The Forgetting

by Nicole Maggi

  Chapter Sixteen

  When I got home, I ran straight up to my room. Grandma’s voice floated up behind me. “Georgie, Mr. Blount will be here in a few minutes!”

  “Be right there,” I called down and closed myself behind my bedroom door. I flung my coat on the floor and, at long last, slid the file out from under my clothes. I sat on the floor with my back against the door and flipped it open.

  The first thing my eyes fell on was a picture stapled to the inside of the folder. It showed a girl of about seven with long blond hair, her brown eyes wide and staring at the camera. No smile adorned her mouth. In fact, her lips were pressed together in an expression far too wise for a seven-year-old. I traced my finger over her features, around those wide eyes, down her slanted cheekbone, and over her hair, as if I could comfort the teenager she would become.

  I shuffled through the rest of the file, looking for a more recent picture, but there wasn’t one. I went back to the first page and began to read. Leeland, Anna Isabel. Born July 20, 1995. Mother: Eliza Marie Leeland, incarcerated for life without the possibility of parole. Father: Karl Michael Leeland, deceased.

  Downstairs, the front door opened and I heard Grandma’s voice greeting Mr. Blount. With great reluctance, I closed the file and carefully slid it between my mattress and box spring. Sitting through my lessons would be torture.

  I wasn’t wrong. “Georgie, that’s the third one you missed,” Blowhard said, tapping his pen on my paper. “Where’s your head today?”

  Upstairs with the file of the girl whose heart I got. I gave him a weak smile. “Sorry.” I tried to concentrate, but after I missed two more calculus problems, Blowhard gave up and switched to English lit.

  Colt came home from school, and Blowhard was still grilling me about Crime and Punishment. I excused myself to the bathroom and texted Nate. Help! My tutor is holding me hostage!

  He texted me back a sad face. Tomorrow?

  Hope so. Will text you later.

  Blowhard finally left at four, but not before Mom emerged from her office and sat down with us to powwow about my progress.

  “She needs to focus more,” Blowhard said. I folded my arms and glared at him. I was sitting right there. He could at least address me.

  Mom nodded, either unaware or choosing to ignore my mounting annoyance. “Well, she has been spending a lot of time on that article for the school paper.”

  Blowhard raised an eyebrow. “What article?”

  Oh, crap. I sat up, my boots scuffing the floor. Mom glanced at me, then back at Blowhard. “The article on human trafficking.”

  “Georgie never told me she was writing an article.”

  They both looked at me. I squeezed my arms even tighter across myself. “Sorry,” I said, rolling my eyes, “I didn’t realize I had to clear it with Blow—Mr. Blount.”

  He blinked. “Well, honestly, it does seem to be getting in the way of our lessons.”

  “But it’s for school. Both my social studies and English teachers are giving me credit,” I lied.

  Mom and Blowhard stared at me for a moment longer. “Well,” Blowhard finally said, “if she’s getting credit for it at school, then I suppose it’s all right. But she still needs to focus more on her studies with me.”

  “Absolutely,” Mom said. “I’ll make sure she does.”

  “And I will too,” I said. “After all, Georgie can’t be trusted to study on her own. She can’t take responsibility for herself. She needs to be treated like a child even though she’s almost eighteen.”

  “Georgie!” Mom shot an embarrassed look at Blowhard. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He stood up and put a hand on my shoulder. “It must be hard to be away from your friends at school and your regular routine. Just remember…”—he squeezed my shoulder—“being treated like an adult is something you have to earn. And you won’t earn it by acting like a child.”

  I fought the urge to shove his hand off my shoulder and gave him a sugary-sweet smile. He picked up his briefcase and headed to the front door. I started to get up, but Mom put her hands on my knees and held me down. “That was incredibly rude, Georgie.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s incredibly rude to talk about me as if I’m not sitting right next to you.” I met her eyes blaze for blaze. Her shoulders slumped a little.

  “What’s gotten into you lately?” she asked.

  “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe a new heart,” I snapped.

  “Oh, baby.” She squeezed my knees. “You’re still the same person. I know what happened to you was traumatic, but you can’t use it as an excuse to behave badly.”

  I clenched my jaw for a long moment before I realized she was right. No matter how confused or angry I was about what was happening to me, it wasn’t her fault. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just…don’t feel like the same person. I feel different.”

  “Different how?” She leaned closer to me. “Should we go see Dr. Harrison?”

  “No, no, it’s not that—”

  “Then what?” Her eyes softened. “Do you want to talk to someone? Like a therapist?”

