She doesn’t like memories.

When she remembers the past (I am five years old and you smile at me, laughing) it is happy and her heart constricts in her chest because it is past, it is then, it is not now, and she doesn’t want to go closer in time to now.

Because she is twelve (thirteen this year, old enough for love, I know it, I know it), and she will say to him, “I like you.”

Because she thinks that he won’t react kindly if she uses ‘love’ instead of ‘like’ (because Mama says I am too young for love, and maybe he is, but I’m not).

That’s why she doesn’t want to go to the past. It’s too far from now, and shouldn’t she start over?

She thinks of the future, sometimes (I am seventeen and you walk past me, not seeing my tentative smile) and she wants more than ever to stay here, to stay in the now, where he is, where he won’t see her unless she steps forward and says to him, “Hello,” but where she can still be around him, for a time.

-

She tosses her head back, triumphant, breathing heavily, as the roar of the crowd washes around her. Across the stage, her partner grins, and she can almost hear her panting into the microphone.

And then she sets her guitar down and heads across to the drums, and her partner sets hers down and moves to the keyboard, and they’re off again, on a rollercoaster of rock and jazz and blues and rhythm and everything and anything they can think of, as if they are one person, not two, and the words come forth, winding around each other as if they have sung this song all their lives when really they’re improvising the melody and the harmony, jamming like crazy, bouncing notes and words off each other like there’s no tomorrow and they only have today to live in the music.

And in the middle of this she has a sudden memory of childhood, and younger not-quite-siblings, and first love and happiness that was innocence, pure and simple, and gradually her percussion contribution mellows and her words mellow too. Her partner slows as if she’s reading her mind and the song that was so fast and rough grows gentle and slow and the crowd winds down and quietens.

Still, they are applauded enthusiastically, and when her partner launches into the next song, one they have actually rehearsed, she’s glad to find herself on familiar ground, because singing about her life is subtly embarrassing in her eyes.

-

She pushes him against the wall, breathes in his scent as he blinks stupidly, trying to catch up with this situation, and crushes her lips against his, while he’s still too confused to react.

She doesn’t go after him when he pushes her away and runs, because this is the fourth time she’s tried to catch him and she knows somewhere deep down that she probably never will (I am twenty-one and you are drunk, and a willing kiss has never felt sweeter). But each time she does this, her stomach twists and she doesn’t want anything more than him with his smile (I am fifteen and you are waving, not at me but to your friend behind me, but I can pretend that brilliant smile is for me and maybe that’s enough) and his stupid eyes that crinkle with laughter and his stupid voice that’s smooth and gentle like silk and honey and his stupid everything that she has wanted, wanted, wanted since she was five.

She sometimes thinks that she is schizoid, split, because half of her says, you are my religion, you are my God, only you are there in my mind, you control me, I belong to you, only you. The other half says, this is no longer love, it is obsession, he is no God, no Creator, he is only a boy, leave him.

But when she goes to sleep at night she talks to him, not caring that he is not there to hear the words, asking him to hear her supplications, saying everything that she tries to say when he is there but won’t listen to her.

-

The first time she says “I like you,” he thinks he is meeting her for the first time, but he is wrong, and she doesn’t correct him. She stands there, waiting for his answer, with a sincerely nervous smile on her face, and when he swallows and says “Oh,” she waits longer, and when he says, “Well, I. You. I mean. You’re pretty, but. I, uh… I mean, I don’t know you or anything,” she shrugs and says, “I’ll see you at the theater Friday, two o’ clock?” while trying not to let the nervousness come out in her words, trying to seem cool, collected, attractive.

He nods, and she grins brightly, like sunshine in winter, and almost dashes off to squeal privately and childishly, because it simply will not do to allow him to observe how dumb she can be at times, because she wants him to like her (love can come eventually, let’s take this slow to savour this bliss).

But Friday comes and two o’clock passes and half past two passes and she’s leaning against the wall, fingering her music player (why, why, why are there so many love songs in this machine), trying not to cry, and when three o’ clock comes and he turns up with a wave and a sheepish expression (“My clock stopped, you see”) she answers, “That’s okay,” and smiles, her eyes glittering suspiciously, although he doesn’t notice.

