Remember (12 page)

I stood and picked up a cardboard star that had fallen to the floor. “Win, I don’t want to fight with you.”

Win snatched the star out of my hand. “Fine, we’re not fighting. Whatever you want.” Her voice was distant and cold.

“I want to be on the prom committee. I really do.” I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. Five minutes ago the dance had seemed irrelevant, but now I didn’t want to lose a chance to be involved. I could see Win’s expression wavering. “C’mon, give me one of those stars.”

Win started to smile, but then stepped on some loose sequins that had spilled from one of the boxes. Her foot slid
out from under her and she began to fall backward. Her mouth pursed into a perfect small Lifesaver O as she went down.

Suddenly it felt like someone hit me in the back of the head with a two-by-four. My field of vision went black, and I had a flash. I was at the top of a stairwell above a foyer, a gray slate stone floor just in view down below. A bookshelf off to the side was stuffed with books, almost every free inch covered, with an old school globe on the very top. The woman from the picture was about to fall. She reached out to steady herself. The bookcase stopped her for a moment, but then her hand slipped off and she tumbled down the stairs with a gasp. The globe teetered at the top of the bookcase for a moment, then came crashing down after her. It broke into pieces when it slammed into the floor below.

“I swear this school is trying to kill me,” Win said.

My attention snapped back to her. I blinked blankly. Win had fallen onto one of the cardboard boxes. Her butt was jammed down in the box, which was filled with tablecloths. Other than her dignity, nothing else seemed to be hurt.

Win stood and straightened her skirt. “If you’re sure about wanting to be involved—”

“I just had another memory,” I said, cutting her off. “There was some kind of accident. A fall. I saw it. I think it’s another piece of the puzzle.” I stopped talking when I saw Win’s face.

“Oh my God. I can’t believe we’re talking about it again. You can’t give it up.” She shook her head in disbelief.

“No, you don’t understand.”

“I understand fine. When you’re ready to be a part of this world instead of the one in your head, let me know.” Win stormed out the door. It swung closed behind her, the hydraulics keeping it from slamming shut. Instead it closed with a soft whoosh, leaving me alone in the storage room.

The room, which had felt claustrophobic when I’d first entered, now made me feel safe. Maybe no one would find me in there, hidden among the boxes and stacks of stuff.

I sank back onto a Rubbermaid container. Hot tears filled my eyes and ran down my cheeks. The woman in my memory was the same as the woman in the picture I’d given to Neil. I had no vision of her after the fall, but I was suddenly quite sure that she’d never gotten back up again. Neil wasn’t going to find her anywhere.

chapter twenty-one

I
’d never been the most popular girl at Saint Francis. No one followed me around and copied what I wore or how I did my hair. However, I was part of the inner circle. Now I was getting a glimpse at how people who were bullied felt as they navigated the school day. The day after the fight with Win, I was doing my best to avoid her in the halls. If I heard her voice, I ducked into the bathroom or a classroom. I could feel my Spidey senses on high alert. Anytime I heard someone giggle, I whipped around, convinced they were talking about me. The halls felt like a war zone.

I was walking toward the cafeteria when it hit me: I had no idea where to sit. It wasn’t like there were assigned seats, but everyone tended to congregate at the same tables day after day. I could picture Win getting up and leaving the
table if I joined our usual crowd, and the idea of sitting by myself felt scary. Everyone would stare as if there were a spotlight directed at me. They’d all wonder what was going on and start speculating. I stood outside the cafeteria and peered in.

“You okay?” Josh said behind me. I jumped, startled by his voice.

“Win and I had a fight,” I admitted.

“Yeah, she told me this morning in history.”

“What did she say about it?” I asked, trying to figure out how much he knew. I didn’t think she’d tell him about Neil, not that there was anything to really say. I’d been clear with Neil I wasn’t wanting to make things romantic. I pushed away the thought that I hadn’t been quite as transparent with Josh and that I was sending mixed messages to both of them. I’d stewed on the fight with Win all of last night. I felt bad I’d been so preoccupied that I hadn’t realized how serious she and Kyle were getting, but she hadn’t exactly been pounding down my door to tell me all about it. She was mad because I wasn’t psychic, that I hadn’t picked up on her signals. It wasn’t fair. Yesterday I’d been too crazed to apologize, but now I felt like she owed me an apology too.

“She wouldn’t say why you guys were fighting.”

I shifted, my shoes squeaking on the tile floor. “It’s complicated.”

Josh sighed. “Everything is complicated these days.” He
cupped my elbow. “Come on, let’s go have lunch. You guys will get over it. You’ve been friends forever.”

I pulled my arm back. I knew he didn’t mean it that way, but it felt as if he were implying we were being silly, overemotional girls. “I don’t want to have lunch and pretend everything’s fine.”

“So what are you going to do? Eat your lunch in the parking lot?”

Saint Francis didn’t exactly have a great outdoor space. There was one battered picnic table in front of the school by the flagpole. It was worn and weathered and was likely to give you a rash of splinters if you were brave enough to sit there.

