Free Milo's Story: Stories from The Gateway: Companion tales to The Gateway Trilogy by E.E. Holmes

Milo’s Story
     
     
    Here’s the thing about human memories that most people will never find out for themselves; they fade. I don’t mean the kind of fading they naturally do while we’re alive—into the rosy colors and vague impressions of a past we don’t have room in our brains to remember in detail. I’m talking about the fading they do the instant we die. There’s a wall that goes up, between the life you had and the half-life you’ve chosen to cling to. The memories are there, but separate from you, on the other side of that wall, and no amount of thinking and feeling and dwelling can haul them over clearly to the other side. Dying is the equivalent of cutting the cords that link them to you, so that you seem to have no real connection to them anymore.
    This is true of every memory I have—my childhood, my family, my school days and summer vacations—each one an image that means less and less with every passing day out of my body. But not the memories of I have with her. Every moment I spent with her is as sharp and clear as though it happened a moment ago. And I think that that must be what it means to be Bound; our story has become the only true part of my story.
    And this is how it started.
     
    ~
     
    “Welcome to Prison, You Screwed Up Little Fairy.” That’s what the sign said outside the building. Okay, that’s not what the sign said outside of the building. It said, “Welcome to New Beginnings.” But I maintain that that’s what I saw when I looked at it.
    I glanced over at my mother, who was sitting in the driver’s seat. She was also staring at the sign as though it said terrible things. For a second, I thought about asking her what she was thinking, but then I remembered that I was pissed off at her and didn’t actually care. .
    “Well, here we are,” she said after a few more seconds of listening to the engine run. It was exactly the same thing she’d said every time we pulled up to one of these places. It was the ultimate expression of the obvious except for one, glaring inaccuracy. She wasn’t really here. Neither was my sister, sitting in the back seat, sucking on her long shiny braid, so that the end of it looked like the tip of a paintbrush. Neither of them were really here. They were going to turn around and drive home in a few minutes, free from whatever lay on the other side of that sign. No, I was the only one who was here, and we all knew it.
    When I didn’t reply, she plowed on through the sea of awkward silence now filling the car, handing me a large manila envelope as she talked. “We did all of your paperwork ahead of time, and faxed all of your records over. It should make everything nice and easy when you get in there.”
    Translation: I did everything in my power to avoid walking into this place with you, because my crippling maternal guilt can’t handle the reality of where we’re sending you. Again.
    “Nice and easy,” I repeated, looking at the envelope. “Yeah, right.”
    “Now, Milo, don’t start. You know what I mean,” she said, wearily, like I was the one making this difficult.
    “So what’s the cover story this time?” I asked, tucking the envelope into my bag.
    She looked me in the face for the first time all day.
    “Cover story?”
    “I mean, what’s Dad telling everyone? It’s not as though he’s actually admitting that he’s locking me up to medicate the gay away.”
    “Don’t talk like that in front of your sister,” she hissed through clenched teeth, the way that parents do, as though pressing your teeth together will render your children miraculously deaf. Seriously, you would have thought I’d dropped an f-bomb. But no, I’d dropped the g-bomb, and that was clearly much more damaging to a seven year old psyche.
    I looked into the rearview mirror at my sister, who was watching us intently. I winked at her and she smiled. I turned back to my mother, who was not getting off the hook that easily.
    “You still haven’t answered