Remember Me Tomorrow

by Farah Heron

This is a pattern, and patterns become cycles until someone breaks them,

“You ever feel like the whole world is spinning five steps ahead of you?” I ask. “And by the time you catch up with them, they’ve already moved on?”

One, your life is going to get so much better once you step away from the people holding you back, because real friends don’t forget friends when things don’t go as planned. Two, I have a very strong suspicion that it’s not you who has to catch up with the world, but the world that needs to catch up with you.”

The irony of searching for a mystery to investigate while I’m actively avoiding a mystery of my own isn’t lost on me.

She shakes her head. “Salma Aunty spent her whole life trying to escape her past. And her past still came and took him. I don’t blame her at all for escaping this damn city. People like us? We can’t ever, ever win here. They own it all. They will never let us forget that.” Somehow, I know she’s including me and Gracie when she says people like us. She means us—newcomers, immigrants, and the children of immigrants.

But there’s one thing we don’t talk about—the future. Mine, his, or the possibility of having a future together. Because we know we don’t have one. We have the past and the present, but nothing else.

“He said when things don’t go as planned, friends never forget friends.”