My father returns home promptly at 8:25 pm. Eli left around an hour ago, and I've been sitting at the kitchen table reading, awaiting the familiar sound of the key in the lock, only this time I'm already inside the door.

He gives me a small smile when he walks in. "Hey, Pen," he says. "How was your day?"

After Eli had gone, I'd showered, washing away any traces of my former mad. "It was okay."

He holds a manila envelope, the kind that closes with string. I have seen seven identical envelopes to this one in my lifetime, so I know what information it holds.

"Where to next?" I ask and set my book down atop the table.

Dad pulls out a chair and takes a seat across from me. His aura is bright. Because of this, I can only be wary.

"Iowa," he says, the small smile now growing into a regular one. "Right next door."

Great. Because I've grown so fond of corn fields in my brief stay in Nebraska. "Another small town, I presume?"

He can hear the distaste coating my words. "Come on. It worked out kind of well for you here."

I raise a brow, thinking of feeling gray at the prom, seeing Gray at the reservation and falling out of the tree, hearing and feeling Gray just a few hours ago inside my very own home. "How so, exactly?"

He gives me a knowing look. "You made some friends, didn't you?"

The way he says the word "friends" makes it seem like he's putting more meaning into it than is necessary. "Yeah, friends I'm gonna lose in two weeks."

"That's the other thing," he says, his expression contemplative, his aura carnation pink and hopeful. "I talked to Brody, and he agreed to make arrangements so that you and Eli can still remain in contact. Iowa's right next door."

I cannot hide my surprise, but I do hide my excitement. "Oh?"

"As long as you don't tell him who you are," Dad explains, "it shouldn't be a problem."

My face drains of its color and my muscles stiffen and my father notices, his aura going a skeptical teal. "...Unless you already have," he says slowly, "in which case, that changes some things."

"No," I lie quickly, but then I clear my throat and start over. "No, I haven't. Still Alyssa."

I can't tell if he believes me or not, but if he doesn't, he plays pretend for the sake of my happiness, and I love him for it.

"Good. We drive out immediately after graduation's over."

I nod even though my stomach sinks at the thought. I'd asked him to wait until graduation, and he's doing exactly that for me. Not a minute sooner, not a minute later. So I can't complain. He's left me no time to.

He taps the envelope with the tip of his index finger. "So. You wanna know your new name?"

"Hit me."

He unwinds the string carefully, maddeningly slowly, until the envelope opens. He pulls out two birth certificates, and with a tilt of the envelope, two Iowa drivers licenses slide out atop them. He picks up the one with my face on it and hands it to me across the table. I lean forward to take it.

"Avery James," I read aloud as I look upon the photo of Avery who looks very much identical to Aspen. "And yours?"

"Dawson James," he answers, his eyes set on his own identification card.

I slide the card back to him. In a few minutes he will put it back in the envelope, string the envelope shut, and lock it inside the safe in his closet which only he has the key to until it is time to go.

I'd planned to confront him when he arrived home. Insist he tell me everything he remembers about our former life — including his schooling, the different jobs he held and his bosses and coworkers, his and Mom's friends and neighbors, the people in the congregation at the little Methodist church we went to — so I could run every detail through my search engine of choice and see if it leads me to Ian, doctor or no doctor. But now I'm unsure whether I should open up that can of worms just yet for fear he'll become wary and retract the gift of continuing communication he's just given me. Because I know that his worry is his constant companion and how much of his peace of mind regarding our safety he's sacrificing in order to let me bring a piece of my former life with me to my new one — the greatest graduation gift he could give.

"Thanks, Dad," I say, and he knows I'm not thanking him for introducing me to Avery.

He looks at me, and his eyes are proud, and it warms my cold little heart. "You bet." And then, after a moment, "You haven't seen any more visions of him, have you?"

Lie. Lie through your teeth. "No. Not since the reservation."

He exhales slowly. "Good."

"You?" I ask, curious as to whether he'll lie to me, as well, even knowing that I'll catch him.