But the date doesn’t go well, and she’s left alone when he excuses himself to the bathroom and doesn’t return. Her heart aches, a little, but she tries not to cry, because maybe he can still see her (I’m not a crybaby, I haven’t cried since I was six when I had to say goodbye to you) and she still wants him to like her (I am twenty-nine, and you are there where I didn’t expect to see you, but you are walking away, and when I chase you and grab your arm you pull away, and my heart is pounding, pounding, pounding like it will shatter).

-

When she sees him from backstage entering the youth club with his friends, laughing and pushing and pulling back and forth, she turns to her partner and says, he’s here, he’s here, do you think he knows, do you think I look good, do you think-? and her partner cuts her off with  a finger to her lips and says, most likely not, he probably only came in on a whim, but there’s no harm in preening a little more if you’ll only hurry, ‘cause we’re on in five minutes.

When they go on stage and she speaks into the microphone, she manages not to stutter, and even speaks a little confidently. Her partner grins that joker’s grin and husks out a little joke that segues into the drums booming while she jams on the guitar, and suddenly her eyes are no longer on the audience, or even on him, because she’s lost in the sound and the rhythm, and she grins a grin that she usually saves only for him, because music is a more willing lover than he.

Once their set is done, she goes backstage, feeling mildly discomfited at the way everyone stared at the two of them, almost worshipful (like I do with you), and she couldn’t see him anymore, sitting in the audience, and she’s thinking whether to mention it to her partner when his voice comes from behind: “Cool show. I liked the song about the seasons.”

She doesn’t blush because it’s almost physically impossible for her to blush, but she swallows hard and murmurs a thank you as she turns and smiles at him, the same smile that had grown across her face as she sang and played her heart out not a minute ago.

She is thirteen (fourteen, almost), and this is a moment she will always hold close to her heart, in a time when he hasn’t yet drawn away from her, hasn’t yet begun to fear her, deep down: the memory of their first kiss.

-

He says to her that she’s a nice girl, but her attentions are too much for him to handle, and maybe their relationship was doomed from their first disastrous date. (He doesn’t say that maybe they didn’t have a relationship at all, that she had been the only one trying to make something out of the nigh-on-nothing he had contributed, because she might cry, melt down the last of the defenses that she takes down around him.)

She doesn’t say anything. She stares at him, almost through him, silent and still and she won’t listen to her heart break (I am six and I don’t want to say goodbye to you, kicking and screaming and sobbing louder than any sound I have ever made, and you are crying as well), so she nods, a stiff jerky movement, and turns away.

She wants to call her partner, but she remembers she’s on a date and mustn’t be disturbed, and so she goes home alone and picks up her guitar and starts playing. It’s mindless work, concentrating on fingering each note clearly, precisely, but it makes her feel better, takes her mind off him. She puts her sorrow into the melody, and when she is done, the cathartic song flees her mind and she doesn’t trouble herself to remember it, because she still loves him, and because persistence is key (this is the first time her other half speaks up, saying, stop, stop, he says no, let us forget, but she won’t because it has been almost ten years since she first saw him, and her feelings have persevered since that day).

-

She doesn’t write songs about him, oh no, because that’s too personal, too raw. It’s her partner who writes the love songs, the sap and tears and mush. She just does the music for which the lyrics are written (I am five years old and performing my first piece of music, for which my piano teacher is hailing me as a prodigy; I title the melody ‘Song of the Sun’, and it is written for you), and when they do their jamming, bouncing back and forth words and strings of sound, they never, never, never sing about love.

When their first album is released, they are almost alarmed at the amount of attention they get, but people are saying that it’s about time they debuted, and their celebrity status startles them, and at night when she thinks her partner is asleep in her hotel bed, she gets out of her own and kneels beside it, and prays to him.

