A Distinct Memory of Alice

            I'm out of my seat in a flash in the split-second after the school bell rings, a human rocket in black Converse. I have barely zipped my bag up before I'm tearing out of the school. In a practiced movement, I jump onto my bike, hit the kickstand with my foot, and am pedalling away like the Devil's on my heels.

            This was my route every day for almost one year, after that happened, and people have quit staring at my furiously cycling form whenever I come down the street. Not that I care about their stares. I only care about getting to her.

            But I'm a coward. 

            This is the first time I'm really visiting her. 

            After ten minutes of cycling, I finally come to the building I have come to know so well, in my one year of trying to visit her. Oh, almost one year. 

            I carefully park my bike in the farthest corner of the parking lot, the spot right beneath her window. 

            I hope that she isn't having one of her tantrum days today. 

            Mrs. Santos, the receptionist, smiles at me as I walk through the doors. I'm glad she's on the phone with somebody else. Don't get me wrong, but I have never met anyone as chatty as Mrs. Santos. For a guy like me, who isn't used to talking, her extreme talkativeness is a bit startling. She waves me ahead, mouthing Go on, go on, then turns back to the phone, talking at full-speed mode. 

            She never knew that for the (almost) one year I was going here, I never got farther than outside her door.

            I run up the stairs, a kind of tribute to her. She was claustrophobic even before the incident happened, and we had always made a game of it--racing with each other on the stairs, never going on the elevator.

            I arrive in front of her door. Room 413. I take a deep breath before twisting the doorknob. 

           I enter her room. It's dark, and I squint at the bed. The covers are rumpled and she's curled up facing the wall and the window. 

            "Hey, Alice," I say softly. She easily spooks, as I heard her mother telling me. 

            A low growl comes from beneath the sheets. I ignore it, and proceed with opening my bag and taking out the Memory Notebook. My hands are shaking, though. 

            For something with such a dramatic name, the MN was just a plain, loose-leaf notebook. But for me, the MN was more than that. 

            The MN was my contact with Alice Aquino, before the incident happened. The MN was where I recorded all my memories of our times together. Call me a dork, but when the incident happened, I tried to record everything I could remember of her. 

            I clear my throat, and flip open to a random page. It's still dark, but I can still manage to read it.

            I read the titte at the top of the page.  

            "When the accident happened."

            Oh, God. Why this memory?

            But I read it, my voice steady and tremulous at the same time. I read it for her, for myself, for my sanity. And most importantly, for the memory itself.

            --------------------------------------------oOo------------------------------------------

            "Adam invited both of us to his party, James!"