Dr. Overton looks confused, but he lets me go on.
“I don’t want to know about Rory or about Zach. I don’t want to know that I erased him or to remember meeting him today. I want everything from the last three weeks gone.”
He’s shaking his head. “That’s three procedures. We’re still monitoring for the effects of the accident. I don’t think we can do that.”
“It’s not dangerous. All the pamphlets and stuff say that. And you said my CT was clear. It’s what I want. Please.” I’m practically hysterical at this point.
“But, Addison,” he says now. “You do realize that you won’t get them back? That these memories will be gone for good if we go through with what you’re asking for?”
The thing I want most is to move on. And the procedure helped me do that before, didn’t it? Maybe not completely, but mostly. That’s why I came back for the second one. Why I’ll do it again now.
“I know,” I say, still shaking.
“Okay,” Dr. Overton says. “Okay.”
The waiting-room music is slipping in under the door, and I dig my nails into my palms. I don’t want to think about anything right now.
“One problem,” Dr. Overton says. “You’re still only seventeen. There’s absolutely no way we can proceed without a parent’s permission. And given the circumstances surrounding your last…Well, one of them has to be with you for the procedure.”
AFTER
January
Bruce, Mom’s boyfriend, is the first person to see me when I enter the Channel Se7en building. “Hey, little miss!” he exclaims when I hurtle into the office area, full of cubicles, where he’s standing reading a sheet of paper. He’s wearing a checkered sweater vest, gray dress pants, and black oxfords. No socks, as usual. “Everything okay? Where are we going in such a hurry?”
“I need to talk to my mom,” I say. “Do you know where she is?”
He frowns at me, concerned, then glances down at his watch. “She’s probably in a meeting. It’s in the boardroom, but I can run over and stick my head in for you and we’ll tell her you’re looking for her, okay?”
“Thanks,” I say as he starts down the hall to get her.
Bruce is fond of the royal “we.” If, God forbid, he impregnated my mother, he’d be one of those men going around announcing, “We’re pregnant.”
But he’s always been nice to me and Caleb.
I pace around now as I wait for him to return. It’s past four. Less than an hour till Overton closes. And what if Dr.Overton changes his mind about attempting the procedure?
Mom’s clicking heels announce her presence before she rounds the corner. “What’s wrong? What is it?” she asks, hurrying toward me. “Bruce said you looked like something was wrong.”
“I want to forget all this. The past few weeks. Finding out about Rory,” I tell her once she’s stopped in front of me. She glances around and then leads me into her office. She shuts the door after us. “Dr. Overton is willing to do the procedure as long as you’ll sign for it and be there.”
“Addison,” Mom says. She looks stunned. “But you were so adamant that it was the wrong thing, that we should never have done it to erase…your brother.”
Even now it’s hard for her to say his name to me.
Rory, Rory, Rory.
I do it for her while I still can.
I do it for him, too, before I betray him a second time. A third time.
He’s dead because of me.
I wasn’t even strong enough to remember him.
In the cemetery, I promised him I’d remember him from now on, but Zach was right.
I’m a coward.
