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“Because! I don’t know! I—if any of this was true, then why wouldn’t I remember it? If I woke up after all of that and I was fine, why wouldn’t I remember?”
“They said it was amnesia at first. Short-term memory loss. Common after that kind of head injury. But after a couple of weeks, you lost more and more of yourself. They began to suspect it was something more complicated. I was the last thing you remembered. I’m usually the thing you remember first too, though,” he admits.
I inch back into the pillows, somehow finding the strength to remove my hand from his.“Liar.”
“I wish I was fucking lying.” Theo’s always been so distant. Withdrawn. Cold. Harsh. I’ve never seen him like this. Wrecked. Broken. So full of hurt.
“If…” There are so many ways to argue myself out of this. So many ‘ifs.’ I can’t contain them all in my head at once. “If you’re not lying to me, then why do I think I’m from Los Angeles? Why…why do I remember being in foster care there?”
He breathes evenly, shoulders tense, as he says. “You were never in foster care. Your parents—”
I jerk back, stunned. “Myparents?”
“The people in all of your picture frames,” he says gravely.
“Your father died in a motorcycle accident when you were eleven. Your mom died from cancer when you were thirteen.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“I know. Fuck! Too fast. This is all too fast.I’m screwing this up.”
I have—hadparents? I can’t process this. I just can’t. My brain short circuits when I attempt to understand what Theo’s just told me, so I don’t even try. “You still haven’t explained why I have these other memories...”
“In a lot of cases, head traumas are a complete mystery. The brain is still an unknown universe, still being explored. Very little about it makes sense. A person can have their skull split wide open, it can look like there’s no logical chance of survival, but that person makes a full recovery. Then, there are people who get a tiny bump on the head and lose everything. Their motor functions. Their ability to speak. Their memory. Their entire sense of self. The brain always wants to heal itself, though. And it’s very adept at filling in the gaps. If the mind perceives that it’s in danger and its surroundings don’t make sense, it’ll do whatever it can tomakesense of its surroundings. Your mind’s still recovering from the accident, so it’s filling in the blanks, giving you a background and a history, a sense of self, so that you can survive. Eventually, the swelling in your brain will right itself and you’ll start to remember.”
He sounds so confident. Not a shadow of a doubt in his voice. The shadow of uncertainty in his eyes tells a different story. They make me think that there’s more to this fantastical, absolutelyinsanestory of his, and that I really won’t like it when he eventually surrenders the information that he’s sitting on.
I close my eyes for a second, breathing.
In… Out…
In… Out…
A shaky sort of calm settles over me, but I know as soon as I start talking again, that calm will abandon me. I relish it for a moment, attempting to piece my thoughts together into some sort of structure that makesanysense. And then I say, “All right. Say I believe any of this, then, what…I’ve been wandering around like this, thinking I grew up in foster care, that I don’t know you or anyone else from my past? Forweeks?”
Theo sits back in the chair, his eyes drifting up to look at the ceiling. “It’s been a little longer than that, I’m afraid.”
I suddenly feel very sick. “Months?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Theo! For fuck’s sake! Tell me I haven’t been floating around in a fake, fantasy world for months!”
Reluctantly, he lowers his chocolate-gold eyes, his gaze finding mine and holding it. “It’s been nearly two years since the accident.”
Bile rises up the back of my throat. I think I’m going to be sick. “And Rachel? Rachel’s been gone all that time, and I—” I want to say the words, I really do, but I can’t get them out. My throat is aching, full of fire, closing up. I can’t swallow. Can’t breathe. Can’t process any of this. My best friend has been gone for nearly two years, and I’ve been treading water, thinking… I don’tknowwhat I’ve been thinking. I’m so fucking confused, my head feels like it’s about to splinter open.
My rising panic intensifies when Theo’s eyes shutter, as if he just stepped through a mental door, through a gateway, to a place where I cannot follow after him. “What is it? Whatever it is, you might as well just say it now. You’ve already turned the world on its head. Just…for God’s sake, I can’t take any more of this! Spit it out!”
“Fine,” he blurts. “Rachel hasn’t been dead since the accident.”
Hope soars within me for one beautiful moment. Shedidn’tdie? Oh my god. Oh mygod—
“YouwereRachel.” I can tell this admission is difficult; the words look like they bring razor blades up the back of his throat with them. “Just like you were Amelia. Just like you were Catherine.”
“No. No, that’s not possible. Irememberher.”
“When you began to lose yourself after you woke up from the coma, you started telling people your name was Amelia. You had a whole life as Amelia. A history. A past. I stayed with you at the hospital for as long as I could. I tried to remind you of who you were before the accident, and our life together. The one we’d been planning for so long. You were Amelia for three months. You were so different from the person I’d fallen in love with, but you were also the same, at your core. Your favorite color was still green. Your favorite ice cream flavor was salted caramel. You were still kind, and brave, and sarcastic, and defensive. You still looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered in the world. All of our history was erased, though. Every special moment we’d ever experienced together, just…” He snaps his fingers. “Gone. One day, I just…” He clenches his jaw. “I lost it. I was just so frustrated and I—I screamed at you. It startled you so much that youdidremember for a second. And then…you just stared at the table and didn’t say anything. You stared into space for three days after that. When you started talking again, Amelia was gone. You were Catherine.”
