The Exact Time

When Lara wakes from her coma, I am the only one there.

The thing I notice first, and it strikes me as a strange priority now, is the time: I feel like I need to remember the exact time, so when people ask I can say "Lara woke at 2am, on the dot" and that knowing this will make them feel better about things, about the fact they weren't there.

I am sitting in the dark, barely awake, when Lara makes a sound, a sound that sounds like it's coming from far away, and the red lights on her alarm clock are blinking, counting down minutes without knowing why; at the moment, they are shining brightly, telling me it's 02:00. It's Monday morning.

I notice the time and then I stand up, as though jolted from some far away place.

"Lara?!"

I hear the slight movement of sheets, limbs under linen, and I quickly turn the light on beside the bed.

"Lara?!"

She's making a gurgling sound, and a sound that sounds like a choke, or a gasp.

She slowly opens her eyes, and I wait, holding my breath, then start saying her name, taking air inwards but not breathing out, as though if I breathe I'll somehow ruin things, this won't be happening after all, it'll just be another one of my dreams.

Lara's eyes struggle to open.

"Hayley"

She says my name quietly, matter of fact, a statement that needs stating. And like something she's been holding inside her, something that hasn't been taken or destroyed or hidden inside her mind.

I breathe outwards, fast, and I feel like screaming, or running around, or standing on my head. My whole body is full of fizz, I don't know what to do with myself.

"Lara!"

I am hysterical, but trying to act calm.

"Hayley"

She remembers my name. If she remembers this, maybe she remembers everything. Maybe things won't be as bad as they said they might be.

Lara's eyes open fully and she blinks, her pupils shrinking in the light. I look at her, and she looks both the same as ever and completely different.

She looks beautiful.

I tell her, softly, it's okay, it's okay until the doctors arrive.

It's 02:42 when our parents get to the hospital and the world is bright from the fluorescent hospital lights, and from other things that cannot be seen.

Lara remembers their names too. We don't stay too long, it's a lot for her to cope with, but none of us sleep. I make a pot of coffee and we sit, wide awake, until 9am and then we drive back to the hospital, everything strange and still and silent, like the world is holding its breath.

Lauren Oliver writes about the sky and the passing of time

“I've never really thought about it before, but it's a miracle how many kinds of light there are in the world, how many skies: the pale brightness of spring, when it feels like the whole world's blushing; the lush, bright boldness of a July noon; purple storm skies and a green queasiness just before lightning strikes and crazy multicolored sunsets that look like someone's acid trip.”

-Lauren Oliver, Before I fall

(I'm a school librarian, so I read loads of children's/young adult fiction. This was is of the best I've read so far, although I do wish it'd been around for me to read when I was 17)

Another Sunny Day

We felt, that day, almost invincible, a sense of time spread out in front and everything to play for, so let's run, run, run, into the day; smack, bang directly into the sun. But also, we knew, somewhere inside ourselves, that things would come to an end eventually, so there was also a feeling of urgency, of time running out, of all of the everything laid out in front of us becoming gradually less, of things receding. We knew that we were both invicible, because we were young, and not, because we were alive.

The sun was bright in the sky.

We drove your car along the coast, the sun smashing its way in through the windows, blasting us with light, with life. We opened the windows and the wind wooshed through the car. We listened to a tape of songs your father used to play you when you were young. We sang along to Simon and Garfunkel. The day felt endless, a clear sea with no bottom.

A colourful coral reef teeming with life.

We bought ice-creams. They melted in our hands as we laughed and hurridly ate them. We ran along the beach, hand in hand, and afterwards lay by the sea, watching the sun-dappled waves making their way to shore and then back out again. I ran into the water, waded out up to my thighs. You pushed me in. I swam, submerged, and kissed you.

I fell asleep in the bright light and dreamed vividly.

Ice-creams & Discarded Cider Cans

It was the middle of summer. We took it in turns to impress you. I bought a skirt shorter than any I had ever owned before, read books by authors whose names I couldn't pronounce, and dyed my hair purple. Elaine coloured her eyelids in a shade between grey and black, plaited her brown hair into tiny plaits, and started learning guitar.

You and your friends concocted a plan.

You charged us 50p each to hang out with you for a week of the summer holidays.

We were giggling and in awe.

You were two ice-creams richer.

We wandered along the cycle path, kicking the discarded cider cans out of our way. We talked, endlessly, about bands, and people we knew. We sat on the grass verge drinking cheap cola out of plastic bottles. We stayed out too late and went home with headaches from the sun and the glare still in our eyes.

