Happenings
707 Words
We sat on the couch. We watched a television show about people whose lives were more interesting than ours. Mara sat at the far end of the couch, her body angled away from me. I sat at the other end, leaving the middle as a barrier between us. When did that start happening? When did sitting next to my best friend become something that required this much distance?
"Are you okay?" she asked at one point. Her voice had that quality of concern that people use when they suspect someone is having a breakdown. Not real concern. Just the polite version.
"I think so," I said. "Why?"
"You seem different lately."
"Different how?"
"I don't know. Distant? You're asking weird questions. Showing up without calling first."
"I called first this time."
"Did you?" She seemed genuinely uncertain. Like she was trying to reconstruct a conversation that might not have happened.
I didn't stay late. Around eleven, I said I should go. She didn't argue. She didn't ask me to stay. She walked me to the door like she was ushering out an acquaintance, not someone she'd spent eight years of her life with.
"Mara," I said at the doorway. "Do you remember when we met?"
She looked at me strangely. "Of course. College. Freshman dorm. You were the only person on our floor who would talk to me the first week."
Relief flooded through me. She did remember. That was real. That was true.
"And we've been friends ever since?"
"Yeah. Why are you asking these questions?"
"Just... reminding myself of things."
She didn't respond. She just closed the door.
I stood in the hallway and added it all to the notebook. Saturday. 11:47 PM. "Mara remembered meeting me. But she doesn't remember calling me. Or does she? Did I call first? I don't remember calling. I remember the intention to call but not the action. Does intention count as action? Does it matter if I don't remember living my life the same way other people don't remember me living it?"
Sunday I didn't leave my apartment.
I sat at my desk and filled the notebook with more entries. More documentation. More evidence of my existence compiled and catalogued like I was building a case. A case for what? That I was real? That I had lived? That I mattered enough to be remembered?
By Sunday night, I'd filled thirty-two pages.
The handwriting got worse as I went. Started slanting. Started having odd spacing. Like my hand was being controlled by someone who'd never held a pen before. Like I was documenting something, but the person doing the documenting was becoming less coherent.
I looked at the pages. All of them. The accumulation of a week. The accumulation of absences and forgettings and small moments where I was present but not perceived. I thought about what Derek had said. "Haven't we met before?" Like I was a stranger. Like the six years of proximity meant nothing.
I thought about my mother. The appointment she didn't remember. The conversation that might not have happened. Or that happened to someone else. Or that I imagined.
I thought about the baristas and the coffee that tasted real but arrived with the wrong name written on the cup.
I thought about Mara. The way she sat at the other end of the couch. The way she asked if I was okay like she was asking about a coworker she ran into once.
And I thought about what I'd written in the notebook. All of it. Every observation. Every documentation. Every attempt to prove that I existed.
Sunday night, I picked up a pen and wrote one final entry.
"If I'm disappearing, I need to know. Not suspect. Not worry. Know. I need to see it happen. I need to make it visible so it can't be denied. So it can't be dismissed as my imagination or my paranoia or my general tendency to overthink everything.
"Tomorrow, I'm going to test it properly. I'm going to force the world to interact with me. I'm going to make myself impossible to ignore. And if they still forget me, then I'll know.
"Then I'll know that something is actually happening."
I closed the notebook.
- Writer