“Maybe. The weather’s nice,” I said.

Josh stared at me as if trying to figure out if I was serious. “Okay then, let’s go.”

“You’re coming with me?” I looked back toward the cafeteria. “I thought you’d want to have lunch with everyone else.”

“I want to be with you.” Josh put his sack lunch down on the floor and turned me so we were face-to-face. “I know you’re going through a lot right now, but it’s important to me that you know I’m there for you.”

My lower lip started to quiver. “I know,” I whispered so quietly that I wasn’t even sure if he heard me.

* * *

The rest of the day felt like a near-out-of-body experience. I went through the motions. Attended every class and shuffled
through the halls smiling blankly at people. All I wanted to do was leave, but

A) My situation wasn’t going to be any better by skipping class and getting in trouble for that, and

B) I had absolutely no idea where I would go if I did skip. It wasn’t as if I could go home—my mom would wonder what I was doing there—and I’d never needed a secret hideout before.

I bolted out the door after the final bell and headed home in my mom’s car. Close to our neighborhood I passed a beat-up Toyota on the side of the road. I turned around. It looked like Neil’s car. It pulled out into traffic behind me. I slowed down slightly and I saw the car flash its lights in my rearview mirror. It was Neil. I drove into the gas station on the next corner. He drove slowly past my car.

“Don’t park here; there are security cameras,” he called outside his window. “Meet me by the strip mall on the next block.” He drove away without waiting for me to answer. I peered up and noticed the black security cameras on each of the pumps. I fought the urge to slump down in my seat. It was all turning very CIA. Was he being serious, or was this just part of his weird off-grid paranoia?

I sat in the car, my hands on the steering wheel. There was no doubt in my mind that Neil had something important to tell me. He’d been waiting for me to drive by. I took a deep breath and drove after him. Now I had to figure out if I was ready to hear it.

As soon as I pulled into the strip mall lot, I saw him. He was outside his car, pacing back and forth. He looked relieved when he saw me. Maybe he’d thought that in the two blocks I’d decided to take off.

“Do you really think someone is tracking us on security cameras?” I asked as I got out of the car.

“I don’t think so, but I didn’t want to take a chance.” He kicked a piece of gravel across the parking lot. “Better safe than sorry.”

I didn’t like how he was looking at me. He had dark circles under his eyes like he hadn’t slept, and his hands kept fidgeting. “What?”

“I have some answers about the woman in the picture.” He passed the photo back to me.

“She’s dead,” I guessed. His eyes widened and he nodded. “I had a hunch that would be what you would discover,” I said. I didn’t tell him about the flash of memory I’d had in the storage room. As much as I wanted to tell him everything, Win was right. I needed to be careful. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “What else did you find out?”

He jammed his hands in his pockets and stared down at an empty McDonald’s cup on the pavement as if it held the answers to the mystery of the universe. “I’m not sure how to tell you. I’m not even sure if I should tell you.”

“You can’t keep something like that a secret. I’m the one who asked you to find this information out.” My stomach clenched.

“Easy. I’m not saying you don’t have a right to know what I found; what I meant is that I’m not sure if I’m the best person for you to hear the news from. I thought it might be better if your heard it from a counselor or something,” Neil said.

“Just tell me.”

“Her name was Robyn Bryne.”

“She had the same last name as me?” My stomach tightened another notch. It felt like my body was being squeezed in a vise.

Neil nodded. “She was married to your dad.” He pulled out a sheet of paper. “They got married their last year of college.”

His words didn’t make sense. No matter how my brain tried to put it together, it didn’t fit. “That’s not possible. My mom and dad got married around that same time. My dad would have said something if he’d been married before.” I reached for the paper but stopped short of taking it from his hand.

Neil looked scared, which made me even more frightened. “She was married to your dad until you were nine.”

“How is that possible?” The idea of my dad having a whole other family was unreal. It felt like a huge gaping hole had just opened up in front of me. What if he was one of those guys who showed up on talk shows because they had two families at the same time who never knew about each other? Maybe I met her when I was young and that’s why she seemed so familiar. Did my mom know about her? “My mom is going to freak out when she hears this.”

“I’m not convinced she’s your mom.”

I stood blinking at him. There was a faint buzzing sound in my ears.

“Robyn Bryne died, and three months later your dad married the woman you know as your mom. You would have been nine when they married. Marriage licenses are matters of public record. You don’t have to believe me. In fact, you should check it out yourself.”

“I was nine?” I swallowed. I felt like I might throw up. Most of my baby pictures and photos from before we moved were gone. My parents had told me they were lost in the move. We had some, but now I couldn’t remember if there was a picture of all of us together as a family when I was really young.

Neil nodded.

“That’s when we moved here,” I said. My voice sounded strange in my ears.

“Have you ever seen your birth certificate?” Neil asked.

I blinked. “My birth certificate?” I repeated. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Wait. Did he think this Robyn was my mom?

“It could be faked, but that would be something to check.”

