Be Kind, Rewind

Smoke thickens and curls on Lilah’s tongue as she shoulders through the crowd of teenagers, their laughter clinging to her like the nauseating scent of ash. She upturns a red solo cup, desperate to drown the night. Her name bounces around her, but she ignores it, tossing the cup aside and fishing keys from her pocket with shaking hands.

A hand closes around her elbow and jerks her backward, tearing at the knitting of her cardigan. Lilah spins to face the furrowed brow of her best friend, hair falling in chestnut waves around her face. Lilah scowls.

“What happened?” Brooklyn asks.

“It’s over. Whatever,” Lilah snaps, yanking her arm free and crossing it over her chest. She looks toward the bonfire, the shadows of her classmates flickering long in the firelight. “Apparently I’m apathetic.”

Brooklyn stiffens, then quickly rearranges her face, but it’s too late. Three years of never-ending text chains and midnight confessions have washed away the girl’s ability to hide behind pretense.

“You agree with him.”

“He cares about you, Lilah. I do, too. I know losing Emily was devastating, but she wouldn’t want you to give up—”

“Leave my sister out of this.” Lilah stumbles backward and catches herself on a tree, bark scraping against her hand. Headlights illuminate the forest preserve as the sound of whooping fills the air, and she steps toward the figures crowded around the blacktop parking lot. Brooklyn swipes at Lilah’s elbow again. Lilah manages to tug herself loose but catches her sandal on a root and hits the ground hard.

“Christ, how much have you had to drink?” Brooklyn asks.

Lilah glares up at her, all her fury poised like an arrow. Leave it to Brooklyn and her judgmental stare to demonize Lilah for wanting one night of escape. What does she know about pain anyway? About watching the window day-in-day-out, like staring long enough could bring her sister back. Lilah won’t tolerate being shamed for the blurring in her vision, the only thing that loosens the cage.

She shuffles to her feet, double-clicking her keys to illuminate her Honda at the back of the lot. Brooklyn lunges forward, but Lilah anticipates the motion, an all-too familiar dance. It ends the way it always does, Lilah pulling open the driver’s side and Brooklyn clawing at her closed fist.

“Give me the keys,” Brooklyn growls. Lilah shoves her backward, and they both topple to the ground, Brooklyn hitting the dirt, Lilah rebounding off the open door, head smacking hard on metal. The world spins, darkness shutting down her senses. They return one by one, sound flickering around her like a badly tuned radio.

“Liam was right. You don’t care.” Lilah finds Brooklyn’s face in the darkness, contorted with emotion, the words distant, as though shouted through a tunnel. “You don’t care that you’re doing the same thing Emily did. So go ahead, I won’t try to stop you. I can’t care anymore.” Brooklyn collapses over her knees, rocking with sobs.

Lilah moves on autopilot, still staring at her best friend as she crawls into the car and starts the engine.

***

Red bleeds through Lilah’s closed lids, painfully bright and painting the world as she blinks them open. She’s slumped against the steering wheel, head tilted toward the passenger’s side, door hanging ajar. Lilah raises her pounding head and frowns at the scene framed before her.

She crawls across the seats, drawn by the haze-like white mist blotting out the horizon line, the blue and gold sign blinking into view. Gone one moment, there the next.

“What—” Lilah begins, but the word comes out loud, obscene in this silent place. She tumbles out of the car and lands on her knees, brow furrowed at the building coming to life before her, each brick taking familiar shape until the staple of her childhood stands tall and proud, flashy and impossible to miss.

Blockbuster Video.

Laughter bubbles into her throat, turning to bile as it bites at her tongue. She stumbles to her feet, eyes locked on the building’s entrance. Each step feels like moving between worlds, tumbling back to the days when VHS was king.

The door dings as Lilah steps inside, breath catching in her throat. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Vibrant color swirls across the walls. The shelves are thick with titles Lilah cannot make out, the scent of plastic heavy in the air. She draws nearer, trailing a finger along the sharp edges of the cases.

