The Leaving (28 page)

That panic started to peek around the corner again. This shouldn’t be hard. She had to remember. She said, “A vacation in Maine where I played video games in an ice-cream shop. It was the first time my parents let me go out on my own with my cousin.”

“Not it. Try again.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Racing around her mind, grabbing at anything of value, like a Supermarket Memory Sweep. “Getting stung by a bee. I felt something on my leg and went to scratch it and got a handful of bee. I screamed.”

“You could just keep going and going, couldn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I guess?” It felt like they were having a fight and she wasn’t sure why. But yes, memories were lining up at the checkout now, waiting their turn.

That time she made a massive sand castle with her father, the way he’d taught her to drip sand to form towers.

The night her parents had a party and she and Max crept halfway down the stairs to peek at the dancing, at the wine being poured.

The time she fell down the back stairs, slid on her back, couldn’t breathe; the panic in her mother’s eyes.

The first time she went off the high diving board at the pool where she’d learned to swim, the way she’d felt like she’d never make it back up to the surface in time and might die.

If he hadn’t asked her, would she have remembered any of that ever again?

And if not, wasn’t that terrifying?

Lucas said, “You really can’t think of your
most vivid
memory?”

And something inside her snapped. “I remember The Leaving, okay? Is that what you want me to say?” It felt like she’d pulled a muscle she hadn’t even known she’d had. “I remember standing at the bus stop for like an hour. There was a tree there that I was trying to climb and I thought it was fun. But then the crying started and then my mom sobbed for days and nothing was even
allowed
to be fun for a long time. I remember being on the news in my pajamas. I remember that more than any good day or Christmas or birthday, okay?”

“You don’t even know how lucky you are.” He shook his head. “I want my life back.”

“So start living it.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“It
is
easy,” she said. “All
anyone
is trying to do is to move on from their own crappy situation or baggage.”

“There has to be more to life than that.”

“Says who?”

He looked at something far away. “On the way here, I was thinking these crazy things, like how we’re going to find some pill or magical cube. Something that will bring it all back, like my whole childhood will come rushing into me and I’ll feel complete again, like I can move on.”

“I think you’re going to need to find another way.”

“To get my memory back?”

“No, to move on.”
With me, you idiot!

“Ever since we came back,” he said, “I’ve had this thought about killing the person who did this. That that would be how I’d be able to move on. Now, with the gun and the body, I’m wondering whether I already did that and still haven’t moved on.”

“You don’t seem like a killer,” she said, and she reached out and took his hand and held it, hard. He didn’t refuse.

“I know. But you don’t know me.
I
don’t know me.” He pulled his hand away. “I shouldn’t have told you any of that.”

She was about to tell him that he could tell her
everything
—that she wanted to know his every thought, every flaw—when he said, “I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Why not?”

He stood. “I don’t know. Because of me. I’m messed up. Because of Scarlett. I don’t know. I just need to figure this out. It needs to be with her.”

So this was what life was.

A series of events in which things you care about—the only good things around you—get taken away one by one.

She wouldn’t just allow it.

She stood and got within inches of him, face-to-face. “But you and I are just old friends,” she said, and waited for him to try to deny what was between them. In some mirror universe they were touching, and in this universe their bodies knew it, had some muscle memory of it.

“Avery,” he said. “I can’t.”

She nodded, then walked inside, leaving the lanai door open behind her. She said, “You’re right that you should stop showing up here like this. It’s creepy.”

S
c
a
r
l
et
t

Scarlett drifted through aisles of bright colors and sparkly displays and bold prints before ending up in a far corner of the fabric store, drawn to a number of vintage prints in muted tones.

She ran a finger across a roll of light-brown fabric with pale-pink stripes running in both directions, like oversize graph paper. She pulled the bolt out of the stand and set out in search of buttons.

And debated between purple and blue before selecting an almost neon aqua.

By the registers, she handed over the fabric and asked for two yards and spun a display of patterns but found none she liked. She’d make her own pattern, maybe using the jacket she’d bought at the outlets with her mother for a guide.

The guard hadn’t mentioned a hood, but she wanted one.

He hadn’t mentioned a subtle pleated fringe down the front but she could see it in her mind’s eye and knew her fingers could make it work.

“Will that be all?” The woman was done cutting.

“And these buttons, please.” Scarlett put them on the counter.

“What are you making?”

“A jacket.”

“You can post pics on my website when you’re done. If you want.”

“Okay,” Scarlett said. “I will.”

“You’ve been in here before, right?”

“No.”

“Really?”

Confused silence that Scarlett then filled: “I’m one of the returned kids. You know, The Leaving.”

“Oh. Right.” She slid the fabric into a bag. “You know how to sew?”

“Yes, we forget where we were, but apparently the part of the brain where you learn things—they call it procedural memory—is intact.”

“I’d like to forget my whole first marriage.” She held up a bag and receipt.

“Wish I could help you with that.” Scarlett grabbed the bag and left.

She was parked a ways down the street and felt a weird sense that someone was following her. Footsteps in pace with hers? Something?

So she turned.

Just people going about their beach business.

No man carrying wrapping paper.

Nothing that looked like wrapping paper.

Nothing.

So she kept walking.

Then stopped and turned again a block later.

Compared the crowd.

Yes, that girl.

Definitely following her.

So she walked straight at her, surprised that the girl stood her ground, didn’t run. “Why are you following me?”

