I light three white pillar candles that I found at the dollar store around a circle of salt. It’s a full moon and it just seems like the right time to perform a séance. According to Carren the candles are supposed to help attract the spirits and set the mood.

The salt is supposed to cleanse the area of negativity. Carren also said to use sage, but I think the salt will probably be enough. I turn the overhead light off and place a bowl of Evan’s favorite snack in the salt circle along with his hair. Trying to subtly figure out what he liked from Cadence was actually far easier than I thought it would be.

I sit cross-legged in front of the candles and pull out the pinkish crystal that was on my desk. I asked Cadence about it, and apparently, I collect rocks. There were a few other gemstones in a box in my bookshelf too, but the crystal must’ve been my favorite. Cadence said it was what started the collection.

It was a gift from Evan. So, that makes it even more perfect to use as a pendant since Carren said it’s best to use something that has sentimental value for a pendant. I’ve tied a cord to the top of it to make it easy to swing, now comes the tricky part. Hopefully I’ll do this right and Evan will finally talk to me.

I start with the self-meditation that Carren recommended, emptying my mind and stating my goals. Eyes still closed I focus on my breathing for a few minutes. And then I go through each muscle, tensing and slowly loosening them. When my entire body feels relaxed I start the invitation that Carren suggested using.

“Evan, I bring you offerings from life into death and invite you here. Please accept these gifts and commune with me. You are welcome here, Evan.”

When I open my eyes I’m not surprised to see Evan sitting on the other side of the salt circle.

I have a piece of paper with yes and no written on it in front of me and I fumble with the crystal as I hold it over the paper. There’s probably supposed to be more ceremony to this, but the book didn’t specify much about how to start asking questions. It just said that once you have a response from the spirit to begin your questions. Appearing seems like a good enough response to me.

“Evan, are you stuck here, do you have unfinished business?” I ask.

I hold the pendant over the paper, waiting to see if it’ll move. I think this is probably an obvious yes, but it’ll help break the ice while I think of other things to ask. I mentally kick myself for not writing a list down.

As if he hears me, he tilts his head to the side and smiles but he doesn’t speak, and the pendant doesn’t swing.

“Do you need my help with anything?” I ask. My heartbeat is the only sound in the room. My fingers start cramping and I realize I’m holding the cord so tight it’s left an indent in my palm. Still the pendant doesn’t move. Evan just stares at me as if I should already know the answer.

“Are you going to wake up soon?” I ask. It’s a long shot, but maybe he can answer this one.

“Can I help you?” I ask, quietly. No response. Just more staring.

There’s a scratching at the door and I practically drop the pendant.

Godzilla, I forgot he doesn’t like it when I leave the door all the way shut. He lets out a heartfelt awoooo and scratches again.

My nearly dropping the crystal must break this weird staring contest we have, because Evan gets up and simply disappears.

A little disheartened, I blow out the candles and get up to open the door for Godzilla who gives me tons of kisses and then makes himself comfy on my bed. He rolls around onto his back and gives me a mournful look until I give him belly scratches.

So, the séance didn’t work, I think, as I clean up the salt from the floor and start putting everything away. I guess on to my next plan. I just have to get Cadence to agree to it.

***

"No," Cadence says, an irritated look on his face. My next step toward figuring out how to help Evan is to figure out what happened.

And the first step towards that would be to find out why I was there in the first place. So, my bright idea is to go to the scene of the accident, maybe see if seeing the place where I lost my memories would bring them back.

It’s such a simple solution, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. Perhaps something in the area could jog my memory.

“Cadence, it’s a logical—”

“Absolutely not. You should be focusing on getting better, not-not traipsing about at the place that…” He trails off, perhaps at a lack of an adjective that is negative enough to describe how he feels about said place.

“That’s what I’m doing! I want to get better, I do, and I think that it might bring back some of my memories.” Cadence is shaking his head vehemently. He stares down into his cup of frozen yogurt.

He’s been stirring it since I asked him about stopping at the place where I had my accident, and it’s now a cup of melty goo with bits of mangled strawberries and blueberries. He pushes the cup away and gives me a look that can only be described as pouty. “I thought maybe we could stop by after we finish here.” I say.

“I doubt you’ll remember anything from there.”

He doesn’t say what he’s most likely thinking. He thinks I won’t be able to handle it, that if I remember anything, it’ll be the accident and that the trauma will stem any progress I’ve made, but he and I both know that I’ve made no progress.

While misguided, I can almost understand his reluctance, that he thinks he’s protecting me from myself, but if anything, the place won’t jog any memories anyway. And perhaps the old Lyric was so breakable, but I am not.