  “Oh my God. No.” The thought of sitting on a shrink’s couch, trying to explain that I was getting some dead girl’s memories while losing my own, seemed worse than torture. “I just need space. Space to figure out who I am with this new heart.”

  “Georgie, you’re still the same.” I narrowed my eyes at her. She was saying it for the second time, almost as if she needed to convince herself of it more than me. “You still have the same dreams and hopes, don’t you? You’re still dying to go to Juilliard, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then you’re still the same.”

  Again that word, “same.” I’m not the same, I wanted scream, but I knew I couldn’t tell her the real reason why. I patted her hands that were still on my knees. “I know. It’s just been a hard adjustment. And I need everyone to lay off. Okay?”

  She sighed, her shoulders drooping. “Okay. Fine.” The doorbell rang. “Oh, that’s Joel. Can I trust you to treat him with a little more respect than you showed Mr. Blount?”

  “Yes,” I hissed and went upstairs to grab my oboe. Normally, I would be bouncing with excitement for my lesson, but all I wanted at that moment was to be locked away in my bedroom with Annabel’s file. We ran through the Poulenc a dozen times but he still wasn’t satisfied at the end of the lesson. “I want that one trouble spot perfect by Friday,” Joel said as we packed our oboes away. “You won’t get into Juilliard with it sounding like that.”

  “I know.” I wished everyone would ease up on the Juilliard talk. As I walked Joel out, I wondered if my parents would be as excited to learn that I got a job helping prevent teen suicide as they would be if I got into Juilliard. Probably not. I’d been talking about Juilliard for so many years that there were so many hopes, so much expectation.

  As soon as Joel was out the door, I booked it up the stairs to get my hands on Annabel’s file. I’d barely gotten to the top when Mom called me back down for dinner. All I could think about while we ate was that folder burning a hole in my mattress. As soon as the dishes were in the dishwasher, I made a beeline out of the kitchen, but Colt blocked my escape.

  “Game of Hearts?” he asked, juggling a deck of cards.

  “I have to practice.”

  “You just had a lesson,” Colt said. He slung his arm around my shoulders. “Just for an hour. You can practice after.”

  I cast a longing look up to my room, but when I caught Mom’s gaze on me again, I let Colt propel me into a chair. If I spent this hour with the family, she’d probably stay off my back for the rest of the night.

  “You all better watch out,” I said, snatching the cards away from Colt. “I’m feeling pretty feisty tonight.” I shuffled the deck and began to deal.

  “Hey, remember that Christmas we all s
pent in New Mexico?” Colt asked. “When it snowed?”

  “Oh, that was the worst blizzard I’ve ever seen,” Grandma said. “We were snowed in for days.”

  “And we had that Hearts tournament where Georgie crushed us,” Colt said.

  “Not to mention that epic game of Risk that lasted for three days,” Dad said. “I won that.”

  “I just remember eating so much chili because all we had were canned beans,” Mom said.

  “And we sent Grandpa to the grocery store and he got stalled at the end of the driveway.” Grandma’s eyes misted at the memory. “By the time he got back to the house, he looked like the abominable snowman.”

  “That was one of the best Christmases ever,” Colt said.

  “That was the last Christmas before your grandfather passed,” Grandma said, her voice soft.

  I dealt out the last card, letting their voices, their memories, wash over me. They didn’t seem to notice that I was silent through their reminiscing, offering nothing of my own memories. Because I had none to offer. Any memory I had from that Christmas was gone.

  I fought the rising panic inside me. When would it stop? What had I gotten for the memory of my last Christmas with my grandfather? Buying strawberries in winter. It wasn’t fair. I tossed the cards out to everyone. “Should we start?”

  Without even trying, I shot the moon during the first round, which sent Colt into sore-loser mode. “Fine,” I said, pushing back from the table. “I don’t need to play.”

  “Aw, come on,” Colt whined. “Sit down.”

  “No, I really do have a lot of homework.”

  Dad sighed, but before he could say anything, I ducked out of the kitchen and climbed upstairs. Inside my room, I leaned against the door and breathed in and out, in and out. I had to believe Annabel was leading me somewhere—and that even if I didn’t know where that was, it would be worth it. That once we got there, she would go away. That once she went away, I would be Georgie again.

  I pulled the file from its hiding place and sat on my bed. Finally, I would get some answers. I spread my schoolbooks around me, in case I was interrupted. Under the cover of my calculus textbook, I opened the file.