I felt light-headed. I might have started swaying, because Neil took a step forward and grabbed me by the elbow.

“Here, sit down.” He looked around. The parking lot wasn’t chock-full of benches. My knees were weak. It was as if whatever muscles were responsible for holding me up had decided to take a break. I sank down onto one of the cement
bars that were at the front of each parking space. Neil guided me down, making sure it was more of a sitting versus a falling.

“I triple-checked everything.” He sounded as if he wanted to apologize.

“You remember stuff from when you were nine, right? I mean, sure, maybe people don’t remember stuff from when they were toddlers or even five or six, but people remember stuff at nine, right?” My voice sounded high and tight even to my own ears. “Even if someone has a crappy memory, they’d remember having a different mother, wouldn’t they? How can I remember details like how my dad brought those Baskin-Robbins ice cream cone clowns to my first-grade birthday party at school, and not remember that I used to have a totally different mom? This isn’t possible.” My breath was coming hard and fast, and I felt a smear of oily sweat popping up on my forehead and underarms.

“Here, let me get you some water.” Neil dove into his car and pulled out a metal water bottle. He unscrewed the top for me, but when I reached for it, my hand was shaking so hard he ended up guiding it to my mouth so I could take a drink. The water was warm, and I had to remind my body to swallow. It was like it had forgotten what to do.

“The clown cones had purple icing hair. I remember that. I specifically asked for purple. I didn’t want pink. I hate pink.” My vision was filling in with black stars, and there was a loud rushing sound in my ears.

“Shit. I knew I should have gotten someone else to tell you. I might be wrong about all of this, but I can’t come up with any other answer. Are you going into shock? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look really bad.” Neil stared down at me.

I dropped my head between my knees. I had a vague memory from tenth-grade health class that that was what you were supposed to do when you thought you might pass out. Neil sat next to me and rubbed my back. When the black dots in front of my eyes cleared, I looked up. “How is it possible that I don’t remember her?”

Neil wiped his hands on his jeans. “I’ve been thinking about it. Is it possible you’ve had the procedure before?”

“The procedure softens your memories. It doesn’t wipe them out.”

“But it could, couldn’t it? If someone, I don’t know, cranked up the machine, it could wipe those memories, couldn’t it?”

Neil didn’t say who he meant when he said “someone,” but it was obvious, wasn’t it? It would have to have been my dad. Who else could have done it? My stomach acid started to eat a sour hole in my guts.

“I started dreaming about her before the procedure. It started when my horse died.” I bit down hard on my lip, trying to ground myself with the pain.

“I thought about that,” Neil said. “Losing your horse was really emotional, right? Maybe that shook something free.”

I flashed to what the groom had said and to the date on
Harry’s papers. “I think the horse used to belong to her, to Robyn.”

Neil rubbed his chin. “I don’t know enough about how the brain works, but maybe if your memories had been buried, losing Harry was enough to make them start to come back.”

“Do you think people know you were checking into her history? Is that why you didn’t want to be near any cameras?” I wanted to look around to see if there was anyone watching us, but I didn’t want to give in to the paranoia.

“I didn’t want to take any chances. There’s been some weird stuff going on—people following me, or at least I think I’m being followed. I couldn’t tell you in an e-mail or on the phone. I didn’t want to take the chance that anyone else would know. Just in case.”

“She fell, didn’t she? That’s how Robyn died,” I said. The flash I’d had when I’d been with Win ran through my head. She’d fallen down the stairs and I’d been there. I’d seen the whole thing. I’d seen it and then somehow blocked it out of my memory. Or someone else had. Things were falling into place. When the groom had talked about how my mom had loved to ride, he hadn’t meant the mom I always knew; he’d meant this other woman. Robyn. The black dots started to fill my vision again, and I forced myself to take a deep breath.

“I don’t know. The information I found simply says there was an accident. What makes you think she fell?” Neil looked freaked out. If he was shocked, I was willing to bet I looked worse.

“I’m starting to remember more things.” I took another deep breath. I could smell exhaust from the road out front; it clung to the back of my throat in a greasy film. “Do you think when I went in for the procedure it could have sped up the memory recovery? If losing Harry started it, did having the procedure speed it all up?”

“I don’t know,” Neil admitted. “My major is social justice. We’re way out of my league in terms of science and medical knowledge, but I’m guessing it did.”

I liked that he didn’t try to pretend like he had the answers. “My dad was really against me getting the procedure. Maybe he knew it was a risk. He wants me to go back in to see his doctor. He’s set up an appointment for next week.” I pressed my hands to my legs to stop them from shaking.

Neil gripped his knees. I could feel the tension in his body where our shoulders and knees touched. “You can’t go.”

“I know.” I didn’t tell him that I’d already missed two appointments. It was going to get harder and harder to come up with excuses to avoid going to the clinic. “I know this looks bad, but I’m not ready to assume the worst. You said yourself there could be other reasons.” I refused to believe it could be as bad as it felt right now. There had to be some other explanation. I had to be careful not to jump to some worst-case scenario.