Unforgettable

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Except for one sound: a sound the dark-haired girl knew well in the country, but in her innocence had not connected with the city.

  The sound of a gunshot.

  From the limousine catapulted a man who moved so quickly there was no identifying him, no focusing on him. He actually picked up Torn Jeans and threw her into the limo, leaping in on top of her, and slamming the door after himself.

  The girl had lost her balance. She cried out, trying to grab the post of the WALK light. She missed.

  There was a glimpse of red fender and chrome bumper. Brakes screamed literally in her ear.

  No—a dumb car accident?—I have to have a life—you can’t take life away yet—I have plans—I’m only seventeen!

  But gravity failed to listen to a tourist’s plans for life, no matter how beautiful the tourist. She fell anyway, while the gray limousine vanished into the smoggy traffic as easily as a snake going beneath the water.

  I know something you don’t know.

  Kaytha loved those notes. No verse in the world compared. You sang your song, you were superior. There was nothing—nothing in the world!—like a secret.

  They thought they knew everything.

  They thought they had covered every base and every angle.

  Well, they were wrong.

  For just a minute, she did nothing about it.

  Savored the power. Savored knowing what Edie was going to do, and how much it would damage them all.

  But in the end, she picked up her phone and quickly dialed. They were leaving on a different errand, but had their cellular phones. Plenty of time to save the day.

  Besides, now they would owe her. Kaytha liked it when people owed her.

  The crowds never thinned. Crowds in July never did. A drive-by shooting, and nobody said, Gee, maybe I should get out of here.

  Mitch McKenna must have sold a million T-shirts. There was nothing like a major crime to make people want a souvenir.

  An amazing number of people had wanted to talk to the police. This was not an occasion where nobody noticed. It was, however, an occasion where nobody agreed. Some little camper had taken a video, which might help the police, but so far, nobody knew anything. The limousine just blended into traffic and vanished.

  Nobody had gotten the plate numbers. Everybody’s version of what happened conflicted with everybody else’s. Some people said it was a middle-aged woman and some people said it was a teenage girl with glittery hair (except for the people who said she had black hair) and some people said it was a man in a blue blazer. Nobody knew who shot whom.

  Whatever it was happened in thirty seconds and was over.

  Mitch had not flung himself to the pavement when he heard the gunshot only because shock froze him in place. A stack of cotton knit was not going to protect him from bullets. Mitch liked to think he was too tough for shock. Any old thing could happen, and he’d shrug, because there was nothing he hadn’t seen.

  But this had not been any old thing. The victim had been scooped up by the very person who’d shot at her! That was one version anyway. Another version said the shot came from the street, and the limousine rescued her.

  A drug deal gone wrong if he’d ever seen one. Mitch, on the waterfront, surrounded by thousands of mingling, moving human beings, had seen quite a few. Depending which corner of the city you were in, a limousine meant a wedding or else drugs.

  The plaza where he parked his T-shirt wagon was a jewel of the city. Brick and granite walkways turned into wharves which extended far out into Boston Harbor. The displays of a hundred tiny shops and restaurants glittered in the sun. The salty wind gave some relief from the midday heat.

  It was not pleasant to think of the number of innocent people who could have been hit by that bullet. But evidently, not even the victim had been hit; there was no blood.

  The day moved on. T-shirts moved, too.

  The sun grew hotter. Heat reflected off water, office buildings, pavement, and brick. They were imprisoned by July.

  Mitch discussed the crime with a Ben Franklin impersonator, whose thinning gray hair and tiny spectacles were not for real. Both Mitch and Ben Franklin were nineteen. Ben Franklin had brought Mitch a hot dog and Coke from the nearest vendor.

  “Thanks,” said Mitch, eating the hot dog in two bites. He gave directions to Paul Revere’s house and directions to the Aquarium and directions to Quincy Market and none of those lost people bought a T-shirt in exchange. Mitch remained cheerful.

  “Drug deal,” said Ben. “Who else drives limos? Plus the neighborhood’s beautiful right here, but one block away, what have you got? Drug country. Filthy underpasses and shadowy caverns.”