He does. "Nope. Me neither."

I wonder how many other things my father has been lying to me about these eleven years. So I unscrew the can.

"How come you never talk about your life before Mom?" I ask, and I can tell by his change in aura that I've caught him off guard.

"I don't know. It's not really something I like to talk about."

And I know why. During winter break of their senior year of college, my parents took a vacation to a ski resort. My father had fallen while skiing. Nothing was broken... but he'd hit his head on a tree trunk. He'd lost his memory — almost exactly a year was shaved off the top. He was a biology major, pre-med. The university couldn't allow him to graduate without retaking the credits he'd forgetten, and his scholarship was just about up. He'd wanted to be a doctor all his life, and he feels like he let his childhood self down.

I justify this in my own heart by believing that even if he had received his bachelors degree and continued on to medical school, he would've only been able to practice medicine for so many years before Gray forced us into a life on the road.

Still, for the sake of the can, I ask him, anyway. "Why not?"

"It's..." He shakes his head, looks down at the envelope. "It's fuzzy. There are gaps. Everything before... is blurry." Hook, line, and sinker.

"For me, too," I sympathize with him, knowing all too well what he means. "But your growing up was such an important part of who you are. You shouldn't let those parts of you die with her."

"Okay," he agrees, looking back up at me. "What would you like to know?"

Everything, I almost say. Instead, I suggest: "Let's start with high school."

🦎

          I am in a room. The walls are white; the floors are white; the lights are white. Everything is white except for two shiny metal chairs bolted to the center of the floor — the sole fixtures of the room. The lights create a glare on the chairs which reflects all the white of the room back at me. I find myself squinting.

I am not alone. Two men sit in the chairs before me, one in each. Even through squinted eyelids, I recognize them both. They both seem to be asleep, perhaps sedated.

Just as the two chairs are bolted to the floor, the two men are bolted to the chairs. Their wrists are detained by shiny silver cuffs attached to the arms of the chairs, their chests strapped in by wide and flat ropes not unlike seat belts, their bare feet cuffed to the floor by their ankles. None of this is as alarming as the contraption that comfortably molds around the tops of their heads, though. It looks like a helmet, but I know it's not one because of the copper wires that protrude out of it and run inside of clear, plastic tubes. The wires lead to a white, ceramic beam that I'm just now noticing that stands directly between the two chairs and reaches up to the ceiling. The wires go into the beam and presumably through it and into the upper floor, or whatever's above us.

I hear a noise like that of a generator turning on accompanied by a high-pitched squeal. The beam begins to vibrate side to side so quickly that I almost can't see the motion.

The helmet Ian wears glows a very dull blue, but as the vibrating kicks up its speed, the blue becomes brighter and brighter. I hear a suction-like noise, and the blue light is gone from the helmet. It travels up the clear tube, through the beam, up to the ceiling, and back down into the beam. The beam turns blue.

The same action takes place within the helmet on my father's head, only this light is red, not blue. The light is sucked from the helmet, rises through the tube, and is dispensed into the beam. As the red saturates the blue, the beam turns purple.

The beam begins to spin, and the red and blue and purple with it, and I'm reminded of a fairy godmother's magic wand. And then, just as suddenly as it'd started, it stops. The process begins again, although this time, it is backwards. The red rises out of the purple, leaving blue in its absence. When it reaches the top of the beam, it splits in half like two fireflies breaking from an embrace. Red goes down both tubes and settles within both helmets. I hear a draining noise, and the light disappears from both.

As I'd expected, the blue now begins to rise within the beam. However, only a small portion of it does — the rest remains seated at the bottom. The blue that has risen leaks into the right tube, the tube that runs to Ian's helmet.

Ian had given blue and received back both blue and red. His helmet now glows purple, but a royal purple that holds more blue.

But Dad had given red and received back only recycled red.

I open my eyes.

