sapere aude

A memory most dear to me

Is the trip ‘round 

What I wouldn’t give 

To be sitting there again

In that children’s jubilee

Just you and me

Round and round for eternity

I find that the doorway to Georgie’s house is blocked by a wall of papers. I sigh. This is a pretty normal occurrence, seeing as Georgie never gets rid of anything she writes. The mountain of loose-leaf paper that washes over me as I open the door isn’t very new. I visited last year, hoping that maybe, just maybe, things will be better. That Georgie will have finally gotten rid of something. But no. She keeps all of these papers. 

I haven’t been back in so long. I just couldn’t bear to see her the way she’d been, frantic, obsessive, and nearly despondent. She’d ended up kicking me out in a yelling fit. I’d resolved never to come back, but I was worried. 

I could never truly get away from Georgie. 

I picked up a particular sheet, torn around the edges, that got caught on my sweater. It’s a short little poem about two little girls riding a carousel as the sun sets. It’s cute, but it doesn’t flow very well. It’s a regurgitation of a memory that Georgie and I shared, back when we were young. I suppose it’s fate that I found the one piece of writing that would pertain to me. 

As I hold the poem, titled “Round Trip,” the other papers begin to swirl around me, forming a cyclone with me as the eye of the storm. I freeze. The papers move on their own. It’s a humid day, so the wind certainly isn’t the culprit. The movement is too methodical to be anything other than something magical. 

I shut the door, seized with the desire to keep this phenomenon secret, just enclosed within the house. It feels personal. Everything involving me and Georgie ends up being things I’d rather keep hidden anyway.  

The papers begin to take a form. A large, domed top, with lines coming down. Papers begin to swarm underneath the lines, hungrily jostling each other for a place in this forming structure. As the papers settle and find their places at the bottom of the lines, loose-leaf horses take form. It’s a paper carousel. 

The carousel begins to form a straight line, the horses moving up and down, going into the hallway. This would be the part where any normal person would panic. Maybe, begin shouting for their elusive friend. 

But, I am not normal, and Georgie and I weren’t exactly friends anymore. I was only here because I was the only person in her life who’d care enough to do a wellness check. 

Truthfully, I should’ve come sooner, but guilt and resentment are bitter, irrational things. They filled my shoes with cement and my mind with excuses. I should’ve powered on regardless. I owed Georgie that much. So, I climb onto a paper horse, surprisingly sturdy for the material that makes it, and I let it guide me down the hallway. 

The hallway is a shrine of paper. Rejection letters, short stories, and an entire screenplay peel off the walls like fungus to reveal a chain of photographs clipped to the wall. All of them are me and Georgie. All of us at the carnival that comes to town every summer. Ages four to fourteen, Georgie and I always went together.  

A lump forms in my throat, and I pointedly look straight ahead, even as the horse slows to a crawl, as if to torment me. To try and force me to look at those relics. Nope. It’s not like I even knew Georgie kept any of those photos. 

The ground beneath me and the slowly bobbing horse is lined with the fallen papers. Some of it is printed, some loose leaf. An unpaid utilities bill from three months ago clings to my shoe. 

A rejection letter from some literary magazine hugs my knee, as it flies backward to help form another figure, a small, twin-tailed girl made up of unpaid bills and rejection letters. Her smile only comes when the string of pictures languidly slips from the wall to worm around her face. 

“A memory most dear to me,” she rasps, her voice crinkly and soft. The photos flap as she speaks. “Is the trip ‘round the sun.” 

She’s reading the poem. The one that I still hold onto with my left hand, my right holding onto my horse. I want to get off, to make a run towards the door, but I find that I’m frozen in place. I can’t move, no matter how badly I don’t want to listen as Georgie’s paper double reads her work. 

The stars peek out as the sun sets

You look towards the sky

While I look to you

Capturing a memory like a wish

And we breathe in this limitless atmosphere

For this one trip

We are going to the same place

Round and round again

“Why’re you doing this?” I ask, cutting her off at the end of the second verse. “What is this?” 

Georgie’s double just blinks her grocery-receipt eyes and goes silent. “Is this because I didn’t come earlier?” I feel my words bubbling upwards, as if I’m on trial, and I must defend myself from some divine judgment. “It takes two to fight you know. You didn’t make it easy on me, Georgie. You can’t just lash out all the time about people I hang out with, and expect me to just sit back and take it!” 

Georgie’s double lets out a croaky, weary sigh. She looks down as we slowly advance towards a single door at the end of the hallway. It’s tiring. I agree. Georgie, while she’d been my first friend, wasn’t always an easy person to be around. She had an inexorable personality, taking any change in our routine as an attack on her. 

I hadn’t minded for a while, but whenever I’d try to branch out, Georgie was always holding me back. Demanding to know why she wasn’t good enough for me, or worse, accusing me of abandoning her entirely. 

We’d always make up when Georgie either decided to let it go, or I apologized for whatever I’d done to make her think I was leaving her. By coincidence, we’d always be square by the time the carnival came to town. Except for the last time. 

As if reading my thoughts, Georgie’s double exhales, causing one of her photos to come loose from her flimsy smile. It’s us, the last year we went to the carnival together. We’re both on the carousel. She reads the third, shortest stanza, her tone fragile with a vulnerability I’d never heard from the original Georgie. 

I never want to leave

But I see you waiting 

Biding your time for the end of us

In the final photograph, Georgie is looking at me, but I’m looking outward at the sunset. That was the last time we’d ever gone to the carnival together. The next year, I’d gone with the robotics team, and Georgie went by herself. 

I’d tried inviting her, but she’d refused. She hadn’t guilt tripped me, she’d just said no, and went by herself. She waved when I passed her, but didn’t approach. That’d been the beginning of the end for us. 

By the time we graduated high school, we were little more than strangers. All I knew was that Georgie was moving out of her foster home to try and make it as a writer. It's always been her dream, ever since the day we’d met. 

The carousel slowed as we neared the end of the hallway, and with it, a singular door. Georgie’s room, if the paper clinging to the door with a peeling piece of duct tape reading “GEORGIE’S — KEEP OUT” is anything to go by. 

Last time I was here, there’d also been some caution tape around the door, for dramatics rather than anything else. The door gave way with an overzealous groan as Georgie’s double put her frail hand to the doorknob. 

No wonder Georgie could afford this place. Everything was in a state of disarray, and if the paper carousel swarm was anything to go by, Georgie hadn’t been paying rent in a while. I step into the room, only for the breath to leave my lungs as I take in the paper graveyard in front of me. 

I look frantically at the paper girl, not opening my lips. I don’t know if I’d curse or scream if I did. All I can do is stare, helplessly. Desperately. Georgie’s double clears her throat. 

You wait for the end

But all I want is to stay

For one more trip ‘round

One last spin

Down memory lane 

Just you and me

Before the sun set on us

For good