  “Most of us call them alleys,” teased Mitch.

  Ben Franklin did not like being interrupted. “Who cares, I say? If drug dealers want to get rid of each other, that’s fine, isn’t it?”

  Mitch and Ben Franklin began arguing the value of human life, if that life was scum and dreck.

  The bricks were still blazing hot, and the sun was the same hazy gold. Its slanted rays blinded anybody without sunglasses.

  An absolutely breathtakingly beautiful girl appeared.

  She was drifting through the crowds as if walking through a watercolor. Or perhaps the girl herself had been painted on the landscape.

  Mitch McKenna lost interest in the subject of crime.

  Ben Franklin followed Mitch’s eyes. “Wow,” he agreed.

  Wow was the only word for this girl. Just the kind of figure Mitch admired most, and thick full hair, which he loved. Mitch tried to catch her eye, but the girl didn’t look his way. In fact, she didn’t look at anything. Her hands were out in front of her, as if she were feeling in the dark. She acted like a blind person who’d lost her cane.

  She had Wow-factor, all right. She was perfect. Mitch’s pulse stepped up several beats.

  His kid sister Ginger, who was not romantic, teased Mitch mercilessly because he was. He could hear her analysis even now. Love at first sight? his kid sister would shriek. Give me a break, Mitch. She’s probably a schizophrenic shoplifter with nice hair.

  Benches on which exhausted tourists could sink were everywhere and the girl made her way toward one. Her walk was too slow to be normal; her manner was confused. She wasn’t stumbling—she remained graceful. But she saw nothing.

  “There’s a girl in need of a knight in shining armor,” said Ben Franklin. “Shall I go discuss the Boston Tea Party with her?”

  Mitch shook his head. “No. What she really needs is a good T-shirt.”

  They flipped a coin to see which of them got to be the friend this lovely girl so clearly required. Mitch didn’t care what the coin said. He was going to be the friend if he had to weld Ben Franklin’s glasses to the wagon.

  Trembling, she carefully lowered herself onto a bench.

  What a relief not to have to keep herself upright. Maybe now she could think clearly. Maybe it was the effort of walking that had prevented her mind from functioning. If only the solid smooth wood would hold her mind up as well as her body.

  Her mind spun over nothing.

  She was a leaf floating over open sea.

  Her head ached terribly. Her skull, her eyes, and her brain all vibrated unpleasantly.

  Her knees remained jelly. Her hands rested in her lap, as if stored there until needed. They were lovely hands; slim and competent, slightly curled as if ready to finger a violin. She wore no rings. On her wrists were no bracelets and no watch. There was no polish, clear or colored, on her gracefully shaped nails.

  There was only one thing wrong.

  One very major thing.

  She did not know whose hands those were.

  Her mind was empty. It had never happened to her before. She couldn’t get past the blankness, or past the fear she felt because she had no mind.

  Minds couldn’t be empty! They were stuffed with facts and daydreams, thoughts and plans.

  But her mind was empty.

  There was something ra
dically wrong. Something completely and totally off base. But she was too empty to know what it might be.

  She focused on physical things. Swallowing. Breathing. Yes. She could do those. So why couldn’t she also think?

  She felt like a jar in a science experiment. Except she hadn’t been used yet. She was just there on the shelf.

  Her eyes were open. Her body was awake. But her personality slept.

  It’s one of those out-of-body experiences, she thought. The kind you hear about on weird TV shows: where the girl on the operating table finds herself in a pool of light up near the ceiling, listening to voices tell her it’s not time to die.

  I need a voice. Somebody tell me what to do. What am I sitting on this park bench for? For that matter, what park is this?

  No answers floated forward. The emptiness continued on, as if she were filled, stuffed, overflowing! … with nothing at all.

  I don’t know my name, she thought.

  She wrapped the five fingers of her right hand very neatly inside the five fingers of her left hand. They were very cold. But the day was hot. Summer day and winter hands.

  Of course you know your name, she said to herself. Everybody knows her name. What’s your name?

