As You Were by Kelli Jae Baeli Page A

moved to the sofa to sit. She watched headline news for a moment, and
    the anchor announced that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his son were injured in a
    motorcycle accident.
    “ Governor Schwarzenegger?” Brittany said. “The actor?”
    Tru smiled. “Yeah. I guess it sounds crazy if you don’t remember it.”
    They continued to watch, until the ticker mentioned snowstorms in Colorado. Tru picked up
    the remote and tuned to the Weather Channel, to find that it was headed in their direction. “It’s going to get pretty nasty outside tonight.”
    The phone rang and Tru answered it, telling Brenda that Brittany was fine and still recovering from the accident. She hung up. “Brenda said to tell you hello and she’s thinking about you.”
    “Who’s Brenda?” Brittany said.
    Tru blinked a few times. “Never mind.”
    The small talk disintegrated into no talk at all, and finally they were left with only the sound of the television.
    As Brittany flipped through channels on cable, Tru pulled her laptop from the bag beside the sofa, and booted into Windows, opened Outlook Express and opened the mail in her eCig folder. She had new orders to fill.
    Brittany watched her for a moment. “Do I have my own computer?”
    Tru looked up. “Um...yeah...it’s in the bedroom closet, in a black bag.”
    Brittany got up and fetched it, soon settling back down on the sofa next to Tru. Oddly, she found that she knew exactly how to boot up and use it. Those memories had been untouched. But she had no idea what she would find. She opened her own Outlook, and then watched her inbox start to fill up. “Holy crap,” she murmured.
    “What?”
    “’You’ve got mail’...” she mimicked the infamous sound byte.
    “I bet you do.”
    Brittany watched as they added: offers for penis enlargement, fake lottery winnings, and Canadian prescription offers; mail from Brenda, with subject lines growing progressively worried about where Brittany had disappeared to; funny pictures and joke forwards from Jan, Liz...and a mail from someone named Travis, letting her know he had a guest room if she needed it. Odd. She glanced at Tru and decided against mentioning it, but wasn’t sure why. “I got a mail from Brenda.” She said instead. “Should I write back? I mean, I don’t know what to say, because I don’t really remember her...”
    “Well, I contacted most people and let them know the situation. They understand.”
    “Oh.” She looked up at the doorway to the hall. “Are you going to show me around the house?”
    “Okay.”
    Brittany stood and followed as Tru started toward the hall. Tru indicated the first door on the right. “The master bedroom. You can sleep in here.”
    “Alone, right?”
    Tru sighed. “I’ll sleep in the guest room.”
    “You didn’t think I was going to bunk with you, did you?”
    “We’ve had this conversation. I think it’s clear that’s not an option.”
    “Just checking,” she answered. Brittany looked at the Southwestern comforter on the bed, and the propped up pillows with beige and green cases. Then the walls caught her eyes. “Why are there all those faded places on the walls? Where’s the pictures?”
    Tru put her hands in her pockets. “I took them down after you left. They’re packed in a box in the closet.”
    Brittany turned to look at her. “They were mine?”
    “Yes.” Tru knew she didn’t understand. They were hers: paintings she’d created and photographs she had taken when things were still good between them. Tru took them down only a few days before she found her again; fearful that looking at them everyday would add to her suffering.
    “Is it okay if I put them back up?”
    “Sure. We can do that later. Let me show you the rest of the house.” Tru led her across the hall to the other bedroom. “This is the guestroom.”
    Brittany took in the guitars and speakers and recording equipment. “Looks more like a studio.”
    “Well, it is, really. I use it for