When there is no longer time to talk to his unhearing ears, she writes her prayers down instead, turns them into letters, and mails them to him. It’s a more certain way of ensuring that she is heard (but her other half says, he gets them, but he doesn’t read them, he never replies, although she always checks that his address is current, correct).

Whenever they are interviewed, her partner purrs a witty reply to the question of both’s love lives, but her own answer is always the same: “My love life or lack of it is none of your business.” (Maybe it’s the other half who speaks when they are interviewed. Maybe not.)

She always signs her letters with her name, and adds ‘I love you, and no matter what happens, I will always love you’ at the end. It is her way of saying Amen, as it used to be when she spoke to him at night.

She has amassed a number of pictures of him, over the years, with him grinning into the camera, a smile not meant for her. They have mutual friends, and sometimes when she visits them she steals the snapshots of him (I am sixteen when I visit your classmate’s home for the first time and spot your likeness in a class photo; I take it home, photocopy it in colour and cut your face out, and discreetly and anonymously return the original to him a few days later). Sometimes when she isn’t being hurried from studio to photo shoot or interview to concert theater, she flips through whichever album of photos she has stuffed into her bag that morning.

When one of their fans makes a gift of an elaborate locket to her, she puts in the best picture of him (changing it every year, to reflect now) and wears it everywhere, and sometimes strokes it, long white fingers moving over elaborate ivory and silver whorls and carvings.

Somewhere across the years, it becomes her own rosary (first whorl: our first meeting. second twist:  I tell you ‘I like you’. third bump: sending you my first Valentine’s gift…).

When they are interviewed, somewhere in the midst of their second tour, the question put to them is: how religious are they? And while her partner says, not at all, she says, “Oh, I’m very religious,” although when asked which religion, “an obscure one. No one’s heard of it,” and she reaches for her locket.

-

She is known as ‘The Heartless Woman’, which bothers her a little, but their fans still love her, and though some people say it’s out of unrequited love for her partner that she’s remained single all these years, she doesn’t bother denying or confirming anything, because they’ll just take denial as a sign of confirmation, won’t they?

And one day she loses her bag, and everything is free for all to see.

Someone finds her bag, and ransacks it: money and phone and address book and music file and lyrics notebook and schedule, and photos of him and the notebook she drafts her letters in and the notebook she copies her letters into so she can mail readable, elegant copies to him.

And her world comes down.

It’s like a crack in glass, small and jagged. When she still remained apart from him (not by choice, never by choice), nothing happened, but now: now, the crack becomes larger, zigzags, splits and the glass shatters. And the shards seem to have lodged into her heart.

Scans of her drafted letters appear on the Internet, along with the photos of him, and soon her fans turn against her. Before this she has already retreated to her home, far away from any big city (seclusion is my lot, because I need only you, and I know you will protect me from the world, though you are far, far away). She doesn’t answer her phone, won’t answer the door, won’t read her mail.

It’s her partner that’s her anchor in this- would you explain for us her strange obse-? No comment, no comment, leave her alone- comes through the door with her own key, unplugs the phone, trusting only her private number, collects the mail and sifts through it for anything important.

She goes through the motions of everyday life. She cooks for herself and her partner, cleans the house compulsively, and, when forcibly pulled away from the broom, the mop, the vacuum cleaner, writes in a new notebook to him: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…

She doesn’t touch the instruments in her house, and she leaves the room when her partner switches on the radio, or the television.

She won’t sleep in her bed. She curls up in a corner of her room, clutching her pencil and her notebook and the many, many, many photos of him are spread out around her.

She goes through her rosary again and again (…fourth dot: our first kiss. fifth raised line: you ask me to write a song for you, and I comply. sixth dip: watching the sunset with you, and then watching the stars…). She won’t talk to her partner, and when she prays at night she prays for forgiveness: I’m sorry, I’m sorry my love, I shouldn’t have been so careless, I shouldn’t have brought this on you…

All through this, she still won’t cry again, because she is too old to cry (you’re a big girl now, Mama says, big girls don’t cry), and because she can be happy and attractive but being sad and attractive or angry and attractive is far more difficult. And he might turn up at any moment; who knows the whims of a god, after all?