  The hot wind crawled through her hair. The sun slanted into her eyes.

  I don’t know my name.

  Chapter 2

  I MUST KNOW MY name. People always know their names. So what’s my name? Come on, don’t get all worked up and silly, just think of your name!

  She touched her throat.

  No necklace.

  No locket, no cross, no crystal, no delicate gold chains.

  She wore no earrings. She touched her face and hair. The hair was long enough to pull forward and inspect. Deep rich brown, glinting with sun-dye. Like her hands, the hair seemed to belong to somebody else.

  Okay. No clues there. Think about what’s around you. Place yourself. You’ll remember things once you see where you are.

  She forced herself to focus her eyes.

  Eyes. I don’t know what color my own eyes are. I’m not blind. I see. So why can’t I also think and know?

  Perhaps I’m participating in a very strange meditation rite, she thought. I’m pouring myself out onto the pavement. I’m evaporating in the sun.

  She imagined herself baking into nothing, just as her mind felt baked into nothing. It was so scary she had to wrap her arms around herself to be sure she still had a body.

  Come on. Think. Get a name. Get a fact. Pretend it’s journalism. Who, what, where, why, when.

  She could remember the five W’s, but she could not answer a single one of them. She did not know who she was. Nor where she was. Nor why, nor when, nor what.

  What is happening to me? Did I have a stroke? Is this heat prostration? Do I have amnesia?

  A homeless man slouched toward her bench. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about, now she had to wonder if he was safe, or if she should run.

  Run? She thought. I can’t even blink.

  She risked a glance at the homeless person. He had the layers, the stumble, and the creepy eyes, but he wasn’t filthy, his clothes weren’t in shreds nor slept in, he carried no bags. He isn’t homeless, she thought, he’s a beggar, he’s going to ask for money, and—

  Yes! Of course! I have a handbag! That’s why a fake homeless man is sidling up to me. He wants my money. Oh, thank you for letting me remember money. I’ll look myself up in my wallet. My purse will get me launched again. Something happened to me here. I just need a clue, and I’ll be fine.

  She actually smiled. Here you were thinking you had amnesia, or some crazy soap opera affliction like that. And all you have to do is—

  There was no purse.

  Mitch won the coin toss, so Ben Franklin slipped inside the floorless wagon to hawk T-shirts for Mitch. Mitch adjusted his own T-shirt to look his muscular best.

  Across the baking hot plaza, the lovely girl suddenly sat up, wild and panicky. She patted herself, looking between her feet—looking next to the bench—over the bench—looking here—there—

  Purse panic. Women tourists always had immense handbags, since they were the family carrying case: sunglasses, Pampers, maps, just-purchased mugs, and postcards.

  No need to rush, the purse was obviously long gone.

  Mitch liked helping tourists. He had not yet had the opportunity to help a tourist as pretty as this. He hoped she would need lots of consolation. The closer he got, the more beautiful she looked—and the younger. He was two years into college, and he really didn’t want to date a girl in high school. Boston had dozens of colleges, though. You wanted to study nursing or music, physics or piano repair, library science or computer engineering—this was the town. He hoped she would be a college girl.

  People glanced his way, and he enjoyed that; he wanted to be visible. He did not seem to be visible to the girl, however. She was touching her extremities, like a space alien wondering what a nose or chin was for. On drugs? thought Mitch. Spaced out up to her lovely eyebrows?

  She was truly lovely. Even though he was right next to her now, she still had that watercolor quality; a dreaminess around her edges. I’m in love, Ginger, Mitch silently told his sister. I don’t care if she is a schizophrenic shoplifter.

  Ginger could have told Mitch how Susan felt about him, and he would have been astonished. Mitch considered Susan his friend who happened to be a girl. The empty locket, however, he would have understood, because Mitch more or less had an empty locket of his own: in the little plastic sheaf that held credit cards and photographs in his wallet, he had saved a space. Someday he was going to have a girl’s photograph there. Mitch had gone out with a lot of girls. Never with one whose picture he wanted in his wallet.

  He had a clutching sensation in his chest, like a heart attack.

