✓ | The Crown of the Dead

Our Family Reunion is Rudely Interrupted

My eyes shot open and I took a heaving breath, trying to stop my body from violently shaking.

The boy was still in front of me, his face emotionless and dark. His freckles were faded. His teeth were straight. He no longer wore a bulky pair of glasses.

He pulled his hands from my cheeks and stood up.

He had the same dark curls and those same bright blue eyes; the ones Dad had and the ones I had.

"Do you remember now?"

How was I not supposed to cry?

Because I did remember, and suddenly I was filled with all these overwhelming emotions-- sadness, joy, anger, regret, jealousy, anything and everything you should've felt when your older brother disappeared from your life. But I supposed it was impossible to feel if he had been wiped from your memory, wouldn't it?

One emotion stuck out from the rest, and it was confusion.

Why? Why had he disappeared?

Where? Where did he go?

What? What had he been doing all this time?

Who? Who did this? Who's horrible plan was this? Who took my brother away from me and took my memories right along with him?

That did not sound right. I really hated that: brother. No way. I didn't have a brother, did I? I didn't have a brother!

My tears were hot and sticky and disgusting, and of course it had to hit me that my parents were dead, dead dead dead dead dead, and here was my brother: Lee Solace-di Angelo-- my brother-- who'd existed as less than a memory for the past five years.

And I just sobbed.

And he just stared.

I was confused. My thoughts weren't organized. I felt like I'd just hit the paste button on something I never knew had been copied to my clipboard. But now it's all in front of me, and oh! I remember this! But it's jumbling with everything else, and now I'm just confused. Terribly terribly confused.

I wanted to hug him and hug him and refuse to let him go, because I remembered and I could feel.

My brother. My brother, the boy I'd grown up with.

What was going on?!

My brother.

So I hated everything now. I was confused and angry and upset and excited-- and I couldn't handle all these emotions.

I wanted to go home.

I wanted to walk through the back door and run up to my bedroom and play with my dolls, I wanted to eat dinner with my family, I wanted my brother to push me on the swings and eat ice cream with me and-- oh gods I was looking at him in that picture in Cabin 13, he'd truly been wiped from my memory, every image every laugh every argument every childish act, gone gone gone gone.

I thought I was gonna throw up. Just throw up-- all over the floor, with my brother sitting in front of me.

This was a different type of hyperventilating. This was sadder and less scared.

This was terribly confusing.

I was surprised I hadn't passed out or something. I really didn't know where to start— by putting pieces together, figuring out which clues I'd missed, trying to understand why the hell I forgot literally everything, figuring out why he'd been chasing me this whole time, etc etc etc.

I lifted my hands up to my head, gripped the sides, and screamed.

Because it felt like two sides of my brian were arguing with each other, and I wasn't about to deal with that any longer.