Holding On

Chapter 2: Small Towns are Loaded with Large Memories

In My Dreams, my mother always yelled to me to save her.

I could never completely make out her face, but I could hear her voice ringing in my head so clearly it was like she was in the very same room. It would start out as a song, the one she used to sing to me when I was little, when I used to come in my parent's room because I'd woken up in the middle of the night and realized I wasn't very fond of the dark. My mother would take my hand and walk me back to my room, and she would lay on the bed next to me and sing until I fell asleep. It was one of my fondest childhood memories.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. That was always how it began.

Then, it would go silent for a moment in my head. I was aware of the increased beat of my heart, but there was never anything I could do to convince myself it wasn't real. It always felt real.

"Charlie!" Her voice would start out gentle, soft. Then it would grow louder and more impatient. "Charlotte!" She would repeat my name over and over in my head, and I could feel my legs beginning to kick under the softness of my sheets. Still, I couldn't do anything to stop it. Her voice grew. "Charlotte, please!" By then, her yell was full-on ear-splitting. It was pleading, desperate, hanging on the last string of hope.

"No." I could feel my lips move as I whispered in my state of being half-asleep, half-aware. "No, mom. No, no, no."

Her voice was making my chest tighten, and then the worst of it came. "No!" a voice inside my head shouted. It was full of fury, rage, anger. It was my voice. "I hate you! No!"

I flew up in my bed. I couldn't tell, at first, where I was, or even who I was. That was always the worst part of waking up in the complete darkness in the middle of the night: that split second when you are so terrified, so deeply enthralled into discombobulation that you are not aware of anything at all besides the panic; not even who you are, or what your name is. That was the very worst.

When I realized my lungs were burning and I needed to breathe, I sucked in a deep gasp of air. I clutched my pillow. Charlie. That was my name, and I remembered it in that moment. My heart calmed a fraction.

Before I was aware of anything else, my hand was fumbling with the light switch on my bedside lamp. When my fingers succeeded, and the faint cloud of yellow light enveloped my room, I was able to breathe regularly again. I was in Aunt Susan and Uncle David's guest bedroom, in the bed that I had been sleeping in every night - with the exception of a few I'd tried to block out of my memory - for the past month. I saw the small white desk that sat in the corner of the wall, boxes upon boxes stacked on it. I hadn't unpacked much yet. It seemed this helped me out in the long run, actually, because I would not have to work so hard at packing my things up.

With one last steadying breath, I ripped the white sheets off my bare legs and touched my sock-covered feet to the floor. I walked over to the desk and folded over one of the flaps on the box nearest me. I felt sticky and my hair clung to my damp face, but I ignored it. Sweat could be removed; it was hardly my biggest problem.

The box was filled with textbooks. As my eyes found the one on biology I'd read so many times over before, I felt a pang of guilt stab at my chest. I grabbed the table for support. I used to love science so much, used to love learning and debating and competing. I wondered, briefly, why I'd stopped, but then I remembered it was because I'd never be that girl again: the happy, go-lucky, eager-to-learn girl I used to be. She was too far gone. There was only Charlie: the lost-cause, the delinquent, the girl with the attitude problem. This was who I had become, and change was everything but reversible.

I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep - I knew this. So I sat down at that desk and pulled an old photo-album out of one of the boxes, and I ripped picture after picture of the girl I used to be. It was only painful to remember, so I promised myself that I wouldn't anymore. As the torn shreds fell to the floor, piece after piece, it became easier to breathe. I felt some sort of clutching feeling in my chest, but I ignored it. Ignoring things was so much easier than the alternative.