Unforgettable

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Now what? Here she was all ready to be a fabulous actress and nobody would allow her on stage. Nobody would do their half of the script.

  The thought came to her, as she took heavy disappointed steps, that she was anonymous. In a small town, attending a small high school, you are never anonymous. You are always known.

  Why not be really anonymous? After all, she had seen something very shocking and also hit her head. Why not pretend to be anonymous even to herself? Why not have amnesia! And if she made a fool of herself, who would ever know? Only strangers she would never see again.

  She had walked around the other side of The Jayquith, following the crowds, turning herself into a terrified confused girl with amnesia. It was a wonderful part. She let go of all her thoughts. She called upon fear and terror to occupy her mind, because if you really forgot yourself, think how terrified you would be! she thought. She went way beyond thinking, right into terror. She had never acted terror before, and she found out she could scare herself so much her hair really did prickle and her heart really did beat faster and her breath really did grow shallow.

  She moved out of her previous life. She abandoned thinking and knowledge and remembrance. She drew herself out of her mind until she really was so confused and afraid that she really did need to be rescued. Her head truly ached and her thoughts truly became mist and cloud.

  She would be the best amnesia victim there ever was, she said to herself. An Academy-Award-winning amnesia victim.

  Nobody’s brain damage is the same as anybody else’s brain damage, so any symptoms were her call. And did she ever call them up! She loved being woozy and confused and vulnerable and weak. She loved not remembering some things but having to remember others.

  She was not just the actress, she was the producer, the writer, the camera, and the audience.

  She had hardly even started when the handsomest young man in New England—the lover in any girl’s script—walked right up. He really did make her woozy. Her heart lurched when somebody in the crowd suggested calling the police. What would her mother and father say to that! She truly thought she would faint, and she had an extra good reason to cling to Mitch: Just imagine what her parents would say about this little acting job.

  Stop this, she had said to herself at that moment. Laugh it off, walk away, abandon this stupid, stupid idea, which is only going to cause trouble.

  … when up came a parent.

  A serious dignified man … who claimed to be her father.

  There wasn’t time to say to herself: Wait. You aren’t this man’s daughter. He knows that. He’s acting too. There’s something radically wrong—get away; give it up. If there’d been time to sit and think about it, perhaps she would have fled to the train station, gone on to the sweet little campuses. But for better or worse, she was given no space in which to contemplate it.

  It was meant, she let herself believe. There is another half to the script. I can’t pass it up.

  She would be the one person to find out if she really could step into another person’s life. Everybody’s television fantasy. Could she pull it off, with no mistakes and no missteps?

  She who had always wanted a magnificent radiant trembling secret that everybody would be jealous of, if they knew. A secret on every level, from every person.

  And in The Jayquith! The incredible wealth and splendor of that place came complete with a cousin who knew her and dinner that was ordered for her. Even a perfect name. Hope. She had been acting confused, but now there was no need to act. What on earth was going on? Who could these people be? What on earth was their motive?

  And what is my motive? she thought. Why am I going on with this? I’ve got to run, not tuck myself into this like a person lying under blankets.

  And then … they produced a passport of her.

  She hadn’t had anything to eat that day. She was light-headed. And suddenly, her skit turned inside out like a sweater, with seams and threads on the wrong side. How deeply could you fall into a role? How intensely could you play a part? Could you actually, on the portable stage of the world, become that Person?

  Who was the act?

  Was she really Hope? A girl she did not remember—but they did?

  A passport.

  The accepted proof the world around.

  She’d gotten so deeply into her act, she couldn’t be sure where the edge of the stage was, and where real life began. Hope—or not Hope? Was she the best actress in the world, or had she fallen off the edge of sanity? And whatever the answers—who were these people? These Senneths?

  And then there was Mitch. Like a storybook prince, he had arrived just to fall in love, as if that were his only role on stage: to kneel beside the sleeping princess and kiss her lips and awaken her. But when they all awakened—when the truth was revealed—Mitch would find he had fallen in love with a person who did not exist at all. Perhaps had never existed, in spite of the passport.

