The splice means I’ll forget everything about Zach. His eyes, his face, his smell. I’ll forget filming our movie and falling asleep in his arms and laughing so hard in the park while we got chased by birds. Plus, it seems safe and fast. Legit.
“Addie, I know places where they dolegitamputations, but it doesn’t mean I have to have one. And what about your parents, anyway? They’ll never agree to this.”
“They don’t necessarily have to know.”
Katy gasps. “How would we manage that?”
“Wewouldn’t, but maybe Beatrice Lane and Kathleen Kelly could.”
“Addie…”
“It’s supposed to be super safe. And it’s not that expensive—I could cover it with my savings.”
“As in all the money you’ve been saving up to leave this town? You can’t!” Katy sits up and looks me in the eye. “I know it hurts right now, Addie, but are you sure it’s worth it? Are you sure it’s what you want?”
“If I don’t have it…”I’ll be stuck here, trapped reliving the pain and heartbreak and anger over and over again.It’s like something is wrong with my mind.
And I can’t imagine running into Zach and Lindsay, seeing them together again.
“You’ll be okay. I know you will,” Katy says.
But I don’t. I can’t remember ever feeling this broken.
“If I could only stop thinking about how hard my heart was beating the first time he kissed me or the way my stomach kept doing somersaults for the first week after. He was the first boy I was with,” I say, swiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “I think I’d feel better if every single thing I ever felt for him or with him wasn’t running through my body every second of every day. I wish I’d never met him.”
My heart feels shredded and raw and small.
Maybe I’m not strong enough. Maybe I can’t handle the full spectrum of good and bad, the blunt surfaces and sharp edges of life. Of love.
Maybe my mother is right to always be so overprotective.
Maybe the only way to feel better now is to forget.
AFTER
January
Mom drives fast—we left my car in the parking lot at Channel Se7en—so we can get there before Overton closes. I’m glad that there’s no time to talk more about it. No time tothinkmore about it. If I did, I’d doubt myself. I’d hear Zach’s words in my mind telling me that erasing him was cowardly. I’d question whether maybe in time I’d be grateful for the pieces of my life I got back—Memory Zach, Rory—and for understanding finally why my family is the way it is. WhyIam the way I am.
But there’s no time for that.
Dr. Overton is finishing with his last patient when we arrive. I fill out a form about my medical history while my mother fills out a consent form. Did they make me fill out something like this the last time I had this procedure? Did I put Katy down for my emergency contact, and did it feel this scary, this strange, signing away part of my life?
I think of Katy.
What will she say when she finds out I did it again?
Will she be disappointed? Angry? Relieved?
And what about Caleb? What about Dad?
What about Zach?
I push them all out of my mind.
An imaging technician comes to get me after I’ve changed into a green cotton gown.
“First we’re going to do what we call a baseline scan,” he says, then explains how the machine works and how I’ll be positioned in it. “It tells us what your brain looks like in its neutral state and also lets us double-check that it’s safe to perform the procedure. I want you to focus on the pictures that come up on the monitor while we capture the images. Any questions?” I shake my head and then slide into the same donut-shaped machine as last time. This time, the technician pulls down a small white monitor, and pictures of different shapes—chains of triangles and circles and polygons—dance across the screen while the machine purrs quietly. Afterward, I’m sent into a room where a nurse I haven’t seen before helps Dr. Overton run the computer, then watches as he puts the electrodes on my head. Mom sits in a tiny attached room, like those for X-ray technicians, watching through the glass, fidgeting like it’s the night of the crash and she’s in the hospital beside me again.
