Imprint (19 page)

“About what?” Drew, lyi
ng in the bed, in the near-da
rkness,
the only sign of movem
ent being
the slight twist of the velvet silhouette of his head.

“About her.
A
bout me. About
everything, I guess
.”

“C
are to elaborate a bit there?”

“Ali…” he lingered over her name, over the hopelessness that came with it
. “You were right when you said that I should have cared more then, looked a little harder, and I might have been able to prevent this.” He shook his head sadly. “What if she doesn’t stop
starving herself
?”

“Then she’ll end up dead, like normal people do when they don’t eat.”

“I don’t want that to happen.
I don’t want her to be like us.
” Sean looked away, staring silently at a spot on the wall. “Try and help her, ple
ase, because you know that I’m pretty useless right
now
in this state
.”

Drew let out a slow, hoarse chuckle. “You must be desperate if you’re asking me for help.”

“You saved her once
,”
Sean replied. It was quiet after that for a long time. The darkness grew, like a black smog saturating the air in the room
,
and
it
radiated
shadows
in
to
every corner to lick at the walls.
It was the most peaceful time of day. Sean was just beginning to relax
into the silence when
a smile tilted Drew’
s lips upwards and he spoke.

“Ok, then, I’ll try. But next time, you’re going to run out of favours to ask me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I guess I was wrong about you, Sean,”
his natural burgundy eyes flickered for a moment as he
stifled
a soft yawn, before he closed them contently
. “I regret what I said that night, about you being selfish.
It sounds like you care about something other than yourself. I can’t bring myself to hate you.
”

Sean blinked at this sudden admittance.
“You’re talking crazy –”

“
So, d
o you hate me?” Drew cut in, his voice barely a whisper.

“
What
?
”

“Do you hate me?” the other boy repeated, and Sean wondered if he was thinking straigh
t. “Tell me the truth. You might not understand why, but i
t’s important.” And there was something in his voice
, an indistinguishable emotion, which
implied there was a lot more behind the simple question. So Sean finally relented and
said
:

“
I want to
, I
should
hate you, but I just can’t. It’s like
there’s something in the back of my h
ead…about you, I can’t explain.
”

“Good, I’m glad,” Drew m
urmure
d
.
“Maybe I did make the right decision
that day
, after all
.
”

And before Sean could interroga
te the boy about what he meant and what happened on ‘that day’,
his breathing had fallen into a soft and heavy rhythm and with a growl of irritation Sean realised that he was asleep.
Damn him, falling asleep like that after creating even
more
que
stions to clutter his
mind.

The twilight grew
and Sean stayed in the same spot
for a good hour. He had given up long ago trying to figure out the enigmatic boy’s motives and the strange garbled nonsense that he occasi
onally spewed. It was
yet another matter to add to the long and growing list of things that did
not make sense. He sighed,
he
sitantly reaching out and, focusing, made his hand briefly solid to rest it on Drew’s forehead. He hated how he was even starting to think of his
own body
as belonging to Drew.

The memory came hard and fast, like a large bird sw
ooping down on him, leaving
him shocked with a strange tingling feeling throughout his body and a sense of falling.

There was
dewy grass, trampled beneath his feet, and a large expanse of water that looked eerily
sinister
in the darkness. He could remember frustration, anger, the emotions suddenly coming back clearly, but
he
couldn’t work out what they were directed at. And then he remembered striking brown eyes like lamps, dishevelled hair, and a foreign trench coat draped over him as he shivered.

“It’s okay, kid
. I come out here all the time at night, it’s not dangerous,” a familiar voice was saying softly. “Sometimes, the dark can even be your friend.”

“But…I…” and then he remembered the fear, steal
ing his
voice.

“It’s a bit late for you to be out, don’t you think? You’re parents are probably worried.”

“No
, they don’t care, not about me.
”

“Sure they do, kid. Just give them a chance. Now come on, why don’t I take you home?”
Maybe he should have been annoyed that this stranger who wasn’t even that much older than him kept calling him ‘kid’, but it didn’t sound condescending. It was comforting.

“I
can’t remember which way I came.
”

“You’re kind of difficult, you know.”
There was
a subtle sigh. “I guess you’ll
just
have to
c
amp out here with me for to
night then.”

There was a long silence, and then he looked up to try and discern the stranger in the limited light. The eyes, almost red, glinted in a strange way. “W-who are you?”

That was where it stopped. Sean reeled back, barely holding back a ga
sp, and began to shake. He trembled
, the strange images flashing through his head, unab
le to think clearly. Was
the memory real
? Had he
really known Drew before
the amnesia
? He didn’t know. He didn’t understand.
He felt like a blank whiteboard
;
wiped clean of everything,
ready to be filled up with temporary information. He’d lived with that feeling for a long time after he first lost his memories.

He
continued to shake, well
into the night until he didn’t
even know why anymore. And once again, by morning all would be forgotten.

