Chapter Text
Natalie Goodman’s very first memory, as it turns out, had shockingly little to do with her at all.
It happened when she was about six years old. Some might say that's a little late for a first memory to form, to which Natalie would reply that there simply hadn't been much in her life that her mind deemed worth holding in long-term storage until then.
It had been a grey, dreary day, despite the fact that it was already summer. She remembers that vividly, because the memory began with her playing in the mud outside. From an early age, she had grown very accustomed to keeping herself entertained when her parents were busy with… whatever it was they were doing when they weren't paying attention to her. She was too naive to understand what it was that they discussed in hurried whispers, or to internalize the name that would come up every so often and set them both visibly on edge. She noticed the air of anxiety and the haphazard trips to the doctor that usually seemed to follow, but she didn't quite get it.
She had a lot of experience in hospital waiting rooms, sitting next to her father but still accompanied only by her own imagination. She learned quickly that it was better not to ask too many questions when her mom had her impromptu appointments, to just be quiet and play games in her head. Sometimes, she would imagine the possible conditions that might require her mother to consult a doctor with such urgency. I know she's sick, and she takes medicine, maybe it's that cancer thing or something. She knew a little bit about that, because one of her friend's moms had gotten it earlier that school year and the kid had missed a lot of school for hospital visits too. She hasn't heard of any other sickness that didn't seem to go away after a week of rest and cough syrup. Her father would reassure her, half-heartedly, that her mom wasn't going anywhere. Natalie wasn't sure if her mom was really there to begin with, and she found it hard to imagine what her going away might even look like.
This particular day, though, her parents weren't at the hospital. Her dad was at work, as he usually was at noon on a weekday, and her mom was watching her play through the kitchen window with a detached look that belied her lack of focus while she dazedly washed dishes. Natalie was crouched in the backyard, drawing shapes in the mud with a big stick she found, in an attempt to keep herself entertained. Eventually, that turned into drawing out a map of the garden in as much detail as she could in that little dirt patch. It was nice, having something to focus on.
That got boring pretty quickly too, though.
Her next idea was to jump between the path of stepping stones laid into the grass and see how many laps around the yard she could take in as little time as possible. She always liked being fast. She was very proud of being one of the fastest girls in her grade, and always winning tag at recess, despite how exasperating her peers found it. She likes feeling the wind in her hair, and that day it was cool and breezy.
She didn't have proper rain boots, though. Or, she did, but they were a little worn out. The bottoms, which were supposed to have a bit of grip to them, had been worn smooth by her extensive usage of them over the better part of the last year. They were purple with white stars on them, and they were Natalie's favorite pair of shoes. Even when it wasn't raining, she would find excuses to wear them everywhere, and her dad would choose his battles. The lower halves are caked in mud all the way up past the ankles, which was still wet due to her endless splashing this afternoon. And the stones that she was so artfully parkouring across were slick from the rain, too.
It was a bad combination. Or at least, a pretty unsafe one.
This didn't occur to Natalie, until she tried to make a particularly ambitious leap and completely lost her footing, slipping on the rain-soaked rock she had attempted to push off of. She felt her feet slide out from under her, saw the tops of the trees come into view where they reached upward and vanished into the sky, and accepted that she was absolutely about to fall and probably split her head open on a rock. Well, life was great, if a little short, but I guess that's it for me, she distinctly remembers thinking. Which was, in hindsight, a little morbid for a first grader.
But just before she could hear the crack of bone against slate, right as she braced for impact, something stopped her. Or someone? She felt a distinct pull forward, and despite not actually falling, it still felt like she had the wind knocked out of her. Maybe she'd overcorrected her balance, because she landed on her knees. Immediately she began searching for the logic. She was alone out there. Who could have possibly caught her?
Her savior answered her question before she asked it out loud, though indirectly.
“Are you okay?”
It was the voice of a kid. Natalie wasn't expecting to have any friends over today, and she knew that the neighbors on both sides of her house were older, and had no kids. They would watch her sometimes, when her mom and dad had to go somewhere without warning.
She looked up, trying in vain to wipe the mud from her shiny black raincoat and gather her bearings. Something about the person she saw staring wide-eyed back at her, whose hand was still braced very lightly, almost timidly, on her elbow, was familiar. She had the strangest sense of deja-vu, and maybe that's why she still remembers the moment so strongly. Either way, she was stunned, completely silent for a couple seconds and didn't say anything at all.
She wasn't the shy type, not really. She liked talking to her classmates well enough, anyway. She liked the attention that having friends at school brought her, although most other kids in her grade thought she was a little bit weird, so a good portion of those friends happened to be teachers. Yet here she was, somehow unable to form words or sentences properly. She was distinctly uneasy, disconcerted by this presence. Although she figured that wasn't quite fair. He had saved her.
Maybe this kid, who had appeared in her backyard just in time to catch her without her even noticing he was there, could make a good friend her own age. The thought of that was undeniably exciting. She was wary, of course she was, her parents had done a good job at drilling the idea of stranger danger into her head. But the more she thought about it, the more benevolent he seemed, and she finally opened her mouth and spoke.
