The Forgetting

by Nicole Maggi

  I drew out one of the applications, grabbed a clipboard and pen from Sally’s desk, and looked for a place to sit down. The only other available chair besides the desk chair was piled high with files. Carefully, I moved them to the floor and sat in the chair. On impulse, I bent over the stack of files, looking at the tabs.

  “Can I help you?”

  I straightened so fast my neck cricked. “Hi—I’m here to apply.” It was idiotic to think Annabel’s file would just be sitting there, waiting for me to find it.

  “For the Teen Crisis Line? That’s great.” She slid into her chair. “We need more teen volunteers. Studies show that kids are more likely to talk to other kids about their problems rather than adults.”

  “I’d—love to help out,” I said weakly. I’d memorized a whole spiel about how I wanted to give back to the community, but the script disappeared from my brain. On this gray floor filled with gray cubicles, Sally was the only one with some color. For some reason, I didn’t want to disappoint her.

  “Just fill that out and then we’ll chat.” She picked up her bagel and took a bite.

  The application was pretty straightforward. I handed it to her when I was done. Sally looked it over and raised an eyebrow. “The Hillcoate Academy? That’s very impressive.”

  “Thanks. I have a copy of my last report card if you want to see it.” I drew it out of my bag and handed it to her.

  Sally looked it over for a minute and then back at my application. “You’re a senior?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you…”—her eyes scanned the paper—“play the oboe?”

  “Yes.”

  She peered at me over the clipboard. “What are your plans for college?”

  “I’m auditioning for Juilliard.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes widened with surprise. “That must be very competitive.”

  “It is. Only two or three get in every year. If that.” I tightened my fingers in my lap. “Last year, they didn’t let any in.”

  “Wow. Any backups?”

  “Eastman, New England Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music. And well, Curtis, but that one is so hard to get into that you don’t even pay tuition.” I half smiled at her. “But my dream has always been Juilliard.”

  “Well, you’re not afraid of a challenge. That’s obvious.” Sally set my application and report card down on her desk. “And you’ll have no shortage of challenges working the Teen Line.”

  “What sort of calls do you get?”

  “Oh, everything from ‘My boyfriend dumped me and I’m sad’ to ‘I’m standing here with a razor and want to slit my wrists.’ It can get intense.”

  I wondered what would’ve happened if Annabel had called the Teen Line before she jumped off the balcony. Would she still be alive? And if she was still alive, would I be dead? I shivered.

  “So, Georgiana—”

  “Oh, please call me Georgie.” I wrinkled my nose. “Georgiana sounds way too British.”

  Sally laughed. “Okay, Georgie. Tell me, why does a senior like you want to do this? You’ve obviously got your future figured out, and your grades are excellent. You’ve already sent in your applications so you don’t need this for a good extracurricular activity. You’re probably spending all your free time practicing for your auditions. Why do this?”

  “Because—” I stopped. I swung my gaze around the depressing gray walls. Had Annabel come here to meet with her case worker? Was this another place I was walking in her footsteps? “Because—” The lies I’d prepared died on my lips. “Because I knew a girl.”

  Sally crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back. Her chair creaked.

  “I knew a girl who committed suicide. And I just think that maybe if she’d called a crisis line like this, if she’d talked to me, I could’ve stopped her.”

  “Jeez.” Sally sighed, shaking her head. “I’m really sorry. I like to think that we could’ve prevented that from happening too.”

  “There are so many kids out there who need help,” I said, thinking of Char, of the skinny redheaded girl with track marks on her arms. I wasn’t lying anymore, giving Sally a bullshit line to get what I wanted. These girls really did need help, and I could do it. “And they believe they have no one to turn to, no one who can help them. If they could know that there are people out there who can help, who care…”

  Sally nodded, her bobbed salt-and-pepper hair shaking in front of her face. “Yes, exactly. That’s why I created the Teen Crisis Line to begin with.”

  “You created it? Wow.” I glanced around her chaotic cubicle. She was clearly overworked and understaffed—I mean, she had to get volunteers for a crisis line that should be staffed by certified counselors—but she still cared enough to get a project off the ground to help more kids.

  All of a sudden, I really, really wanted to do this. Yes, I wanted Annabel’s file, but I also wanted to stop the next Annabel from jumping off her balcony. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “The girl I knew—who killed herself—she was a foster kid. Well, she had been. She was eighteen, so she’d aged out of the system. Right? When kids turn eighteen, they’re no longer your—I mean, the Department’s responsibility?”

  “Yeah.” Sally’s face screwed up and she let out a long sigh. “It’s such bullcrap—pardon my French.” I shook my head to let her know she wasn’t offending me in the least, and she went on. “I mean, these kids clearly need our help past their eighteenth birthday, but the State just cuts them off. We have a couple of programs in place to track them, but only if they’re receiving a grant or tuition aid or something like that.” She clenched her jaw. “It’s ridiculous.”

  “Right? It is!” I threw my hands in the air. “I’m practically eighteen and I’m not nearly ready to be on my own. My mother still does my laundry, and I couldn’t even tell you what button turns the washer on. How can the State expect these kids to just fend for themselves?”

