The Forgetting

by Nicole Maggi

  Nate raised his eyebrow. “Yeah, why?”

  “I just wondered if you knew anything about her case. I mean, I know she aged out of the system but there’s got to be a file on her somewhere, right?”

  He nodded slowly. “I guess so. But it would be at Social Services, wouldn’t it? Why does it matter?”

  I chewed my lip. “That file has her real name on it. Her last known address. What happened to her family. That file has answers in it.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll never get it. I mean, it’s not like you can just waltz in there and ask for it.” He pulled open the door.

  Somehow, the fact that Nate said it couldn’t be done made me want that file more than anything. I followed him into the basement, let the warmth blast out the cold, and unbuttoned my coat. Tommy was at the kitchen table, chatting with a couple of other girls. I waved to her as Nate led me over to the couch by the bookshelf, where a slight redheaded girl sat with a book open in her lap. As we got closer, I saw just how thin she was. I could count the ribs that appeared above the low neckline of her shirt, and her collarbones stood out sharp and prominent. Her skin was almost translucent; she was like a whisper of a person, or an echo.

  The book she had in her lap was one I’d donated, a vampire romance that Ella had swooned over and made me read. “That’s a good one,” I told her, even though it wasn’t.

  She looked up. Her eyes were bottomless, pale blue like faintly colored glass. “The vampire is an idiot,” she said. “Why doesn’t he just bite someone already?”

  I laughed and took that as an invitation to sit next to her. “What other books do you like?”

  Her mouth pressed so thin it almost disappeared. “I don’t read much,” she said, tucking a long strand of her stringy red hair behind her ear. I examined her profile. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen at the most. What was I doing when I was fifteen? Spending my summer at Interlochen and worrying about my math grade.

  “So what brings you here?” I asked. Nate squeezed onto the couch beside me. I tried to ignore the heat of his thigh pressed against mine.

  “Annabel told me if I needed a warm place to go, the basement was usually open.” She shrugged. “I got kicked out of my usual place so I came here.”

  “Where was that?” Nate asked.

  She glanced at him. “The halfway house over on Lexington. But they got these stupid rules.”

  Nate nudged me and I followed his gaze to her wrists. They were so thin that the wide sleeves of her shirt kept falling back, and when they did, I caught a glimpse of the bruises on her skin. I jerked back and looked at Nate. “Track marks,” he muttered in my ear. “The halfway house kicked her out for using.”

  I stared at her wrists, unable to contain the horror I felt inside. Nate had told me that most of the girls he dealt with were drug addicts too, but seeing it firsthand—those bruises were not movie makeup—hit me right in the gut. She was so young, her whole life ahead of her. And she’d spend it trying to get clean.

  I dragged my gaze away from her arms. “So, what else did Annabel tell you?”

  She shrugged. “Not much.” She narrowed her eyes toward the kitchen. “She said you got food here too.”

  Nate jumped up. “I’ll get you something.”

  I watched him head to the coffee machine, then turned back to the girl. “So—”

  “He’s cute,” she said, flipping another few pages. “He your boyfriend?”

  “I…” I looked back at Nate, who was taking a mug down from the cabinet. “I don’t know. It’s kind of up in the air.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, still not looking up. “I saw the way he was looking at you when you guys walked in together.”

  “Really?” I bit my lip. I wasn’t here to dish with this girl about Nate. Then again… “We just met. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen.”

  She slammed the book shut and peered into my face, her eyes like orbs. “You trust him?”

  I watched Nate put three mugs, a plate of cookies, a banana, and an apple on a tray and try to balance it. “Yeah. Yeah, I trust him.”

  “You just make sure he deserves your trust.” She traced her forefinger over the outline of the vampire on the book’s cover. “I trusted a guy once. Biggest mistake I ever made.”

  “What happened?”

  She hunched her shoulders. “He…promised me the moon, or whatever the saying is. And when I ran away with him, he didn’t exactly deliver.”

