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The irony of it all was that Virgil’s week had gotten off to a good start. Not great, he wouldn’t go that far, but then again what college kid would? But it had been a relatively okay day. He woke feeling actually refreshed without nursing any murderous tendencies towards his alarm clock. Young light was slipping through the gap in the curtains, turning everything the colour of gold silk as the early morning sun crested the red brickwork of the apartments across the road. It was beautiful enough to warrant a photograph which he then admired, clutching his phone in one hand whilst jabbing at a pan of scrambled eggs with a spatula in the other, considering all the ways he could capture the exact iridescence of the dawn sunrays on canvas.
Public transport was running to schedule. This should have been a red flag. His bus was never on time. Clearly the universe had been lulling him into a false sense of security – and he’d fallen for it, hook, line and sinker, like a complete idiot. Even his early morning lecture had been a success. Now, he examined the ink stains of equations scrawled over his hands and curling around his knuckles and wondered how he could have been so naïve as to believe that life was actually giving him a break for once.
It had been an unnervingly good spell of luck and he was a Tracy. In their world, luck was normally the precursor to tragedy. Not that this counted as one, not really. He’d lived through enough genuine tragedies to understand that this was merely upsetting. Yet he could taste the irony as bitter as blood in his mouth as memories of a precious sunrise transformed into a taunt while the universe laughed at him.
Or maybe it was a whole lot simpler than that. Because the truth? The truth hurt. The truth was that no greater force was out to get him. The truth was that this entire painful mess was an accident. In a way, he thought, that was worse than deliberate sabotage. An accident had no one to blame, other than perhaps himself, and that realisation stung, but still didn’t ache quite as badly as the loss itself. The loss, of course, being his phone and the five years of photos and videos stored upon it, because he was an idiot who hadn’t ever checked if his camera roll had backed up properly, so now his phone was broken beyond repair and he had lost all of it.
And it was all an accident.
He’d been waiting for the bus when a fellow student had slipped on the early February ice and had ploughed straight into him, knocking his phone clean out of his hands and into the gutter of frosty sludge. She’d been full of apologies, even offering to pay – which he’d obviously declined because her threadbare sweater and worried eyes proved that her funds were significantly less than his – and he couldn’t bring himself to be angry. Had he known the implications of that water-logged, battered, all-around ruined phone, perhaps his reaction would have been a little different. But as it was he’d been having a good day and it was a genuine accident, so he reassured her and got off the bus two stops earlier than usual to try his luck at a repair store.
“Wow,” the gruff-voiced man remarked, scrubbing a hand through salt-and-pepper hair as he tilted the phone under the lamp. “You’ve really done a number on it, kid.”
Virgil sank his hands into his pockets and awkwardly shrugged. “Dropped it by accident. It was already pretty battered, so I guess this was the last straw, huh?”
“You had everything backed up, right?”
“Right,” Virgil agreed slowly as the first notes of anxiety dawned on him. He sought his memory for the last time he’d backed up his camera roll and music library and came up empty-handed. The music wasn’t so much of an issue because he could simply download it all again, but his gallery was irreplaceable. It didn’t bear thinking about. Cold dread settled like a stone in his stomach.
Please no.
Occasionally he couldn’t help but feel like a rich brat and, handing over the emergency card to charge the new phone directly to Dad’s account, this was one such occasion. He wanted to sink into the floor. His good day was hastily spiralling into a nightmare. He longed to go home, crawl into bed and hide underneath his duvet until his heart stopped doing strange tricks in his chest and his own ribs didn’t feel quite as tight and nauseating dread finally let him breathe again. For now, he attempted to ignore those raised ‘brows at the card and cradled his new phone to his chest with a silent plea for fate to smile on him.
Just this once. Please. Let my camera roll be safe. I won’t ask for any more miracles this year, I swear, and that’s a good deal because it’s only February.
