Our Darkest Memories

3. When Old Friends Meet

5 week after forgetting

It had been a long week. Ever since that Yellow arrived, I had been thinking about the weird meeting we had. I had asked Buz if he or his boys had mentioned me when they were bringing the Yellow to the camp. He had said that the only thing that they had talked about was Clancy and that that was the only thing that he might have heard.

"Why?" he had questioned me with raised eyebrows.

"Nothing. It's just something he said," I had responded.

And that was true because that one thing he had said didn't let me go. He had said my name. But if what Buz had told me was true, then that would be weird.

How did he know my name then?

It really bothered me, so I had been following him around the past week. I was wherever he was, and I went wherever he went. I felt like he probably knew that I had been doing it, but he didn't say anything about it to me. It was like I was a crazy stalker. Which... I kind of was.

*****

It was just after dinner time. The sky was colored a shade of pink mixed with orange because of the sunset. I decided that it was the perfect moment to take a walk through nature. I found a path that I knew led through the forest surrounding East River.

After a moment, I stood still to take in the woody smell and took a moment to admire a big and old oak. It had seen the country when it wasn't messed up. It had seen the peace. But it was just a tree and had nothing to fear, in contrast to us.

That's when I noticed that the bark was damaged. I leaned closer too see better, only to realize there was a bullet stuck in the bark. Maybe the tree had experience with violence, after all. But what had caused the bullet to be there?

While thinking about that, I suddenly heard the sound of branches breaking under someone's weight. It sounded like it was coming a little away from me, on the other side of the bushes that I was standing next to. I carefully peered past the bushes to see who it was.

The person was walking away from me but hadn't noticed me yet. Even though I was only able to see his side profile, I immediately recognized him as the Yellow that I had been following the last week.

I tried to quietly walk after him, but after a few minutes, he turned around by the sound of my footsteps.

Why do I always have to walk so loud?

I realized it was useless to hide, so I just stood there like a complete weirdo.

"Eh... hello?" I said with an uncertain voice while I awkwardly raised my hand to wave.

"Do you wanna explain why you have been following me the past week?" He asked me with furrowed eyebrows, getting straight to the point.

"I don't know," I admitted.

He observed me curiously, while I was studying him.

His hair was, like always, messy. He was wearing long jeans, boots and a brown shirt. I noticed he didn't wear black, which kind of surprised me.

In East River, we didn't like to be defined by our color. So instead, we all wore black; the color of us. The color of the psi. I always like the idea of this, so I always made sure I wore some black.

At that moment, I was wearing black jeans, a charcoal grey shirt that was covered by a black jacket and I was wearing my comfortable boots.

Seeing him not wearing black made me a little frustrated as if he was rebelling. Only then I also saw a backpack hanging from his shoulder.