  I put a hand on her knee. “Is that what happened to Annabel? Did she meet some guy who did the same thing to her?”

  “There’s always some guy.” It was unnerving, how she didn’t seem to blink. “Every girl’s story is the same.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be,” I said, leaning in. “You don’t have to end up like Annabel.”

  The girl hugged herself, her thin arms wrapped like wire around her middle. “I liked Annabel,” she whispered. “She was nice to me.”

  Nate returned with the food. He dragged a side table in front of the couch and set the tray down. The girl grabbed one of the mugs, dumped five sugar packets into it, and took a long sip. She glanced around the room. “Can I sleep here too?”

  “Sorry, no.” Nate handed me a mug. “This one’s herbal tea.”

  I smiled up at him. “Thanks.”

  He settled himself on the floor next to the table, the third mug in his hands. “We can help you find a place to stay,” he said to the girl, who was dumping more sugar into her coffee. “But you’ll find they have the same rules as the halfway house.”

  The girl shoved a couple of cookies into her mouth and didn’t say anything.

  “We can help with that too,” Nate said. His tone was so easy and gentle, like he was coaxing a kitten out of a closet. “You have a lot of options.”

  She choked, sputtering crumbs. “Are you fucking serious? I got no options. I got nothing.” She started to get up. “This was a mistake.”

  “No, wait.” I put a hand on her shoulder. She looked back and forth between me and Nate. “Hear him out.” She sat on the very edge of the couch, ready to bolt at any second.

  “Where are you from?” Nate asked.

  It took a long moment but she finally answered. “Baltimore.”

  I started at that. She’d followed this guy so far away from home, and then he’d made her a prostitute. A sick taste rose up in the back of my mouth.

  “Are your parents there?”

  Her jaw clenched, but she nodded.

  “We can get you back there.”

  She breathed heavy, in and out. “Jules says if I try to go home, he’ll kill my family.”

  I swallowed hard. Even if that wasn’t true, all Jules had to do was make this girl believe it, and she would stay put. Nate set his mug down on the floor and laid his hands on the girl’s knees. “Then we can bring them to you. And you can go someplace safe together.”

  She looked from him to me and back again. “I–I don’t know. I gotta think about it.”

  I squeezed her shoulder. Her bones were sharp beneath my fingers. “Something brought you here. Not just a warm bed. You can tell us.”

  Her eyes were wild, looking everywhere except at our faces. She half rose from the couch. “No. He’ll kill me.”

  “He doesn’t have to know,” I said. “Who’s going to tell him? Not us. Not you.”

  She wavered halfway between standing and sitting. “I should go.” But she didn’t move.

  “I can get a place for you to stay,” Nate said.

  After a long moment, she sat. Nate and I moved closer to her so that she wouldn’t have to speak much above a whisper. “I overheard him. Jules. On the phone.”

  “Was he talking about Annabel?” I asked.

  She shot me a look like I was an idiot. “No.”

  I clenche
d my fingers into a fist and released them again. Not everything was about Annabel—at least not to this girl or to Nate. Annabel was the road to someplace bigger for them. For me, she was the place that all other roads led to.

  “What was he talking about?” Nate prompted.

  “I don’t know exactly. But he called it ‘the Warehouse.’ And when he got off the phone and caught me listening, he just said I’d know what it was soon enough.” The girl narrowed her pale eyes at Nate. “Do you know what it is? Because I don’t think I want to go there.”

  The Warehouse. I let the words roll silently on my tongue, and fear rose like bile in the back of my throat. A pit of pure dread settled in my stomach. The Warehouse. I closed my eyes and pulled up all of Annabel’s memories that I’d gotten. The Warehouse was not among them but I could feel it there, just out of reach. Annabel knew this place. But how, exactly, I wasn’t sure. “I don’t think you want to go there either,” I murmured, opening my eyes.

