Rewriting History.

If you try hard enough you can convince yourself of anything. If you know something and you want it erased from your mind, all you have to do is think. Think up new knowledge or even no knowledge at all. You can only know as much as you want to.

I was awoken at whatever O’ clock. The light seeping into my bedroom through my blinds told me it was morning. The ringing hands-free phone sitting on my bedside desk told me to sit up and answer. These two orders were the sweetest things of the day. Freedom of mind before it was quickly drowned by the world. Stuck on thoughts of the night preceding.

The voice on the other side of the phone said hello, then asked me where I’d been. It was Salinger. My Professional Writing and Editing teacher.

“Um…” I hadn’t been to class since Monday. It was Friday now. “I had to go away for a few days.”

“Had to?” He asked, then “Where?” he followed.

I was tired and weird and it was at this moment that my mind flooded. I was silent in the water. And he interjected.

“It doesn’t matter. The reason I called is to see whether you had thought about what I said on Monday.”

Monday. Monday felt like a year ago. Monday felt like a world away. He’d told me of my potential. He’d told me that if I didn’t apply myself I’d fail at everything I did. Yeah, I’d thought about it. I’d started a novel because of it.

“Mr. Salinger,” I said, “since speaking to you on Monday, I’ve been writing non-stop.” A lie, but not a complete untruth. There was a pause before he spoke.

“Excellent.” He seemed pleased. “Then you’ll have something to show me at class this morning.”

Class this morning? SEE: On my mind, last thing.

“Yeah…” I started and stopped. Fuck. FUCK! All my pages at the beach house. All that writing gone, lost, evaporated like footprints on the sand, a memory that may never have happened. “Oh wait, shit. I actually don’t have any pages with me.” I said honestly, despondently.

And silence. Maybe I heard a sigh. Maybe I just thought I did.

Finally, “I’ll see you in class Owen.” He sound disappointed which hurt a little. He was a nice enough guy and I didn’t like to disappoint him, but by the same token I didn’t really care. So the phone call was ended and in the strange light-dark glow of my room I felt I could stay forever. Still, knowing that I’d have to be off and at class soon, the responsibility of upping out of bed weighed on me. I closed my eyes.

On the count of three you must get up and open your blinds.

One.
Two.
Three.

And then there was light. Engulfing, yellow, ugly light. Sometimes all you want is to stay in the shadows. Now with early sun shining in on me I was given a shot of adrenaline. Awakeness, I thought. My brain was instantly thrust into turmoil with the invading thoughts fighting a one-sided battle. The night preceding was locked in my scope, playing over in a stream of guilt and pain and anger. I cursed myself for the frame of mind that led me to where Steven was. For the irrationality that had caused me to stalk him. For the instinct that forced the blade into his skin and the blood from his veins. Overthinking all my overthoughts.

Why the fuck couldn’t I have just stayed with Katya? What was so wrong in my head that I had to go and hurt somebody to correct it?

Freeze. Rewind. Stop. Katya. And through all these overthoughts I’d overlooked Katya. The effect all this may have on her. The fact that when I left she was alone with her injured father. The fact that she would have to talk to the police and lie about it all. Just being through all that she’s been through would be enough to make most an emotional wreck. How could she possibly cope with that on top of it? And then another thought. She’s probably already been through all of it. What time it was now was at least a few hours since the cops had arrived at the house. Maybe they’d already interviewed her and everything was over. In my hand was still the phone, so I pressed it on and dialed her number.

My ear to the receiver, waiting, dial tone, nothing. She wasn’t home. She was still at the house, perhaps. With the police, possibly. In jail, I thought. They’d interviewed her and found that she’d cold-heartedly stabbed her father in a vengeful attack. They’d refused to let her have even a phone call. They’d just locked her up and thrown away the key. Her victim was a rich doctor who helped children. They don’t look too kindly on things like that. And it was all my fault. And with thoughts of dread expanding, my brain absorbing them all, I had a shower, got dressed and went out to my class. I was practically there when it occurred to me that I’d spent the night at home after my father had kicked me out. Lucky he wasn’t there when I was, I thought.

I arrived to class punctually for the first time in ages, it seemed. In there I got a few hello’s from people I should have known but didn’t. More blank faces in the vast sea of strangers. Salinger came to me with this genuinely excited look on his face.

“Owen,” he said “I’m glad you’re here.” He was a nice guy as always. “Now, you said on the phone that you’d been writing but you didn’t have any pages with you.”

“Uh-huh.” My response.

“Is there any way you can get those pages over the weekend and have them for Monday’s reading session?” He had a look of hope in his eyes. Maybe he’d thought he was close to making a breakthrough with me. It pained me that my answer had to hurt him.

“Actually, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get those pages back.” The hope drained from his eyes. “See, I left them at a place where I can’t go back to…” My self-justification was brought to a hasty halt.

“Do you remember any of what you wrote?” He asked.

“Well, kinda. I don’t remember the exact words I used, but I know everything that happens in the story.” He grinned.

“Okay. Here’s what I’d like you to do.” He started as I noticed Sammi enter the class. She gave me a look of acknowledgment before sitting down at a desk and taking out her notebook and pen from her bag. “I want you to sit down and take not of every story-arc you can recall and when you’ve finished I’d like you to start rewriting what you had written until you are back to where you were when you lost the pages.”

I stood there as his words belted me. If there is anything I hate about writing, it is revision. Re-treading plains you’ve already crossed. One of the most senseless things, in my mind, was revisiting old news. When something loses its freshness, it loses its interest.

“But sir, this was a novel. I’d written like five chapters.”

