The Missing Piece
by Miranda K, Year 8
The river waits for me like an old secret, shimmering softly reflecting the sky with a kind of quiet kind of arrogance. Its surface is smooth, deeply calming the way a held breath is calm. It’s clear and dark water makes me feel unsteady, almost as if it’s hiding something in plain sight.
Riven Hale steps out from the trees moving with that strange shadow soft grace of his. He seems like someone shaped by storms and silence. His eyes seem older that the sky and his hair fall’s down into his face as if he is hiding from the world. The crescent scares that curves across his ribs makes me wonder. I know everything about him, yet he still seems so mysteries like there is some deeper question that I still haven’t solved Someone who sees too much and says too little.
“You came” he said voice low almost reluctant
“You asked” I replied although we both knew wouldn’t have come anyway. Something about him pulls me not romantically, not dramatically but gravitationally as if his eyes were streetlights guiding the way home.
People think I shine because I’m popular but really its because my HSAM (Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory) traps every memory in unforgettable detail.
I remember everything,
Except why this river feels like a bruise
The thought rattles me. My memory is flawless, relentless like a library with every book yet here a page is torn out. Something important. I try my hardest to resurface every time I’m here yet every time, I leave heart broken.
Our reflections ripple together two silhouettes stitched together by the trembling surface. My blonde hair catching sunlight and shines to bright like a warning flare, and in that body of water the memory slams into place.
The problem wasn’t the river it was us.
I can see the storm-lit afternoon argument crackling between us like lightning. Riven accusing me of knowing too much, remembering too much, seeing too much. Me accusing him of hiding behind silence of letting the river swallow pieces of himself he refuses to face. Words sharp as broken glass. His eyes grey and furious, ones I have never seen before. My voice too loud, too certain, too stern like I was becoming someone else, someone I have never seen myself become.
Then the slip.
The splash
The scream swallowed by water
He didn’t fall I pushed him. A hard and brutal push. The current to strong, taking him down the river rapidly, the dark sky makes him invisible. Disappearing into the darkness, I break down, a tight burn swelling between my lashes until it spills over, how could I.
For a heartbeat I don’t breathe
For a heartbeat I’m six-teen, and twelve and ageless all at one
I hesitate to whisper “Riven I remember”
His shadow stiffens beside mine.
“The river the storm the … the push” I say voice trembling
The river wasn’t bruised it was us, me, the guilt I buried so deep even my perfect memory couldn’t bear to hold it. Mabey I’m the one that is afraid to face pieces of myself, maybe it’s all my fault.
“I’m sorry” my voice clear, and shy
Riven stays quiet
And in that moment, I realised something I should have known all along, something I should always remember. Memory isn’t a wound or a weapon. It’s a bridge, A way forward. A way back. And maybe the only way we can heal is by stepping off the bank, not into the river, but into the guilt we have been drowning in all this time. Instead of letting the current drag us under, deeper, from the truth.