  “Look,” Nate said, sliding a card out of his back pocket. “Go to this address tonight. She’ll have a bed for you, and she can keep you safe.” The girl reached for the card but Nate held it back from her. “But you can’t stay there if you’re not clean.”

  The girl’s face pinched tight. She pulled her backpack into her lap. After digging into an inside pocket, she took out a little box and slammed it into Nate’s palm. He didn’t drop his hand. She sighed hard and dug into another pocket, extracting a little bag, and practically threw it at him. He caught it neatly.

  The girl shrugged herself into her coat, took the banana and the apple off the tray, and shoved them into her pockets. She stood to leave. “Did she—Annabel—ever tell you anything about herself?” I asked. “Anything at all?”

  She shook her head. “She used to let me stay with her sometimes. But we never talked much.”

  “Where? Where did you stay with her?”

  “She squatted at a building not far from here,” she said. “On Emiline.”

  Again, 826 Emiline. That explained why she’d jumped from there. “Thanks.”

  The girl took a step away from the couch, then twisted back. “Strawberries,” she said. Her voice was quiet and hushed. “She used to bring me strawberries. Even in winter.”

  I closed my eyes and the memory rose up. The holes in my gloves let the cold in to touch my skin, freezing my fingers as I pick through the strawberries. The cobblestones beneath my feet are littered with rotting fruit and broken crates. By the time my little basket is full, my fingers are numb. I pay the wholesaler out of my precious stash of cash. I’d have to make up the difference tonight, but as I bite into one of the strawberries and let the juice dribble down my chin, it’s worth every cent.

  My vision blurred with tears. “They were her favorite,” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” the girl said. “That’s what she told me.” She hugged herself. “Thanks for the cookies.”

  As she walked away, Nate pushed himself up onto the couch. “How did you know that?”

  I brushed the tears off my cheeks. “I…just figured if she was buying strawberries in the middle of winter, she must’ve really loved them.”

  Nate took my hands in his and rubbed them. “Are you okay?”

  No. No, I was not okay. What memory had I just lost? “I’m just glad she’ll have a place to sleep tonight,” I said, nodding toward the door where the girl had just left. “And that we got more information.” But I couldn’t swallow the hot lump in my throat, and not just because of the memory. All these girls, following some phantom dream, only to be smashed. To find themselves standing on a lonely street, waiting for a stranger to pick them up in a silver sports car. Like this girl, like Char.

  Like Annabel.

  Chapter Fifteen

  That night, I lay wide awake, staring at the ceiling. What the hell was the Warehouse? And why didn’t I get the memory of it when the redheaded girl mentioned it? Instead I got a memory of buying strawberries in winter. Where the hell was that going to get me?

  “If you’re going to screw with my brain,” I said aloud to the shadows on the wall, “at least give me something I can work with.”

  The only answer I got was the clacking of bare branches on the tree outside my window.

  I sighed and rolled over toward my nightstand. I flipped on the light and slid my journal onto the bed. It fell right open to the page with all my scribbling on it. The memories-lost and memories-gained map was as inscrutable as ever. I stared at it until the lines blurred, hoping that something useful would pop out the longer I contemplated it. Finally I grabbed my pen. I added the Warehouse at the bottom of the page.

  Whatever went on at the Warehouse, it couldn’t be good. Maybe Annabel had found out about it, and it was so bad that she’d rather commit suicide than face it. That was the biggest thing I’d gleaned from our conversation with the skinny redheaded girl.

  I laid the pen in the crease of the journal and ran my finger down the list of memories I’d gained. What did it all mean? Why were these memories imprinted on Annabel’s heart? What were they leading me to?

  As I touched the indentations of my writing, the tip of my finger tingled. They did make sense.

  They were in order.

  They were in chronological order. I was remembering her memories in the order that they happened. I was living her life over again, gaining each memory when the heart wanted to reveal it to me.