-

“Stop this,” he says, clearly enough that she can’t pretend she misheard him. “Stop trying to- to have me. I’m not an object. I’m a person like you are. We broke up already, didn’t we? Stop this!”

She stares at him, mute and still, and somehow she doesn’t seem to be there behind those eyes (don’t say this to me, don’t break me further, I won’t listen to this, don’t hurt me). Her withdrawal infuriates him, and he grabs her and shakes her: “Damn it, listen to me! Leave me alone. Don’t try to pretend I’m not saying this!”

Her throat tightens and his face blurs in front of her because he’s so close, so close, and she must hear his words and obey them, because not doing so is tantamount to blasphemy (one half of her whispers, it would be blasphemy to be disobedient, forgive me beloved God for I have sinned). And she says, so softly, as if drawing a knife down her arm, “Yes.”

He lets her go, and she drops, like his arms were the only thing that were holding her up. He considers pulling her up, but he thinks that she’ll delude herself into thinking of a deeper meaning in this gesture, and so he merely walks away.

When he is out of sight, she gets up, slowly, tottering on unsteady feet, and turns in the opposite direction, and now that she is alone and no one can see her, she sits down underneath a tree and cries for the first time in exactly ten years and nine months.

After that, she swears to herself never to cry again.

-

He wakes up to the phone ringing, and when he sleepily picks it up it’s an unfamiliar voice, saying, I understand you formerly had a relationship with- and then he slams it down because he knows that the shit has hit the fan.

He picks it up again, because it’s ringing, and when it’s a different voice, still unfamiliar, he keeps doing it, putting it down and picking it up, until there’s a dial tone and he can call his workplace and say he won’t be coming in today.

(A day or two before, coming home, a message on his answering machine from someone he hasn’t seen in three years, the last time by chance. She is hysterical, sobbing, and he can barely reach the coherency in her words, but at last he thinks he understands: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh God, I shouldn’t have been so careless, now everyone will know, oh God I’m sorry I did this to you, forgive me, forgive me, I’m sorry” and her words end in a choking sob and dies away.)

He stays in for the day, and stays in for the rest of the week after his boss calls to tell him that he’s having unpaid leave.

When he tries to go out on the third day, because his fridge is empty and he’s hungry, he is mobbed by paparazzi- do you have any idea why she has so many photos of you, what’s your opinion on her letters to you, how long has she been writing to you, why do you think, why- and he keeps repeating “No comment, no comment, no comment” until it’s the only thought in his head, and he fights his way to his car and drives off.

(His ex-wife called last night, sending her sympathies, which he thinks is really a stretch for a bitch like her, but he answered her cordially and sent his love to his daughter.)

At the supermarket people stare and whisper and he ignores them, but when a man almost ten years younger than himself comes up to him and says, “you fucker, you broke her fucking heart,” he glares at him, but holds his tongue and tries to walk away until the other draws back his fist and punches him in the eye. Then he jumps on him and holds him down, smashing, smashing, smashing his fist into his face.

When he’s pulled off, he looks down at the other man, who’s barely conscious, and says, panting, “she wouldn’t let go, do you know that? She’s written to me for almost ten years, and it broke my marriage before it ever began and it broke my ex-wife’s heart, and now I can’t see my daughter, but I’m not going to be the one who hurts her again, understand? I don’t read any of her letters, never have, never will, but it kept her sane, do you understand? Writing to me even when she knew I wouldn’t read them kept her sane, kept her happy, and that’s why she can concentrate on you, on the people who actually love her and the songs the two of them sing, because somewhere in her mind she can pretend I’m thinking of her!”

While the people around him back away, wary and cautious and wide-eyed, he adds, as a parting shot: “And now that you’ve abandoned her she can’t even pretend that because there’s nothing else for her to put her life into!”

Then he steers his cart away and goes on with his shopping until the police come to arrest him for battery.

(He gets off with only two days in jail because he was provoked, and because, argued his lawyer, he was already stressed by the past few days’ events.)

