there's no remedy for memory

Sun, 28 Sep 2014 05:31:14 GMT

It's nice to see Anna return to Abby's work time and time again. So many seem to see it as a novelty and come only once, but there's something therapeutic about the combination of coffee and cake and cats, and she's glad to see her friend benefit from it.

She waves when Anna enters the café but has to wait until she's on her break to come on by, and when she does it's with two cupcakes in hand. She gets a pretty decent discount on snacks and things, and these are pretty irresistibly cute. "Hey," she smiles, pushing one of the plates across the table to Anna. "It's on me."

Juliet, Abby's favourite of the café's cats, comes on by and she lifts her carefully into her lap, stroking her ears between her fingers.

comments

Thu, 25 Sep 2014 03:21:25 GMT

As much as things might have changed, as much as she might have evolved, it's still hard for Abby to resist the pull of the beach on her way home from work, and she almost always stops by the boardwalk to glance at the horizon for a while.

It's hard to believe that they're trapped when from here, she feels so free.

The afternoon crowd starts to make its way out and Abby takes that as a sign that she should start to head on back. It's an old habit from back home, carefully avoiding the tourists that would flock to Montauk in the summer. It's a lot harder to think with children running around shrieking, though she'd never deny anyone their right to enjoy the beach.

She makes herself stop, though, and give into the smile that tugs at her mouth at the sight of Chris. "Hey," she greets. "Are you in the records book, yet?"

comments

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 11:56:36 GMT

It's still nice enough, if a little cool, on the boardwalk, an easy place to arrange to meet with Jason. She's seen him around but it feels like it's been a while since they've really caught up, even if there isn't all that much to catch up on – at least in Abby's life.

Most of her changes have been internal, carefully worked through with Alana. She's still working at Un Chat Gris without any real plan for the future, but that suits her just fine. It's not as if she expects to be going anywhere for a while.

It's kind of crazy to think that it's been over a year since she met Jason on the beach, since they road his bike out to the old, abandoned fairground and talked about their fathers of all things. Since she'd asked him why in the world he was being so nice to her without so much as wanting a kiss.

Maybe that's the biggest change. Not always questioning motives. She trusts that there are people who want to be around her, now, trusts that she deserves a place in her friend's lives. Even if it's hard, sometimes.

"Hey," Abby calls, hand lifting into a wave as she spots Jason approaching the boardwalk.

comments

Thu, 31 Jul 2014 09:45:36 GMT

It's almost a year since she arrived in Darrow and though there's little to show on the outside for it, Abby's starting to feel like things might actually be changing within her. In part, it's about finally having been honest with herself. With Alana, too. Maybe she'll never be fully over her sister's death, maybe it'll always ache in a way she can't quite explain, but actually acknowledging the events of the night that took her has to be a step in the right direction.

It just has to be.

She's still drawn to the beach but maybe it's a little less morbid than it was before. Maybe it's a little less about guilt and a little more about just wanting the familiarity of home. The parts of home she liked, at least. The saltwater and surf. It's been much more crowded than she'd like over the summer but she still heads over in the afternoon after a short shift at the cat café, leaning over the edge of the boardwalk and watching as the water ebbs and flows around the wooden columns keeping them from plunging into the sea. It's easy to lose herself this way, easy for minutes to pass without her ever realising so, and she's not sure how long it's been when she starts to head back to the apartment but finds herself spotting a familiar face instead.

She still hesitates a little, but it's less about fear and more about not wanting to lose Harley as a friend with her missteps. She has a history of fucking up, and this is one of those things she cannot. "Hey," she says, though. "Where're you headed?"

comments

Thu, 17 Jul 2014 12:40:01 GMT

By the time she makes it to Alana's, Abby feels like she's going to burst.

It isn't as if she's outwardly lied to her, anyway. She's told her the same half truths she's told every therapist along the way, every doctor, her parents, friends. The trouble is that Abby thinks she really might trust Alana – no, knows – and that she might have her best interest at heart. She doesn't have any parents to appease, after all. There's just her in the city, it's just her happiness at stake.

