by Marissa Lete
He blinks a few times, then sighs. “You and I… we were together,” he tells me. It’s something I’ve sort of known for a while, but it’s strange hearing him say it. “You knew my mom pretty well, too.”
Of course I would know his mom. “Did I know about Alice? And the medicine? Your ability—any of it?”
He grimaces. “No. I didn’t know how to tell you, I guess.”
I expect a feeling of hurt, betrayal, or anger to come, but there is none. I obviously hadn’t told him about my ability, either, or he would have known that erasing my memory never would have worked. I can understand why he wouldn’t; it’s not exactly the easiest of subjects to talk about.
“But after she died, I tried to go back to a normal life, I tried to put it all behind me. It was fine for a while, but then I started receiving threats from Alice. If I didn’t go back and work for her, she was going to start taking everything I had from me. Everything I loved.” He meets my eyes as he says the word loved.
I hold his gaze for a moment, understanding the pointed look he’s giving me, but then look away. It’s strange to think that he could have been in love with me when he feels so much like a stranger right now. Had I loved him, too?
“I didn’t know what to do. I tried to get the police involved, but they couldn’t track her—I’d covered up her crimes too well. And no one’s going to believe me when I say I can take their memories away. So I tried to wait it out, but she started terrorizing me. My tires were slashed, my house was broken into—all kinds of things. I couldn’t escape her.”
Understanding hits me all at once, knocking the breath out of me. “You were afraid she would come after me.”
He nods solemnly. “I couldn’t stand the idea of you being hurt because of me.”
“So you erased yourself from my life,” I finish.
“Yeah,” he says, his eyes shut. “I couldn’t just leave, I needed to make sure you wouldn’t know anything about me, I needed to make sure she couldn’t use you against me. I erased myself from you, from everyone we’d come in contact with together.”
I glance up at him. “You missed someone.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t understand it at the time, but a worker in this shop downtown recognized me. Coffee and Cream. She told me about you.”
It dawns on him. “Oh. Right,” he says. “I can’t believe I forgot about that.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes after that, and I go over everything he’s told me in my head. The story makes sense. It makes complete sense. I’ve finally gotten my answers. But I still feel empty inside. Like something is missing.
“So it was as if you’d never met me, after that?” I finally ask him.
“For you, yeah,” he answers, his eyes burning into mine. The color of them seems to change with his emotions—amber one moment, then greenish, then yellow. Right now they’re dark.
I watch him fiddle with a piece of string coming off his shirt as I think about it. Maverick still remembered me, the whole time. Even now, he remembers everything about our relationship. I hate it, knowing that he knows about every moment we shared, and I’m a blank slate.
“Is there some way I can get my memories back? Can you... restore them, somehow?” I wave my hand in the air, a little bit of hope creeping into my voice.
Maverick simply shakes his head, and the hope dies.
“I erased your memory because I thought she didn’t know about you, I thought making you forget me would protect you from being used as a pawn in a game.”
“Obviously that didn’t work out,” I mutter. Maverick’s plan made sense, it was great that he was trying to protect me, but I feel a twinge of anger bubbling up inside me. How could he just delete me from his life like that? How could he just let me go? Couldn’t there have been some other way?
Maverick grimaces. “I didn’t know that she had been watching me and already knew about you. I didn’t think she would use you, since you weren’t in my life anymore. If I had known…” he trails off.
I feel my anger building, hot and sudden. “You would have done what? Not done it? A few days ago, I was listening to the coffee shop worker tell me about how we were so in love and now I’m learning that you cut me out of your life just like that? How could you?” My heart is thrumming in my ears by the time I finish.
Maverick looks like he’s just been punched in the gut. He shakes his head. “I didn’t know. I thought it was the best decision.”
“The best decision,” I scoff. I can’t control the anger inside of me. I’ve had a part of my life ripped from me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I can see Maverick trying his best to stay calm, but when he speaks, his words are saturated with frustration. “Do you know how hard it was to live with the memory of you every single day, knowing there was nothing I could do to get you back? Do you know how hard it was to find out that my enemy knew about you all along, and that it was all for nothing?” His eyes burn into mine like a million suns. I’m speechless for a moment, a tear streaming down my cheek. Then I find my voice.
“Do you know how hard it was for me? To hear myself talking to you, getting to know you, and not remember any of it? To wonder whether I was going crazy or not? Then to find out you’re real, but you’re also the reason I don’t even remember my first kiss? The first guy I supposedly loved?”
“I—” Maverick chokes out. “I didn’t know about your ability, I didn’t think this would happen.”
“But you were okay with just accepting that I was gone forever?” I spit, not bothering to hide my anger.
“No!” he replies, angry, too. “If I could take it all back, I would. Laura, I’m so, so sorry. You have to believe that.” The look in his eyes tells me he truly means it, but I can’t stand the thought of sitting here for another second.
“I’m sorry, too.” Tears flowing freely now, I stand, knocking over a glass as I do. It topples over and shatters, spraying water and glass across the table but I ignore it, turning towards the door we came through, and run. When I finally get to my room, one glance in the mirror tells me I look like a tired, frantic mess. I spread out across the bed, taking deep breaths, trying to calm myself down.
