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MELODY
The Titans sweatshirt draped over the chair in the corner of the room has taunted me for two days. We flew back from NYC on Monday night. With the conference over, and all hope of my old stomping grounds triggering a memory gone, there was nothing else to do.
I have a borrowed laptop, a hand-me-down from Natalie, and a cell phone that I can never remember to charge.
But one thing I have held on to is Jacob Rhodes. I just haven’t worked up the nerve to do an internet search for his name, because I’m afraid of what I might find.
My head aches, the pressure building behind my left eye. I finally open the laptop and type his name into the search bar. Quickly, before I can lose my nerve, I hitenter.
Dozens of search results pop up immediately.
No, hundreds.
His face is front and center, a row of pictures of him in action on the ice, his headshot, him in a suit at a press conference. I lean in and examine him closer, without fear of him staring back at me.
I wait for the slightest tingle of some familiarity.
He knows me and I don’t know how. I’ve got that desperate fluttering in my chest dragging me forward. Ineedto know what he does.
It’s why I end up clicking on the Colorado Titans schedule, my eyes going wide when today’s date jumps out at me.
They have a home game tonight. But not just any home.Denver. It’s why Thomas is a fan, I guess. Natalie grew up just outside the city. They met in a grocery store, of all places, and fell in love. I was fed that story in bite-sized pieces over dinner one night, like I might not comprehend it.
I mean, maybe I don’t. The idea of love is as foreign as my name was at first. There was no settling in my bones that assured me I could recognize it if I felt it or heard it.
No, the word, the concept—it’s all cold.
My whole life seems to be on ice. Did I have life goals? Did I have… ideas? Hopes and dreams? Thomas doesn’t have answers.
But maybe Jacob Rhodes will.
I get changed in a hurry, slipping my feet into my shoes and heading for the door. My room is a converted office on the first floor, and I call out to Natalie and Thomas that I’m going out for a little while.
Neither stop me, although Thomas looks at me weirdly, and Natalie asks that I call her if I forget their address. Like she didn’t program the house into my maps and their contact information as soon as I arrived.
I close the door gently behind me and head toward the train station.
The road to get a new driver’s license has been painfully slow. We’re waiting on my birth certificate to come in, and a new social security card. New York issued me a temporary state ID, since that’s where my last known residence was.
The state ID apparently isn’t enough to unlock my bank accounts, however.
The sooner I do that, the sooner I can start to move on. And moveout.
Thomas and Natalie will eventually ask me to find my own apartment. I’ve been looking already, the weight of being a burden heavy in the back of my mind. But with an apartment, and rent, must come a job. Some sort of income.
Another mystery.
I can barely work the hand-me-down laptop Natalie gave me, and I don’t know what I was doing for work pre-accident. Or, incident. Since I don’t think whoever did this to me did itaccidentally.
Once I’m on the train, I insert my earbuds and choose the next music station on my list. It’s some sort of loud, semi-screaming music that hurts my eardrums no matter how low I turn the volume.
So… not a fan of whatever the hell this is.
Maybe it’s just the song.
I keep it on and wince through the next six songs. I get off the train and walk up the steps near the arena, and I cross out that station from the list on my phone. Not a winner. So far, I’ve enjoyed the country station, the pop punk one, and some of the Top 40 music. The last one is a hit or miss.
Anyway.
