Hippocampus

“Are you lost?” Gwen kicked her bare feet onto the dashboard, she was short enough to do so comfortably.

“No, I remember it being this way.” Terry turned on the high beams to light up the road in front of them. Trees and startled deer on either side of the road.

           “Pretty sure we’re late for the party.” Gwen picked up her phone and squinted as she was blinded by the screen. She turned down the brightness to get a good look at the time.

           “Not my fault Pete lives out in the boonies.”

           “I can still look up where he lives.” She held up her phone and shook it like a container of mints.

           “I got this, I remember- “

           “I remember it being this way, I know.” Gwen shook her head and slid her phone back into her college hoodie pocket. The sound of the engine running permeated the car. Gwen tried to mess around with the radio again, she rolled the scanner dial between her fingers. Static, static, static, static, country music. She promptly turned off the radio.

           “So, what part of the brain tells you how to get to Pete’s house?” Gwen turned her head towards the driver’s seat.

           “What?” Terry kept his eyes on the road.

           “What part of the brain are you using to remember the directions? Was it the cortex one?”

           “Oh,” Terry laughed. “No, it’s the hippocampus.”

           Gwen giggled when she heard the word. “That’s really what it’s called?”

           “What?” Terry couldn’t help but smile.

           “The ‘Hippo campus’?”

           “Well, you don’t pronounce it like that.” He finally turned towards her.

           “Like what?” She shifted, taking her legs off the dash and turning her body towards him.

           “You’re putting emphasis on the first part.”

           “You mean the hippo part?” Gwen snorted when she laughed, it cracked him up.

           “It’s one word, ‘hippocampus’. Like the fish horse.”

           “What?” Gwen sat up in astonishment. “What are you talking about?”

           “It’s like Greek mythology, you should know this stuff.” Terry smirked, splitting his attention between the poorly lit road and the girl in the passenger seat.

           “Was it ever painted by an Italian guy in the fifteen hundreds?”

           “I don’t know, probably not.” He really tried wracking his brain to think of any Italian painters at all, but he was struggling for some reason.

           “Then I wouldn’t know about it.” Gwen shook her head and she dug for her phone again. “Tell me more about the hippo-on-campus, brain guy.”

           “Hippocampus.”

           She didn’t look up from her phone.

           “The hippocampus is believed to be where our memories of specific events are kept, so like the last time we went to Disneyland.” Terry adjusted the wheel to move away from the mountainside wall they were driving by. His hands tightened around it.

           “Oh, is this the horsefish you were talking about?” Gwen held up her phone to Terry to an image search showing a roman statue of a horse with a fishtail. Terry’s eyes shifted very quickly to the image then back to the winding road.

           “Yeah.” He said,

           “You didn’t even look at it.”

           He turned his head very quickly again.

“I’m driving.” He responded.

She took her phone back and silently stared at it. The road seemed to get dark as they drove further into the mountains. Wild animals idled around the outskirts of the forests, making Terry tense up every time. There was a fork up ahead, one path continued on paved ground, the other on a dirt road. Trying to go off of memory, Terry pulled off onto the dirt road.

“Are you lost?” Gwen said, adjusting the black stocking around her ankles before sliding the shoe back over it.

“No, no I remember it being this way,” Terry said, turning on the high beams he thought were already on.

“It kind of looks like we're lost.” Gwen stared out the window at the barren desert outside.

“That’s how it’s always looked.”

“Is it?” She turned back towards him.

“Yeah.” He stayed focused on the road ahead.

“So, when was the last time you saw your mom?” Gwen struggled to get her phone out of the little bag she had brought.

“What?” Terry turned his head towards her. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Gwen manages to get her phone free and breaks eye contact with Terry to look at it.

“It’s…fine. It was last Christmas, I think.” He tried focusing on the road again.

“Last Christmas, I gave you my…” Gwen trailed off before apologizing again.

“She seemed fine then.”

“Why didn’t you come back to visit her?” She flipped her phone closed and slipped it back into her bag.

“I had to go back to school, I was already behind on a lot before the break.” Terry reached for the bottle of water in the cup holder, only to find it wasn’t there.

“What part of the brain would make you choose college over your sick mother?”

“The hippocampus, I thought I already told you.” Terry tried reaching around the general cupholder area but the water bottle wasn’t in the vicinity of where he thought he had left it.

“Maybe, what is it?” Gwen passed a water bottle into his hand.

“That part of the brain is responsible for self-control.” He tries twisting off the cap with one hand. “It’s how you choose what you should do over what you want to do.”