  “You have no idea how much this issue means to me,” Sally said. She sat up straighter and set her shoulders. “I actually tried to petition the State to get the law changed to keep kids in the foster system until they’re twenty, but it went nowhere.” She pointed her finger at me. “It is very astute of you to recognize this problem. We need people like you around here.”

  “Does that mean—I have the job?”

  “Yes. I know you must be busy with your auditions, so whatever time you can give us would be great.”

  “Thank you!” I smiled and danced a little in my chair. “I just have to talk to my parents about my schedule. It might have to wait until after my Juilliard audition, but that’s only next month.” My stomach squirmed. Less than a month before the audition. Somehow, I hadn’t been as obsessed with it the past few days.

  “That’s great. Just give me a call and let me know when you can start.” Sally handed me her card and stood. “I’ll walk you to the elevator.”

  It was only when we arrived at the elevator bank that I remembered I’d come here for an entirely different purpose. While Sally pressed the down button, I scanned the directory on the wall. “RECORDS, 10TH FLOOR,” it said.

  Crap. That was up. The elevator dinged. Please don’t get on with me, I thought feverishly at Sally.

  “It was really nice to meet you, Georgie,” she said, sticking her hand out. “Call me when you have a better idea of your schedule.”

  “I will,” I promised, shaking her hand. “Bye.”

  I hit the second-floor button. I’d get off there and go back up to ten. But just before the elevator doors closed, Sally thrust her hand in. “I need coffee something awful,” she said. “The sludge they have here is undrinkable.”

  The doors closed. I slumped against the wall a little. Sally hit one. “Oh—did you hit the second floor by mistake?” she asked, pointing at the lit-up se
cond-floor button.

  “I must have. Oops.”

  We rode the elevator down in silence. My cheeks flamed as I tried to think of how to get back up to the tenth floor. When the doors opened on the first floor, I had no choice but to follow Sally out. “Can I buy you a latte?” she asked as we walked to the front entrance.

  “Oh—no, thanks. I have to get home.”

  “Okay. Great to meet you, Georgie,” she said as she held the door open for me. I ducked through it and walked toward the T stop. Thankfully, Sally was going to a coffee place in the opposite direction.

  I stood for a moment, watching her disappear into the crowds of Downtown Crossing. Before I could hesitate or think it through, I dashed back in through the grimy glass door.

  “Can I help you?” the receptionist asked as I breezed past her.

  “Oh. I was just upstairs,” I said, waving my Visitor badge. “I was meeting with Sally Klein? And I forgot something.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me but then her phone rang. “Go ahead,” she said in the same breath as she answered her phone.

  A bunch of people piled into the elevator behind me. I shrank into the corner, hoping I was invisible. I crumpled my Visitor tag in my hand and shoved it into my coat pocket. If someone stopped me, I didn’t want them to think I didn’t belong.

  If the fourth floor was a wasteland where office drones go to die, the tenth floor was the Mount Doom that lorded above them all. I got off behind a couple of women and followed them through a door that could only be accessed with an ID card. That door led to a long hallway with a dozen rooms, each with the same electronic swipe pad protecting the contents within.

  Dammit.

  I kept following the two women, all the way down the hall. As we passed the locked doors, I noticed a sign on each of them. Closed Files, 1990–2000. Closed Files, 2000–2010. And so on. At last we came to a desk at the end of the hall with a lonely computer sitting on it.

  One of the women bent over the computer and typed something on the keyboard. I turned and swept my gaze down the long hall. Which room had Annabel’s file? Was she even here? She’d aged out of the system not that long ago; maybe she hadn’t even been filed yet. And what the hell was I supposed to do with that computer? Why hadn’t I paid more attention to all those stupid spy shows Colt made me watch?

  A printer next to the computer spit out a sheet of paper and the woman straightened. “It’s in Room C,” she told the other lady. They brushed past me.

  Okay, one thing I had picked up from those shows was that sometimes it was best to hide in plain sight. I took a deep breath and arranged my features into my best damsel-in-distress expression. “Excuse me?”

  The ladies turned. “Yes?”

  I bit my lip. “Um, I just started an internship this week and my boss sent me up here for a file and I have no idea how to find it. Can you—” I gestured to the computer.

  The woman with the paper handed it to her coworker. “You go ahead. I’ll help her.”

  “Oh, thank you so much!” I gushed as she stepped over to the computer. She gave me a tight smile and leaned over the keyboard. “By the way, I love your sweater. Did you knit it yourself?”

  The woman straightened again, this time her smile stretching wide. “I did! Thank you so much.”

  “It must’ve taken forever, with all those little baby bunnies,” I said, widening my eyes with what I hoped was an expression of admiration. “I wish I could knit.”

  “Oh, it’s easier than people think. You should take a class. That’s what I did.”

  “What a great idea!” I sidled next to her and put my hand on the computer. “So, you use this to find a file?”

  “Yes.” She tapped a couple of things and a search screen popped up. “You just type in the name you’re looking for, and it will give you the file’s location.”

