Page 28 of The Unraveling

I’m unsure what sight awaits me as we approach Daisy’s door. The space behind it is a black hole in my memory despite knowing I’ve spent hours in there with her.

With one arm curled around my waist to keep me steady, she opens her bedroom door. A shameful grimace crosses my face as my sight first lands on the pale purple and silver damask wallpaper and the white metal headboard of her unmade double bed.

Her room has an air of old familiarity, like it’s been years since I’ve glimpsed it instead of just yesterday. Stepping into it with her has a similar quality to the time I returned to my grandmother’s cottage. A decade had passed without a single visit after week-long trips each summer, but it was just as I recalled despite how it felt like standing in the memory of a place that had continued without me.

I’m ensnared by the image of the wooden lattice arch above my grandmother’s walkway, tangled by vines budding with flowers. Sunkissed, round stones made up the exterior of her cottage. The towering privacy bushes lining the sidewalk twittered and tweeted with tiny birds.

I’m rooted deep in the memory, breathing in the damp green and the aroma of berry tea served in hand-painted teacups—until Daisy tugs me from the thorny grip of my past. She nudges the door, and it begins to close on Dr. Watson’s annoyance concerning Victor’s insufficient equipment.

Victor’s exhausted voice carries upstairs. “We don’t all have access to Harvard labs⁠—”

The door clicks into place in the frame.

I sigh and scan her room. From the bed on the left wall, across the white fur rug—that I know once belonged to Dr. Smith despite being unable to recall why it’s in here now—to the bookshelves teeming with worn romance books, manga, and multiple editions of her favorite classics. I gasp at the bundles of black and white yarn on the ottoman below her TV, flushing hot with panic from a handful of disjointed memories.

A stack of glossy catalogs in the parlor with curled edges but knowing I ordered her gift from Victor’s phone.

Crossing my fingers that it would be delivered in the evening so I could beat her to the door.

Hiding the box beneath lacy skirts in my wardrobe.

A flash of the glittery purple wrapping paper as I unrolled it on the dining table while she was fast asleep.

Yet I can’t recall her birthday, when she opened it, how she reacted, or what she’s making now.

When is Daisy’s birthday?

How could I forget my best friend’s birthday?

“Do you remember giving the crochet kit to me?” she whispers, tugging me toward her bed.

My body moves with her despite how my gaze stays locked on the pile of yarn. The metal frame creaks as I climb onto her disheveled blanket and curl up on my side. Daisy crawls on after me and sits behind me.

I shake my head against the blanket, my throat jammed with emotions that have the backs of my eyes stinging.

“It was last week,” she says, and my tears come.

I lick the salty, coppery droplets off my lips and wipe away the rest with my sleeve.

Daisy’s soft hand strokes my hair, a quivering smile tugging at the corner of her lips as I glance back at her. “I’m not upset you’re struggling to remember.”

“I’m still sorry,” I choke out.

I search for meaning within the overlapping black and white threads of yarn. For a memory, because I can’t bear to ask her a question I should know the answer to.

Wet warmth teases the edge of my nostril as I beg for the memory to uncover itself, and Daisy snatches a fistful of tissues and tucks them into my hand. My lip trembles as I wipe my face clean.

“I’m making you a blanket,” Daisy says with such ease it’s as if she’s not upset she’s fading from my memory even as we sit together.

I sniff and wipe my eyes with the bloody tissues. “You should make yourself something, Daisy. You shouldn’t use your birthday present on me.”

Daisy’s teary laugh bubbles out of her. “You said the exact thing, word for word, when I first told you.”

A still memory like a Polaroid picture—perhaps it’s a memory of one—from her birthday flits past me with the simple fact that she wasn’t supposed to live this long. That I thought how wonderful it would be if she’d be eternally twenty-one like me. She sat at the dining room table with little candle flames flickering light against her rosy cheeks in the dim room.

What was my twenty-first birthday like? My heart’s a piston in my chest with the inability to even draw the month or day forward.

When is my birthday? Did I stop celebrating it when I turned into a vampire?