The words pulse and shift, changing at whim. Lilah tugs a case loose and peers down at the cover, frowning. The scene is familiar. It takes her a minute to place it. When she does, the case falls from her hand, snapping open and sliding across the floor.

Lilah drops to her knees and pulls it back to her, heart pounding as she stares down into her mother’s silhouette hunched over a pot in the kitchen of their old house. There’s a girl tugging at her sleeve, that mane of curls cascading over her shoulders the same way it had when she tucked herself out of that window, the last day Lilah saw her.

“Em,” Lilah gasps, trailing her fingers along the image. She snaps her head upward and tugs another case loose, this one depicting the halls of her elementary school, a little girl with blonde pigtails sprinting toward the exit. Lilah grabs another, examining echo after echo as they unfold around her.

She doesn’t know she’s hunting for something until she finds it. That crystal beach, two girls curled around each other like puppies. The last good day. Lilah pulls the tape to her chest and holds it tight.

A crash emanates from the back of the store, and Lilah looks up. She creeps along the edge of the aisle, peering in the direction of the sound. A balding man stands behind a checkout desk, clicking away on an ancient computer as he peers down his nose at the stack of tapes beside him. Lilah steps into view, watching the man closely.

“Found the one, dear?” He calls out. Lilah squares her shoulders and takes a step forward, slamming the VHS on the counter.

“What is this?” She demands. The old man leans forward, exposing the nametag lining his royal blue polo. Al.

“Ah, one of last year’s New Releases,” Al says, holding a hand out to take the video. Lilah pulls it toward her, narrowing her eyes at him. “I’m not stalking you. I know you were thinking as much. Humans remain woefully and painfully predictable.”

“It’s a fair question,” Lilah snaps, eyes falling on the nearest case from his stack, a grainy image of a toddler bobbing on her father’s knee. “Given you’re profiting off my home movies.”

“They’re not movies. They’re memories.”

"Right," Lilah says, curling her lip.

“What’s the last thing you recall? Before you landed here,” Al asks, leaning on his elbows and watching her closely. The image of Brooklyn sobbing into her knees blooms in her mind. The fermented taste of beer on her tongue. The muted world as the car door slammed shut. Lilah twirls around toward the glass double doors, staring down the crumpled car parked at the curb. She looks back at Al and frowns.

“I’m not. I can’t be—” Lilah shakes her head, but pain does not sink deep in her chest the way it did when the police turned up on her doorstep, Em’s backpack slung over one arm. There’s something else in its place, something light. Another laugh bubbles in Lilah’s throat. She runs a hand through her hair and sags against the counter.

“You don’t seem torn up about it,” Al says, raising his eyebrows. But Lilah is staring at the case in her hands, knuckles white as the plastic crackles beneath her fingers.

“The only person who would have missed me isn’t around to see me gone.”

Al exhales through his nose and pulls one of the tapes in the stack loose, cracking the case open and tucking the VHS in the clunky television on the counter. Lilah stares transfixed as her third-grade teacher’s face blooms into view, glowing as she watches Lilah tackle her solo on stage. Ms. Woodlore coaxed her into it, Lilah shaking like a leaf the whole time, but the show opened the door for dozens to come. A new world at Lilah’s fingertips.

“Few understand the call of teaching, the way leading others to greatness fulfills something lost within us as well. At nine years old, you never could have known this moment meant the world to her,” Al says, pausing the video.

“That was eight years ago. Ms. Woodlore probably doesn’t even remember me,” Lilah says, a lump rising in her throat.

“What about Abby?” Al asks, propping open another case and swapping it with the current VHS. The name makes Lilah’s throat run dry. Abby, her favorite cousin, the one who had been akin to a sibling growing up. She knows what scene will play before it blooms to life. Lilah, standing on a table at a mall cafeteria, shaming the boy who made Abby’s life a living hell for five months. The video zooms in on Abby’s expression, vulnerable, open, full of gratitude.