He opted to walk home rather than wait for the next bus which was purporting to be delayed. It was only about twenty minutes, but he spent the entire time in a daze. In hindsight, maybe he’d jinxed himself – Murphy’s Law and all that – but now that the thought had struck him he couldn’t shake it. Each step brought new certainty that his gallery was lost. He barely felt the chill of a northern wind or the melted ice which drenched his gloves to leave his fingers like brittle bones. Warmth was another lifetime.
He stumbled through the door to his apartment like a drunken man, struggling to unbox the new phone before he’d even finished clambering out of his coat and boots. His hands were yet to dethaw, and they seemed as if they belonged to someone else, clumsy and uncooperative. The phone lit up after he input his details and predicted another ten minutes until it would be finished downloading his data, so he forced himself to make a hot drink.
Coffee was a familiar ritual, soothing his unravelling nerves until the metal spoon rattled against his mug and he glanced down to realise that his hands were shaking. He tried to convince himself that it was the aftershocks of the February chill. Logic told him otherwise. The new phone chimed, a falsely merry sound which was jarring in the relative silence broken only by his own strained breathing and the distant thrum of traffic beyond double-glazed windowpanes. He just knew. He didn’t even have to check.
The camera roll was empty. He stared at it for a long minute as the screen darkened and then switched off to leave him facing his own reflection, damp-eyed and trembling and pale as the realisation dawned on him that he had lost five years of memories. Precious, unrecoverable memories. He couldn’t recreate any of them. High school, out-of-touch but fondly recalled friendships, meaningful screenshots, painting inspiration, the final part of his childhood, his family; all of it gone, just like that. Forever. Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, holidays, stolen selfies, miscellaneous videos of his brothers which he still watched and laughed at when loneliness slunk into his silent apartment. Everything was gone. Five years of his life wiped out of existence.
“I’m such an idiot.”
It hit him like a tidal wave, a physical weight which knocked the air from his lungs until he sank down the cabinets to sit on the kitchen floor. Tiles leached warmth from his skin. He wrapped his arms around his knees, unable to breathe through the sheer overwhelming sense of loss.
No, no, no, no, no, no-
He didn’t realise he’d hit call until the phone was already ringing. There had to be a way to recover at least something. Anything. He’d take even a handful of photos. It couldn’t all be gone.
“Hey-” John began, before Virgil cut him off.
He couldn’t hear half of his own words, tumbling over each other, a jumbled mess of choked explanations and self-curses and the strangled rasp of his sobs. He clasped a hand to his mouth to stifle them. The pressure behind his eyes and in his chest was suffocating.
“You can fix it, right? There’s gotta be a way- You’re a tech genius, John, you can- you can get s-something back- Just one video even, anything- It can’t all be gone- It’s- Five years, I can’t-”
“Virg,” John tried to interject, softly to begin with only to sharpen his voice until it was a snap. “Virgil. Take a breath. You’re panicking.”
Virgil sucked in a strangled breath. He was pressed into the corner of the kitchen cabinets. He could feel a handle digging into his upper spine. There was a dribble of spilt coffee on the floor and an absurd voice in his head urged him to wipe it away.
“Virgil?” John asked gently, sort of hesitant, pitched slightly in concern. “Are you with me?”
Virgil curled a hand around the phone until the hard edge of the metal volume button dug into his thumb. It was a shock of cold against his palm. He inhaled deeply and let it go, suddenly overwhelmingly shaky and a scared flavour of lost, like a little kid. He nursed a strange, childlike desperation to see his family, to hide in Dad’s arms and have Scott promise him that this was all just a nightmare, that everything would be alright again.
“You can fix it, can’t you?” he whispered, voice stripped raw by the tears still hot against his frozen face. “John?”
John was quiet for a minute. “If you didn’t back anything up…” He cut himself off as Virgil let out a strangled whimper. “I’m not saying it’s impossible and I’ll try my best, but I can’t promise anything. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.” He sighed. “Fuck, Virgil, I’m so sorry. That’s awful.”