  Or when it was provoked. The memory of Nate had come to me as soon as I’d met him. Annabel’s kingdom by the sea had been stirred up by Nate reading the poem. All of the memories so far had occurred before she’d learned about the Warehouse or been there.

  I rolled onto my back and gazed at the small circle of light my nightstand lamp made on the ceiling. If this was true—if the heart only gave me each memory in the order they happened—then I wouldn’t know why Annabel had committed suicide until the heart revealed all the memories that preceded it. I laid my hand on my chest, heartbeats reverberating against my palm. I was powerless against this organ, completely at the mercy of its will. I just had to believe that when I reached the end of her memories, when I figured out who she was and why she jumped from that balcony, it would all end and I could go back to normal.

  Whatever normal looked like now.

  I shoved my journal in my nightstand drawer and brought my laptop back into bed. The covers pooled around my waist as I pulled up the Department of Children and Families website again. Maybe just staring at it would magically make Annabel’s file appear. I clicked on every link I could but it was like the big hedge maze at Tanglewood. Everything kept leading me to a dead end.

  “Dammit,” I muttered and clicked on the “Fostering Kids, Fostering Futures” headline again. It took me back to a page spouting some bullshit about how invested they were in every child’s future potential. Yeah, they sure hadn’t been in Annabel’s. I ran the mouse down all the links below the banner and stopped at something called the Teen Crisis Line that I hadn’t clicked on before. The link opened to a new page.

  Volunteers needed

  Volunteers are needed to help answer the Teen Crisis Line. Looking especially for teen volunteers so that callers can talk to their peers. Apply in person at the Department of Children and Families, 600 Washington Street, Boston, during the hours of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Thursday.

  Well. I sat back and stared at the little square box advertising for volunteers. My insides jittered like I’d had too much coffee. It wasn’t Annabel’s file, but it was a way in the door.

  • • •

  The Department of Children and Families offices in Downtown Crossing were in a tall building made of glass and steel that badly needed cleaning. The windows were grimed up and the silver door handles had long since lost their shine. I stopped at the reception desk. The receptionist’s hair flew in all different directions and half-covered the
headset she wore over one ear. She held up a finger without looking at me, pressed about a dozen buttons on the huge dashboard-like phone that took up half her desk, and answered one of the blinking buttons. “Please hold.”

  She tilted her chin up to me. “Can I help you?”

  “Department of Children and Families—”

  “Which department?”

  “Children and Families—”

  “Which department in the Department of Children and Families?” Her words practically tripped over one another in her rush. “Who are you here to see?”

  “Oh, um, I don’t have a name—”

  “I can’t help you without a name.” She pressed the blinking button again and transferred the caller, who apparently did have a name.

  “I’m here to apply to volunteer for the Teen Crisis Line,” I said in one breath before she pressed another button.

  “You want the Adolescent Office,” she said, slapping a Visitor tag on the desk. “Fourth floor.”

  “Thanks,” I offered, but her head was already down, focused on the blinking dashboard in front of her.

  I expected to encounter another receptionist when I got off the elevator on the fourth floor, but instead I found an open office space filled with endless cubicles. File boxes were stacked up in every available corner. The sound of ringing phones filled the air. I peeked into the first cubicle I came to. It was empty except for a half-drunk cup of coffee. At the next one, I found a woman hunched over her phone, and even though I stood in front of her for a good three minutes, she never looked up.

  I moved on to the third, fourth, and fifth cubicles, where I finally found a squat little man typing at his computer with only his two forefingers. “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Um, I’m here to apply for the Teen Crisis Line? To volunteer?”

  “Good for you.” He pointed down the length of cubicles. “Sally Klein. Second cubicle from the end.”

  “Thank you,” I said very pointedly. He didn’t get it.

  I found Sally Klein’s cubicle. It was empty, but there was a half-eaten bagel by the keyboard that indicated she had just stepped away. A box hung on the side wall with a sign that read, “If you are here to apply for volunteering, please fill this out.” An arrow pointed down into the box.