  The kicker in this was that Mitch loved her for her mystery, and for her status and position and wealth. What was he going to say when he found she was the dullest of girls from the dullest of towns?

  She needed all kinds of time, and lengthy phone calls to exchange thinking with her girlfriends, and perhaps a chocolate sundae, in order to see things clearly.

  Instead she had Kaytha and a terribly angry man, to whom a real Hope had done something awful. She saw now that Kender Senneth’s script called for revenge. He, too, needed an actress: somebody to play Hope. Somebody to lash out at and punish.

  And that punishment … what would it be? For it would be real. Amnesia could be faked, and trembling and confusion could be falsified, but the punishment that Mr. Senneth had in mind would actually exist.

  “You and I are returning to The Jayquith,” said Mr. Senneth at last. In her wildly active imagination, it sounded as if they were returning to the guillotine.

  She swallowed. The flashbacks in her head stopped. She had wasted precious time, when she could have been planning an escape.

  “The party we have planned for tonight is far too important for you to ruin,” said Mr. Senneth, just like a parent. “You’ll be in the suite at the hotel during the party. Very, very sound asleep.”

  She thought: We have both fallen into our roles completely. He thinks I am his daughter. But who is Hope? And how do I stop being her without getting hurt in the process?

  Mr. Senneth took out a small dark plastic bottle; a prescription bottle. “This is Dr. Patel’s newest attempt at calming you down,” he said. “Take six of these.”

  She backed up against the salon wall, pressed against the maps of treacherous waters. Six of anything was too much. She couldn’t take some unknown medication at all—and certainly not six.

  He handed her her own glass of bubbly water to swallow the pills with.

  She burst into tears, which had worked before. But it did not work for her now. Billy held her arms, and Mr. Senneth tilted her head, as if she were a cat and they were veterinarians, and they poured the pills and the water down her throat.

  The hotel staff saw nothing but a lovely girl, with her father and a friend on either side of her, the men laughing and talking as they walked her into a side door at The Jayquith, and quickly entered the private elevator.

  “So you carved your little snake design into your hair with your own pocket knife?” said Susan.

  Susan did not learn quickly. She never had. “You’re a total idiot, you know, Kaytha. People have seen you all over the place, and they’ve seen this boat, and they’re going to know where you come from.”

  She could not believe the little squirrely smile on Kaytha’s face either: as if Kaytha were tucking Susan’s hurt and fear into her cheeks to chew on later.

  Edie said, “Susan, what we need to do, you and I, is play whatever game Kaytha wants to play.”

  “It isn’t a game,” said Kaytha. “It’s real, Cousin Edie. It was a real necklace and you’re going to die a real death.”

  “It was not a
real necklace!” cried Edie. “That’s the point, Kaytha.”

  Mr. Senneth came in and Kaytha flicked the knife shut. Now it was just a long elegant slightly curved object. It looked as if it could have had a clasp in back, to hold your ponytail. It looked like ivory.

  Made from an endangered creature, thought Susan. Like me. I am an endangered creature right now.

  “Kaytha,” said Mr. Senneth, “we agreed we’re not going to do that kind of thing again.”

  “I never agree with you on anything,” said Kaytha. “I didn’t agree this time either.”

  “Leave them alone. We have enough problems. I cannot believe you brought this woman Susan back on the boat. What are we supposed to do with her?” Mr. Senneth was not the distinguished gentleman that Susan had seen handling Miss Amnesia. He was frantic and trembling. He did not recognize her as the colonial-garbed waitress, she was sure.

  “We had to get rid of Edie anyhow,” said Kaytha. “We’ll just get rid of both of them.”

  “Kaytha, we can’t just get rid of them.”

  Susan was happy to hear it.

  “If we don’t get rid of them,” Kaytha pointed out, “they will go to the police and our lives as the Senneth family will end. You will not be sought after socially. You will not be on important boards of major museums and philanthropies. You will not dine with stockbrokers eager for your business. You will have no yacht, no Jayquith Hotel suite, no French country manor, no nothing. You will have prison. Toilets without seats in rooms with cockroaches, both human and insect.”

