What do you want from me?

You're looking at me with expectant eyes. You're waiting for me to say something and from the frown that you've giving me it's something I should know.

Maybe I've forgotten something. Is that it? A birthday? Anniversary? Something poignant and meaningful? It's rather hard with the scattered memories that I'm sporting. Can't you give me a hint?

This is something you haven't quite gotten. It's very simple, completely uncomplicated, in fact, let me spell it out for you: I'm not the same person. Things have changed. We can never get back the fallen years. They're trapped timeless, as flat as the pictures on your wall.

I've been here for nearly a week and I can count the number of times where you haven't started a sentence by saying 'Do you remember...' on one hand. It's driving me batty but I don't want to say anything. Hospitality rules and all that. I do remember that much.

It's completely beyond my comprehension that you don't get this. A shower, a shave, and you seem to think that everything that happened was washed away as easily as the dirt on my body. You've always been sensitive to everything about me. I don't understand why you don't get this.

Then again, you were always good at denial. Well, not denial exactly... it's one thing I never really got about you. When we were kids ( yes, I remember stuff when we were kids) you'd get so absorbed in stuff until reality made you crash back down. Sometimes it was us, that reminded you of it. Sometimes it was you. Others it was the pale light hanging softly in the air. You hated that moment, loathing it with all your being.

I understood why. It was a reminder. You never did let yourself become deluded. You always knew what you were. Still, there were moments when you forgot completely. It wasn't on your mind and it was a feeling of right, a feeling of normal. Reality crashing back down always killed you.

Maybe that's what's happening here. Maybe you want to pretend (you never used to pretend Moony,) that if you don't say anything then it can be like it's all right. Like everything might just go away.

It won't. I know that already. I'm just wondering when it'll sink into your mind because I can't live like this. The smiles are killing me. The gentle nods that I have to make and the sympathetic, knowing murmurs of remembrances for the memories I'm supposed to know.

You're staring at me now and I know I've missed a cue. I should have laughed or smiled or done something to play along. I'm so tired of playing along. Don't make me do this any more. You're not breaking eye contact. Damn.

I muster a smile mixed with an innocent, guileless expression. "What?"

Your look is cool, calculating but there's a sense of sorrow about it. "You've changed."

And I want to shout out, 'Yes!' I want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you and call you a stupid fool. Of course, I've changed. Everything's changed. The world, reality, it's all gone to piss. It's morphed into something beyond what our boyhood imagination could have conceived of. It's all changed and I can't get it back.

A weak smile, something to set your mind at ease. "I'm tired is all." I am. Tired of this charade, of running, of this insane world that I don't even remember slipping into. The last thing I want to do is pretend. "I'm fine."

You nod. There's something different there now. Something heavy and weighty and it's not the casual nods you used to give me. You've worked it out. It's taken you long enough. I'm sorry to bring you down to reality.

I'm sorry to say that nothing is how it was. And I'm sorry to know that it'll never be like that again.

fin

~story index~