Dad had answered a good percentage of the questions I'd thrown at him. Everything before Mom is difficult for him to remember, but he can recall every last detail of life with her. After a while, it became less like a gathering of information and more like a puzzle I couldn't solve. What parts were clearer, what parts were fuzzier, and why? Why could he remember the name of the Methodist pastor (Brother Joe Green) but not the name of his high school principal? It must be related to his memory loss; it must go back farther than I'd thought.

I hadn't been able to sneak away with the laptop after our conversation. I suppose I could've taken it while he was in the shower, but that would've only given me about ten minutes to play detective. So I'd resigned to wait 'til morning.

But I don't think I can do that now. In fact, as my bare feet touch the soft carpet below me, I know that I can't.

I tiptoe across the hallway. Dad sleeps with a small crack in his door, perhaps just in case Mom were to come back so it would be open for her. This prevents me from having to noisily turn the knob. Now I just have to push it open enough to squeeze my body through. I press my fingertips to the wood and push just the smallest bit — more of a tap, really. The door creaks, and I instantly round the corner, my back pressed against the wall. I don't hear any stirring coming from his room, and when I bravely poke my nose back in, he is sound asleep. I tap the door again and it opens further, this time producing no audio. I continue this slow, torturous process until there is an Aspen-sized gap between the door and the wall that holds it.

I suck in my stomach (which doesn't really make me any thinner; it just tricks my brain into thinking I am) and enter the room. The only light is from the alarm clock radio on Dad's nightstand, flashing 2:21 in a bright green. The projection ends somewhere at the tip of his nose. I go silently to the desk and place my hand right where I know the laptop to be... but it lands atop solid polished wood. I slide my hand back and forth, lifting it to touch surrounding objects — a book, a lamp, a mug. But no laptop.

Dad snorts and rolls over and I drop to the floor, my heart pounding against my ribs. I hear a dainty clink coming from atop the bed, and I know I've been caught. I weigh my options. Can I crawl out, unseen, before he sits up and turns on the lamp? Or maybe I should come up with an excuse as to why I'm on the floor in his room instead of attempting to escape. I couldn't say that I've had another nightmare; that'd just lose me my graduation — we'd be out the door tomorrow. I could say I've... recently taken up sleepwalking?

During my weighing, though, no further noises emit from the top of the bed. I rise, slowly, and since his face is no longer blocking the clock's projection, I see that when he'd rolled over, his arm had landed atop something, the contact from his wedding band most likely the culprit of the clink. My eyes have adjusted just enough to make out the rectangular form of the object Dad is hugging. The laptop.

Go back to bed, my head tries to tell me. Go back to bed and worry about this tomorrow.

But my ego begs to differ.

I've never stepped this carefully or meticulously in my life. My every move is premeditated; I know where my foot will land before I've even lifted it. The real challenge comes when I successfully stand at the side of his bed. How can I extract the laptop from beneath his sleeping arm without waking him?

The answer is simple: Quick, fast, and in a hurry.

I squat down, get a good grip on each side of the slim pieces of metal... and pull. Fast. When it is in my possession, I hit the floor. If he makes any movements at all, I tell myself, I'll leave it and make my exit. He could've easily pushed it off the bed in his sleep. Nothing suspicious about it.

In a very fortunate turn of events, Dad doesn't make a sound nor move a muscle. I exit the bedroom as quickly as possible while still being silent.

I all but dart into my room. Closing the door and locking it, I perch atop my bed and open the laptop. It lights up with a webpage containing various information about Iowa — the climate, the native crops, the occupations, the suburbia. He'd been doing research.

I open a new incognito window (an unnecessary precaution since I will be erasing this from the history momentarily) and take the same steps I'd taken earlier. I Google my father's name. I click on the images tab. I scroll past the first few results. When I see the picture of Ian, I will click on it and go where it leads me. Then I will backtrack from there, filtering the results with some of the factoids I'd learned earlier and attempting to make sense of whatever that dream was.

Except I scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, and I don't see Ian's photograph.