I bought a pair of plastic sunglasses. I fancied myself as older than I was. Elaine and I never thought that you were really hanging out with us for any reason other than pity.

When you bought us ice-creams one afternoon, I knew you felt bad.

Elaine clipped her hair up and tried to catch your eyes as she licked the melting ice-cream cone in a way she thought you might like. I looked at the ground, sepia toned through my sunglasses. Your eyes were hidden too. I imagined them rolling, taking none of this seriously; we were both younger than you and you were above all this, right?

That night, Elaine and I decided our friendship was more important than boys. We listened to the same song seventeen times, shouting how it spoke to us, and this summer was so important, and how we were the very best of friends. We were seventeen years old and thought we knew everything.

Two days later, the last day of our bargain with you, it rained. We went to the cinema. Sat quietly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw your hand touch Elaine's, saw you glance furtively at her in a way that said very clearly it wasn't the first time.

I didn't let on that I'd seen anything and we parted ways that evening with hugs and promises to see each other again soon.

Elaine went to University at the end of summer and we stayed sporadically in touch, but it was never the same.

I only ever saw you again once, years later, back at the same cinema, with two hyperactive children and a woman who looked at least five years younger than you. You looked at me as though you were trying to recall where you knew me from, smiled briefly, and were gone.

Mellow Drizzle

I remember the night cracked open like a cold beer, the fizz as you flipped the bottle opener sideways, the sky opening up into the crystal white light of Friday evening.

I felt like it could have swallowed us whole.

The night cracked open and shared itself with us. The first taste on your lips, the sigh and the sit down, the hazy glance, a smile lurking.

Mellow drizzle.

It is a rare thing to be afraid of nothing.

Sweetness

I listen to violin music. I miss you. I imagine myself missing you, dramatically, waving a hankerchief into the wind, atop a mountain. The tears that run down my face are big, and dramatic, and wild. I am wild with missing you.

I can't even breathe.

I listen to a rock song. I shake my hair. I ruffle my hair myself and it's not the same.

I imagine candles and ceiling tiles, stuck fast in the place where I feel empty.

All the sweetness in and out and within the world, I remember in a single moment. I squeeze those molecules of sweetness in, using only my memory. There was a look we exchanged which said it all. I wanted to stay, to say it again, and again, and again. Over and over and over we went, over the same ground, slipping in our sock shoeless feet, laughing as we went, crashing into walls, jumping up at them, through them, across them. To hell with boundaries, we said, life is short and we are boundary-less, we move beyond that, and if you aren't touching all four walls of a room simultanously how can you be sure, I mean really sure, that they are all actually there?

I listen to a love song. It says little about love.

I soar away, elsewhere.

I count down the days until you return. I imagine the smell of your neck. I put my hands flat on a wall, and my ear, and I listen for a sign of the past, residing in the insulation.

There is none. Nothing in the wall, anyway.

When you return I will be wearing a blue dress. I will gather flowers. The sky will last forever.

A World Beyond Worlds....and I hope

I try to revise things, take into account a little experience. It's difficult to do the sums. The years tick by, the hours between 5pm and half past so slow, but a year so fast. Could 1000 years seem short, retrospectively? Time makes no sense taken out of time.

I will remember a colour, a smell, a word you said, a thing you did, a tiny moment, and nothing else. It's as though those idle times were spent nowhere, doing nothing; often they were. Sometimes I add up time in my mind, I imagine myself at 21 and now, and I work out possible percentage of life passed talking about nothing things and staring into space, cup of tea in hand. Vertigo doesn't even come close.

All I know is that my memories still continue to be made, I am still mistaken for "someone's daughter" even though I feel as though I ought to be an older woman by now, and that I've lived through tragedy and seen how life can fade so quickly, or a certainty can become the past, and yet, and yet I still have so much to do, and people still surprise me, and I try to find the meaning in the moments in between real time events, like the time spend waiting on a train platform, or for a school bell to ring.

I often fail.

June on the west coast is always a surprise. Or Spring anywhere. And yet it comes back again and again. This Spring I wonder, is the world different now that I know someone and someone else who cannot see it? And I know the answer is yes, but also that this is not unusual.

I do not remember feeling okay with the idea of this cyclical fading, this disappearence of sorts. I never felt good about knowing that nature is cruel. The sun sets late in the sky after the clocks change, and I think about a world beyond worlds, beyond reason, beyond hope. And I hope.