Aidan. My name is Celtic for “fire”. My mother loved to joke at dinner parties that I gave her so much heartburn while she was pregnant with me that it just fit me perfectly.

The cross-stitched nametag still hangs above my childhood bed, kept into place above my headboard by two golden thumbtacks.

Aidan Duluth Maxwell, it says. Born 22 May, 1974.

I haven’t the heart to take it down or move it, and since my mother doesn’t either, guests who stay in the room will often come downstairs and ask my mother about her son.

I didn’t know you had a son, Marie! They’ll say, and my mother will flinch, shying away.

I didn’t either. She’ll reply stonily.

The guests will fumble for the right words, before my mother replies evenly that it’s quite alright, she forgets intentionally.

Aidan Duluth Maxwell, Born 22 May 1974, Disowned 22 May 1991.

Her name was Natalie. She lived next door to me, and it was on that childhood bed of mine that we lost ourselves to each other.

She had short, bobbed blonde hair that went down to cup under her ears and big, earnest blue eyes. Freckles covered her pale face and laughter always filled the air whenever she was around.

My Natalie. I said to her once, and she shied away. That one blessed day in 1991, my seventeenth birthday.

I’m not yours. She said. I’m thinking of going to Prom with Victor. My breath caught in my throat, and before I knew what was doing, I had her pinned on the ground, my fingers a vice around her neck.

You won’t go anywhere with Victor when you’re dead. I had said icily as she struggled to sit up and scream for help.

You’re an asshole, Aidan. A complete and utter selfish asshole. She spat in my face. I threw back my head and I laughed.

Thank you, ma’am. I said, squeezing one last time.

Natalie died on my bed, on my birthday, at three fifty-four pm.

My mother disowned me at eleven fifty-nine pm, saying that she was pushing the date as close as she could, so I could feel remorse for what I had done.

Guess who’s laughing now? Certainly not my mother. Mother’s too busy pretending like I don’t exist, locked away in my little room and laughing with empty eyes at the picture in my mind’s eye of Natalie Hallowell.

Because you can’t go anywhere when you’re dead.