- 30 -
August 2045
Hallee
Miles isn’t usually picky about the entry table, but this is our third reorganization this week. He’s avoiding eye contact, flipping two books back and forth as if he hasn’t done it twenty times already.
“The woman with the balloon hasn’t been here in a while,” I say, trying to distract him from whatever mental battle he’s fighting.
He’s always been kind to her, attentive to her needs and generous in listening to her stories. I can’t believe it took her absence for me to realize how connected they’ve always been, laughing over their shared love of stories. Isn’t that how it works, though? Absence gives you time to think about someone—to miss someone.
His silent fidgeting is deafening.
“She’s pretty hard to miss, but I haven’t seen her recently. Have you?”
My blood becomes liquid worry, pumping through my body. Why won’t he even look at me?
“I didn’t know how to tell you. After a couple weeks of her absence, I reached out to the elderly transportation service that brings her here. They informed me that she unexpectedly passed last week after a brief illness.”
“She what?” My voice breaks as the news slaps me in the face. My frown is the lasting handprint.
His tone was almost robotic—devoid of all emotion—but there in his eyes is a glimmer of devastation deeper than my own.
Reaching over, he rests his hand on mine. “I’m sorry, Hallee. I know you really enjoyed your time with her.”
“Unexpected illness, so she was—” A sob travels up my throat, releasing silently through cascading tears. “Alone. She was alone.”
As he nods, fear freezes my lungs. We’re all damned to the same fate. Regardless of how much I fight against it, oblivion will collect me too.
“She was so much braver than me,” I whisper over the ache in my chest.
Business owners belong to the government. How much of what he remembers is he willing to disclose? Grief and fear move me to press on the subject, and my dissatisfaction with The Gift radiates off of my every word.
“Did she come here every year, Miles?”
His weary eyes find mine, flaring before he admits, “She did.”
Miles, the man of many words, has settled for two? What kind of training has he endured to warrant such a bland response?
“Were you close with her?” I push.
“Hallee,” he sighs.
“Miles, were you close with her?”
“It’s very hard to be close to anyone when they forget you.”
The answer implies he wasn’t, but his watering eyes beg to differ. A slideshow shuffles in my mind, projecting memories of Dean and I. My heart cracks more and more as each one passes by.
Come on, Hal, his voice is the soundtrack, lifting me up to channel the bravery of the old woman, and my tears shamelessly flow as my eyes close.
“What is it like, Miles? To remember when no one else does?”
I need to hear his oblivious warning for my upcoming fate.
My disrespect of questioning the government is a stun gun, locking his empty stare onto me. Clearly no one has ever dared ask. The public has chosen acceptance over curiosity.
“She believed someone would remember her because of the balloon. Do you think it’s possible for the civilians to remember, Miles?”
Silence overrides my hope that the humanity of hearing his name would drive him to talk to me, and anger bubbles in my voice as I try again. “Come on, Miles. You’re a person, not their pawn.”
“It’s an incredibly lonely prison,” he whispers as a single tear falls from his face, crashing onto the book in his hands. The raw vulnerability of his fear-filled stare cracks the door for me to continue.
“Are you happy, Miles? This gift they have given us—do you really think it’s that?”
Holding my stare, he breathes out a strained, “No.”
No he isn’t happy, no he doesn’t think it’s a gift, or both?
I’d never have known the pain that the happiest person I know has carried alone, but the implication of my tone if I ask for clarification might startle him back into his armor, so I don’t.
“Someone should change that, don’t you think?”
Desperation seeps from the well in my eyes. Staring straight into their reflective pools, he offers me a single nod of bravery—of hope.
Maybe we’re all not as different as I’d assumed, civilians and government employees. We share the similarity of being forced into solitude by either forgetting or being forgotten. Taking three steps closer to him, and I replace the book he’s holding with my own hands.
Hope did not die with the old woman, and I’m not the only one she ignited it in. Allowing the unspoken words to settle, I gently squeeze his hands. The pressure is the final crack in the dam, and his shoulders shake as bone-deep sorrow breaks through.
“You’re okay, Miles. I’m with you,” I cry, pulling him into a hug.
“She—” A sob swallows his voice. “She was my mother.”
His exhale of grief circles us like a ring of smoke, filling and suffocating my lungs. Waterfall tears fall to the floor as I pull away and look into his eyes. He needs to see the determined strength behind my words.
