“GI Jane and the Fairy Princess,” Sindi pointed at the photo. “It’s a game we used to play.”
“We?Correction, a game you used to force me to play!”
Sindi laughed. “It’s true. I did hold him hostage.”
“And I still bear the psychological scars of that,” Noah said on a long sigh.
“Oh, you turned out just fine,” she said, then turned to me. “Don’t you think?”
I looked at Noah, and a strange, warm feeling fluttered ever so slightly inside my belly. Suddenly I felt desperately shy. I wanted to look away and not answer, but Sindi seemed to be waiting for a response from me.
“Uh. Yes. He’s . . . great.” The word “great” came out sounding a little peculiar. In a tone I’d never heard myself use before. The tone was soft and breathy-sounding, with a slight lilt to it that made me sound younger than I was, although I had no idea what age I was. But Sindi looked pleased and gave her brother a pat on the back.
“See! I’ve trained you well. Right . . . give me a moment and then we’ll get you some clothes.” She scuttled down the passage and disappeared.
I turned to Noah. “Thank you. For having me. For feeding me. For not sending me to a care home, for thinking about the fact I might need clothes and then coming all this way to get some for me.”
“I don’t mind. Honestly.”
I felt my insides warm up even more. The fact that he didn’t mind made his gesture even more meaningful. It was such an act of kindness and compassion and I felt I could never take this for granted.
“I . . . I’ll find a way to repay you, when I figure out who I am,” I promised.
“No need. Really, I’m happy to help.”
I was about to open my mouth and protest when his sister returned, this time wearing a pair of bright pink sunglasses and neon-yellow sneakers.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The roof. All the apartments have storerooms up there. That’s where I keep the clothes. No space for them here.”
I followed Noah and Sindi up the stairs and onto the roof. The view was incredible from up here. You could see the treed suburbs below, awash in the brightest hues of reds and orange.
“Did you know that Johannesburg is one of the most treed cities in the entire world?” I heard myself say.
Noah and Sindi both turned and looked at me curiously.
“Don’t ask me how I know that, though, or why.” I gave a shrug. “But I can also tell you that Pretoria is known as Jacaranda City and has over 70,000 Jacaranda there. I can also tell you that the Jacaranda tree was brought to South Africa in the 1800s from Argentina. They are actually not indigenous.”
“I didn’t know that,” Noah said, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. It was directly above us, and it was making the autumn air warm and pleasant.
“Neither did I,” I said, “until one second ago.”
“I wonder what other interesting facts you’ll suddenly remember,” Sindi said, walking to one of the storage lockers on the roof.
“Don’t know.” I tried to reach inside my brain again for something to grab onto. But once more, I was faced with the same dilemma: the blank nothingness stretching out in front of me. It seemed that I wasn’t able to find anything when I looked for it, but rather that it found me when it wanted to. Dr. Cohen had been right: trying too hard to remember anything didn’t work. We reached the storeroom and Sindi slipped the key into the lock and turned. And then, she bent down and lifted the door up with a loud whooshing sound. I peered inside. It was dark at first, and then something flew at me out of the darkness.
“Don’t worry. Sometimes I get bats in here,” Sindi said. “They usually just fly away.”
But of course, it didn’t fly away . . .
CHAPTER 25
“Uh . . . guys,” I said, turning in circles as the bat flew around me over and over again.
“That’s weird,” Sindi said. “They usually can’t get out of here fast enough.”
“Guuuyys!” I started to feel panicked as it seemed to swoosh towards me, do a full circle around my body and then fly off into the air, only to come straight back for me and repeat the action. I flapped my arms and it darted away from me again, only to turn around once more and fly at me. I fell to my knees with a squeal and crawled as fast as I could into the storeroom, where I hid behind a rail of clothes.