When my heart finally slows and my breathing is normal again, fatigue hits me. Aside from the brief nap in the car, I haven’t slept in a long time. My eyes feel heavy, and I don’t fight them as they close. I embrace the sleep, letting it take me down into a dark, silent abyss.
Chapter 23
When I wake up, the sky is a light gray, the sun beginning its ascent somewhere far away. I turn away from the window, blinking a few times before I notice an alarm clock on the stand beside me. 6:06 A.M. In the corner, there’s the date. Sunday.
It dawns on me that I haven’t been home in over 24 hours. Mom and Dad. They’re probably out of their minds, wondering where I could be. The police are involved by now, no doubt, and there’s probably a massive search party out looking for me.
I stand up in a hurry, opening the door and poking my head out before I leave the room. Something about the grandness of this place makes me feel like I have to move in secrecy so I don’t disturb the peace.
I walk down the almost-familiar hallway, down the staircase, and into the entranceway. I peek my head into the doorway I’d seen Jacob come from yesterday. No one is there, so I continue down the hallway, checking inside each door as I pass by. I’m backing out of a doorway when I bump into someone, startling me. I whip my head around, meeting Maverick’s eyes. He looks down at my hand, still on the doorknob.
“I—” I start, feeling a little bit guilty. The tension of our fight last night hangs in the air between us, making it hard to breathe. “You’re up early,” I say, trying to break it up.
Maverick blinks his yellow eyes at me. “So are you.”
I’m not sure how to respond, so I just cut to the chase. “I think I need to call my parents, they’re probably worried about me.”
Maverick blinks again, taking a deep breath. “Actually, they… uh… probably aren’t worried yet,” he says tentatively, like he knows he has to say it but he doesn’t want to.
I blink back, confused.
“After Alice let me go yesterday, before I came to break you out, I… made sure they weren’t worried about you. They think you’re at Grace’s for the weekend,” he explains.
“How did you…?” I trail off, realization hitting me. “Oh. Right. You can make people forget things.” The words taste bitter in my mouth, and I can see the hurt in Maverick’s eyes after I say them.
“I just wanted to get you back and take you home. I didn’t want there to be any further disturbance in your life,” he tells me.
“Oh, so you made my parents forget about me?” My voice cracks.
“Not completely, I just thought—” he stops short, closing his eyes tight. “I’m sorry,” he finally finishes. I stare at him as he runs a hand through his dark hair awkwardly, then something dawns on me.
“Wait, were you going to erase my memories too?”
Maverick grimaces.
“Oh my gosh. You were! So what, you were just going to make me forget everything that happened this weekend? Getting kidnapped, meeting you, all of it?”
“I… that was the plan until I found out about your ability.” He waits for my response, but I simply glare at him. Then, finally, he adds, “I just wanted to keep you out of this.”
“I’m sure you did,” I spit, then shove past him. I’m not sure where I’m going, but the last place I want to be right now is standing here with Maverick. He was going to erase my memory. Make me forget meeting him, all of it. If he had, I’d have been stuck in the same endless cycle as before, hearing echoes of him and questioning my sanity because I couldn’t remember any of it.
Instead, I’m here, and I understand what has happened. Maverick erased my memory, and he thought he was protecting me by doing it. But now I’m not sure if I can even trust him.
I’m not sure which situation feels better.
“Laura, please,” I hear Maverick call from behind me. He’s following me down the hallway, which I quickly realize comes to a dead-end, and suddenly I feel trapped.
I stop in my tracks and spin around, facing him. “How can I trust you?” I ask, trying to make my shaky voice sound brave. “How can I trust anything that you say or do, when you can just wipe the memory from my mind if it doesn’t go well for you? How do I know you haven’t tried this conversation before and just hit the reset button when things went wrong? How can I trust that you won’t do something like that to me again?”
I watch his chest moving up and down a few times. I can tell he doesn’t know how to respond, but I wait anyway. We stare at each other, and I can almost feel the sun rising a few inches in the sky as we do.
Then, finally, I can taste one last question on my lips, less bitter than the previous ones. “How do you even do it?”
Maverick’s eyes burn into mine, questioning.
“Take away people’s memories,” I add.
He looks down, and I think I see his hands shaking the tiniest bit, but I can’t be sure. He inhales and exhales slowly. When he speaks, darkness clouds his eyes. “I have to touch them,” he tells me, and his hands curl into fists. “If I make contact with them, and I focus hard enough, I can reach through their skin, all the way into their mind. It’s like snipping the little strings that hold their memories together.” His face contorts in disgust, and he lowers his head solemnly. “It only takes a moment.”
Immediately, I become aware of the distance between us—maybe ten feet. I take another step back for good measure. “So then there’s just empty holes in the person’s memories?” I ask. I hadn’t noticed any weird gaps in my memory—the only thing that taught me about Maverick’s existence was the echoes, which any normal person wouldn’t have been able to hear.