  “Cool.” I gave her a worried face. “But the thing is, these doors are all locked and I don’t have my ID yet. So how do I—”

  “Oh, you poor dear. Your boss really threw you to the wolves, didn’t he?” She gave me a sympathetic pat on the arm. “I’ll wait while you type in the name and we can find the file together.”

  My insides clenched. Crap. I had no idea what Annabel’s real name was; I couldn’t just type it in. “Um…okay.” I leaned way over the keyboard, trying to position my shoulders so they blocked the screen from my helper’s view. I typed in “Lee” on the off chance that was her real last name.

  It took ten seconds for the search results to come back with about five thousand Lees. I pressed my lips together, trying to control the shaking of my fingers. I was so freaking close…

  The door to Room C opened and the other woman emerged. “Got it. Let’s go.”

  “Just a minute. I’m helping this young lady,” said my hideously sweatered friend.

  “We’re going to be late for the meeting.”

  She turned to me. “Did you find it yet?”

  “Oh—no, but…” I glanced at the locked room closest to us. Closed Files, 2010–2020. “It would be in that room, though. If you could—”

  “Sure, dear.” The woman swiped her card in front of the keypad and the door clicked open.

  “What’ll you do in 2020, when you’re out of space?” I asked.

  “Purge the files from the 1990–2000 room,” she told me. “We only keep them for twenty years. Good luck on your first week.”

  “Thanks so much for your help.”

  When she got to the door to the elevator bank, she turned back to me. “Oh, don’t forget to leave a printout of which file you took in the box on the back of the door. That way we have a record of which files are checked out and who took them.”

  “Oh—right. Thanks.” I waited until the two women were on the elevator. Once I was safely alone again, I ducked into the room she’d opened for me and shut the door.

  File cabinets lined all the walls and filled the center of the room. How would I find Annabel? I walked around the room until I found the cabinet that contained the Ls. It was the only place to start. I pulled open the drawer and thumbed through to Lee. There was an entire row of them. I walked my fingers over the tabs, moving quickly past the boy names. But the girl names…it could be any of those. I tapped my foot on the ground as I went through the entire drawer. I pulled out a few possibilities—Lee, Michelle and Lee, Olivia and Lee, Samantha—but the dates didn’t match up.

  I rested my forehead on the cold metal edge of the drawer. She wasn’t in here. I could feel it. Or rather, I couldn’t feel it, couldn’t hear the Catch telling me I was on the right track. I put the files back, slammed that drawer shut, and opened the next one.

  This one had several Lees at the front and then started to branch into Leed, Leefer, Leek, and Leeland.

  Leeland. My body went hot and cold. The Catch stirred to life. My fingers stopped at the first Leeland file.

  Leeland, Anna Isabel.

  My hand shook. I touched the name on the file and felt those letters burn into my fingers. It had to be her. There was no way that it wasn’t her. I pulled the file out of the drawer and held it against my heart. The Catch was so loud in my ears that I could swear it was playing through a surround-sound system hidden in the corners of the room.

  “Anna Isabel Leeland,” I whispered. I touched the edges of the folder, almost afraid to open it. What would I find?

  The door to the file room slammed open. “Was that you searching ‘Lee’ on the computer?” asked a short guy with glasses as he stomped into the room. There were multiple stains on his brown tie. “Because you need to clear the search history when you’re done. For confidentiality reasons.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I clutched Annabel’s file to my chest and closed the drawer I’d gotten it from. “I’m new.”

  “That’s not an excuse,” he said, sliding a file drawer ou
t with such violence I thought it was going to come off its tracks. “Your boss should train you better.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell him that,” I said and ducked out of the room.

  “Hey, you forgot to leave a printout in the box!” he called after me. I ran to the elevator, pressing the down button over and over. The elevator dinged and I stepped on just as the guy came striding down the hall. I jabbed the button to close the doors and they slid shut just in time.

  I breathed out and sagged against the wall. Before the elevator could stop on another floor between here and the ground, I shoved the file up under my sweater and buttoned my coat over it. The elevator carried me directly down to one.

  But when I stepped off it, the first thing I spotted was Sally Klein chatting up the receptionist, who looked especially annoyed at being interrupted from her constantly ringing phone. I stepped back into the elevator and hit the button to keep the door open. I couldn’t ride the elevator up and down until she left. I peeked out again. She was still there, now showing the receptionist something on her phone. Crap.

  Another elevator on the opposite side of the bank opened and half a dozen people spilled out. I bolted into their crowd and hid myself between two gray-haired ladies and a middle-aged guy. Thankfully, Sally didn’t look up as we moved out the door and onto the street.

  I didn’t stop until I was safely down the stairs into the T station. Only when I was on the train did I let myself relax. My fingers itched to pull the file out from under my sweater, but I couldn’t begin to think how wrong that would look to everyone else on the crowded train. So I just counted the stops back to Brookline, repeating her name over and over. Anna Isabel Leeland. Anna Isabel Leeland. She had a name, a real name. She wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. She existed, as sure as the manila folder digging into my skin.

  “Anna Isabel Leeland,” I whispered, and the name wrapped itself around my heart.