The Potential of a Day

Chapter 7: Lock and Key

Lock and Key

          When I get back to my house, it’s three-fifty. Ten minutes, until Abby will be coming to get me. Ten minutes. I wonder if I’ll be coming back here again before I’m able to move on. I hope not. Or maybe I hope so. I can’t really decide. On the one hand, I would like to go over some things here, before I leave forever. But on the other hand, if I come back here after the festival, it might well mean that I was wrong, and this won’t let me move on. And as I see it, that is the worst possible outcome to this whole, strange, unlikely day.

          For the few minutes I’m here, I wait in my room. After several moments I receive a text message: on my way. I stand up, about to make for the front door, to get myself all ready to go. One last time, I glance at myself in the mirror. Something, I can’t put my finger on what, is missing. Something in the empty space where the two top buttons of my blouse hang open.

          A necklace, that’s what I’m missing. I haven’t worn much jewelry since Sephie’s death, and, looking in the mirror, thinking about it, I realize all I have is from before that time. There was one piece, I used to wear it all the time; a little silver heart, with an imitation key hole on it. Sephie had a matching piece; a silver key; the top formed as a heart as well. Our aunt bought them for us when we were three; we wore them every day afterwards. I haven’t worn mine since Sephie died; I hadn’t even thought about that since now, I wonder if I had a reason.

          Suddenly determined, I set to finding it.  

          It isn’t for about another five minutes that I remember why I stopped wearing the chain. As it turns out; I won’t be wearing my necklace today. It was about three months before the accident; I lost my piece of the set.

          It had been the last time we would be going to the beach that year; early fall had been growing ever colder, and our beach, just several streets away from my house, in a coastal town on the tip of Long Island, isn’t one of those beaches people ever crowd for its warmth. But my sister and I had always lived here, and my parents were from the West Coast of Canada. We were resilient to the chilly oceanic climate where we lived.

          We had been playing in the surf for nearly an hour, when our mother forced us to go home; convinced one of us would catch our death of cold. It was on the car ride back from the beach that I realized I had lost my necklace to the waves. But we didn’t go back for it; there’s no way we could have possibly found it anyway. We didn’t go back until the next summer, and by then, our ranks were down one. I don’t expect the thought could have even crossed Sephie’s mind, that that trip to her beach wouldn’t be her last of the season, but her last; period.

          Thinking about it now, it seems rather odd that I forgot for a good few minutes of considering, about any of that. I suppose, in the end, Sephie’s passing overshadowed all the things that happened recently before it.

          I guess it’s sort of sad; the tragedy covered up all the other things that happened before it. Briefly, I wonder how many other things I forgot. What moments, memories, closely preceding her death, am I missing? Could it be possible, that she actually did give me some beautiful last words that I simply forgot…? No. I wouldn’t forget those, right? Of course not. I’m not so obsessed with what happened that I’ve forgotten everything else; that’s ridiculous.

          Besides, it’s not like it matters anymore; doesn’t matter at all, so I shouldn’t be worrying.

          The doorbell goes off; that’s my cue, Abby won’t want to be kept waiting. I’m making for the door of my room, but empty space at my throat is still bothering me, setting me off. I find myself clutching at the place a chain used to be. It’s been years; I shouldn’t be feeling its absence now. Yet despite what I should or shouldn’t be feeling, I can’t seem to make myself cross the doorway out of my bedroom.

          In the end, I make a rather hasty decision. It ends up taking more time than I would have liked, but, in the end, I find it. The truth is, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to; for all I knew, it could have been buried with her body. But of course, it wasn’t. They don’t bury you with the things that mattered; just the things that they think will keep up the image they want to paint of you, once you can’t refute their lies.

          Of course the key is exactly where I thought it would be. The box of things I put together, just after her death, just before the reality of it actually hit me. Her things. Things I wouldn’t allow myself to take, things that would always be Sephie’s. A real memory of her, not a memory made up by someone whose profession is handling the dead, not a memory made up by someone who could never conceive of the vibrant life that made her up before.

          For a moment it strikes me, how sad it is, that I should be thinking that way, when here I am, killing myself, after never being able to cherish her life, only remember her death.

          I was planning on wearing the chain, but when I put this box together, it was for a reason. It was supposed to be the very essence of Sephie. Yes, maybe there is a little of me mixed in there as well, but it’s Sephie. The few pieces of clothing, and trinkets here, are things I told myself I could never take. Because they are hers. Back then, in the three days following her death, I was still sane, I had put up a wall between the reality that was Sephie’s death, and my own person. It was a fragile wall, and broke quickly, but in those few days, I was still the person I was with Sephie. I trust that version of me more than the one I see in the mirror now, the one that, last night, took her own life.

          I’m not meant to wear this chain, because it is not a part of me.

          It is a part of Sephie.

          And despite how I might feel now, despite how similar we are now; twin sisters, now both dead, I am not Sephie.

          There is no purpose to wearing the necklace; it is of no value now. It doesn’t belong to me, and in the end, it’s just a pendant on a chain; it is not Sephie; it is simple something that once belonged to her, belonged at her throat. Something that is not mine, not a whole lot of anything. Just a trinket, that I’ve assigned value to. But people tend to do that a lot, don’t they? Give meaning to small objects. But in truth, there is no value to it. It is simply one of a matched set; it means very little on its own. The only meaning it has, is that it belonged to Sephie.

          But what’s the value of a key, with nothing to unlock?

          My phone buzzes: Lil I’m waiting outside come on.

          I remove the chain from around my neck, and shove it back into the red cedar box. With scrambling feet, I hurry down the stairs, and make for the door, yanking it open as quickly as I can. Abby is wearing heeled sandals, her coppery hair pulled up into a, somehow, elegant messy bun; she wears a red based flower print summer dress. She definitely looks more festival-ready than I do. “What took you, Lily? Let’s get going,” she looks up, registering my change in hairstyle, “Oh my gosh! Lily! You’re hair! You cut it! It looks great!”

          “Um…thanks. Oh, and sorry for taking so long. Let’s get going.”

          I lock the door behind me.