“Technically, yes. But the mind is powerful. It’s good at filling in the gaps when it needs to. Most people don’t even notice at all. Sometimes—like with your parents yesterday—all I have to do is take away one small detail, and they come up with the rest themselves. I simply took away their worry when they couldn’t find you yesterday morning, so they assumed you were at Grace’s.”
I listen to his words, my own swirling through my mind. This ability that Maverick has is completely different than mine. It affects other people, while mine only affects me. It’s useful, while mine is nothing but a burden. It makes sense that someone like Alice would want to abuse his power and use it for her own gain. It makes him powerful. Dangerous.
My thoughts are interrupted when I see movement: Maverick, taking a small step towards me. I throw my hands up in front of me. “Stop!” I blurt, my eyes wide.
He does, his hands going up defensively. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know if I can trust you,” I tell him, “but if I’m going to try, I need to know that you won’t use your ability on me. Ever. Again.”
“I promise—”
“And the only way to be sure is to make sure you don’t touch me. So I don’t want you getting too close.”
A sadness glows in his eyes, but he nods, backing away and lowering his hands. “I won’t,” he says.
“Good.” I sigh, calm acceptance flowing through me. I know the truth now. I know I’m not crazy. That’s what matters, right? That’s all I’ve wanted for weeks now. But now that I have it, I’m not sure I can handle it anymore. “I would like to go home now,” I tell Maverick.
He nods. Then, without saying anything, he turns around and gestures for me to follow. So I do.
In the entranceway, he disappears into a side room. Then he emerges, Jacob trailing behind. Maverick stops several feet away from me, but Jacob closes the distance, holding out a couple of items to me. The first: my car keys. The second: my phone. I realize I must have left them in the alley when I tried to run. My car must be pretty beat up, too, after scraping against the Suburban. I recall a faint memory of the side mirror getting knocked off. I wonder how I’m going to explain that one to my parents.
“Your car’s out front,” Maverick tells me.
Not only is my car out front, but it’s fixed, too. The mirror is back, and there’s no evidence that it has even made contact with another car.
“I got it… fixed. I wanted to make sure everything was normal, as it was before you started getting chased. I wanted you to have your life back,” Maverick tells me when he sees me eyeing the car suspiciously.
I nod, hitting the unlock button on my keychain. I remember the grinding noise I’d heard when my car scraped against the Suburban. There must have been some serious damage to the exterior, and it probably had needed an entire new paint job. Wasn’t getting a car painted expensive, and didn’t it take a long time? I hadn’t even been gone for a full forty-eight hours yet.
“My number is in your phone now. In case you… need anything,” Maverick tells me sincerely. I can hear what he really means in the space between his words: in case you want to talk.
“What are we going to do about Alice? What if she tries to kidnap me again?” I ask him.
“I’m going to look into it. I’ll figure something out, but for now, just try and stay safe. Don’t go out alone, lock your doors, stuff like that. I don’t think she knows where you live. Call me if you notice anything suspicious—anything at all. Okay?”
I search his hazel eyes for a long moment. “Okay.”
Maverick starts giving me directions on how to get home from here. We’re right at the edge of town, so it’s almost a thirty-minute drive back to my house. But as I stand there, listening, my focus changes to something else.
Maverick’s house. His massive, elegant, very expensive-looking house. I take in the perfectly mowed lines in the front lawn, the spotless windows lining the front. The art and furniture I’d seen throughout the inside, the sport’s car he drove—all of it pointed towards one simple truth: Maverick must be rich. Really
rich.
“—I’ll keep you updated if I find anything,” he finishes. My eyes pull into focus and I look at him. He’s wearing an old, gray T-shirt and a pair of dark jeans today. Black sneakers. If he wasn’t standing in front of a mansion, I’d never suspect him to have lots of money.
“Okay,” I reply, though I’m sure I’ve missed some part of the conversation. I take a couple of steps towards my car, then turn, looking at him. “Thanks,” I tell him.
His mouth twists up in a knot. “Drive safe,” he replies.
As I get in my car, and as I pull out of the glorious stone driveway, a thought wanders into my mind. If Maverick can essentially manipulate people’s memories, he can make anyone forget ever meeting him. Or seeing him do something wrong. What kinds of things could he have gotten away with throughout the years?
I see a flash of the speedometer creeping higher as we’d driven away from Alice’s laboratory. If he had gotten pulled over, he could have simply made the cop forget it had ever happened.
To get to the main road, I have to pass through a tall, intricately woven metal gate that swings open when I get close to it. If Maverick has lots of money, how did he get it? He could have easily robbed a bank, or stolen the money from someone and covered up the act by making them forget about it. He could have taken the mansion from someone and left them on the streets, and they’d never have even known they were rich.
I take a deep breath, my fingers tightening around the steering wheel, turning my knuckles white.
What kind of person is Maverick—the kind who’d be honest and true, or the kind who’d use his ability for personal gain?
Chapter 24
Sunday passes by in a haze of spending my time avoiding my parents, moping around in my room, and trying to sort through the endless spiral of thoughts coursing through my mind. On Monday, I stay home from school, certain that sitting in a classroom attempting to focus while I have so many things to process will just make me crazier.