REMEMBER
Andrea didn’t waste time scanning the running, laughing, sticky-fingered children around her for any sign of the boy she had followed into The Frigid Place. He probably wouldn’t be waiting where she could easily find him. Not as long as the Sandman was working to keep them apart.
She bit her bottom lip, wincing as a pressure grew inside the cracks and holes of her heart and, along with it, a new thought: that maybe the answer of how to move forward lay in the dusty corner she had given up as her price of admission. She had thought it would be so great to let that memory go, and it had been great, at least for a little while. She had felt so much relief after she woke up in that hammock and the memory was gone. She had lost herself in entire worlds built of dream dust and had felt so free.
She wished she could go back to the moments when the forgetting had been a comfort, but the relief hadn’t been permanent. Too soon, she had felt the invisible hand inside her, skittering around, trying to find what she had lost.
In the end, her heart hadn’t really let her forget. She had woken up at home to a confusing mess filled with her mother’s tears, and boxes spilled on the lawn, and memories detached from their source. It was clear that trying to forget wasn’t the amazing solution she had once thought it would be.
Andrea put a hand to her chest and reminded herself to breathe through the pressure that surged inside her as she realized that maybe, to find out where her brother was, she had to put all the pieces back in place. And doing that would mean entering the memory she had chosen to give away.
If she wanted to find answers about Francis, she would have to un-forget.
Andrea found her way to a quiet lane of tents containing the memories children gave up to earn their tickets into the dream circus. Each and every one radiated wistfulness and longing, and surrounding them all floated crisp air, like the calm before the first fall of snow, bringing with it the scent of a bonfire burning somewhere far off in the distance.
Now she just had to find her tent. She passed by Fishing with Grandpa, Our Day in the Woods, and The Rainbow Sunset. It didn’t take Andrea long to find herself drawn to one particular tent, much as Root River had called to her at the very start. She walked forward, faster and faster, the pull as strong as a magnet until she stopped at the entrance to a tent called The Night You Left Us. Every bone inside her body knew this was exactly what she had come down this lane to find.
But as she stood in front of the memory and stared up at the blue and white stripes that contained what she had most wanted to leave behind, knowing what she had to do and actually doing it were two very different things.
The feather and the coin and the vial of sand in Andrea’s left pocket emanated a strange sort of heat, almost pushing her forward into the memory. A new voice hummed, soft but insistent inside her. It has to be him. It has to be him. It has to be him. The other voice was still there, too. It hissed at her in desperation: Your fault. Your fault. YOUR FAULT.
In Andrea’s right pocket, the parchment and the charcoal sat, heavy as stone, like they didn’t want her to move an inch. Like they expected her to fail. She was about to remember the full extent of her guilt, remember what had happened in the hours between going to bed that final night and waking up the following morning. But maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe it wasn’t too late. She could still draw a world where nothing bad had ever happened, and all her choices had been the right ones, and the Sandman, good or evil, could attach it to his umbrella and make it come true. It sounded so much easier than walking right into the worst moment of her life and reliving it by choice in the hopes that it might help her find someone who might not even be possible to find.
No.
Running away from everything wasn’t an option anymore.
A gust of wind picked up around Andrea, swirling her hair in crazy directions and bringing the bottom of the tents up to billow and wave.
Andrea pulled her hair back with her hands, glancing around, first left, then right. She thought she heard something shuffle behind her. But when she looked back, there was only an empty cotton candy cone rolling down the lane.
Andrea swallowed hard, then stepped inside the memory she had been so eager to give away.
She made the choice to remember.