What We Used To Know

“Mum do you even know where we’re going?” I choked out, tears spilling endlessly from my eyes. I could hardly see, due to the clouds of moisture in my eyes. It was like everything was happening ten times faster than it should have. People were moving faster than normal, speeding about in this place where they already move along at top speed. And I felt like I was going at a snail’s pace, trying to keep up with everyone. I guess I just felt out of place when everyone around me was bustling around, trying to get somewhere, and I was still stuck standing there, wondering what in the Devil’s name had been going on in the past twenty-four hours.

“Yes, Addie, I know exactly where we’re going,” Mum hissed, grabbing my hand and yanking me along. I felt like she was just trying to make her escape as quickly as possible. I suppose that’s what was going to be best, anyways. The faster we’re out of here, the better, eh?

“Well, where are we going then?” I asked her in my sandpapery voice. She didn’t even seem to care that I was sobbing my way through the airport. I guess that maybe if she slowed down, she’d be doing the exact same thing as I was. Then we’d just be a mum and daughter who were too far out of their element at this point, trying to start a new life and whatnot.

“We’re going to the United States, Adelaide. A place called Illinois.”

“Illinois,” I repeated. I didn’t like the way it felt on my tongue. I didn’t like the way it sounded. It didn’t sound like home, I could say that.

Mum yanked on my hand again, wiping her face, probably a stray tear or two.

I hadn’t seen her cry yet, but I knew she had been doing so. We were at the station all night, and she didn’t even sleep. They had numerous questions for the both of us; I hated it. They kept asking me about Jordan, and about my dad. That only made things much, much worse. How did the officers expect me to answer questions about my now deceased father and brother? Did they really think that asking me endless questions about Jordan’s behavior, or how my dad treated him would really help? They acted like Jordan shooting my father, and then committing suicide by shooting himself was just another routine, and asking the right question would get them the right answers.

Mum ordered that they finish up as soon as possible so we could get out of there. We were stuck in that station for over twelve hours, trying to get things sorted out. And straight from there, we headed off to the airport.

They ruled mum out for any legal issues that may arise, saying that there was no evidence proving she did anything. She was the one who called the cops when Jordan came home first, anyways. Mum called them to file a complaint of domestic disturbances when Jordan had broken into the house, when she had happened to have come home early to meet up with dad. I didn’t even want to know at the time what my parents had wanted to do alone together.

But before that, Jordan showed up. He was causing trouble immediately, picking a fight with my father. Once I got home though from Oliver’s, that’s when it had gotten really bad. So bad, that it got to the point of taking both my father’s and brother’s life. Devastation was probably the best word to describe how I felt right now.

The gate our plane was going to be taking off from was in sight now. Hardly anyone else was there. I could only count maybe twenty people who would be boarding this flight from here. I hoped that this meant the flight would be relatively empty and quiet. The last thing I needed was some toddler kicking my seat the entire odd hours it took to arrive in the States. I hated planes. I hated traveling. I was always happy where I was - kind of - but now, getting completely uprooted into a different country was taking it just a hair too far this time. I didn’t want to go to America. I didn’t want to see what it was like there. I was happy in England, where I had lived my entire life.

I hated Jordan now more than ever for ruining everything I ever hoped to gain in my life. For in the span of a few single moments, he shattered every dream I ever hoped to fulfill.

It wasn’t even eight in the morning yet, but so many people seemed to be busy in the airport, rushing around trying to find their own gate. Me and mum were just two more people in the sea of travelers who were hoping that they’d make it on time to their flight, to wherever they were going. Everyone was going for a different reason, what was their reason? Had they a drug addicted brother also shot their father, causing their mother to decide instantly that they needed to now move to a new country in order to start fresh?

I doubted it. I could say with confidence that not many people in the airport were probably departing for the same reasons I was.

“Why are we going to Illinois?” I asked my mum as we were seated on the plane now. Her eyes were closed and her hands folded in her lap. She didn’t even acknowledge that I had even said a word before she opened her mouth. It looked like she could have been sleeping.

