Wild ― Piper McLean

―xx. memories

IT TOOK THREE WEEKS FOR THE NIGHTMARES TO STOP. It took another week for Verona to remember how to smile, how to cast the cold of that day aside long enough to soak in the warmth of the sun. It wasn't until April that she could talk about her friends without grief choking her up. 

But once she could, she didn't stop. 

"Lawrence was the first friend I made at camp," she told Piper, leaning back against the base of an oak tree. The sunlight made shapes on her legs as it filtered through the treetops, warm and exactly what Verona needed. "I knew some English, but I had this thick accent, and the other kids made fun of me for it. But not Lawrence. He'd had an accent, too, from living in Japan when he was little, so he took me under his wing. Taught me all the cuss words he knew in English, then Japanese." She smiled. "So I obviously had to teach him all the Italian cuss words I knew—and my dad was clumsy as hell, so I knew most of them."

Piper smiled, her face softer than it had been in a while. Through the haze that memory and tragedy had put her in, Verona noticed the worry etched into Piper's face whenever she looked at her. The influx of memory had put a pause on Verona's plans for asking her out, but it hardly mattered. 

Piper was still there, just as she had been since Verona woke up on that bus. 

"He sounds like Leo," Piper commented. 

"Oh yeah," Verona said. "I think they'd have gotten along, being brothers and all." She smirked. "Jordan and Jason might've gotten along, too—though I'm not convinced there wouldn't be a power struggle in the beginning."

"Who would win?" Piper asked. 

"Oh, Jordan, hands down," Verona said. "But she would've been a gracious winner. She was never the bragging type, even though she totally could've been." She smiled again. "She went on her first quest when she was eleven, a year after she joined the legion. And she made centurion that same year—youngest ever to win that election, and by a significant majority. She had five successful quests under her belt and about two dozen honors by the time she ran for praetor." Her smile dipped. "Didn't stop that asshole from beating her, though." 

Verona hadn't been able to say Michael's name again since remembering, and she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to. She wasn't sure she even wanted to invoke the name of the coward who'd gotten her and her friends killed—he didn't deserve to be remembered, not like his victims. 

"I met Auggie when we were twelve," Verona said, sliding past the memory of the liar to focus on the good. "And by met, I mean he accidentally shot me in the face with a paintball gun—friendly fire, by the way."

"Oh my god," Piper said with a laugh. 

"Yeah," Verona agreed. "He felt so bad about it. He cried until I shot him in the foot to get even. Then we had to sit out of the rest of the game—because, y'know, friendly fire's kind of frowned upon—so we just talked while the game went on. And laughed, when Auggie's brother got knocked off the wall. Guy was a pompous dick, so he deserved to be laughed at." 

"Did he survive?" Piper asked, looking torn between laughing and worrying. 

"Oh, yeah, of course," Verona said. "Giant eagle snatched him up before he could hit the ground. All he ended up with was a bruised ego—which, if you asked me, was begging to be bruised at that point." 

"Was he that bad?" Piper asked, amused. 

"Worse," Verona complained. "He had a huge stick up his ass, and he acted all high and mighty because he had a 'pedigree.'" She shook her head. "If he and Auggie hadn't looked so alike, I'd have had trouble believing they were related."