-

Her partner watches the YouTube video captured from the store’s security cameras of the incident, and tries to tell her what’s going on, what’s being said now, but she just won’t listen.

The phone has been ringing. Besides the press, the following have called: parents, relatives, significant other, close friends, manager.

Both sets of parents express their outrage and pity for her. Her partner tells all four of them that they are both doing fine, and no, she isn’t planning on getting married yet.

Apart from cousins (so close, more like siblings) and aunts and uncles who call to offer sympathy and well wishes, only one stands out: her great aunt, who says it’s her punishment for idolizing a mortal man as God. She gets hung up on.

The significant other expresses his worry for his beloved’s partner, and wants to know if he should come over as well; she tells him that it would be all right, she’d take care of her, and when all this is over and people leave her alone, she’ll come home to him, and they can be together, for as long as he likes.

All their close friends, who aren’t connected to him, and don’t know him in any way, say that they can nevertheless sympathise with him, and yet they say they hope she’ll get well soon. She wants to say, get well? what from? this is what she is, who she is, but they always say goodbye and hang up before she can say so.

All the friends that do know him in some way say that she is sick, crazy, touched in the head, and she wants to tell them you knew, you knew from the moment he told her to leave him alone like I did, you knew and I knew and none of us did a thing to stop her but they too say their goodbyes and put the phone down.

Their manager says, get on with it, get her over this, we were meant to start recording the new album two days ago, and she retorts that until this whole thing blows over there’s no way she’ll let her set one foot outdoors in the state she’s in, and besides, right now she won’t even touch her guitar, and when that happens you know something’s really bad, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, she has to watch her best friend trying to hold herself together, trying to ignore the fact that she’s falling apart.

Since the first day they met, she has known about him, and how much she feels for him. (She won’t call it love, because she doesn’t classify such obsession as love.) But they have been together as music partners for just under twenty years, and she hasn’t lifted a finger to stop her, to help her, even when she hears her talking at night to him, even when she sees the photos when she needs to borrow a pencil from her and goes through her bag. All she does is write songs about obsession, single-minded, destructive love, that will never be recorded with her, that no one will ever hear, because it would force her best friend to look in the mirror and see what she is, and then the beautiful music they do together would be all gone, wouldn’t it?

-

She wants to die. Maybe this is all a bad dream that will be over if she will just take a knife to her arms and let all the bad stuff flow out; maybe this nightmare will end for her if she can do something to show him she is sorry.

She wonders how he is handling this, but does not ask her partner.

Every night, after talking to him, she goes through her rosary (…seventh mark: your birthday near the end of winter, we kiss as snowflakes cover us. eighth bead: the sun hot on our skin as we run laughing through the park. ninth slash: tilting my head up to say goodbye at night, our last kiss.), and one night, she runs a finger over the smooth back of the locket, and adds a tenth part (you tell me to leave you alone, and I comply again because you ask that of me.).

A month after her heart is first thrown open to the world, she stands on the roof under a perfect night sky (sixth part of the rosary), and does a swan dive into her backyard swimming pool, and never comes up. (It’s not her life that flashes in front of her eyes as she goes but her rosary, and as she enters the water she smiles for the first time since it all began.)

She leaves a last letter to him on her pillow (…I’m sorry for living, for ever being born, I’m sorry I ever entered your world, my love, my God…).

-

She is entering kindergarten for the first time, and she is afraid. She is a shy child, and so she shies away from the other children- but she is also a lonely child, and so she tentatively tries to make peace with them. However, she is not like an ordinary child, and so eventually they do not accept her ridiculous attempts at friendship.

She wanders away at recess, and finds a keyboard to play with, in a small empty room. Eventually she finds the button to coax forth sound from the keys, and the corridors echo with a soft gentle melody that attracts a little boy.

When she looks to her left where someone has settled himself, she finds a bright smile and cheery face and a pleasant voice that says, “that was pretty. Do it again?”

She does not know the words to describe that feeling, but when she is older, she will think, that was the moment I fell in love.

This is a memory she will always have, no matter what happens: a memory of joy, of innocence, of love.