“And it chose school over your mom?” She leaned over and turned the cap for him.

“It’s a little more complicated than that.” He moved his face to meet his hand halfway and took a drink from the bottle.

“If you say so.” She leaned back into her seat and tried to fiddle with the radio. The needle moved from left to right. Static. Static. Static. Country. Gwen turned it off and closed her eyes.

“Are you going to sleep?” He put the bottle into the holder next to him.

“You ask that like we’re close, are we?” Gwen popped one eye open.

“I think so, maybe.” Terry focused on the road.

She looked around at the night-covered desert surrounding them and closed her eye. Terry drove in silence, passing by the occasional cacti and tumbleweed. He would peer off into the distance every now and again to avoid highway hypnosis. At one point he looked over to see a four-foot raven up ahead. The raven turned towards him and then took off into the night sky at an alarming speed.

Without looking away from the creature, Terry tapped Gwen on the shoulder. There wasn’t a response. He gave her a little push. Still no response.

“Psst, hey!” He spoke in a hushed yelling voice, like when he tried talking to someone from across the room at the library.

“What?” Gwen spoke with a groan.

“Look at that.” Terry pointed up towards the bird with the five-foot wingspan.

“Wow.” She tried pressing her face against the windshield. “It’s kind of creepy.”

“How do you mean?” Terry flitted his eyes between the bird and the desert road.

“I don’t know. I feel like it knows something we don’t.” She followed it closely with her eyes.

“Didn’t Vincent Van Gogh do a painting with those kinds of birds?”

“Did he?” Gwen spoke to him without ever turning towards him.

“Well, you should know, shouldn’t you?” He was having trouble keeping the bird in sight.

“Why should I?” Gwen laughed.

“Aren’t you the art history lady?” Terry adjusted his seat and tried to lean forward but the bird was still obscured.

“I don’t think I am. Am I?” She finally turned to address him.

“I thought you were.”

Gwen shrugged her shoulders and dug through her bag. She rolled down the window slightly and lit up a cigarette with the car lighter. She brought it to her mouth slowly and she leaned back into the car seat. Turning her chin vaguely towards the window, she let out a puff of smoke.

“Since when did you smoke?” Terry rolled down his own window and leaned his head to breathe out of it.

“I’ve always smoked.” Gwen tipped her eyes towards him, bringing the cigarette back to her lips. The end glowed bright orange, illuminating the side of her face.

“I don’t remember that.”

“Does it bother you?” Keeping her eyes on the driver, she leaned back towards her window and released the smoke into the desert.

“My mother smoked,” Terry said.

“Is that what killed her?” The cigarette was dumped out the side.

“Maybe.”

“You don’t know?” Gwen rolled up her window, keeping her eyes on him.

“It’s hard to tell.”

Gwen leaned forward in her seat to look at the raven again. The bird flew ahead, far past the car. Lit only by the moonlight, the bird became lost behind a rock formation up ahead. Signs on the road warned of a tunnel further on. Terry reached out and held Gwen’s hand. It was soft and warm and she gripped his hand very gently. He turned towards her as the tunnel approached and wanted to say something to her but couldn’t find the right words.

The car traveled through the tunnel and the sound of the engine echoed throughout the chamber. The sound became rhythmic and soothing, washing over everything like a wave. A salty scent filled the air and married with the diesel to create a unique and not entirely unpleasant smell. The end of the tunnel came quicker than expected and the car passed through with ease. As the sea breeze entered through the open window, Terry felt as if he’d forgotten something.

He turned towards the empty passenger seat, wondering. Outside the window were the moon and the stars reflected on the ocean waters. It was so vast and so dark, that he couldn’t begin to comprehend it. Thirsty, he reached for his bottle of water in the cupholder, but it wasn’t there. He reached around where he thought he had left it to no avail.

Terry noticed that he didn’t recognize this road at all. He didn’t know where it was going, he wasn’t sure where it would end. He didn’t know where he was going, for that matter. It seemed like driving on was all he could really do. He looked down at his legs and saw the ground beneath him. It wasn’t moving, he wasn’t moving anymore.

“Are you lost?” A voice calls out next to him. It belongs to a young lady with a sweet voice and a patient demeanor. She wears a nametag that says ‘Gwen’ and he wants to tell her something about that but he can’t find the words. He wants to go somewhere, rather, he needs to go somewhere. Something is gone but he can’t recall what it was.

“Dr. Grey, are you lost?” She repeats, sweetly.

“No. I-“ He trails off, leaning back into the wheelchair. “remember it being this way.”