Miss Me Not Chapter 2

“Can you pass me the syrup?” Cameron’s voice jolted me back to breakfast. My pancakes lay untouched on my plate, a small amount of syrup drizzled over it. Without making eye contact, I pushed the bottle of maple syrup to the centre of the table where Cam could reach it, returning to staring at my breakfast as if I could consume it by just looking hard enough. Both my parents were done with their meal, and were waiting for me to finish. Poking my plate forward a little, I mumbled, “Cam? Do you want my pancakes? I’m not hungry.” 

There were a few seconds of silence, and I continued to gaze down at the plate of undisturbed food laying in front of me. A hand reached out and plucked it from its place on the table, and I heard it dropping back on further away.  Quietly, I excused myself to go change into my day clothes, getting up and scurrying down the hall into Charlie’s room. Uncle Arnie called out, “Oh, and Connor, Charlie wanted you to have his laptop. It’s on his desk,” he added, as if I hadn’t spent the night in the room. “Okay, thank you,” I responded, not quite sure what else to say. Upon locking the door, I changed quickly into a pair of jeans and black T-shirt that I had brought along with me. I slid my nightclothes into my bag, then after a pause, took a seat in Charlie’s desk chair, moving the headphones off to the side. I opened his laptop and tapped the spacebar. The menu to log in popped up, and I keyed in the numbers from the note. 792251.

The laptop unlocked, and I examined the home screen. The desktop background was an image of some blue flowers. Scorpion grasses, I think. The apps pinned to the home page were neatly stacked up on the left, a far cry from the disarray of Charlie’s physical room. The taskbar was lined with several apps. Two google chrome tabs, the files app, a notes app, a VPN, a few video games, and a chatting platform. One of the chrome tabs were open but minimised, and so was the chatting software. All the others were closed. Curiosity getting the best of me, I dragged the mouse pointer over to the messaging app and clicked. Three chats showed up; a family group chat with 4 members, a private chat open to Charlie’s own profile, and a message to a name I didn’t  recognise. Jennifer Williams. I couldn’t see the entirety of the most recent message, but there was enough showing up for me to see the words “I’m so sorry, but I can’t...” An ellipsis followed the phrase, but it didn’t take a genius to realise what it was. Charlie notifying “Jennifer” that he was about to commit suicide.

I double clicked it to see what it was on reflex. I’m so sorry but I can’t do life anymore. Unfortunately won’t be making it to next week’s session, but you’re invited to my funeral :) xX. Charlie. The morbid joke surprised me. My cousin had never seemed like the jesting type, but then again, I never knew him. I looked up at some of the older messages, and it became clear that Jennifer was Charlie’s counselor. Charlie seemed so open, joking, even extroverted, dare I say, that it was hard to believe this was the same person I saw practically melting into the walls at family gatherings. As the topics grew heavier, I paused. Was this an invasion of privacy? Could you even invade a dead person’s privacy? I decided the answer was yes. If my brain could convince me that sleeping in the room of a recently deceased family member was disrespectful, it should be able to know that scrolling through a dead person’s messages is equally rude, if not worse. I exited the chat, and closed the app, moving onto the files to see how much storage space there was on the laptop. Immediately though, something caught my eye in the quick access. It was a folder named ‘OPEN ME.’ 

The same instinctively investigative force that led me to open Charlie’s messages dragged my fingertip across the mousepad and double-clicked the little file icon. Surely this was not an invasion of privacy, if there was a folder pinned to quick access literally asking me to open it. In the folder were more folders, each labelled with the word ‘for’ and names of various family members. I clicked on the one with my name, wondering why Charlie had just left these on his computer instead of sending it out to the family. A video and two text files showed up. I opened the video first, turning the volume up a little to hear. Charlie sat in the middle of the screen in the same chair I sat in now. In his rare crocodile green eyes that ran in my dad's side of the family, I saw Cam’s grieving expression. I saw myself in the bathroom mirror after scratching open wounds in my own skin. Deep wells of pain that looked like I could drown in, all three pairs in the same rare shade. Dull and devoid of life. Charlie had lost the spark first, then me, and now Cameron. Who was next? I didn’t want to know. Was that selfish?

I hit play on the video, and my dead cousin began to speak.