,

  gleaming of freedom,

  the sure sign of summer,

  while we review America’s 19th century—

  the Civil War, Lincoln, and

  Manifest Destiny.

  Mr. Williams is the only teacher

  who still cares on the last day.

  He wants us to write a review

  on the battles and bloodshed spent;

  the glorious people who got us from there to here.

  He’s a good teacher,

  a passionate teacher.

  I’ll miss him

  when sophomore year comes to an end.

  Students glare at the clock,

  willing time to fast-forward.

  A few guys in the back joke about bikini season.

  The girl beside me files her nails.

  I study my notes.

  They’re filled with scribbles and timelines,

  beginnings and ends of eras,

  doodles of Lincoln and Carnegie.

  When the final bell rings,

  the ticking time bomb goes off,

  and everyone races

  to escape this place.

  In my mind,

  students jump,

  flinging papers in the air.

  They clap and sing and

  congratulate each other on surviving.

  Mr. Williams blasts “Another Brick in the Wall Part Two”

  from an old boom box,

  and we dance our way home to Pink Floyd.

  But that sort of thing

  only happens in movies—

  a designed, deception of reality.

  Here at Greenwood High,

  we scurry to leave.

  Forget about battles and bloodshed,

  they think, pushing their way

  through the door, past me.

  I’m off to the beach!

  Erica takes a drag of her cigarette,

  decorating the clear summer sky

  with clouds of gray smoke.

  We hide away in Wildflower Park,

  taking refuge on a rusty metal jungle gym.

  She celebrates the end of the school year

  with a pack of Marlboros.

  I commend myself on mediocre grades

  by sketching trees from the surrounding forest.

  “I like it here,”

  Erica says between drags.

  “Thank God it’s a forgotten paradise.

  Can you imagine actual

  ‘Mommy, I need this; Daddy, I want that’ kids here?”

  I continue detailing the trees,

  drawing every inch of bark, every string of leaves.

  “We’ve been here so many times

  but we’ve never seen signs of life.

  Even the birds have abandoned this place.”

  She grinds out her cigarette on the nearby slide.

  She’s slouched up against my side,

  facing the parking lot while I face the evergreens.

  Erica and I have come here after school

  since the beginning of last semester.

  Sometimes she brings a book,

  but today she just has

  tobacco, her thoughts, and me.

  I used to come here

  when I was little.

  My parents would bring me.

  Dad would push me on the swing

  while Mom took videos as I screamed in delight,

  “Look, Daddy, I can fly!”

  I don’t remember seeing anyone like us,

  smoking and sketching,

  when I was one of those kids

  that Erica so dislikes.

  Then again, maybe they were there all along,

  and I just didn’t care about anything more

  than my newfound wings,

  as I clung to the ignorance

  of a six-year-old child.

  Just like the rest of the town,

  I forgot about this park.

  It was old, rundown, and they wanted

  an updated version.

  But unlike the rest of the town,

  I had Erica to reintroduce me.

  “Wildflower is too peaceful for kids,”

  I say, more to agree with Erica than

  to express my own feelings.

  Her black hair presses against
my arm,

  smelling of cigarettes and coconut shampoo.

  “You think it’s peaceful now,

  you should see this place at night.

  It’s incredible.”

  We sit in silence.

  She lights another cigarette.

  I put the finishing touches on my forest,

  inhaling Erica’s distinctive scent,

  just as addictive as nicotine.

  I follow Erica to her house

  in an attempt to spend

  as much time as I can

  next to her,

  avoiding my own

  lonely home.

  She hates,

  she hates,

  she HATES

  her townhouse.

  The barred windows

  and paper-thin walls

  scream reality

  and Erica is more

  into fiction.

  She digs in her jeans pocket,

  then curses under her breath and

  bangs her fist on the front door.

  “Bea, I forgot my key!”

  Beatrice Brooks was

  Little Miss Beauty Queen in the ’70s,

  the go-to gossip girl in high school.

  Now she’s a cubical worker

  and the foster mom of my best friends,

  my only friends,

  Erica and Asher Sinclair.

  Inside the house,

  the cold air touches me.

  It’s deadened and hollowed—

  a bit bleak, a bit empty.

  Corpses of forgotten items

  decorate the hallway:

  takeout cartons, deferred bills,

  shreds of torn-up wrappers.

  The air is still stale

  when we enter her bedroom.

  She lies on the bottom of the bunk bed.

  I peer over the top

  and see the sheets are made-up and clean.

  “Doesn’t Taylor sleep above you?”

  “Oh, Bea kicked him out,” she says.

  “She hasn’t gotten a replacement yet.”

  My hand shakes

  as my fingers run over cotton

  I forgot

  these things

  could happen.

  I sit on the edge of her mattress,

  Not sure of what to say.