And as long as she's only telling half truths, she's just not sure how happy she can be. Try as she might, she can't convince herself that it was a dare that day. That it really had been about the dozen oysters, that Amy had been the only one who was supposed to go.

Maybe it's her birthday that's the final straw. She's eighteen and back home she'd probably just try to forget it, accept half-hearted happy birthdays from her parents and maybe let Bryce get her drunk while Christopher sulked somewhere in the shadows. Here, she's all the more aware of her distance from home, all the more aware of how far away she is from the last place her sister swallowed air before choking on saltwater. When they were younger, birthdays always led to fighting. They might have been twins, but they wanted different things. Right now, though, there's no one she'd rather have shared her eighteenth with.

All this thinking about Amy, about home, just makes her feel that much worse for keeping the truth from Alana and she can't handle it anymore. Still, there's still a nagging feeling that she should go, that this is only bothering Alana, after all. But she pushes through it, and raises her fist to knock on the door.

comments

running for your life won't get you so far

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 08:27:16 GMT

Sometimes Abby feels like Christopher is coming back.

And it's nothing like before, nothing like how it all began, because she knows he's fucking imaginary, because she knows that he's a coping mechanism for all of the love that she craved but never received and blah, blah, blah. But it still freaks her out, and she's torn between wanting him to stay and wanting him to go away forever because, well, company is company, right?

But she's supposed to be getting better and this is pretty much as far from better as she can possibly get. Well, while living. And though she's not thought about anything too dramatic for many years, she's still aware of the nature of her moods, ebbing and flowing, the way that sometimes she catches herself not thinking about Amy and she doesn't know how to react. Whether to be delighted or devastated.

Right now, though, she's hardly wanting to dwell on it for too long, and knows if she does, Christopher's return is inevitable. Because, after all, she'll be craving reassurances, and he was the only one that ever got that right. Well, she was. Imaginary. Figment of her imagination. Right.

She's seen Jason around, of course, but feels like it's been long, too long, since they really sat down and spoke. Somehow, inexplicably, she's drawn to him and it's more than just typical teenage attraction (although, well, there's that, too.) It probably speaks for itself that he's the first person in Darrow she told about her sister. She could have so easily left that all behind and yet. She'd told him. And she'd trusted him. And still does.

And there's the typical teenage attraction thing, too.

Grabbing her phone, she scrolls through her minimal list of contacts and finds his name. Hesitating just a moment, she sends off a text, trying to remind herself that they're friends and even if he says no that's not on her, and all of the things that therapy taught her a million years ago but she'd never really accepted deep down. "Hey. Want to catch up?"

comments

baby, you can start again

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 08:28:35 GMT

Halfway to Alana's, Abby wondered what the hell she was doing.

Sure, the woman seemed perfectly trustworthy, but above all she was still a therapist, and they hadn't boded particularly well for Abby in the past. Not to mention, she'd want to know, and she'd want to know it all, and there were things that were hard enough to admit to oneself let alone others. No matter how fancy their certifications.

Still, she'd made the appointment and felt pretty much obliged. If it was completely terrible, she couldn't be forced to return. It wasn't court ordered, or anything, just a last ditch effort at stopping feeling so fucking sad, and confused, and guilty.

Knocking on the door, Abby inhaled sharply. She crossed her arms tightly against her chest and waited.

comments

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 05:06:27 GMT

It was nice, spotting a familiar face. They were increasingly more common in Darrow now that Abby had started to let her guard up, gotten a job, attended more events, but there was something special about encountering Don. She'd always sort of hoped she would again after showing him home on his very first day because he intrigued her. His success, mostly. His love of what he did. She still hadn't figured that out, and with the likes of Danny and Alana and Don in the city, it made her wish she had.