It looked like she could have been dead.

“We’re going there for something new, Addie. We need something new. Something new in order to… move on from… the old,” she said. It sounded like was hesitating while speaking her last sentence. It sounded like she wanted to say that we needed something new in order to forget about what had just happened, to forget about the things that would plague us for the rest of our lives. My mother would be emotionally scarred for the rest of her life now. Having her husband shot to death right in front of her, having his blood as well as her son’s blood caked on her while she screamed in sheer horror at the scene of it all. My mother was going to be a changed woman now, whether she liked it or not.

The only thing that scared me was that I was undoubtedly going to change now, too. I had experienced the same thing, only from another point of view. And it scared me like nothing else. I didn’t want to change. As much as I had been miserable in the past, things felt right now, like I might actually be happy in Sheffield. But it was all gone now. All of it.

“What is there for us?” I questioned again. I had endless questions for my mum. I didn’t want to unleash them all on her though; it would be unfair. The poor woman had already been through hours of questioning at the police station. How fair would it be to ask her more questions about what was going to happen to us?

“My family lives there, Adelaide.” She sounded short now, like she wanted me to shut up and stop interrogating her about the future. I wanted to stop, too, and keep my mouth shut. But I felt like I couldn’t sit in peace on this flight if I didn’t know the first thing about what was going to happen after we landed.

“We have family in the States?” This was news to me. I only thought that mum had one brother who lived about an hour away from us. The only family we had ever really known was dad’s siblings and parents. And we hardly knew them at all. The only times I had ever seen them were on the really important holidays, not even our birthdays.

“Yes, Addie. My sisters and mother live there. We’re going to be staying with them for a while, before we can find a place of our own.”

“But, but I thought you only had a brother, Dan?” Why was everything so foreign feeling to me lately? I felt like I had just been born yesterday, and taking in so much new information was making my head hurt.

“No. He’s just the only one I can actually be in the same room with for more than forty minutes.”

“We hardly even saw him to begin with,” I started, my words coming out slow as I tried to process everything. “How is staying with your sisters going to work?”

“We’re only staying with one of ‘em. We’re staying with my older sister, Abigail, until I can find us somewhere to stay. My other sisters, Joni and Debra, live close to her, but far enough away so that I won’t have to deal with all three of them at once.”

“What about your mum?”

“She’s in a nursing home, Addie. We won’t hardly see her.”

“Why… why haven’t you ever told us about them?” This was going to be a painful flight for my mother, as well as myself, if we didn’t get things figured out. Why had so much of my mum’s life been kept secret before? I thought both of her parents were dead from the way she never even mentioned them. That goes to show how often she talked about her sisters. I’d never even heard a word mumbled about them in my life, and now I was going to be living with one of them.

My mother exhaled deeply, cracking her eyes open and peeking at me before shutting them again and settling back into her seat. “Because, Adelaide, when I was seventeen, they all decided to move to the states. Abigail, Joni, and Debra all went with my mum and dad to New York. I stayed here, because I had fought so much with them, and hated them so much, that I wanted nothing to do with them. So I stayed. M’ brother Dan stayed, too. ’Course he was in the military, but he wouldn’t have wanted to go, anyways. They stopped talking to me once they moved. Last time I heard from any of ’em was Christmas Eve, four years ago. They wanted me to know that my father had passed away from cancer. And now, I have to put everything behind us in order for you an’ me to get a fresh start.”

She wiped another stray tear from her left eye, and I could tell that more would be coming soon. This was why she had never uttered a word about her family. They left to a new country for some sort of fresh start, and she rebelled and stayed behind. I had to admire her for her strength. Of course, my mother had always been a strong woman, I knew that, but now I knew why she was able to do so many things without really falling apart. I felt like for the first time in my life, I actually knew her.