  Mr. Senneth made fists. There was hardly room to do that or anything else. The tiny space curved to a point, where Susan’s and Edie’s feet nearly met, the space between the bunks barely enough for one person to get dressed in. Kaytha and Mr. Senneth were inches and breaths away from each other.

  “Kaytha,” he said wearily, “this should have been so simple. I cannot believe we have hostages and death threats. All I wanted was ten million dollars.”

  All? thought Susan. He thinks that’s minor?

  “We’ve done so many museum switches,” he said. “We’ve got fakes in museums all over Europe, and gotten away with it, and we never had to threaten a single person and we have never been in danger ourselves. And now look what you have done!”

  “Blame me?” said Kaytha furiously. “It’s Edie who took the necklace! Blame her. I’m blaming her, even if you don’t. I’m lowering her overboard, even if you don’t. I might lower you overboard too, while I’m at it. You love having Hope for a daughter, don’t you? She’s just what you want in a daughter, isn’t she? She’s beautiful and stunning and graceful. She’s smart and quick and athletic, and she eats all her meals and doesn’t throw them up.”

  “Kaytha, stop it.”

  “That’s all you ever say to me—stop it. Well, I’m your real daughter, Kender Senneth, and it’s your turn to stop it! Stop pretending that beautiful girl is your little girl. Get rid of her. She’s in the way.”

  “She knows where the necklace is! She’s the one we have to interrogate, Kaytha, not this stranger.”

  “Then why did you take her back to the hotel? Why let her sleep all neat and clean and safe? Why not skip the party tonight, and sail out to sea, and let her watch what I do to these two, and then I bet she’ll tell us where the necklace is.”

  Kaytha’s hatred oozed out of her. Susan had never been so terrified in her life.

  “You like pretending I’m your niece instead of your daughter, don’t you?” shrieked Kaytha. “You’re ashamed to have me for a daughter! You probably wouldn’t mind if I went overboard and you got to keep Miss Amnesia!”

  Susan tried to pull the emotional level down. “I’m a little confused,” she said, with massive understatement. She wanted to know who Hope was. “Mitch said you had her passport. Mitch saw her photo on it. The girl is Hope Senneth.”

  Kaytha giggled, a sick hot chortle.

  Mr. Senneth said, “Hope Senneth is dead. I don’t know who the girl is.”

  Hope Senneth is dead, thought Susan. How did she die? Will I die like Hope Senneth? Just for a necklace?

  Or is it just for acting? Because of Mitch, and his act? These people, and their act? Miss Amnesia, whoever she is, and her act?

  “I’m not involved,” said Susan. “I won’t go to the police. I won’t go to anybody. Just let me go, okay? I’ll just run along home and forget the whole thing.”

  “That’s a crock,” said Kaytha.

  Mr. Senneth rested his head in his hands. I’m afraid it is a crock,” he said, “vulgar term though that is. Of course you would go to the authorities. Please explain to me, rather than Kaytha forcing you to explain to me, who Mitch McKenna is, and why he is involved.”

  Kaytha played with her knife again and this time Mr. Senneth did not ask her to quit.

  Susan directed a few hateful thoughts toward Mitch. “He’s just a college kid,” said Susan. “He fell head over heels in love with Miss Amnesia and he thought of a way to get up to your suite and make you prove to him that she is Hope Senneth. Mitch is an actor, we all are—drama majors—and he thought up a skit that might work, and he used my name. I don’t have anything to do with this.”

  Kaytha smiled. “You do now.”

  “No, Kaytha,” said her father wearily. “The guests will be arriving shortly. Go get dressed. Whatever else we do, we have to make this party work. Every one of these guests will be at the Museum on Tuesday, they will all have complete faith in me, and never worry while I am near the real necklace. And somehow I am still going to get the fake and do the switch and get my ten million.”

