Freefall ✓

03 | hazel

Dying to know but afraid to find out

—n.l.francis

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AUDREY

Tomorrow was going to be the first day of school. And, as unusual as that was for me, I was anything but ready.

My senior year had to go by smoothly and perfectly, as planned. I had to focus on my grades to, ultimately, get a scholarship for my college and I had to keep a low profile to stay out of stupid high school drama. Basically, to do what I have been doing for the past few years.

I had formed that perfect plan in my head back in freshman year and followed it faultlessly ever since. Nothing ever took my focus away. Until now.

Cameron.

I couldn't get him off my mind from the moment I left him standing there, at the mall. He was messing with my head, consuming all of my concentration and it was exactly the opposite of what I needed right before the start of the most important school year.

I knew I had seen him before. But I couldn't remember where.

I had rummaged through every corner of my memory about a hundred times, seeking for any hints and clues of the mystery of that pair of warm hazel eyes.

But I couldn't come up with anything complete and reasonable.

Yesterday, I had been annoyed with my memory, angry at it. It had the capacity of remembering every single lyric I learned when I was twelve and every bad word I've been called but it couldn't provide me with what I really needed?

However, right now, I was past that. Lying on my bed in an oversized T-shirt and sweat shorts while staring fixedly at the ceiling, I was in a half-conscious state of mind. I've given up on trying to remember him.

The best I could do now was to bury the memory of his hazel eyes somewhere deep, slam a lid on it, and don't open it until I could afford to lose my concentration again. Which would probably be after school and after college. By then, my—as I recently found out— awful memory would've probably gotten rid of him anyway.

I decided it was time to break out of my trance and get down and see what my sister was up to. If I wasn't mistaken, the glorious smell of food I could sense was coming from our kitchen.

I rolled out of my bed, my joints creaking like I was a grandma. How much time exactly had I spent lying motionless?

I also must have dozed off to such extent that I'd completely forgotten about the function of osmosis. My poor bed was left to act as the towel and soak up the wetness of my hair.

Great, now my bed had a wet spot right in the middle. Well, at least my hair wasn't dripping anymore. I huffed and walked out of my room.

Today had been dedicated to spending quality time with my sister. It was one of the few times I went to the beach willingly, in contrast to the many times this summer Syd had to literally drag me out.

We were initially just going to chill out on the sand but Hailey convinced me to go and "get our feet wet" which ended up in her mercilessly pulling me into the freezing seawater with her. Get our feet wet my ass. I should have known. Can't say I didn't have fun though.

I really needed that to clear up my mind before school.

Skipping down the stairs to the kitchen, I could now confirm that, indeed, the rich smell of food was coming from our house. Hailey must have been bitten by a chef cook bug in Pennsylvania.

"Wow, what are you cooking? It smells so good," I pointed out, making an appearance.

"Taco fillings," she threw a quick glance at me, "or fajitas if you prefer the fancy term."

"You know, you don't have to be cooking twenty-four-seven," I watched her add red peppers and onions into the pan, "usually people come home for a break."

"Let me remind you that I don't cook in Philadelphia," she remarked, sprinkling chili powder over the sizzling vegetables, "so this is me having fun."

"Well, if that's what you do for fun-", my eyes bulged out when I noticed she was making no implications of stopping to add chili any time soon, "Woah! No need to go crazy with this," I snatched the small spice jar from her before she could add any more, "some people here actually have functioning tongue receptors," I said, not attributing Hailey to that category of people.

It was a family joke, really. When we were younger, I'd always overrate my tongue sensitivity in Indian or Mexican restaurants. As someone whose spicy food tolerance maxed out at sriracha, I often wondered why I even kept agreeing to go there. Surely, within minutes, my medium-level red salsa —admittedly a tame fire compared to the ghost pepper sauce Hailey was relishing — had me breathing like a dragon. And then my whole family was laughing at me and I was promising myself to never eat spicy food again. Guess I finally learned my lesson.

"Ooh, sorry, I forgot you were so delicate," she teased with a smirk.

"I'm not delicate, I'm normal. You're the one who has numb pain receptors," I argued, but her smirk never left. The sight of our rose gold round wall clock entered my vision and I furrowed my eyebrows.

"How long have I been upstairs?"

"Just under one hour. What have you been doing there anyway?"

Uh, well. Staring at the ceiling and overthinking?

"Changing clothes?" I said, my tone questioning, as if asking if that was enough to justify my one-hour absence.

"Really? Well, that does look like a complicated outfit indeed."

I had to contain myself from rolling my eyes. After all, it was me who wasn't giving her enough information.

"Well, I also might have taken a little nap. Anyway, is this ready? I'm hungry."

"Pretty much." She put the pan on a big tray beside a plate of golden tortillas, a little bowl of nachos, and a tin of guacamole. I helped her carry it into the living room.

"So we're eating in the living room now?"

"Yup," she chirped, picking up the remote control and switching the TV on, "moreover, we are having a Netflix marathon. I haven't finished watching Friends."

"Oh, didn't you? I have."

"What? Without me?" Her shocked tone was matching the utter indignation reflected in her facial expression. She lowered her voice to a whisper, "Traitor."

Once again, I almost rolled my eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Ease off, drama queen. I have no problem with re-watching it."

We started our marathon from season 9, where I was told Hailey had left off. She had a little laughing-at-me time as I struggled to open the guacamole tin for a solid ten minutes, eventually letting her open it.

To make it even more humiliating, when I was reaching for the remote control, I dropped some of the stuff on my T-shirt, completely ruining it.

I concluded that guacamole had something personal against me.

It all reminded me of the good old times before Hailey went to grad school and even before she went off to college. We would often do these movie evenings.

If only I could stay like this forever.

Yet soon I would be forced to endure whatever high school troubles awaited for me and continue dealing with the pair of hazel eyes that were still roaming around my memory and occupying a good portion of my mind.

Forgetting wasn't that easy.

Cameron.

Oh boy, why did I ever lay my eyes on him that day?