“Abby is older now. She doesn’t need me to fight her battles.”

“She fights her own battles because you gave her the armor to do so,” Al says. “Look around, Lilah. Your impact is wider than you think.”

Lilah gazes at the cases littering the store, the beaming faces of people she’s loved and lost. Flashes of memory burst from all directions, but she shakes her head. The world will keep turning, and these lives will carry on with or without her. Al sighs heavily, then shuffles to his feet, his gait rickety and slow as he steps around the counter toward a curtained room at the back. He returns a moment later, carrying a video with a pitch-black cover.

Lilah holds her breath as the scene blooms to life, a crowd of familiar faces dressed in black. She looks toward Al, heart pounding in her chest, then at the screen again as it zooms in on a lanky figure lying across an open casket.

“Brooklyn,” Lilah’s mother whispers, pulling at the girl’s elbow, but Brooklyn does not budge, her body shaking with sobs, the movement achingly familiar.

“I could have stopped her—” Brooklyn’s muffled voice insists, and Lilah’s mother bows her head, shoulders shaking. The scene warps and shifts, reforming into a bedroom so familiar Lilah could conjure up the texture of the carpet at will. The scene zooms in on Brooklyn staring blankly at the ceiling. The signature sparkle in her eyes has dulled, life leaking out of her in a way Lilah knows all too well.

“Brooke?” A voice calls from the doorway, Brooklyn’s kid-sister peeking into the room with wide eyes. Brooklyn does not answer and the girl creeps closer, poking her sister lightly in the side. Once upon a time, the gesture would have elicited Brooklyn to sweep the girl into her arms, cover her in kisses, but now she just rolls away, muttering a dismissal. Lilah pauses the video.

“I don’t want to see any more. This is cruelty. This is—”

“This is life when someone you love goes away,” Al says gently.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Lilah snaps, the words thick in her throat.

“But you still think your people are better off without you?”

Lilah lets out a frustrated cry and sinks to her knees. This man, this stranger, could never understand. The ways Lilah checked out of the world, the warm embrace of non-feeling. She wanted this. She’s been chasing it since the day Emily’s toothy smile faded in the darkness like a cheshire cat. Lilah couldn’t live with the guilt of letting Emily slip away. Would it be the same for Brooklyn?

“Does it matter?” Lilah asks from the floor, staring down at her hands. “Whether or not they’re better off?” She looks up at Al’s wrinkled face, trying not to betray the hope in her chest. But his answering smile says he sees it all the same.

“You can’t change what’s gone,” Al says, finger hovering over the control buttons on the television. Lilah sags, pulling her knees to her chest. “But... you can always rewind.”

***

Lilah jolts forward, whirring heavy in her ears as she blinks her eyes open into darkness. The world spins on its axis, and she raises a hand to the back of her head, fingers trailing over the lump already beginning to form.

“I can’t care anymore,” A voice screams, the words breaking midway through as Brooklyn collapses over her knees. Lilah tumbles forward, ignoring the pulsing in her head and pawing at Brooklyn’s legs. The girl kicks outward, but Lilah dodges her defenses, wrapping her arms around her best friend’s shaking shoulders and pulling her to her chest.

“I’m so sorry,” Lilah whispers into her hair, the words catching in her throat. Brooklyn pulls back and looks up, cheeks wrecked and tear-streaked.

“I can’t lose you,” Brooklyn whispers. Her eyes are glistening, but the sparkle is still blessedly present beneath. Lilah nods, lip wobbling.

“You won’t,” she replies, and there’s an echo in the words, Emily’s last broken promise. Lilah pulls Brooklyn tighter and looks back toward the open car door. Something tumbles to the ground, thudding to a stop among the fallen leaves.

Lilah leans forward, hand hovering over the black VHS tape, heart thumping heavy in her chest. She looks at Brooklyn again, then kicks the tape out of view.