When I woke up this morning, something felt off. Like the room I was in wasn’t mine. But it definitely was mine. The huge ‘Molly’ sign above the door assured me of that. So then what felt wrong?

It was my dream. I barely remembered it anymore, but everything in my room was different. Instead of blue walls, they were purple. Instead of black curtains, they were white.

What if? No. It couldn’t be.

        I rubbed my eyes, and then rolled out of bed and made my way into the bathroom. I put my contacts in, noting my extremely disheveled brown hair in the mirror, and then made my way out of the bedroom while trying to pat it down to a more presentable fashion.

        Bacon. The smell hit hard once I opened the door from my bedroom. The popping in the kitchen made it even more evident that Dad was making breakfast. It made sense, I woke up right on schedule for the day.

        We had a calendar on the fridge marking every important occasion that there was in our lives lately. Ever since I got in a car accident 6 months ago, life tended to be nothing but a bunch of doctor’s appointments and school. Band practice ate up most of my time lately, now that the appointments had subsided. I was healing wonderfully, they said.

        Today was my big audition for the University of Texas Austin School of Music. I’d been working incredibly hard since my car accident to get ready for this day. It was tough, and most of my doctors told me I probably wouldn’t be ready in time. I just wanted to prove everyone wrong.

        “Good morning, Molly,” Dad said from the kitchen. “Waffles or pancakes? I made both.”

        I smiled and sat down at the breakfast bar. “I’d love a waffle,” I replied sweetly.

        A plate was placed in front of me, holding a waffle, eggs and three strips of bacon. I did a three sixty in my stool and looked around the living room. It was a huge mess. The window was open, the curtains blowing in the wind. There were last night’s leftover pizza boxes still sitting on the coffee table. Dad looked pretty disheveled, his beard hair moving in every direction possible.

        “Busy day today,” he said as he took a seat next to me. He picked up his newspaper. “Are you ready for your audition?”

        “As ready as I can be.” I stabbed my fork through a piece of my waffle and put it in my mouth. Once it went down, I said, “Mr. Skinner thinks I’m definitely ready to go today. And I think so too. I’ve worked way too hard for this.

        “Yes you definitely have.” He set his newspaper down and looked at me. “Molly, I know this year has been so hard for you. For all of us. You’ve done so much better than a lot of people thought you would, and I am so proud.”

        “For what it’s worth, Dad, I’m glad I made it to this point. But I’m not gonna lie and say that I don’t still wish I could just remember everything.”

        Did I mention that I have amnesia? I cannot remember anything from two years prior to my car accident. When I woke up after surgery, I internally went back to age sixteen. But I found out pretty quick that I didn’t have the liberty to stay in that mindset. It was getting around the time to figure out the next step in life. Where was I going after high school? In the midst of all the physical therapy, I also had to figure out how to move on emotionally.

I left a lot of memories behind. I tried for the first few months to remember who I was before the accident. But after so long, my family started pushing me to focus on the present. That pushing the memories was only going to drag me down. I had to move on, and I did.

I won’t lie though and say it was easy. Everyday I longed for my memories. But I was always being pushed away from them.

They won’t change anything about who you are now, Mom would say. Why bother anymore?

Like they had any reason to have an opinion. I’m pretty sure what went on in my brain was my business.

“I know, Molly. I can’t begin to imagine what you’re going through with this. But you’ve handled everything so well considering. And I can’t wait to see what the future has in store.”

I smiled and took a few more bites of my breakfast.

“So, what else is on the schedule today?” I asked.

“Well first of all, your mom and sister are coming into town for dinner tonight.”

I couldn’t hide my initial reaction. I did not enjoy it when they came around. I had no problems with Shannon. She and I were really close when we all lived together. But ever since the accident and subsequent divorce, Shannon went with Mom and I stayed with Dad. And I did my best trying to avoid Mom.

It’s not that I didn’t love her. I just internally always had this feeling after the accident that it was all her fault. No one believed me though. Primarily because I couldn’t remember. But they also said that she and I had a huge fight when I was sixteen. It’s almost as though that was the last thing I actually do remember. Regardless, Mom and I didn’t get along, much to her dismay.

