Too Easy To Forget

It was only six days ago, a Tuesday.

"Are you ready to take this?" the French teacher asked me, referring to a quiz. I had missed school on Monday due to a random case of the flu, but the content of the quiz was things I had already learned.

"Yeah," I said in response, nodding.

"No," Floyd said, turning around. "When asked that question, you always say no." I rolled my eyes.

"No, Floyd, you always say no," I replied, and he laughed, turning back around.

"If anyone needs any help, raise you hand," the teacher sighed. She always seemed frustrated, but if you had to teach a room that was mostly obnoxious freshmen girls, wouldn’t you be frustrated too? Floyd raised his hand immediately.

"What do you need help with, Floyd?" she asked, her voice flat, like she was just expecting that smart-ass comment and she didn’t know whether to acknowledge it.

"Yeah, um, what are the answers to numbers…one, two, three, four—" She cut him off, smiling despite the obvious setup. I think that the French teacher wanted to like Floyd, but found it very hard to.

"Get back to work," she said simply, and walked away to help someone else.

"Floyd," I hissed, and he looked over his shoulder at me. "What’s the date?"

"The twenty-fourth," he replied and before I could write the numbers down on my paper, I stopped short, something in my brain opening up, letting a few memories spill out.

April 24. Sometimes, we just remember certain dates and their meanings, sometimes we don’t.

April 24 had been Kimberly’s birthday. As far as I know, April 24 is still Kimberly’s birthday.

In middle school, in fifth or sixth grade, a new girl had moved to our school, a girl named Kimberly. She was tiny, not even five feet tall, and probably not even a hundred pounds. Her hair was cropped short, almost like a boy’s. Her eyes were light in color, either blue or green, I can’t remember now. Her teeth were slightly crooked, and she always looked happy when she smiled.

Kimberly bonded quickly with my twin sister, Yuuki, who was always welcoming and friendly to new people at school, but I hadn’t really gotten the chance to get to know her until we were both in seventh grade. We had bonded over things we both enjoyed, like drawing, ghost stories, writing short stories, and reading. By that time, Kimberly had become one of the most bullied girls in my grade, not-so-affectionately nicknamed "Farmer John," because she had made the "mistake" of wearing bib-overalls to school. But despite all of it, she had trusted me. She told me things that still haunt me, like the way her parents abused and mistreated her, and how they accused her of being insane because she had told them that she thought she saw ghosts in her home. That was another thing. Kimberly was a strong believer in the supernatural, and she believed that she was very capable of seeing the dead. She saw apparitions in her home, and even claimed to see them at school, in the middle school bathrooms. (For the record, those bathrooms were definitely haunted.) She also shared something with me that I regret keeping a secret: her depression. Though she retorted vicious comments back at her bullies fearlessly, every word still hurt her. She had admitted to cutting. I remember the day she had told me about it. We had been in one of those bathrooms, the one where people hummed that weren’t actually there, the air was always cold and shadows hid in bathroom stalls. Kimberly had thought it was a girl who haunted the room. She had been so positive that it scared me.

While we were in there talking, she had admitted to cutting. There really was something strange about that bathroom, because all of her secrets seemed to come out while we were in there.

"What do you do it with?" I had asked curiously. The subject of cutting had recently been introduced into my life, probably when we had discussed depression in health class, and I had never expected to become affiliated with someone who was actually depressed.

If only I had been able to see my future, I would’ve been even more surprised by how many of my other friends admitted to their depression. And how it easy it was to fall into that pit myself.

Anyway, that is when Kimberly pulled something from her pocket. It was the end of a pencil, the metal part that holds the eraser. But the eraser wasn’t in it, and the open hole had been pressed closed, making the end straight and sharp. My eyes had widened at the sight, and widened even further when I had caught sight of the proof that she wasn’t lying to me.

An angry looking cut on the inside of her tiny wrist.

I didn’t try to stop her. I knew and kept it a secret. What would happen to her if someone else knew?

I had tried hard not to think she was crazy. Even when she talked about the girl that haunted the third floor bathroom. Even when she said that she "kind of liked the taste of blood," her eyes wild and her face smiling. Even when I saw the cut on her wrist that she had stopped from healing many times. The secrets she had told me remained secret, and to the rest of the world she was just an annoying, bad-tempered, defenseless little girl. But to me, she was a walking disaster, the first one I had encountered, but definitely not the last.

And one day, Kimberly was gone.

Some people said that she was dead. Some people said that she had moved to a different school to run from her bullies. Some said she had gone insane and was getting mental help. Some said she had tried to hang herself with a belt.

I’ve considered asking her older sister, who still attends my high school, about her. But asking a girl who I’ve never talked to about such a touchy subject just didn’t seem right.

Only a few weeks ago, I had been at CVS with Yuuki and my mother, and I had caught sight of Kimberly’s sister’s wavy blonde hair and long brown roots, almost like mine had looked before I had dyed my hair back to its natural color. She was with a heavy, dark-haired woman who wore a t-shirt and shorts, and had a stretchy black supporting band around her knee. The woman had said hello to my mother, and as we stood behind them in the pharmacy line, I had thought about Kimberly again. This was her mother, the woman who had accused her of being insane, who had apparently abused her. And her she was, in a pharmacy, picking up a prescription. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was picking up anti-depressants for Kimberly.

If I saw Kimberly tomorrow, would I even recognize her? Would she recognize me? Would she say anything? Will she think of my sister and I on May ninth, me and Yuuki’s birthday, like I thought of her on April twenty-fourth?

I haven’t seen Kimberly in almost four years, and she was almost too easy to forget.