Annabelle

Annabelle.

The name catches in the corner of my conscious and jerks me to attention. I scan my surroundings, searching for the source of the simple word; the voice that brought it to life. The mother stands several feet in front of me, her hand clasped around her daughter’s arm, pulling her away from a colorful display of candy bars. Her long pink fingernails dig into the child’s flesh leaving tiny marks resembling a shark bite.

Don’t touch that, she says. She glances in my direction and then pulls her child into a different aisle. I wonder what a small girl like that is doing out so late at night. Surely most eight-year-olds are in bed by now. The tired sting behind my eyes tells me that it is well past midnight.

I nudge my empty cart down the aisle, past boxes and bags and bright stickers advertising big savings. I don’t need the cart. Don’t need anything in this store. Don’t really know why I’m here. Perhaps for nostalgia’s sake. You used to drag me out to the store once a week, and you would never go before ten. Said there were less crowds at that hour. I told you I was being deprived of sleep. You slapped my arm. You didn’t know how hard sleep was for me back then.

The shapes in front of me begin to register and I wonder how I have managed to wander into the cereal aisle. Perhaps driven by hunger. But I am not hungry. And you made me stop eating cereal a long time ago. Too much sugar, you said. It’s bad for you. You were always telling me to stop doing things.

I keep moving forward because it is the only thing I know how to do. Put one foot in front of the other until I reach my destination, even if I don’t yet know what that is.

But I remember now. I came here to get you a gift. Tomorrow is your anniversary. One year ago you married Freddy, ran off to South Africa, and left me in LA.

I lift my gaze toward the blinding overhead lights and blink against the stabbing brightness, searching the signs swinging from the ends of the aisles for what I need. I start toward the office supplies department. It was always your favorite place in this store. I know just what I will get you.

I will not get Freddy anything. He already has the one thing I value most in life: you. But I cannot blame you for this. It would have happened eventually, with or without him. Our lives were not meant to be spent side by side forever. But I’ve never been able to keep a friend as long as I’d kept you. Just last year, we were all we had. I will never forget those memories. We never went to parties, or dances, or joined sororities. We holed up in our dorm room all year; you wrote stories for every publication imaginable, and I worked on my novel. When you got the scholarship for the semester abroad and I didn’t, you went without me. Which was logical. I’m glad you did. Now you are a journalist in Cape Town, and I am a waitress in LA.

My feet move across the scarred linoleum tiles with purpose now. The back left wheel of my cart squeaks loudly. A few people glance up. I do not look at them. I focus on the red office supplies sign in front of me; a guiding beacon to my wandering body.

Then I see them. If you were here, I never would have spotted them. You would have told a funny joke, or pointed out something else; anything to distract me. But you are not here. Haven’t been here for a long time. So I take a tiny box from the rack and toss it into my cart.

You were always trying to get me to quit smoking. Hated the smell of it in our dorm.

It’s not good for you, you said.

I don’t care.

You will when you get lung cancer.

I might be dead before that happens.

You might not.

I don’t care.

But after you left, I did care. I thought if I could clean up and make something of myself, you would come back for me. I was stupid. Am stupid. But stupid got me clean for eight months. That ends tonight. I want to feel the harsh cloud in my lungs again. Want to breathe away your memory with the hot tendrils of bitter fire.

I take my time going down each aisle, trying to examine each pen and notebook with the enthusiasm you used to. You used to see the potential in everything. Maybe that’s why you were my friend. You saw the potential in me, and when nothing came from it, you bailed.

I take notice of a small leather journal on one of the bottom racks and reach down to touch it’s smooth surface. Clutch it, turning the dark glossy book over and over in my hands, fingering the heavy pages and giving the pen loop a good stretch. I think I start to see what you might have seen.

I drop it in the cart. You will have it filled in less than a month. Probably a dozen stories will be born in it’s ivory pages. And then it will be forgotten. Just like I was forgotten.

I decide I need a card next. It would be the polite thing to send, despite the fact that I will always view this anniversary as the day you left me, forgot me, and not the day you got married. To the photographer who stole your heart. Who made your stories come to life with images, flew away with you to Cape Town, gave you something more than friendship. More than I ever could.

It is the anniversary of when I lost my friend. I’m not sure what I hope to gain by sending you a journal and card. Perhaps it is a last desperate plea that you remember me. Tell your children about me one day. About our friendship, however brief, however imperfect.

Perhaps I hope that it will cause you to remember me. To reach out after nearly a year of silence that has stretched between us, pushing us further from each other than physical distance ever could. But I don’t need you anymore, and you don’t need me. We used to, though.

There is no shortage of anniversary cards to choose from. I reach for one with two animated pears on the front, smiles like they’ve just won the lottery, mustache and bow identifying the genders. You’re the perfect pear, it says. It’s perfect for Freddy. You would hate it. You never bought into that kind of cheesy, over-the-top clichè. I return the card to it’s slot.

I settle for a plain white card with a swirl of pink hearts across the front and an all too cheerful Happy Anniversary! I toss it into the cart.

It’s one thirty in the morning. I drag myself to the front of the store, eyes stinging harder now from lack of sleep. I blink rapidly to stay awake.

An unenthusiastic cashier with dark circles under his eyes is ringing up the mother with the pink nails. Her small daughter watches me; the girl who shares your name. I wonder if she will turn out anything like you. Like my Annabelle.

I stare at her. She stares at me.

What do you want? I want to ask. To scream. As if she’s read my mind she points a confident finger at my near empty cart. Those are not good for you, you know, she says. I follow the line of her finger to the box of cigarettes.

I know.

Why are you buying them?

The little girl’s mother is finished paying now and she shushes her daughter, pulling her away from me. She shoots me the same judgmental glance you used to give me all the time when you caught me smoking. They leave the store.

I buy the card and journal. I don’t buy the cigarettes.