Page 13 of The Circle

CHAPTER SIX

TODAY. LATER.

The sun is bright today. It’s always bright here, I suppose, but today it seems especially so. And speaking of the sun…

I had to go through about ten dusty, ancient trunks in the attic before I found it. The dress. The yellow one. I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure I still had it. I honestly couldn’t believe it survived all these years. But then I can’t believe I did either.

Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’m not really here. Maybe this is all just some alternate reality, a dream by someone else, and what I’m experiencing now isn’t me at all, but only some recollection of an idea of me.

Or maybe I’m just thinking about it all too much because today is a big day.

Such an odd thing we do: Mark occasions. Document the passage of time. As if time is a real thing and not just some figment of our imaginations. Some concept we humans have invented to… I don’t know. Know that we’ve been here, I guess.

We shouldn’t have to create special occasions to remember. To mark moments. To celebrate or mourn or whatever it is we’re trying to do. We could just choose to acknowledge each day that we get a chance to wake up, breathe air, and try again to be the best version of ourselves that we can. Can’t we? Do that? Can’t that be the default rather than the exception? I want to believe it can.

It’s why I looked for the dress and pulled it out, deciding that it is time for it to be worn again. It’s still yellow, still pretty, just a little faded and a little worse for wear, but not unacceptably so. Kind of like the person who bought it. It still reminds me of the sun—just a bit lower in the sky than it used to be, I suppose. Aren’t we all?

Once we moved here, I went to see if the lady at the fish market who sold it to me all those years ago was still there. She wasn’t. She was gone. Nobody seemed to know who I was talking about or who she was. Nobody remembered her. It made me sad. I wanted to see if her life was still exactly the same or if, like mine, it had changed dramatically in ways she couldn’t ever have seen coming.

Recollections sprint past my mind’s eye.

The bug.

The blue.

The boxing gym.

Alec.

Danny.

Danny.

Alec.

London.

Sydney.

The diamond.

Alec.

The boat.

Danny.

The Watsons.

Crown Jewels.

London.

The house.

The rooftop.

The memories I lost.