False Memory

DAN KROKOS

In the food court I find a mall cop leaning against a pillar. His eyes sweep over the tables, fingers rolling a whistle in front of his sternum. His left hand taps a beat on his thigh. C. Lyle, according to his name tag.

I walk up to him. It takes five seconds for him to look at me. “Hello,” I say. “I lost my memory. I was wondering if you could help.”

“You lost your memory?” he says.

I don’t know why he asks. It’s clear he heard me perfectly. “Yeah. I don’t know where I’m supposed to be,” I say. He stands upright, arching his back to push off the pillar.

Fuzzy blond wisps cover his chin, and acne pocks his forehead —not all of him made it through puberty.

“What’s your name?” he says.

“Miranda North.”

“And how old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

One corner of his mouth goes up, and I know it’s fake because no one smiles that way naturally. I remember that. “Doesn’t seem like you’ve forgotten all that much. You remember who you are.”

Half true. I remember my name and age. I remember what a mall cop is. I don’t remember anything about my life. Here’s hoping that’s normal for amnesiacs.

The crowd pulses behind me, makes me step closer to C. Lyle. I try to block them out; being in the open like this makes my skin itch, and I don’t know why.

“I don’t remember anything else,” I say.

It’s true. This morning I woke up on a bench, staring up at the Terminal Tower. I know that’s in Cleveland, and my first thought was what bad luck to wake up in Cleveland with no memory. Not San Diego, or Dallas, or a place where the sun shines more than three days a year. The logical reason I’m here is because Cleveland is my home.

I know my name is Miranda North, and I know I’m in the second half of seventeen. I have four hundred dollars cash in my pocket.

“Why would I lie?” I say.

“Because you’re a kid, and kids like to mess with security guards.”

Can’t imagine why. If he wants me to stand here until he’s forced to deal with me, I can play that game.

After wandering the city for a bit, I found a mirror in a public restroom and didn’t recognize the girl staring back at me. I mean, yes, I knew it was me. Obviously. But if you had asked me what color my hair was before then, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. It’s reddish-brown, straight, a little past my shoulders. I’m muscular, like I work out all the time. The contours of lines on my stomach are visible without flexing. I’m not bulky, but there’s nothing soft about me. Maybe I’m a gymnast. My eyes are the same color as my hair, which seems odd. I drifted into the mall after that. I felt fine at first—not afraid, because I didn’t know what to be afraid of. The memory loss could be a temporary thing. Then I noticed my eyes automatically searching for cover, places to hide. Scanning people’s faces, judging their expressions as friendly or menacing.

Watching the way they moved, seeing if they were preparing to attack. Nobody was.

Paranoia, I thought. I struggled to appear calm on the outside. Inside I was feverish, eyes darting at everything, grasping for calm thoughts.

Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to ask someone for help. I rode the escalator to the food court on the second level. Found a table in the corner to rest and think. Then I saw C. Lyle leaning against his pillar.

“Just...let me use a phone or something.” Maybe if I’m holding a phone, my fingers will remember a number my brain can’t.

C. Lyle really studies me for the first time. It’s like his eyebrows are trying to kiss between his eyes. “Are you messing with me?”

I’m trying to be calm and reasonable, but this emptiness inside my chest widens, this fear I might never remember who I am.

With that awful thought, my eyes ache, as if I stared into the sun for a few seconds. The cramp spreads through my brain into a full-blown headache, which I could do without right now. I blink a few times. Over my shoulder, the line curls away from Charley’s.

“No,” I say. “I’m not. I was hoping my memory would come back, like one of those temporary things. But it’s not. I know it’s not. I really need your help.”

He points at the bag in my hand. “You lost your memory but had time to shop?”

I look at the bag too. “I had some cash on me and thought I’d buy a few things.” Buy some stuff in a mall. Be normal. Part of trying to not throw up into the nearest trash can. He points at the floor now. “Set it down.”

I do.

He crouches and opens the bag, then raises an eyebrow.

“Is there anything in here that could harm me?”

“What? No.” The way he’s looking at me, like I’m a criminal, makes my skin crawl.

“You’re sure?”

The ache behind my eyes becomes a burn, a hot spike narrowing to the bridge of my nose. It doesn’t feel like a normal headache, but maybe I don’t remember what a normal headache is. I take a shallow breath and rub my eyes while C. Lyle bends over and paws through my bag. He pulls out a red bra. I spent forty dollars on.

“You lost your memory but had time to go bra shopping?” he says.

Someone bumps into me from behind. I step forward instead of lashing out with an elbow, which for some reason is my first instinct. C. Lyle isn’t quite looking at me; he’s looking up at the pale patch of skin between the straps of my black tank top.

