Remember December

Skipping Stones (Part 1)

Day Five

At dusk we left. Fluffy clouds filled the lavender and magenta colored sky. The sun started coming up from behind the clouds, the sky started catching on fire from its bright rays of golden sunshine.

I paced after Melody and Minho. Minho was up in the front, Melody behind him, and I after her. We walked like a row of ducks in silence. The river flowed towards whatever we were heading, we didn't know and the river didn't provide any hints to help us out.

Midday we stopped to get something to eat. We had brought all that we had, including the cheap weapons that Melody and I had fashioned two days beforehand. Minho wandered further down the river, weapons in hand. Melody sat down on a fallen log, bringing her knees closer to her chest. I joined her on the log in silence.

"What are you thinking about?" Melody asked, breaking the silence. Truth be told, I hadn't been thinking about anything at all. One would think with all the silence that filled the day, my mind would have wandered to some place, but I didn't think of anything else other than which foot to put in front of the other.

"Nothing," I replied, "I'm just tired." It wasn't really a lie. I was tired of being here and tired of the whole situation. I didn't even have anything to think about. While Melody and Minho had their memories to reflect on, I was left with a hollow canvas of nothing.

"You know, we watched this terrible movie once. It was based off of your favorite book. It wasn't anything like the actual book. You hated it so much. We broke the disk after we watched it together," Melody said. There is was. She was thinking of past memories, something that I couldn't do.

"You can look back on the past and laugh at stuff that you did with people," I told her, "I can't. I don't remember all these memories that you and Minho keep trying to tell me about. I think that you guys think that it helps but it makes me just feel left out. It's like I can't grasp a simple math concept, like adding or subtracting. Sure those things were hard at one point but now it's not hard. I can remember how to add numbers, the capital of Illinois, and where Canada is. I can't remember anything about me though. Heck, I don't even know my own favorite color." Melody didn't say anything for awhile. I shifted my weight and dropped my head in my hands. I brushed my fingers through the messy, blond mess that I had on my head.

"Green."

"What?" My eyes flew to Melody. My head was still in my hands, but I knew that she sensed my gaze on her face. She wasn't looking at me but straight ahead. She was facing the river that I could only hear right now.

"Your favorite color is green," she said. She turned to me. "And you have an obsession  with butter."

"Butter?"

"You put butter on everything, bread, meat, potatoes, muffins, and you layer it too," Melody laughed.

"Why? That's so weird," I asked her. She shrugged but a small smile slipped on her lips.

"You're a pretty weird guy," she said.

"Geez, thanks," I replied.

"It's kinda why we became friends actually. You were that one weird kid that didn't talk. I was that one weird kid who didn't shut up," Melody said. It wasn't like she was talking to me now though, she had already drifted into her own world. She seemed to be talking only to herself now. "We would make cookies all the time. We had our own kind of cookies. Alice and Max loved them. Alice and Max are engaged, I don't know if that piece of information has come up yet or not. Macy would bring a bag of cookies to school to share with her friends. The twins would argue about which cookie had the most sprinkles." She drifted off. I let the silence hang between the two of us.

"I got some fish!" Minho's voice rang from the distance, breaking the silence.

"I'll get a fire going," Melody replied.

"And Kyle, you get to help me take the guts out of this bad boy!" Minho laughed.