“Then it is even more imperative that you do this before all of it is lost. Memories of the past can leave you in a second. Sometimes what you think you know isn’t what you once knew. History has a habit of rewriting itself with no one noticing, that is why it is important to get all you can remember down before it’s reduced to nothing.”

And his reasoning had no effect on me. Let history rewrite itself. Better than me dwelling on it. If my memory was going to skew itself and jade my past, I couldn’t stop it, nor did I want to. Nevertheless, I knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer so I just nodded and went away to pretend work, to appease him. I sat alone so that I wouldn’t be bothered. A little later I saw Sammi looking at me with a slight air of rejection. Probably because I hadn’t made an effort to sit near her. Why the fuck should I? The same girl that had me convinced Katya’d hung up on me and no longer wanted me around. The same girl who’d read a poem about me aloud in class. Fuck her, I thought.

I opened my notebook and wrote the heading “Owen and Katya” on a blank page. Pointlessly I set my mind back to when we first met. Here, at Uni. I wrote down “Met at Deakin Uni…” From there I continued. “Date at Uni bar…”, “Saw her sing…”, “Followed the moon…” and by the time I was interrupted by a ringing mobile phone I had gotten to “Had sex on the beach…”

When I looked up to find the source of the ringing interruption, all eyes in the room were already fixed on Sammi. She looked incredibly embarrassed. Sammi’s the kind of person that finds everything a big deal. Her embarrassment was a product of her insecurity was the reason she was a slut was why I tried to stay away from her nowadays.

“Sorry.” She said as she quickly switched her phone off. No one really cared, including Salinger who had already thrust himself back into the book he was reading. She went back to her writing, still eyeing around every now and then to make sure nobody was laughing at her.

For me, the memories, or rather the desire to revisit memories had dried up. Having sex with Katya was something that until now I’d had no real time to dwell over. We hadn’t even spoken a word about it afterward. It was like nothing had happened. I hated that. This got me to wondering, did she even remember it? It was a blur to me as it was, and we were both pretty wrecked. Maybe she didn’t remember it. Was that a good or bad thing? I wanted our first time to be something special, not an intoxicated spree of lust. If she didn’t remember, it showed that the moment meant nothing to her. Then again, maybe it gave us a reprieve. To act like it never happened and have our next time be special. If she didn’t remember, all I had to do was make myself forget. If you try hard enough you can convince yourself of anything. But, the thoughts appeared, what if she did remember? Why hadn’t she said anything? Maybe she regretted it. Overthoughts crowded my brain and as I thought of Katya, I couldn’t stop it all coming back to last night. I couldn’t stop wondering what had happened with the police. Thoughts of dire circumstances weighed me down and took me to the end of class.

As I left the room with haste to avoid any more words from Salinger, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Turning slightly, I saw Sammi’s face. Great.

“Where have you been, stranger?” She said as if I was her friend.

“Away.” I answered plainly. She got the hint that I didn’t want to speak but seemed not to care.

“Did you go away with Katya, by any chance?” Still her voice was playful and friendly. I continued walking as she went by my side.

“Why?” I answered with a question.

“Because she hasn’t been home all week and you haven’t been at class. I just put two and two together.“ She must have been so proud of her Maths. “Oh, shit.” My sarcastic mind was interrupted by her. “I have to return Katya’s call!”

I stopped dead. Soon, so did she.

“That was Katya that called you?” I asked.

“Yeah” Sammi answered.

“From home?”

“That’s the only number she has.” Sammi laughed lightly as I didn’t.

“Shit! Can I use your phone for a second?” I had to speak to her. Sammi handed me her mobile and I quickly dialed Katya’s number. Holding the thing against my ear, it was very clear to me why I hated mobile phones. So small and noisy, subtly invading our culture like parasites. I waited as Katya’s phone rang. And rang. And rang. And nothing. I gave up after a minute and handed the phone back to Sammi.

“Not there?” Sammi inquired.

“Nup.” I answered, trying to find what I should do next. Trying to register everything. If Katya had been home, she was free, right? I was about to ask Sammi before I realised that she must have known absolutely nothing about any of this. After some quick thinking, I decided the best thing for me to do was to go home and wait for her to call. I had to know what happened. With a partial wave to Sammi, I ran off and headed homeward.

As I entered my bed room I saw the note sitting on my unmade bed. In bold black writing: “PACK AND LEAVE”. Dad wanted me out of there as soon as possible. And for a moment I was blank. I had no idea what to do. Until I heard a knock on the front door. I went and answered it.

“Hey fuckface, where the hell have you been?” It was Damo. He walked right on by me as he continued talking. “I’ve been calling the house the last few days and your Dad kept saying he didn’t know where you were.”

“I went away.” I said as I closed the door and followed Damo into my room where he had already picked up and read the note.

“What the fuck is this?” He asked.

“Dad kicked me out.”

“What? Why?” Damo’s trademark incredulity reared its head again.

“Can’t be bothered talking about it.”

“Okay.” He said, then asked “So you got anywhere to stay?”

“Nope.”

There was a brief pause before he spoke again.

“Well, I’ll help you pack your shit and you can come stay at my joint if you want?”

I thought about it for a second before accepting his offer. Living with Damo. It would be weird, but it would sure as shit beat living on the streets, I thought. So we packed all the stuff I would need rather quickly. CD’s, clothes, posters and toiletries. Before we left for Damo’s house I tried calling Katya one more time. Still there was no answer. And as I left my father’s house for the last time ever, I realised that I was going where Katya couldn’t find me. I couldn’t stop wondering where the hell she was. Thoughts of dire circumstances reappearing.