“I have a lot of time,” I say. “Like I said, I don’t know where I’m supposed to be.” I’d be content with a lie, a few comforting words.
Everything will be okay, Miranda
.

He sees the rest of the stuff is clothes, which I bought so I’d have something to change into. If I was going to be a fake shopper, I might as well buy fresh jeans.

He stands up and dusts his hands together like they’re dirty. “Get out of here. I’m not here for you to play with. Or I can walk you out.”

My mouth opens a little. I don’t understand. I just told him I don’t remember anything, and he’s trying to shoo me out of here like he’s got something more important to do. “Please,” I say. “I don’t know what happened to me.” If I knew, maybe everything would be fine. Maybe knowing would fill some of the emptiness inside. Or maybe I could lose the headache.

He drops his hand on my shoulder. And squeezes. It’s like a piano wire is running from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. The wire breaks. I clamp both hands onto his arm and hug it to my chest. My black boots squeak on the floor as I pivot into him, still holding his arm, and set my back against his front. I pull his arm across my body and pop my hip against his thigh. He flips over me, legs kicking like he’s on an upside-down bike.

C. Lyle lands hard on his back, blowing out an explosive, spittle-laced breath.

I stand there stunned. One thought flashes like a neon sign—
I’m in trouble
.

His face mirrors mine. Except for the area directly around us, life carries on in the food court. The line at Charley’s grows.

A kid spills a drink, and his mom shakes a finger in his face and shouts. Someone balls up a wrapper and shoots for the can, misses, and leaves it on the floor.

C. Lyle fumbles with his stun gun, trying to unbuckle the strap.

I have to stop him. I have to show him I didn’t mean it.

Because it’s true; I have no idea why I did that. But he has the snap open now, and his fingers close on the stun gun. I stop thinking.

I thrust my hand forward, palm out. “
Wait!
” As I say it, the pain behind my eyes returns, stronger than ever. I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t stop. My brain has been replaced by a huge glowing coal. And somehow, the pain and heat radiate 
outside
my head. I can feel them spreading around me, moving outward in waves, even though it’s impossible.

C. Lyle freezes on the floor, hand clenched on the stun gun.

His eyes bug and his whole body begins to tremble. Thankfully, his hand spasms too violently to pull his weapon. People around him back away rather than help, then they freeze too. Then they run.

C. Lyle flops over onto his belly. He gets a leg under him and tries to stand but slips and falls flat again. The fire in my head keeps spreading, releasing pressure with each pulse, granting me a fraction of relief with each passing second. People flee from me, from us. Pounding feet rattle my eardrums. The pain blurs my vision with tears, but my eyes automatically search for an exit on their own. They find no escape route, just faces with open mouths and wide eyes—deer eyes, panicked.

Fear. Of what? I spin around, looking for someone sane, someone who will tell me everything is fine. Instead I see a man running, head turned over his shoulder, blind to the silver railing in front of him. He hits it. His feet leave the ground and he topples over. His shoes go upside down as he drops, soles pointed at the ceiling. The screams don’t drown out the thump of his body.

I clap a hand over my mouth. It happens again. A woman flips over the railing. Her beige purse flies into space, coins and keys shooting out and flickering in the bright light. I focus on that, the purse pinwheeling through the air. I watch it disappear under the floor’s edge. 

More people fall, so I fix my gaze at the skylights framing the bright blue sky. A little boy calls for his mother. His voice cuts through me and pulls my attention back to the hysteria.

He yells again—“Mom! MOM!”—but there’s too much noise, too many bodies blurring past to find him. My numb feet carry me to the edge, where I clamp my hands on the cold metal tube that’s supposed to protect people. Bodies sprawl far below, twisted and still.

I push away and spin back to the court, swallowing hard against my gag reflex.

Even the people who didn’t see me flip C. Lyle—they run too. Like a spreading wave, the wave from my head, the people farthest away stiffen, then take off in no particular direction.

Many of them scream. Some cover their mouths to keep the screams in, like me. I only catch snippets of their words—
help me what is this Mom where are you please please someone!
C. Lyle staggers to his feet like a drunk, belt jangling as he lurches to the escalator. He almost trips over two people tangled on the floor. The last two. I watch them break apart and roll away from each other. They breathe in heaving gulps.

One gets up and runs down the escalator. The other crawls, dragging his right leg. My last image of him is a work boot scraping over the ridges on the top step.

Somewhere in the food court a tray falls. A drink splashes over the floor.

At first the court seems empty, except for the bags and food trays people have left behind.

But I’m not alone.