8: Memory

I stood by the door for a few minutes, motionless, after Names had pushed me over and ran away crying. Her pale, thin arm had shoved me to the wall by the entrance, and I could still feel the weak pressure of her hand on my chest. It was the first time she had touched me in what felt like forever. My face was warm and red.

I regained my composure, walked inside, removed my shoes, and ran to Kind’s PC to see what had made Names so miserable. I moved the mouse slightly, and it revealed the photo of a beautiful Asian girl named Alicia. Intrigued, I began my research and found horrific things.

“You piece of…” I said out loud, “I didn’t know you had game like that!”

Flustered, I took a step back. His room was eerily quiet. There wasn’t any sound inside or outside the room besides my own breathing. I stood in the middle of it, trying to listen to something, anything, but there was nothing. It was so silent it gave me chills. I could feel Names’ misery lingering inside, pushing my shoulders downwards.

I had been in that room hundreds of times before, and still, I didn’t recognize it at all. Kind’s bed was still undone from that morning, with his child-like shark-themed bedsheets and his single, unwashed pillow. Disgusting. No wonder he didn’t get laid. His wardrobe was full of the painfully-boring clothes I had seen him wear over and over again, like his dozen plain white t-shirts, his collection of sneakers that I was definitely stealing, and the large winter jacket he bought because there wasn’t a medium available. It was strange to think that nobody would wear those clothes again. His laundry basket still smelled like his sweat.

Echoes of all the laughs we shared in that room flashed into my mind suddenly. All the thousands of football matches we played on his computer, all the hazy mornings we spent figuring out how to get him laid over coffee and cigs, and all the heart-to-hearts we had lying on his bed in the total darkness of the night. We had so much fun inside that room. So much.

The butterflies inside my stomach began swarming me and torturing me as I began prying inside his closet, looking at his personal belongings. Items insignificant to me, like the bottles of perfume he always forgot to spray on or his cheap watches, were now the only things I had left to feel close to his beautiful presence. Prying further, I found a box of photographs at the bottom of his closet. He had twenty-nine polaroids from twenty-three girls, some clothed, some naked, all addressed to him specifically. He also had handwritten love letters from all these girls, displaying a rainbow of lipstick kisses on their envelopes, and a box of one-hundred condoms with only fourteen left.

My spine twitched. I felt betrayed to the deepest level of my heart and soul.

“Who were you?”

I wanted to escape that room; it felt like it was shrinking and going to eat me alive. I couldn’t recognize anything anymore, and I was horrified. But just as I was making my way to the door, the computer began ringing loudly.

His girlfriend was calling.