Final forest.
It makes me physically ill. Anger lights my skin ablaze as I crumple the piece of paper and toss it rather aggressively over to the trash can, though I miss it entirely.
Breathe.
Sure, the last three years have served zero casualties, everyone making it off the mountain alive and unscathed. The problem isn’t that I feel scared of becoming a victim of the Pines. It’s that I feel this incontrovertible pressureto go. My gut instinct is telling me that I have to be in the Pines this weekend and there is no argument to be had against it. But I do have an argument, don’t I? What if everything comes flooding back and it’s too much for me to handle? What if it breaks me?
"Olivia?" I snap out of the wretched memories, turning my head at the voice of my father.
"Hey, Dad," I say with masked calmness as I turn around to present him with an artificial smile.
He ducks his head under the half open garage door. Almost as if he can predict the torment I was revisiting, an understanding sigh leaves his chest as he places both of his hands on his gun belt.
"You know you don't have to go,” he says, letting me know that he saw me as I was looking at the flyer before throwing it away. "Though it might also be your last chance to-"
"To what, Dad? To try and remember the trauma that my brain decided to hide from me? Yeah, no thanks." I don’t mean to sound rude but he’s not the first person to insist that I enter the Pines this weekend. And I don’t see the point. But I’m also on edge because I can feel the pull to that dark place, and I’m not sure I’m ready to face it.
My father believes in tackling trauma head on. He thinks that if I don’t face it, I’ll never be able to move on from the pain that night has caused me. Pain I can’t even really remember that I have. He even tried to get me into therapy, and though I’m as stubborn as they come, I agreed. I gave it a real shot and went to a few sessions where I sat with a psychiatrist. She asked me a bunch of questions, I gave her a bunch of answers and honestly, I don't really remember much of it. I do know that she told me that I might be able to recall the trauma I’m pushing down by revisiting the Pines. But that was the last visit I had with her, and I never went back.
I realized that I didn’t need therapy to tell me that I’m forever damaged from watching people I loved being carted off as corpses; one of the faint evocations I do remember. And I definitely don’t need to be told to go back to the place that is riddled with death just to recall something I’m probably better off not knowing.
Besides, I think I’m doing fine thanks to my discrete thieving; purloining a few of my dad’s anxiety pills over the years. I don’t take much, maybe a few a week. In fact, I have three of them stuffed in my pocket right now. I only take them when the few memories that I have of that night start to overwhelm me. I know thatI’ll need them more than ever this weekend, regardless of what I decide to do.
I reach for my car cover and start to unfold it, attempting to put my mind somewhere else for a second. Part of the reason why I started to work on this car was for this exact reason. And even though I’ve done as much as I can do on it, I still come out to the shop to admire what I’ve done to the Bronco. I can feel his presence when I’m here; Declan. And the memory of him doesn’t hit me in a crippling way when I work on the car. Not like it does other times. There’s a joy I feel when I’m in this garage so I come here to find solace. And I know he’d be proud of me.
And even in the midst of imagining him proud and happy and smiling at me as I reveal the final version of the Bronco restoration to him, I still get those sour feelings of knowing that he’s gone and I can’t remember why.
Declan Winters. The celebrated quarterback of the Marauders’ football team.
And my big brother.
Who would have known that the weekend he helped plan four years ago would be the one that took his life?
For years, I’ve accepted the fact that my brain has been protecting me from something I probably wouldn’t be able to handle otherwise. Maybe even a truth I don’t want to uncover. I barely even remember having to sit through the few interviews with police officers and detectives as it is. But what I can remember, clear as day, is being forced to relive the horror of the night over and over again for weeks after as I tried to recall any details from that weekend. All I can rememberare the very few remnants that still haunt me. The unmistakable mark of death. The sight of blood, the feeling of pain, and the sound of cries—whose, I don’t know. But it’s the essence of that night that plagues me, everything else is a disturbing void.
I close my eyes and try to squeeze the faded memory from my brain, but it's sewn into the edges, like it's the very thing that is keeping me together when really, it's swallowing me whole. Trapping me with no hope of escape all while keeping the other dark truths at bay.
"You know,” my father speaks up and pulls me from my thoughts, “that flyer is just the college boys being . . . well, boys, right? Don't pay any attention to it," he says to me as he walks over to help me lift the cover over my Bronco.
I take a deep breath, focusing on getting it secure. Once that's done, I turn to my dad whose eyes are trying to find a way to reassure me, but it's not his reassurance I want. It's his acceptance that he's got to let me go.
Whether he likes it or not, I am leaving this town behind the moment I get this car finished. And I think he’s trying everything he can to keep me here as long as possible. But forcing me into the town's imprint in the form of a tradition is not going to stop me from getting the hell out of Indigo Pines.
"It's the principle, Dad,” I respond. “The person responsible for that night was never caught. To this day, you still don't have a single clue as to who it could have been.” I let myself live in that thought for a moment. “Not a damn lead,” I add.
The funerals came and went of those who died on the mountain that night, and there was no break intheir cases. No evidence. No clues. So to this day, the families of the ones we lost have had no closure, yet here we are still celebrating this weekend like it’s meant to be a chance to be closer tothem. To celebrate their short-lived lives.
My father takes a step forward, only one hand on his belt this time. "I know you might be nervous or scared but if you do decide to go, you might be able to come to terms with-”
"I'm not leaving this town in a body bag, Dad. Not like Deck.”
Shit. I regret the words as soon as they leave my mouth. Even though they came in a calm tone, they were still distasteful at the least.
He dips his head in a display of frustration. I can tell I’m not making this easy for him but at the same time, it’s not easy for me either.
“How come no one talks about it? How come the whole town acts like that weekend never really happened? How come no one will justtell mewhat happened?” I ask as I lean against the covered car with my arms crossed at my chest.
“It’s not that we don’t want to tell you what happened, Liv. It’s that no oneknowswhat happened. No one saw anything and there were no leads as you said. No one knows how to explain that night to anyone, whether they remember it or not. Someone killed four innocent teens and not a single person offered up any piece of information. There really is nothing to tell.”
