There was a new store on the corner. Matthew had been in such a hurry to get to school that he had hardly noticed it when he rode his bike past in the morning. The front of the store was hung with a brightly colored banner that said, “Grand opening!”

“Mom won’t mind if I just see what it is,” Matthew said to himself. He left his bike in the grass right outside the door.

When he pushed the door open, a little bell tinkled. He looked around. The walls were covered in shelves, which were filled with bottles. The bottles were full of different colored liquids, some sparkling clear blue, some murky grey, some bright red. They were all labeled with things like “KBis5Ap278.” Matthew stared around him.

“May I help you?”

Matthew turned. There was a very tall, thin man waiting behind the counter, looking at him expectantly.

“What do you sell?” asked Matthew.

The man smiled. He had slightly crooked white teeth. “I don’t sell anything. I give things away.”

“What kind of things?”

“Days.”

“Days?”

“Days! Each bottle has a day in it.” The man pushed some buttons behind his counter. One of the shelves near him rotated with a hum of machinery. “These are yours.”

Matt took a step forward. “Mine?”

The man came around the counter and wrapped his long, skinny fingers around one of the bottles. “Last summer. One sunny afternoon, one lazy morning, one laughter-filled evening. All in this bottle.” He handed it to Matthew. “Try it.”

He looked at the bottle. The liquid in it was golden, like perfect apple juice, only paler. He thought of every lecture he’d gotten about not taking things from strangers. “No thank you,” he said.

The man sighed. “It’s getting harder. Times being what they are. Nobody wants to remember any more. I would want that day, if I were you. The sun, the smell of mowed lawns, your brother Andrew saying you were pretty cool for a little kid—“

Matthew’s heart stopped. “How did you know he said that?”

“Oh, Matthew. It’s magic. There -- just now you were thinking, ‘How did he know my name?’ And now it’s, ‘Well, anyone could figure out that I’d be surprised.’ But I do know your name. I know what Andrew said. But only you—and that bottle—know how you felt when he said it.”

Matthew peered skeptically at the flask, then at the man, then at the bottle again. He pulled the cork out of the top.

“Drink it slowly,” the man advised. “Savor it.”

Matthew smelled the top of the bottle. It had the green, milky scent of crushed dandelion stems. He tilted it back and sipped the first few drops.

“You need to drink all of it,” said the man. “Or you won’t get the whole day.”

Matthew took another drink, and another, savoring the tart sweetness. It tasted like lemonade, and he could smell sun-block and chlorine. In a rush, the day came back to him, the sparkles of sunlight off the pool, the sound of his mother’s laughter. He could almost feel Andrew’s wet arms as they tried to wrestle each other under the water. His muscles ached pleasantly, as if he’d spent the day swimming and was walking home in the cool summer twilight.

The feelings faded. Matthew looked up at the thin man. “That was…wow. It was all so clear, the day when…when…I can’t remember!”

“Of course you can’t. You just drank the memory.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that was how it worked?”

“You didn’t ask. Do you want to try another one?”

Matthew hesitated. “Yeah. I guess. But only a little one. What are those tiny bottles up at the top?”

“Ah, that’s from when you were a baby. Very few memories. You want to try one?”

“Sure.” The bottle was just a little longer than his longest finger. He pulled out the stopper. It took only a quick slurp to drain the whole flask. The liquid was pale and milky, with a slightly sour aftertaste. All the images he saw were huge, much larger than life, and blurry. He could make out his mother’s voice, singing him a lullaby. The rest was too fuzzy to make any sense. Matthew blinked at the tall man.

“Did you like that one?”

“I don’t know. It was nice. I wouldn’t want to do it again, though.”

“Something a little different, perhaps?”

“Like what?”

The tall man scanned the shelves. His hand darted out. “This one.”

Matthew took the bottle. It was a dark, murky blue-green, almost like seawater. “What is it?”

“It’s a little more grown-up.”

Matthew took a deep breath and gulped down the liquid. It was thick and salty and coated his tongue. He gripped the counter, hard, so that he didn’t fall over. “You gave me—“

“Just relax. It’ll be exciting.”

Matthew gasped for air. He was in the middle of chaos, pushed and shoved in every direction, assaulted by noise and smells. His family had disappeared into the crowd. There were shouts, curses—“Watch where you’re going, kid!” Matthew was almost sick from the smell of hot dogs and clashing perfumes. The pavement hurt his feet. The relief when he relived his reunion with his family hit him hard again. The whole thing lasted only a split second, but it felt like hours. It all merged until it was a blur of hugs and jostling and tears.

Matthew fought to breathe. He stared wordlessly at the thin man, who shrugged. “You asked for something different. That’s about as different as you’ve got. You want another?”

It couldn’t get any worse, Matthew thought, and the first one was really cool. “Just one more, and then I have to go home,” said Matthew, thinking of how his mom would worry when Andrew got home so much earlier than he did.

“Only one? Well, then, it’ll have to be the best one.”

“Which one is the best one?”

“Memories are like fruit, dear boy: they are most piquant when fresh.”

“What’s ‘piquant?’”

“In this case, strong and flavorful. Here, let me show you.” The thin man pressed another button, and the shelves rotated again to reveal a small, complicated distillery. There were a dozen starting liquids, of varying colors and textures, which bubbled and seeped through the glass tubes. The flask at the end looked like all the others, but the liquid that filled it was sparkling and prismatic, with every shade of the rainbow refracting from its depths.

The thin man unscrewed the flask and quickly replaced it with a smaller one. “Today’s vintage. Why don’t we enjoy it in the gorgeous sunlight of the day itself?”

“Okay,” said Matthew suspiciously, following him to the door.

“Remember, you must drain it quickly.”

“Uh huh,” said Matthew, taking the flask before the man could change his mind. It smelled like pencils and chalk dust, like the apple in his lunch bag and the waffles his mom had made for breakfast—and like all the other flasks. As he started to sip, he was surrounded with words:

“Wake up, sweetie! It’s a gorgeous morning.”

“Hurry up, Matthew, you’re going to make me late!”

“I got a new lunch box.”

“What’s the capital of South Dakota?”

“Does anybody remember where we left off last time?”

“Okay, you can go now.”

“You must drain it quickly—“

Matthew dropped the flask into the grass. “Thank you,” he said as he picked up his bike from next to where the flask had fallen. He gave it a quick glance.

The thin man smiled and waved. When Matthew was out of sight, he shut the door behind him. He looked around the empty shop with a sigh. “They always let themselves forget.”

Matthew’s mom was working in her office off the family room, but she had left peanut butter cookies on a plate on the kitchen table. Matthew grabbed one before Andrew could finish them off.

“Hey, sweetie!” his mom called. “Did you have a good day?”

Matthew thought of the two sparkling drops left in the flask in the grass. “Oh, yes,” he said.

The End

Marissa Lingen is a freelance writer living in Minnesota. She intends to buy a dog soon, is allergic to cats, and has a backyard full of squirrels that throw things at her. She is working on a fantasy novel featuring Finnish mythology, early computers, and the Cold War. She has published over thirty short stories.

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