I watched as she stood up from her seat and moved to the bathroom. She didn’t come back for at least ten minutes, and I assumed she was dealing with some hard feelings right now. I wanted to hug her, to comfort her and tell her that the past can be the past so long as we are able to move on from it.

I wondered how my aunts would take a liking to me. Had they even known I existed before this morning? I assumed mum let Abigail know that her daughter would be staying with her. Did they have kids? Did that mean I had cousins? Everything felt so new, just like this new country I was going to be calling home soon enough. I didn’t like the idea of completely leaving behind what I used to know in order to try and forget about all of it.

My mind drifted off into thoughts of what I would do, now that I really could be whoever I wanted this time around. I was going to try as hard as I could to be normal this time, and actually make a good start for myself, unlike all the other times I had decided to give up and fall into my loner habits.

That’s what Oliver would have wanted, right? He would have wanted me to be happy. I hated that I left without telling him goodbye; I never got the chance to. It had been less than twenty-four hours since two of the most important men in my life had died, and my mum and I were just walking away. I didn’t want to leave it like this. I wanted to tell Oliver that I would call him, or write him, or something. I wanted him to know that I was okay, and that I wouldn’t be okay without my best friend. I’d tell him I need him, and that maybe life without him would set me right back to where I had been before I had been at the start of the school year: miserable.

But I wasn’t going to call him, or write him, or anything else. If I was going to leave everything behind and try to move on, that would mean moving on from everything I had known in my previous life. This time around, I wasn’t going to make any references to my past that might indicate that I actually missed it. If I stopped talking or even thinking about it, it would just disappear. And that’s exactly what going to Illinois was about. It was about getting the past to disappear.

And I hated myself for every thought that had just passed through my mind, but I knew it would have to become the truth if I wanted to survive.

Here’s to surviving and forgetting about the past.

***

All of the kids in Illinois were on their summer holiday by the time we arrived. That meant no one was in school. I had no chances to make friends, because where Abigail lived seemed to consist of no humans under the age of thirty, except for myself now. If there had been any kids my age though, they certainly didn’t make themselves known. I hated that I was going to spend my entire summer alone.

There was no way for me to meet people. I didn’t know where everyone spent their time. I didn’t know anything about this new place, and I hated that. I hated the unknown.

It had been almost two and a half months since that plane had landed in the airport. Somehow, I remembered every detail of that morning and the night before perfectly. It was seared into my brain forever. I couldn’t forget it, even if I wanted to. Everyday was a reminder of what had happened, and why I was here. I tried to pass the time by writing. More and more ideas had flooded into my head since we arrived, and I was now letting them out.

It felt good to write about how I felt, instead of keeping it all bottled up inside like I always did. Only the piece of paper I scarred with ink would know my secrets.

Jordan was my main subject. It seemed my mind had a liking for writing about him. The endless lines that I had written about missing him and hoping that he could have lived long enough to turn his life around. I wrote about betrayal and how it felt to have everything ripped away from you because someone else decided they didn’t want to be alive anymore. It hurt so bad to write about how I felt, but I knew it was better than battling it out with myself in my head. Somehow just knowing that my thoughts were out of my head - even if they were only written down on a piece of paper - felt better than knowing I was holding it all in. This was me, letting go of what I used to know.

I didn’t write about home. It was the only rule I had: no mentioning anything that had happened before I landed in Illinois, except the ideas that went along with writing about the way I felt about Jordan. The rule made it feel like I literally had no past, and that me and mum had just appeared out of nowhere. Almost like we were plopped down onto earth from space for no apparent reason, our only instinct being to survive. And if surviving meant never mentioning the memories I used to hold so close, but now had to relinquish in order to continue living, then I would do it.

I had forced myself to forget anything I had ever learned, heard, seen, or experienced. As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t even remember the last person I had considered a friend, really. I couldn’t remember the last person I had had fun with, or laughed with, or been comforted by.

Simply because it had never happened. And that was the end of it.