  He strapped Edie and Susan down, and even though he apologized for the pain and distress he knew it would cause, taped their mouths again. He didn’t cover Susan’s eyes.

  After all, she couldn’t yell to the party guests with her eyes.

  Hope had proof now, that she was a solid actress.

  She had let them walk her to the hotel, pretending to be completely out of the picture from the medication. Any thoughts she might have had about screaming for help were subdued by the fact that both Mr. Senneth and Billy were armed.

  Then she played a perfect Sleep scene, only slightly less difficult than a Dead Body scene. She had acted asleep for fifteen long minutes. It had felt like a quarter of a century.

  “She’s out,” said Mr. Senneth at last. “I don’t have anyone to stay with her. Let’s get back to the boat. I have to be there for the guests.”

  “Do we lock her in?” asked Billy. “I hate having her here on her own. Why couldn’t we leave her on the boat?”

  “There’s a limit to the number of prisoners we can handle,” said Mr. Senneth. He sounded very dangerously strung out. “Fifty guests are going to want to tour every inch of the yacht. We can keep them out of the crew room where Edie and the girl are, but where do we put this one? So we’re here, and we made it, and somehow I’m going to get through the party and somehow I’m finding the necklace. There’s no way to lock her in. Fire laws, you know. If she wakes up, she can get out. But she can’t wake up, not with a double dose.”

  There were no departing footsteps. The carpeting in the suite muffled everything. She slept on in pretense. She heard a door shut.

  I won’t get up yet, she thought, I’ll wait another quarter of an hour and be absolutely sure nobody stayed behind.

  She faked on.

  But this time, what with stress and fear, it was not an act. She was as deeply asleep as if she really had swallowed all six pills, and not held three of them beneath her tongue, letting them fall out as they forced her back down the ladder from the boat. Three pills had made no noise falling into the water, but just sloshed quietly away. The other three, however, were doing their job.

  The collection of grown-up toys lay neatly wrapped in white canvas on the flat-topped deck. Tiny stainless steel stairs curved upward to reach it. It had a bar, and a wonderful arched white canopy with a lacy flapping trim. Fifty people could dance th
ere. The band had arranged itself among the toys.

  Wave Runners, Jet Skis, Boston Whaler to pull the water skis, Sunfish, scuba sets, snorkeling gear—anything a water-loving guest could want. Derry had explained that you hardly ever had a water-loving guest and they never wanted to touch the toys. But they loved knowing that the toys were there—that they could have used them.

  There was no song this band could not play. Guests who were seventy, guests who were eighteen, guests who were forty-five, and guests who were thirty: the band played the hit tunes from any year in the 20th century.

  People danced.

  They laughed.

  They admired the lovely graceful yacht and were thrilled to find that the captain would take them on a starlit sail in Boston Harbor.

  The portly young man whose dinner jacket had purple velvet lapels—not atrocious, but crazy, so you had to laugh when you saw him; he was dashing and creative—entranced the older women. “And what did you say your name is?” asked a blue-haired old lady with whom he was waltzing.

  “Ben Franklin,” he said, forgetting which role went where.

  “You poor thing. Were your parents demented? Do you have brothers named George Washington and Lafayette?”

  Ben Franklin laughed easily. “For the summer I’m an employee of the Park Service. I spend the day wandering around being an historical personage to tourists. Naturally, everybody just calls me Ben Franklin.”

  The group was entertained.

  There was nothing Ben Franklin loved more than a party, except being the center of attention at that party. He was having a wonderful time. All the possibilities he had frightened himself with were ridiculous. It was easy to blend in. Nobody wanted controversy, nobody wanted details—they just wanted a laugh, a drink, and a dance.

  Ben was a wonderful dancer, which most of the men were not. He danced with wives in their fifties and sixties and their husbands thanked him for saving their evening.

  He didn’t meet the host until he’d been on board nearly an hour.

  “Kender, this is too delightful,” cried his current dance partner. “To think you’ve invited Ben Franklin! How Bostonian!”