I scroll back up. Surely it's here. It was here not sixteen hours ago. But I find nothing. I click to the next page and then the next and the next. I try searching Dad's name in different ways — with the "Dr.", without the "Dr.". I use a different web browser, a different search engine. I even throw in the name "Ian".

Nothing.

All traces of my father... and the man who is not my father... have been erased from the internet.

🦎

          When the end of the school year rolls around, teachers administer final exams. These I am good at. Memorization, grammar, and formulas. I long for the predictability of them all. But when the end of Mrs. Berthelot's art class rolls around, she administers something even harder.

"For your final project, I want you to do a self portrait."

Ninety percent of the class groans. For once in my life, I am in the ninety percent.

"It doesn't have to be straightforward your face in a mirror... in fact, I don't want it to be. The theme of the portrait is: How do you want to be remembered? For the seniors, it can be how you want your classmates to remember you. It could be something you hope to achieve in your life — you could illustrate a certain goal or career or family you'd like to have before you kick the bucket. It can be a character trait you possess or maybe one you'd like to work on and learn to possess; maybe you wanna be remembered for your kindness or your athleticism or your sense of humor. There are no limits or restrictions. It can be abstract; it can be photorealistic; it can be a cartoon or a caricature. You can use any of the mediums we've practiced with this year — acrylic, watercolor, pencils, oil pastels, or charcoal, or any combination thereof. It'll be due a week from now when the seniors leave. And the best part is it will also count as your final exam grade because I loathe modern testing methods."

Eli starts eagerly as soon as Bertha steps down from her podium. He says he knew this was coming because he had a senior friend last year who took this class, and so he's been planning for this assignment in his head all semester. He begins sketching the trunk of a tree on a piece of computer paper as a rough draft, and hanging from each branch, he says, will be something representative of each part of his personality. I idly wonder if there will be anything representative of me in his tree.

This project is much more difficult for me than for him. For the obvious reason of me not letting anyone get to know me, so how in the world would they remember me? But also for a more deep and existential reason of I don't even know who I am, so how could I know how I want to be remembered?

I suppose I could draw something that I'd like to eventually be. But how do you draw free? Grounded? Happy? Aspen?

And then, as I glance over at my friend, something worse occurs to me, and it has nothing to do with my final grade.

How will Eli remember me?

And I know the answer. Halfway. He knows me better than anyone other than my own father, and yet he only knows the parts I allow him to know. I am slapped in the face by an epiphany that both startles and scares me — I want Eli to know all of me. As my final gift to him. For opening me up to life again, for reminding me that it can be beautiful and magical and worth living. I don't want to leave him with the memory of this halfway version of me, a fuzzy one with gaps like my dad's memory. In a few years he may question whether he even knew me at all.

I'm a hundred percent aware that this sudden revelation is, in fact, stemming from the confused and angry feelings currently being directed towards my father and the man who is not my father. This doesn't make my revelation feel any less dire.

I grab a sheet of Eli's white printer paper from out of his book bag and begin to scribble on it with colored pencils. First red, then coral, then orange, then yellow, and followed by lime green, olive green, and kelly green. Then turquoise, light blue, royal blue, navy blue. Plum, maroon, magenta, light pink. Beige, brown, black, gray. I leave the last strip of paper white. After I've scribbled the width of each color, I go back and work on filling them in for now, as it's going to take a lot more willpower than I'm able to muster up at the moment to label them. Eli watches me, thoroughly confused.

"You want to be remembered as God's promise to never again flood the world?"

"No," I answer without looking up. "This isn't my portrait."

"Then what is it?"

"A map," I decide.

"To your heart?" he jokes, but he's pretty darn close — only a few inches south.

"To my head," I say.

__________

Hey, fam. My excuse for the fact that I missed last week's update is a nonexistent one. My excuse for that over-dramatic laptop retrieval scene is that I saw Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation on Tuesday and I'm pretty sure Aspen is played by Tom Cruise.

Sometimes my friends (jk just Liliana) dress grunge and send me pics. And I post them along with my chapters because Aspen.

Anyway. What's going on? What's up with y'all? Hmu.