It was possible he didn't want to be bothered, but Abby figured it was worth a shot. Calling out from the slightly busy post-holiday crowd, she raised her arm to wave. "Hey, Don, right?"

comments

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 04:59:57 GMT

She hadn't been working there long at all (if it could even be called work, she spent the day playing with cats and occasionally had to deal with people) but Abby already felt like she was doing a pretty good job. And that much was strange. She had worked, suffered really, summers before at carnivals and they hadn't felt worth the pay. For her first months in Darrow, she'd relied on the payment of the city and essentially loitered. Tried to find her place.

And though she knew this sort of thing was temporary and probably anyone with a few brain cells strewn together could do it, she felt like she had a purpose. And that was nice.

After refilling the water bowls, Abby sanitised her hands and went to check out what kind of customers they were bringing in that day. It was funny, really, how universal the love of cats seemed to be. Young, old and in between flocked for a chance to play with felines without the responsibility of taking them home at the end of the day. That much she could appreciate.

comments

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 10:17:00 GMT

No matter how many times she told herself she wouldn't, Abby always ended up standing on the boardwalk for a while after exploring the city. It was probably morbid to be so obsessed with the same thing that had taken her sister, but even before Amy was gone she'd loved the ocean. It had been her fault, anyway, that her sister wasn't there anymore. Not the water's. Or so she told herself.

She'd bought a bunch of ingredients to make soup that day, primarily because living on takeout wasn't exactly cost effective and though she never really wanted for anything in Darrow, she figured it important to have something set aside. Also, she just really liked making soup and it had been so goddamn cold, it would serve that purpose, too.

Inhaling a deep breath of salt air, Abby didn't think to turn to look before she stepped back from the boardwalk's edge, bumping into a passerby in the process. "Shit, sorry," she said, sighing, grateful that the bags in her arms hadn't fallen like her encounter with Peeta a few months prior.

comments

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 06:03:48 GMT

It should probably have made Abby feel guilty, but there was something so cathartic about being away from Montauk, being in a place where nobody knew her name unless she offered it, nobody knew her past. She almost, sometimes, just barely allowed herself to forget she was half of a whole. Not that she ever really could, it sat on her shoulders too heavily for that, but she caught herself smiling more, not surrounded by so many reminders of what was and what would never be.

Until the envelope.

She hadn't thought to check her mail, yet, so used to receiving nothing back home except for occasional birthday cheques and junk mail. More recently there had been brochures from colleges in the area, clearly having picked her from some masterlist since she hadn't shown any interest in applying thus far. It had some appeal, though, the idea of getting away, maybe moving into the city, maybe even travelling out of state. But even when she considered it, she felt weighed down by guilt. Amy would never go to college.

In any case, the envelope was plain, white, inscribed with her name and sealed with a lone piece of tape. Pulling it out of the mailbox, she frowned as she felt its weight. It wasn't just a letter, or a card, it was... something else. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching before leaning against a wall and peeling back the adhesive.

In it lay, in a pool of cool silver chain, the necklace she'd been gifted for her eighth birthday. It was unmistakable. The pendant was simple enough yet encompassed so goddamn much, two hearts joined in a square frame. Amy had an identical one. It was undoubtedly the most expensive thing they'd owned, and for a while Abby had been mad that it was yet another thing that made them the same, until she, like her sister, gave in and wore it every day.

Abby had kept up the ritual until recently when she'd tossed it into a drawer after spotting a knot in the chain. She'd never forgotten it, really, just told herself she'd get around to fixing it until it became easier to tell herself she would instead of actually doing it. Her psychologist would have told her that it was symbolic of her wanting to ignore her sister's death. Abby would have told him to go fuck himself — she never was his biggest fan.

She thought for a moment that maybe it was Amy's, but that quickly faded away as she spotted the telltale knot and it made her grimace. The whole thing turned her stomach, as if just on the verge of moving towards happiness God, or whoever the fuck else, had thrown a spanner in the works. What nerve you'd had, Abby thought, trying to move on after almost ten years of hating yourself.

Whatever possessed her to reach into her pocket and pull out her cell phone, she wasn't sure, but it was Jason's number she found herself looking for, quickly sending a text to. You're not suddenly busy, are you?

comments