“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?” I reach across the Formica table and grab his hand. “Don’t you think I’d like to remember everything? I’m a walking blank canvas. I can barely tell Clef and Alto apart, I don’t know anything about you or Harp or Serenity and Reid, and that’s another thing, it feels so weird calling people that I can’t remember Mom and Dad that I haven’t been able to say it. I have to remind myself of my own name.”

I take a big breath of air, feeling a lot like a balloon about to deflate.

“All of you are strangers Cadence, we tried everything everyone else’s way, why don’t we try mine?” I ask.

Cadence sits back and blinks at me. I’ve said too much, I know. I wish I could snatch the words back, but they hang in the air between us, heavy and solemn.

“Never mind… why-why don’t we go see a movie or something?” I say, suddenly wanting to backtrack. “You said something about a movie with pirates, and if I remember correctly we love pirates, so let’s—”

“No.” Cadence says, his eyes are shiny, as if he’s about to cry. “No, you’re right. You sat through hours of us telling you who you are, you didn’t complain when we took you to practically every place you’d ever liked. I wasn’t thinking about… you really can’t tell Clef and Alto apart?” He asks

“Is that really relevant? They’re identical.” Cadence is laughing.

“No, it’s just… when we were kids they used to trade places all the time and try to trick us, and you could always tell. They’re voices are a little different, but you didn’t even need to hear them to know. They’d just walk in the room, and little five-year-old you would just look at them and say, ‘Why is Thing 1 wearing Thing 2’s clothes?’ And then we’d all laugh.”

“I called them Thing 1 and Thing 2?”

“Oh yeah, it was their nicknames because they dressed as Thing 1 and 2 for Halloween one year and you never stopped calling them that.” Cadence sits forward, his brows knit together. “Lyric, we’ll go. I’ll take you.” I think my face might break, I’m grinning so big.

Not more than twenty minutes later Cadence pulls to the side of the road near a construction site. The bare bones of a building shooting from the earth enclosed by a chain link fence, yellow caution signs warn trespassers away, threatening fines and jail time. Piles of stone and dirt are spread out amongst machinery with tarps covering a few things here and there.

“This is it?” I ask looking around. “Was I in the construction site?” Cadence shakes his head, he’s watching me far too intently.

“No.”

I follow him on up the road where it begins to climb steadily uphill, there’s a drop on one side, not very steep but enough to do damage. “The car was found down there.” Cadence sits down in the gravel that litters the side of the road and kicks a rock down the incline.

“No one but me even knew you weren’t home...” This is news to me.

“You knew?” Cadence gives me a tortured look.

“I was supposed to go with you. I had a paper to finish. I bailed and-and, you said you’d be back before midnight, and to cover for you. But then you weren’t back, and you wouldn’t answer your phone and… I should’ve been there.” His guilt is tangible, like a spider web clinging to skin. I wonder if he’s been hiding it this whole time.

“No, if you had been….” I don’t say it, but he knows what I’m referring to. If he’d been there, he might’ve died too. I’m the lucky one that survived, that managed to walk away. “Do you know why we were here?” I ask. Cadence gives a dry laugh.

“I don’t know all the details, you wouldn’t tell me everything because I kept bailing on you during your investigation or whatever it was. Heck, all of you were a little irritated with me, even Evan, and I’ve seen him apologize to a wall for bumping into it,” he lets out another laugh, this one a little lighter.

“A wall?”

“Well, he was tired and thought it was a person, but anyway I know it all started with something to do with Darryl and whatever it was, you said it was something big.”

“Well, that is so not helpful.” I sit down next to him and look out into the trees lining the roadside.

“Soooo… remember anything?” Cadence asks. I can tell by the way he asks that he knows I haven’t. I shake my head. I stand and dust the gravel dust off my pants and walk toward the railing, it’s not even dented or scratched.

“It’s weird, the railing, that is. Did they repair it that fast? How’d they make it so seamless?” I ask, ignoring Cadence’s question.

“No… they said that somehow the impact sent you flying right over the railing, it didn’t need repairing.”

Musing over this bit of information I glance down to the bottom of the drop, but nothing comes back to me, only a sense of vertigo.

It’s just a normal roadside, just some dirt and trees. I don’t even see Evan. I close my eyes and try to imagine what happened.

That’s when I hear a scream, the sound of crunching metal.

“I love you guys. If this is how we go, I’m okay with that. If any of us makes it—"

Cadence taps me on the shoulder and the words fade away. It was a male voice, the same I heard in my room. I think it might be Darryl’s.

“Anything?” Cadence asks. I shrug.

“I guess you were right, let’s go.”

The car ride is silent, I can practically feel his disappointment, but I don’t really want to tell him about the voices, and it’s not like it’s a memory anyway. Maybe I’m hearing the ghost Darryl? But the fact that I hear my own voice doesn’t make any sense and why do I only see Evan’s ghost and not Margaret’s and Darryl’s?

To try and lighten the mood I convince him to stop by the library.