“I was afraid to say . . . I just.”

“You just what?” Scarlett stepped closer.

“I wanted to see you with my own eyes, I guess,” she said.

“Why? Who are you?”

But the girl’s voice was so familiar that Scarlett realized she knew the answer. She’d seen her before, on the news.

The girl said, “I’m Avery. I’m Max’s little sister.”

Lucas

“I wasn’t expecting I’d hear from you again.” Sashor shook Lucas’s hand, and again Lucas didn’t want to let go. But did. They walked down a long hall to his office together. “So, what’s up?” Sashor asked.

They sat—Sashor at his desk, Lucas in a chair in front. A sign on the wall that Lucas hadn’t noticed last time read,

THERE’S NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT
AND NO PRESENT LIKE TIME.

“Have you ever heard of a memory scientist named Daniel Orlean?”

“First I heard of him was from Chambers.”

“His research had to do with erasing trauma, curing post-traumatic stress.”

“Yes, I read up on him a bit. The science has come a long way since he was working in the field, but it’s still a minefield of moral issues.”

“It seems like maybe whoever did this was influenced by him, by the book. Because our traumas have been erased.”

“You remember the scene of your mother’s car crash, Lucas.”

“But not the shooting. That must mean something.”

“It could mean everything or nothing. Chambers and I, well—Lucas, I’m not sure I’m free to talk about it yet.”

“About what?” Lucas asked.

Sashor just pressed his lips together.

“You’re seriously not going to tell me.”

“I’m really sorry.” Sashor looked it, at least. “Soon,” he said. “I’ll have something to tell you soon.”

“I kissed Scarlett,” Lucas blurted, and Sashor looked surprised and interested. “And I knew it wasn’t the first time. But I’ve been trying to will myself to remember and I can’t. Can I will myself to remember things she and I did together?”

“Well, certainly there are memories we have and never access until someone else mentions them.” Sashor sat back in his chair, swiveled a little one way, then the other. “Like someone will say ‘Remember the time you did the “Thriller” dance in your underwear,’ and you won’t have thought of it in years but you’ll remember it.”

Lucas said, “I don’t know that dance.”

“You get my point,” Sashor said. “There’s also stuff that your subconscious hangs onto—like a buffering or savings effect—so if you memorize a list or something, then wait a long time until you’re sure you’ve forgotten. Like if you tested yourself. Then if you try to memorize the same list again it’ll take you less time than it did the first time around. So the memory of the sequences was stashed away somewhere in your brain and then reactivated.“

“How do you remember everything that you know about memory?” Lucas asked.

Sashor laughed.

Lucas worked hard to phrase the next question just so. “So if I can remember loving someone, would I remember hurting someone?”

“I wish I had clearer answers for you, Lucas.”

“I wish you did, too.”

“I just wonder if there’s a point at which you should just stop trying to remember. If maybe what you need is the opposite of trying to will yourself to remember. Maybe you need to intentionally forget about remembering.”

“I’m not sure I follow.” Lucas shifted in his chair.

“Imagine each memory of these past eleven years, imagine each one as, well, a penny. Say the reality of each moment is the penny. Now imagine them all stretched like Scarlett’s penny—because your recall, if you had any, of what happened wouldn’t necessarily be accurate anyway. So why fixate?”

“There was a woman in the nursing home. Where Orlean is. She couldn’t remember anything. Not from one minute to the next. You leave the room and you go right back in, and she had no idea who you were.”

“I’ve read about her.”

“Who is she?”

“Her name, you mean?” Sashor shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

“No, I mean, how do you form and maintain your identity if you have no memories?”

“
You
have the whole rest of your life ahead of you to make memories.”

“But how do I know how to be?”

“How does anybody? Most people only come into adulthood with a handful of vivid memories of their childhood anyway. There’s a forgetting curve that has been researched and documented. The longer you live, the less you remember. Don’t overvalue what you’ve lost.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m just thinking out loud. People aren’t shaped by conscious memories so much as they are by their overall life experience and
bonds. The important thing is arriving at adulthood feeling secure, and even though there are a lot of questions about what happened to you, you seem pretty secure.”

“I have barely suppressed homicidal rage,” Lucas said. “How does that make me secure?”

“Your rage is justified. You’re feeling rage toward someone who did something awful to you, not just some random guy who cut you off on the highway.” A beat. “I really am just trying to help.”

“What’s up with the sign?” He nodded at it.

Sashor turned. “Oh, that.” Then turned back to Lucas. “A memory science in-joke of sorts. And by in-joke, I mean it’s funny
to me
.”

“I don’t get it.”

“We may not remember this moment,” Sashor said. “And we might be happy we’ve forgotten it.”

“Dancing in your underwear.”

“Exactly.”

AVERY

So she’d been caught. Maybe she’d wanted to be.

“What do you want?” Scarlett demanded.

“Nothing. I just wanted to say hi, I guess. I remember you.”

“Yeah?” Scarlett laughed in disbelief.

Poor choice of words.

Scarlett said, “What do you remember?”

“I guess I remember being sad that you were gone. Maybe in a way even sadder, at first, that you were gone than that my brother was gone. I think I worshipped you. In a kid way, you know. You were always nice to the littler kids. And making up stories about wizards and fairies and stuff. I felt like there was something . . . magical about it. About you.”