  I’m not good at talking.

  “Lie down next to me,”

  she says.

  This is one of those times

  I wish I knew

  what was running through her head.

  Lie down next to me.

  How much does that mean?

  I want to do more than that.

  I want to touch her,

  kiss her,

  be with her.

  For now,

  I lie down.

  Asher

  rolls into the room

  on his skateboard.

  His long black hair is

  pulled back in a ponytail.

  He’s got one earbud in,

  blasting Guns N’ Roses so loud

  I can hear it from Erica’s bed.

  “Ooh, am I interrupting something?”

  My cheeks burn,

  but Erica

  is expressionless,

  as if she’s stone.

  “Go away, Asher,” she says.

  He sticks his tongue out

  like a child.

  “It’s my room too.”

  I giggle. I can’t help it.

  Erica is

  less than amused.

  In fact,

  I’m not sure she heard him

  at all.

  I met Asher

  the first time I came to their house.

  “Hey, it’s better than being locked in a closet,”

  he joked (he always jokes)

  when he caught me eyeing

  their broken home.

  Coming from upper suburbia,

  I was surprised

  this neighborhood existed

  so close to my bubble,

  the one I was always

  trying to pop.

  Erica glared at Asher.

  I guess

  she didn’t think that memory

  was anything to joke about.

  Of course,

  back then I didn’t know

  Asher was referring to their old life

  with real parents

  in a place that they once

  called home.

  The door swings open

  as Asher leaves.

  Sounds of life

  creep through the open door.

  The thud of pans falling,

  a TV screaming,

  a woman cursing.

  The door’s mouth closes

  and swallows the sounds.

  Walls keep in the quiet

  and we lay

  in silence

  until Erica asks me,

  no,

  tells me, to go.

  I pull on the metal knob,

  hear the sounds of the real world.

  I peer back at Erica.

  She looks straight up,

  eyes focused on nothing,

  waiting for the door

  to close

  once more.

  Angela Richards

  is an accounting consultant.

  Every day she dresses

  in blouses of rich blues or purples,

  a jet black pencil skirt,

  and tops her façade off

  with two-hundred-dollar heels and a Chanel briefcase.

  As a child, she was

  a victim of poverty,

  a victim of a negligent family,

  a victim of a shaky life.

  She began her future

  with a college scholarship,

  then on to an entry level job

  where she worked her way up,

  further away from us.

  Now she’s a successful businesswoman,

  the mother of Jamie Samantha Richards,

  and lives in Greenwood, Virginia.

  It all sounds

  so perfect

  on paper.

  She’s not perfect.

  She’s defective,

  flawed,

  human.

  She’s a widow,

  his widow.

  She’s a mother,

  my mother.

  She’s still

  a victim

  of this world

  but the evidence

  is harder to find.

  I see myself

  Spending the summer

  listening to “Bohemian Rhapsody” with Erica,

  laughing and joking with Asher,

  with my sketchpad and pencil in hand,

  drawing whatever happens to be

  in eyesight or mindscape.

  Asher hanging at the skate park.

  Erica’s dark green eyes.

  Pieces of the forest.

  Anything, everything.

  Capturing these moments, these memories,

  my version decorating

  pure white paper.

  My mom

  sees things differently.

  She wants me to join

  a camp or a class;

  some sort of constant activity.

  “I don’t want you wasting the summer away,”

  she says as we walk down the cereal aisle of Superfoods.

  Translation:

  she doesn’t want me sulking around the house,

  friendless and alone

  like last year.

  I grunt in response,

  and toss a box of Lucky Charms

  in our shopping cart.

  She puts it back,

  and picks Special K off the shelf.

  “You’ll thank me when

  you’re a size two.”

  I wonder

  if she’ll ever learn

  that I don’t want to

  turn my life int
o a schedule,

  squeeze into doll-sized jeans,

  or mold myself

  to fill her stilettos.

  Strangers

  think the best of us.

  I am The Average Teenager

  with ripped jeans,

  arms crossed over my chest.

  Foot-tapping, gum-chewing,

  not-quite-mature-yet.

  She is The Caring Mother—

  picks the healthy foods,

  cell phone on fire with messages,

  a genuine hands-on-her-hips

  woman of conviction.

  No scruff in the image.

  I refuse to sign up

  for a tedious class

  or a patronizing camp.

  Mom is not pleased.

  Apparently,

  I am missing out on a

  “constructive” and “character-shaping”

  opportunity

  that would conveniently fit with

  her work schedule.

  It’s too bad

  we can never agree on anything

  anymore.

  Instead

  I find a list of drawing exercises online

  and pursue an activity

  that I actually like.

  LIST OF DRAWING EXERCISES

  1) Draw someone or something that you miss.

  I miss my dad.

  Before the car crash,

  I loved him,