“Molly,” Dad sighed. “Please just don’t do that. You only have to see them once a month, and this is a special occasion. I can deal with seeing them, so can you.”

“Yeah, okay. Like always, I’ll deal with it. But that’s all I can promise.”

I looked down at the remainder of my breakfast, probably about half of it, and realized I wasn’t really hungry anymore. The nerves were starting to settle in.

“I think I’m going to go get ready now. I’m not hungry anymore.”

His dismay was obvious, but Dad nodded and I stepped off the stool. I was okay with not eating a whole lot. Less to throw up later.

I headed back into my bedroom and went straight to the bathroom. I turned the shower water on, and then undressed, put my hair into a bun so it wouldn’t get wet, and then stepped in.

When I got out and wrapped my towel around my body, I heard a knock on the door.

“You decent?” Dad asked.

“Sure, what’s up?”

He cracked the door open. “It’s family weekend at UT. I’m going to head out so I can help Brian keep the place above water. You’re sure you have a way to get there?”

“Yeah.” I looked in the mirror and pulled my hair out of the bun. It fell down just a few inches below my shoulders. “Sarah and I are going together. We’ll be fine.” I smiled. “You really should go. Brian will probably have a stroke if you aren’t there by the time the store opens.”

Dad laughed. “You are probably right. Do good today. Call me if you need anything. I should be home around the same time as you.”

“Sounds good. Love you.”

“Love you too, sweetie.” He shut the door behind him.

I slipped into a tee shirt and a pair of shorts and went back out into my bedroom. My flute was sitting in its case on my desk. I went over and grabbed it, and sat down on my bed. While putting it together, I used my shirt and rubbed the fingerprints off as I went along.

Without warming up, I started playing the audition piece. It was a tough one for sure, but it would weed out the potential students who weren’t willing to put in the work to learn it. Of course, I started this venture at a significant disadvantage. On that same note, however, I remember the first day I picked my flute back up again.

It was like riding a bike. While I wasn’t quite where a senior year band student would be, I definitely had no problems jumping right back into rehearsals. Nobody seemed to bat an eye about it either. It felt to me like I was starting back in right where I’d left off before the accident happened.

When I finished the piece, I packed my flute back up. I didn’t need to over rehearse. I’d just psych myself out that way. I heard my cell phone text tone go off, so I grabbed it off my nightstand.

“Hey girl!” It was from Kirsten. “Party at Kevin’s tonight! Let me know if you wanna come!”

Kirsten has texted me a couple of times since I came home from the hospital. She always seemed to be talking about a party of some sort. I tried getting her to stop, but she never did.

”Hey. I can’t come. Mom and sister are coming.”

I couldn’t ever bring myself to just ignore her. I got a feeling that we had been friends before, but when I mentioned her, my parents told me we weren’t friends anymore. And without being able to remember things on my own, I felt like my parents were the only ones I could trust.

“Tell Shannon I said hey,” Kirsten replied.

I locked my cell phone and set it down on the bed, and then made my way over to the closet. I’d picked out my outfit for today a month ago, when I found out I’d been chosen. Because hundreds of flute players audition every year, they require us to do a pre-screening, where we send them a tape of us playing an audition piece. They only choose twenty to come to the in-person audition, and from there only eight get chosen to enter as freshman. If you don’t make it in, you can still get into the school of music later, but you’ll lose at least a year of specialized training. I wanted to take in as much as I could get.

I pulled on the dark purple dress, and pulled my black cardigan over my shoulders, slipped my black high heels on, and stepped in front of the full length mirror.

“Not bad,” I said out loud. “You’re definitely ready for this.”

I picked up my cell phone and looked at the time. Sarah would be here to pick me up in just a couple minutes. I grabbed my flute case, folder, and purse, and went back out to the living room.

Dad had cleaned up a lot while I was in the shower. It smelled ten times cleaner than it had during breakfast.