“Yeah. I'm okay. Um.. who are you?” Natalie felt like it was a bit of a foolish question soon after asking it. It sort of implied that she was supposed to know who he was, but didn't, and although that's exactly how she felt, she knew it was irrational. She was also still slightly embarrassed by her utterly failed jump.
“My name is Gabriel.” The boy, who she now knew the name of, didn't seem particularly confused by the question. So maybe she had just over-thought it after all.
Natalie nodded, looking at his face for a few more seconds. He looked a little bit older than her, but also maybe like he could have been in her class, just one of the taller kids with an early birthday. He had messy brown hair that looked like it hadn't seen a brush in ages, and still-slightly-widened eyes. He looked nervous. She didn't think he had any reason to be, but then again, he had kinda technically snuck into her backyard. That could be why. He also looked very familiar.
In the background, her mind was running through as many experiences and faces and names as it could, trying desperately to place where she might know him from.
“You… remind me of someone.” A kid in my class, maybe? Someone I saw at the park one time? Some kid from TV? “How old are you?”
She hoped that would help jog her memory. She was completely grasping at straws, searching for something that might help her out, but she could feel her patience beginning to wear thin with every moment that she went answerless.
Gabriel counted on his fingers in response, the long white sleeves of the shirt he had on under his t-shirt falling over his hands a little bit in the process.
“I'm eight.” He finally said, sounding rather proud of himself for figuring that out, although it wasn't exactly rocket science, nor was it impressive. Natalie felt slightly smug despite herself for knowing how old she is without having to count at all.
“Huh.” Natalie hummed, her eyebrows furrowed as she studied him. “Well… do you wanna be friends?”
She'll never forget, for as long as she lives, the way his face positively lit up when she asked. Like he had been hoping she would, but didn't know how to broach the subject himself.
“Yeah!” His answer was enthusiastic and immediate, like he didn't even have to think about it at all. Then again, deciding to be friends isn't something that most kids have to consider for long before agreeing.
While they were playing, or more specifically, lifting up rocks and trying to see who could find the most bugs underneath them (and then, and Natalie had added this condition to the game later and always won as a result, who could identify the most species) the uneasy sense of dread slowly crept its way back to the pit of her stomach.
She looked up from the caterpillar she was trying to coax onto her palm, looking at the boy across from her in the garden.
“Gabriel?”
“Yeah?”
“Have we met before?”
He hesitated before answering, and not like he was trying to recall something. It looked more like he was debating on whether he should admit to something.
“No, I don't think so. Not that you would remember.”
“I feel like I've heard your name before.”
“Mom talks about me a lot, I think.”
Natalie can't forget, the way it felt like everything in the world just clicked into place when he said that. Of course. She has heard his name. She's never heard it out loud, she's never heard it as anything more than a murmur, like the very idea of him was a great taboo in her house. But she has heard it. She's heard it a lot.
Her big brother.
She had a lot of questions. She had a lot of questions, none of which she could even figure out how to ask. She didn't know what she might do with the answers anyway. It was too far beyond her childlike comprehension of the world.
“I thought… Dad said you were…” She was left speechless. She'd heard her mom mention a brother countless times, and they'd gotten into arguments before when Natalie would insist she didn't have one and never did.
“Don't be such a child, Natalie. Just because you aren't getting along doesn't mean you get to just pretend he doesn't exist,” she would say.
Whenever she went crying to her dad after these disputes, he would explain that her mom was just fragile. That something bad happened a long time before she was born, and that her mom was trying to get better for her. That he was glad she told him, and that he was going to take her back to the doctor and fix everything. Natalie always felt like it was a lie that was told to make her feel better, but she always accepted it, so maybe she was just as bad for not standing up for herself.
Gabriel didn't seem surprised to hear that revelation about their dad.
“He doesn't like me very much.” He replied, the words rolling off his tongue like they weren't the slightest bit distressing. Natalie, on the other hand, was always heartbroken whenever she felt their mother didn't like her very much.
“But you're real? Then why does he say you're… not?”
“I don't know.”
“Are you real? Did I actually hit my head?”
“I don't know. And no. I don't think so.”
The uncertainty of it all is killing Natalie, and she feels a little bit nauseous.
“I'm gonna go inside now.” She announced, standing up on shaky, ineffective rain boot clad legs, small fists clenched at her sides. She tried not to look at his face, lest she notice just how sad he looked.
She decided with fierce determination at that exact moment that she would not mention this incident to either of her parents for as long as she lived. She didn't want to make their lives harder than they already were. She never did, but for the first time in her life, she actually understood just why.
Natalie remembers the rest of the day, too, although not so strongly. It was still the most detailed day she could recall up to that point in her life, but she wasn't sure if anything would ever be able to beat meeting her brother.
She does know this much. She knows that she went inside quietly. She knows that she tracked mud into the house because she was frazzled and forgot to take her boots off, and that her mom asked her to please remember next time, “because this is the tenth time she's asking and she's getting very tired of it.”
She remembers being upset by the reminder, despite the fact that it was relatively gentle, and stomping her way up the stairs to her room, where she stayed until dinner. She remembers that while she laid there and stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling above her bed, she wished despite herself that her brother would come back. Or that she hadn't left him so soon.