  It is a heart attack, thought Mitch. It’s a love-at-first-sight attack of the heart. He grinned. It was the kind of heart attack he’d been waiting for since he first discovered girls.

  In his soothing, strangers-are-your-friend voice, he said to her, “What’s the problem? May I help?”

  How slowly she lifted her face to his, as if fighting gravity. When she finally focused her huge blurred eyes, she then actually set her hand on Mitch’s chest, as if checking his heartbeat, making sure he was alive and not a store mannequin. It was okay with Mitch. He kept on grinning. Mitch had one of the world’s better smiles, but the beautiful girl did not smile back.

  “I—can’t—find—my—purse,” she said jaggedly, taking her hand back. Her voice shook. Her hands shook.

  Poor kid probably had her plane ticket in there, her traveler’s checks, the name and address of her motel. It was amazing how many people couldn’t remember where they were staying. Mitch was always yelling for the beat policeman or telling tourists to call Travelers’ Aid. He wasn’t going to suggest Travelers’ Aid for this girl. He would be all the aid she could require. “What’s your name?” he said gently. He was dying to know her name. He needed her name. He had a weird superstitious feeling that once he said her name, he would link himself to her.

  Since she was fighting tears, it took considerable effort for her to form an answer. It took Mitch considerable effort not to hug her. She just looked perfect for hugs. He wanted to touch her hair, which was absolutely gorgeous: bronze statue-in-a-museum brown: shining sunset-in-the-dark brown.

  She touched his chest again, fingertips only, and stared, as if searching for his heart. Or hers. At last she spoke, in a husky close-to-tears voice that wrenched Mitch’s heart. But what she had to say was impossible.

  “I don’t know my name,” she whispered.

  Mitch could just imagine what his sister Ginger would have to say about that.

  He was having the funny feeling he’d seen this girl before. Mitch saw hundreds, maybe thousands, of people every day out here. They were all going on the Freedom Trail, hunting down Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church. Had he seen her as a tourist?
A T-shirt buyer?

  Or had he seen her on TV? She was lovely enough for television. And if that was where he’d seen her, then she was an actress, and this was an act.

  But what would the act be for? Why fake memory loss? What could she hope to accomplish?

  It must be real.

  But was amnesia ever a real medical condition? Could you actually forget the name you’d been called all your life? Maybe if you got hit on the head. But she looked fine to him. Admit it, she looked world-class to him. If there was any skull damage, it was perfectly concealed by that perfect hair.

  But, say she really couldn’t remember her name. Say the amnesia was real. What should he do about it? Call an ambulance? He did not want a problem as attractive as this in anybody’s hands but his own. On the other hand, if she had a concussion, she shouldn’t be up and walking around. She should be in a hospital bed. Wouldn’t it make it worse, to slosh her brains around instead of lying still?

  Doesn’t know her name, thought Mitch ruefully. Would Ginger ever cackle with laughter now. So much for falling in love across the crowded plaza.

  Tourists, sick of Revolutionary War history and eager for entertainment, listened in. They were pretty sure it was a hoax. Maybe a movie being filmed. Or some cleverly staged con. But she was a real beauty. Hoax or not, she held the crowd’s attention.

  Word spread. Strangers gossiped as if they were old buddies in a coffee shop. Tourists from Japan asked tourists from Alabama exactly what was going on. People came out of the hotel to monitor the situation. People crowded around to hear better and some of them took photographs, in case this was going to be on national television.

  “Amnesia?” said a stout woman leaning on a goose-head cane. “Don’t you have to get whacked on the head? She doesn’t seem hurt.”

  “You can get shocked enough to forget,” said somebody else. “Maybe she had a terrible shock.”

  A tourist sympathetically bought the girl a lemonade. She closed her hands around the paper cup like an extraterrestrial who was unfamiliar with liquid.

  In mid-afternoon, the restaurant where Susan Nevilleson waitressed was open, but business was very slow. She saw the crowd gathered around Mitch McKenna, and said to Michael, the headwaiter, “I’m going on break, Michael.”