I’ll See You Around

There are only two people on this train. One of them is a girl wearing a blouse sprinkled with little pink flowers. She has big brown eyes, a head full of dark curls that glow in the sun, and a radiant smile.

She looks like someone you’d trust to look after your house and your dog if you were going to be out of the country for a few years, and by the time you got back, she’s made friends with all of your neighbours and their families four generations up and down.

Her name is Lynette, and she’s nineteen years old. She’s on her way to her grandmother’s house. Her favourite food is honeyed dates, which she keeps in a little jar in her bag. She likes to read and paint. I know all of this, because even though this is the first time Lynette is meeting me, this will be about the seventh time that I’m meeting her.

There are only two people on this train. One of them is Lynette, and the other one is me.

The train whistles. We set off, easing steadily down the hill and into the countryside fields. The sky is clear and blue and the wheat is golden. It’s perfect. It’s beautiful.

Lynette comes to talk to me like I knew she would. It’s habitual. She sees someone sitting alone and some sort of built-in ‘look-after-everyone’ instinct immediately starts whirring inside her head like automatic machinery.

“Hi.” She says, and smiles. “Looks like it’s just us on this train, huh?”

“Sure does.” I say.

“Where are you off to?”

I name a station. She looks pleasantly surprised. “That’s where I’m going! What a coincidence. What’s your name?”

I tell her.

“That’s a lovely name.” She says. “I’m Lynette, but you can call me Lyn. Would you like a honeyed date?”

The first time I met Lynette was in a hospital. I was two. She was also two. I was two years old and she was two days old. I don’t recall the experience but it’s been described to me so many times that it might as well be a memory, which is just as well. At least one of us remembers.

I’m told that my eyes genuinely lit up when I saw her lying in her cradle, sleeping, with her little hands fisted in her blanket. I’m told that I could barely walk then, but still fought to toddle over to her. I’m told that the older-sister instinct had never been so obvious, and it was. It settled then and there, a stone cold fact in two-year-old me’s brain: Lynette is my responsibility. It was a law of the universe, and it stuck like one. I kept Lynette in the corner of my vision at all times.

I take the offered honey date and pop it into my mouth. It’s very sugary and could stand to lose a bit of honey and gain a bit more date. It’s going to give her cavities. I tell her so.

She laughs. “You sound like my mother.”

The second time I met Lynette was, again, at the hospital. This time in a doctor’s office. A man in a white coat was saying something about retrograde amnesia and I tried to take her hand. She allowed it, too polite not to, but looked at me with confused politeness. Like I was a stranger.

“Um.” She had said, “Who are you?”

She was ten years old. I was twelve. A twelve year old cannot comprehend the fact that the sister they’ve known for their whole life doesn’t remember that she exists, let alone anything about her. I know this, because I didn’t comprehend it. I screamed my head off for a grand total of twenty minutes. I kicked her, at some point. I remember her brown eyes filling up with tears. I remember feeling angry that she had the audacity to feel hurt.

“So, what brings you on this train?” She asks.

I shrug. “I wanted to get a look at the countryside.”

“Ah,” she says, knowingly. “Got tired of all the city smoke? I don’t blame you. It’s so much lovelier out here, without all the noise and the lights. You should consider moving out.”

“It’s a lot of work.” I say.

“Yeah, but the long-term benefits are worth it.” She smiles. “Seriously, I know I come across as a know-nothing country hobo, but believe me. The quiet does wonders.”

The third time was two days after the second time. I calmed down. I had to, for them to stop locking me up and putting me to sleep. And she was leaving, which I had to gather from very broken sentences from my slightly less broken parents. The doctors had suggested that living in an environment with less stimuli would do her memory some good.

We stared at each other in front of the airport security gate. The adults had backed away to ‘give us some privacy’. Terrible decision, on their part. To her, I was the crazy child that had tried to break her kneecaps two days ago and was also apparently related to her.

I searched my mind for something to say to her. I settled on, “I hate you.”

She made a little gasp and recoiled a little, like a few drops of icy water had landed on her head. Then she walked away and didn’t look back.

“I have a medical condition.” She says now, conversationally, rearranging the flowers in her bundle. “Periodically, I start to lose older memories. The doctors say there’s something wrong with my hippocampus.” She taps her head. A bit of pollen gets on her hair.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Oh, it’s fine, it’s been getting better. I’ve basically got all my memories from age thirteen to now. But any time before that is left in the wind.” She laughs. “I might even know you from before then. Do I look familiar?”

“A little.” I say.

“Could be because we look a bit alike.” She says, and looks at me a bit closer. “Gosh, yeah. We could pass as siblings. If you squint a little.”

I flinch.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth times I met Lynette were all very brief and done in a clinical setting. We travelled to the countryside, where she was recuperating, and had brief, ten-minute interviews with her. The doctors weren’t sure about her triggers, and didn’t want her to relapse, so it was best if we kept the visits short and infrequent. My parents accompanied me on these trips once. They stopped when work got busy.

She was doing very well. The sun did her a lot of good, and she remembered mostly everything. I stared at her from across a nailed-down coffee table and asked her bland questions like ‘what is your favourite food?’ and ‘what are your hobbies?’ and left feeling like I had a gaping hole in the middle of my chest.

“Lyn.” I say. “Are you happy?”

“Of course.” She replies, easily. “I’ve got both my parents, food on the table, and weekend trips to look forward to. That’s all anyone could ask for, really, memory loss or not. What about you?”

“I guess.” I say. “Do you ever feel like something’s missing?”

She thinks about it for a little while. Then she says, “No, not really.”

It was suggested, with a little bit of tact, that we cut off contact with Lynette completely. My parents signed the documents without looking at them. I agreed under the condition that I would have one unmonitored conversation with her. Hence the empty train. Hence us.

“Ah.” She says. The train rolls to a stop. “Here’s our destination!” Thirty minutes, no more, no less. We step off the train and stand facing each other on the station platform.

She looks at me and smiles brightly. “It was lovely to meet you. I’ll see you around?”

I’m never coming back. I wanted to say. You’ll never see me again. Instead I just nod.

She waves. Then she walks away and doesn’t look back.

Writer – Amy Zuo
Editor – Sophia Oblefias
Artist – Maryam Nawaz

–June 2025–