“Did I ever k
now you, before you died
?” Sean asked the next morning, on their way to school. He had a strange gut feeling, as if there was something tugging at the back of his mind but he couldn’t quite grasp it.

Drew paused, confused.
S
hook his head. “Of course, amnesia, you don’t remember.”

“Remember what?”

“
Nothing
. We met a few times
, but that was it.
It’s not surprising considering we both lived in the same town.
”
Drew eyed him suspiciously. “Are parts of your memory returning?” he asked.

Sean felt that nagging feeling again, but he still couldn’t pinpoint it. “No,” he replied uneasil
y.

“Good.”

“Wait, how do you know about my amnesia?” Sean asked,
narrowing his eyes
.

Drew shrugged. “I watched you for a few months, remember? You go on about it enough.
‘Oh woe is me, I’m so depressed and broken inside because I can’t remember my past and therefore I have an excuse to be a general prat to everyone’
right? You can be such a girl, Sean.”

Sean opened his mouth to defend himself, but then realised that Drew had apparently died some horrible, tragic death. Even he knew that he could not compete with Drew on the ‘who has the shittiest life’ scale. And ‘your mum’ would not be an appropriate comeback in this instance. “Yeah well, you’re more of a prat, you stole my body,” he eventually came out with.

Drew just raised a rather condescending eyebrow. “I’m not even going to dignify that awful comeback with a response.”

“Because you’re too stupid to come up with one?”

“No, because I don’t want to catch stupidity from you. It’s contagious, you know.”

Sean was about to make a witty and cutting remark about the size of Drew’s miniscule, microscopic brain, but a horn blasted and the school bus rumbled to a stop in front of them. He sighed. Perhaps he should spend his nights preparing for these banter
sessions and come prepared next time. Drew would never know what hit him.

For the rest of the day Sean followed Drew around the school, making occasional scathing comments even though he never expected a reply. It was too risky to be seen talking to an empty space, after all. Sean felt like he w
as slowly losing his identity, l
ike Drew was stealing it from him and improving it. Ever since the cocky psychopathic freak had taken his place, he noticed that
‘
his
’
popularity had sky rocketed. Drew was the exact opposite of him; he was
smart, witty and outgoing. Yet somehow, no one questioned this sudden personality change. Maybe they just figured he had been bipolar all this time.

“I really like this new you,” Ali, the only person who mentioned the difference, would say at regular intervals.
This time she had dragged Drew out onto the school field during free period, when it was practically deserted, to tell him this. “
You seem so much more cheerful lately, it’s really great. You must have hit your head pretty hard
during the accident.”

“Or, maybe, it just opened my eyes,”
he
smiled.

“To what, exactly?”

“Well, that’s a secret.”

She
paused for a moment, and the playful grin decorating her face slowly faded into a frown. “You seem to
have a lot of secrets lately,
” she noted quietly. “Why don’t you tell me these things? I wish I could, but I can’t figure out everything by myself. Especially you.”

“I’d
tell you if I could,” Drew was obviously trying
to sound reassur
ing. “If it was important
I’d tell you, but it’s not. It has nothing to do with you, and you’d be better off not knowing.”

She scowled. “I don’t care whether it’s important or not. You trust me, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Then tell me, because I want to understand.”

“
This isn’t something you need to be involved in
.
” It was stalemate for a moment. Ali tried glaring but Drew’
s stubborn expression easily overpowered it. “Face it, Al, I’m not saying anything. And you’
re terrible
at glaring. Expressions like that just don’t suit you.” It was true, Sean thought to himself as he watched the exchange, her face was just too innocent to be capable of such a negative emotion. But then again, she was beginning to prove that maybe she wasn’t as innocent as he first thought.

“I’m not giving up,” s
he suddenly declared, rather fiercely
. “Maybe you think I’m just some little kid who can’t handle whatever the truth is, but I
know
that something’s going on…something that’s not normal.” She shuddered, looking away, and wrapped her arms around herself.
“
I want to know what it is.”

Drew’s eyes were back to steely and serious again. “What makes you think that something’s going on?” he asked.

“I…” she paused, unsure, but eventually continued in a hesitant voice. “I’ve been having these weird feelings recently. Like, I know it sounds stupid, but it’s like someone’s watching me.”

“So you have a stalker?”

“No! Not a stalker.
I can’t explain it, but it’s
like
sometimes I just
know
that there’s this presence right beside
me even though I can’t see it
. The air feels cold, and it’s like someone’s tr
ying to tell me something but they
can’t get the message across.”

“So you have a ghost stalker?”

Her gl
are returned, maybe even sterner
than before. “Sean, stop joking around about th
is dammit! I’m being serious,
I’m scared.” She
averted her eyes, blinking back tears. Drew took this chance to glower
directly at Sean, his expression clearly saying
‘see what you’ve done?
’