“I’m so sorry for your loss. She was an irreplaceably beautiful flower in a world filled with dirt.”
“She was,” he responds, nodding once as his grip tightens.
“My friend.” I swallow down fear and breathe in her bravery. “I will remember her and her balloon. I promise.”
“Promise is a big word, Hallee,” he whispers, but I stomp down his doubt.
“I promise.”
As we hold each other until our tears subside, my heart pounds the promise into my bones.
His mother’s legacy will live on through me.
Miles
The first year was the hardest.
The adults had it better than the infants and children, who were separated from their parents and placed into group homes to be raised by government educators. They were only allowed one personal item. I was allowed whatever I could fit in their standard moving box. I’m not sure what happened to the rest of my belongings after they moved me into assigned housing. They were probably erased like the rest of me was.
I was the only member in my family whose job qualified them as a government official and was immediately trained on the “appropriate” way to conduct myself if I ran into people I have known—have loved.
It all amounted to one conclusion: act as if you don’t remember.
Under no circumstances is it acceptable to break character or insinuate that we’ve known someone in a past life. Should we fail to uphold our duty, the government will gladly . . . handle us. They didn’t have to explain what that meant—it’d be incredibly easy to make a problem disappear when there’s no one to notice the absence of their loved ones.
At first it was freeing that no one held onto an opinion about me from when I was still young. When growing pains hurt, ignorance made me rude, or mistakes made me bitter. There are hundreds of apologies I owe to others because, at the time, I didn’t know any better. I carried the shame of learning wisdom at the expense of others, hurting friends in the name of growing, until The Gift was given to us. The load had been lightened, and for a week I began to think that underneath all of my grief there could be a free life, filled with happiness.
I thought that until I saw her.
The bell to the store rang, followed by the click of her walker, and the familiar sound transported me back to the day she’d been given it. Dad tied a bundle of French Rose pink balloons to it, attempting to break the news as softly as possible. He thought introducing it as a present rather than a reminder of her declining health would help her cope with the change. After a lifetime together, he should’ve known that she was the one most in favor of such a thing.
To his surprise, she was ecstatic for the extra stability and expressed nothing but gratitude. It was one of the reasons I admired her—her uncanny ability to remind others that aging is a gift and should be celebrated as one.
As she hobbled along toward me, I had hope that memory was what led her to my store. The store she listened to me dream of for over twenty years. The store we spent a year trying to name.
Surely, I thought. Surely she remembers.
Then, her eyes met mine.
A yellow balloon was tied to her walker, floating along her path as she passed the entryway table. A friendly smile lifted her cheeks as she saw me, yet there was an emptiness behind her eyes. My mother looked at me without an ounce of recognition. I wish I had the luxury of forgetting her unmistakably soul-crushing blank stare, but it’s forever burned in my mind like her words from the opening day of Happy Bookday.
Be intentional with your customers. They will always buy books, but will choose to return here based on how you make them feel.
She would want nothing less than for me to continue on—to live a good life. So, regardless of the hollow hole in my chest, I promised myself that day that for her, I would not be swallowed by grief. For her, I would continue on and cherish whatever fleeting moment I could have with her as a customer in my store.
She always found her way back to me. For five years, I got to spend time with her as her favorite book salesman. In the end, it was never enough. I still wanted more—for her and for me. The feelings of unrest continued to grow, and do so even now.
“Are you happy?” Hallee asked.
No.
The answer resounded in my mind five times before my whisper slipped out. Five times for five years of faking it, but honesty won as the knowledge of my mother’s death urged me to courageously disobey my training.
I have nothing and no one to lose anymore.
Let them take me away.
“She was my mother.”
For everything she had been to me, it was the last thing I could give her. Acknowledging and sharing who she was by recognizing her favorite title— Mom.
As Hallee looked into my eyes and called me a friend, my heart shed away the shell of darkness that encapsulated it.
No one has called me that in five whole years.
“I will remember her and her balloon,” she promised.
“Promise is a big word, Hallee,” I reminded.
There was an eerily pointed edge to her words, paired with a ferocity in her eyes that caused the doubt in my mind to shudder as she repeated, “I promise.”
For the first time since that very first year, I had hope.
I believed her—and hold on tightly to that belief as the store bell’s ding pulls me back to reality. A little girl is skipping in, holding a yellow balloon. My mother must’ve sent her my way.
As a warm ghost of wind passes me, I almost swear I hear her whisper, I remember you now, my Son. You are not alone.