“It’s… I just can’t believe… all of it, even dumb videos and- and photos from when Alan was really little and holiday pictures and…”
“I know,” John murmured, painfully soft. “I know, Virg.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
There was a brief pause. The coffee machine shut itself off with a grumbling purr. Muted footsteps clattered in the shared hallway outside. Virgil flattened his hands against the kitchen tiles and exhaled until his lungs ached as badly as his heart. It felt as if he had been used as an emotional punching bag and he was still reeling from all the hits.
“You start again,” John said, sounding so impossibly warm and openly concerned like one of the rare hugs he sometimes offered that Virgil wanted to cry all over again. “Tomorrow is another day. You’ll build more memories and in the meantime I’ll try to recover your old ones.”
Virgil wiped a hand down his face. “Sorry. I’m definitely overreacting.”
“Actually, I think this is a perfectly understandable response.”
“You have to say that - you’re my brother.”
“And when has that ever stopped me from speaking my mind?” John sounded vaguely amused by that remark. There was a background rustle of paper and a faint patter of bare feet across floorboards. “Do you want me to stay on the phone with you for a while?”
Virgil balled a hand into a fist and pressed his knuckles against his closed eyes. “Would you mind?”
“Not at all.”
Later that evening, after he’d flayed his soul over piano keys and had a quiet cry in the shower so that the water could sooth his aching eyes before tears could stain his face, his new phone began to chime. Once, then twice. For a while, silence. Then it lit up constantly. Virgil fumbled to reach for it without dislodging his nest of blankets, curled up on the couch with some familiar sitcom playing on the TV in a feeble attempt to reclaim the link to his childhood that the loss of his gallery seemed to have severed.
It was the family chat. Well. Specifically: the one with his brothers, not the one with Dad and Grandma or even the one with Uncle Lee and Aunt Val.
J: Can you send any family photos stored on your phones?
G: Uh ok?? Why?
J: I’ve got to collect data for an analysis of familial relationships in my psych unit
J: It’s actually fascinating. I could explain it in depth if you’re interested?
G: Nope, keep your nerd rants to yourself space-case
G: Take my photos and let me live in peace
S: All of them? Because I have a lot.
J: All of them, yes.
Virgil sat upright. The blanket pooled in his lap. He clutched his phone like a lifeline as treasured memories in the form of family photos automatically saved themselves to his previously empty camera roll. His eyes were stinging again.
Thank you, he texted John privately.
Has it helped? John replied in an instant.
Virgil tipped his head back against the couch cushions. His heart still hurt but the pain was no longer quite as raw.
Yes.
Eventually, the sense of loss eased. It always did. He tried not to think about the memories he couldn’t recall without a prompting photo which would now forever remain forgotten. Perhaps it was ridiculous to mourn photos and videos, but he let himself feel and slowly acceptance crept in like a soothing balm. By the time spring break came around, he’d almost forgotten his desperate plea for John to fix it, Johnny, please, until they were once again under the same roof.
John slid a laptop across the kitchen counter. It was late evening. Everyone else was either asleep or part of the way there. Virgil placed a hand on the smooth metal to keep it from slipping over the edge and frowned at his brother in question.
John lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “Open it.”
There was a lone file on the screen. When Virgil clicked it, he was greeted with a priceless collection of everything he’d believed to be lost forever. Years of life and love restored. He slowly lowered the screen to stare at John.
“You…”
“It took a long time, and it wasn’t entirely legal, but yes.” John ducked his head. “It’s not everything. Sorry. I tried my best and I recovered most of it, but some-”
“John?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I hug you?”
John blinked owlishly in the dim light. “Uh, sure?”
Virgil rounded the counter and pulled his brother into his arms. John was all height whereas Virgil was all muscle but somehow it worked. He buried his face in John’s shoulder and breathed deeply until his voice was steady.
“I love you. I love you so, so much.”
John’s smile was audible in his words. “I’m pretty fond of you too.”
Virgil couldn’t help but laugh. “Thank you.”
John held him close for a long moment, voice soft as he whispered, “Anytime, Virg.”