  Mother, incarcerated. Father, deceased. I turned the page to find a sheet titled “Case History,” and a long paragraph typed beneath it. I bent over the page and read.

  On March 4, 2002, DCF was called to… The address was blacked out. Case was a seven-year-old female. Mother was taken into custody for the double homicide of her husband—Case’s father—and his girlfriend. Mother confessed to crime at the scene, having called the police herself. Case witnessed the crime but was unable to provide any kind of comprehensive report. Case taken into DCF custody for immediate placement with a foster family.

  I wanted to cry but everything inside was frozen. I flipped back to the picture of seven-year-old Anna with her wide, staring eyes. She wasn’t staring at the camera. She was staring into a future without a mother and a father, a future where she would have to take care of herself. I went back to the page with the case history and read it again. This time I did cry, large teardrops splattering on the yellowed paper. What kind of a mother abandoned her daughter like that? She hadn’t killed two people that night. She’d killed three. She’d killed her daughter too.

  With shaking fingers, I turned the page. The next few pages contained the names and addresses of the foster families Anna had been placed with. The first family had moved out of state and couldn’t take Anna with them. The second family had wound up having twins of their own and couldn’t handle the extra burden. The third family had sent her back within only six months. I peered at the dates; Anna had been a teenager by then and was probably too unruly for them. She’d been with the last family for two years before she was emancipated. There was an address. It was in Mattapan.

  I splayed my hand across the address, covering it and uncovering it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there. But I knew that if I went, I couldn’t face it alone. I reached for my phone. I found out more stuff about Annabel, I texted Nate. Tell you tomorrow when I see you.

  OK, he sent back. Have a good night.

  I smiled and held the phone to my chest. I lay back on my pillows, wishing that Nate was here next to me, his knee touching mine as we went through the file together. I wished I could tell him everything.

  A knock thudded on my door. I shoved Annabel’s file under my pillow in the instant before Mom opened the door. “Sweetie? Ella’s here.”

  “What? Why?” I scrambled off my bed and nearly collided with Ella as she sidled into the room.

  “That’s the greeting I get?” she said, tossing her hat onto my desk.

  “I’m just surprised to see you, that’s all.” I gave her a hug that she half returned.

  “Not too late, girls. Okay?” Mom shut the door as she left.

  Ella surveyed my room as if she didn’t already know every inch of it. “So you really do have a ton of homework, huh?” she said, nodding to the pile of textbooks on my bed.

  “You think I was lying to you?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Georgie!” Ella threw her arms into the air. “I mean, you’re never around anymore. You never call—”

  “I texted you the other night,” I protested, shifting my weight between my feet. Anytime Ella and I fought, she always gave herself the upper hand.

  “Yeah, after I texted you and called you. And you said you’d call me the next day and never did.” She folded her arms and blew a hard breath out. “What is going on with you, Georgie?”

  “Ella, I’m sorry.” I sank onto my bed. “But please try to understand. I have someone else’s heart inside my body. Do you not get that?”

  “I get it, okay?” She ran her hand through her hair. “But I mean, did I do something? Did Toni do something? Why don’t you want to hang out with us anymore?”

  I picked at a loose thread in my bedspread. “No, you didn’t do anything. It’s not you.”

  “What is it, then? Is it this guy?” She half smiled. “No guy is worth changing yourself for. How many Seventeen articles have told us that?”

  “I’m not changing myself for him.” I looked at her for a long moment. “But I’m not the same old Georgie. I’m just not. I woke up from that surgery different—”

  “So, what? The new you doesn’t want to hang out with your friends?” Ella planted her hands on her hips.

  “No, that’s not it—”

  “You’d rather hang out with druggies and hookers?”

  “Ella!” I jumped to my feet. “That’s a really mean thing to say.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She brought her fingers to her temples. “I would’ve thought that after a near-death experience, you’d want to be with the people you love even more. Not less.”

  “I do want to hang out with you guys.” My voice climbed higher and higher. “But I’ve got other things going on in my life—”

  “What other things? Clue me in!” Ella glared at me. “That’s what friends do, Georgie. They share what’s going on in their lives. They ask for help.”

  “You can’t help me with this. Trust me, if you could, I would’ve asked for it a long time ago.” I folded my arms and leaned back on my pillows.

  Ella stared at me for a searing, stretched-out minute. “So that’s it, then?” she said finally. “You’re really not going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Ella…”

  “Fine.” She started buttoning her coat, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you, Georgie. I thought we could tell each other anything. I guess I was wrong.”

  “Ella, please.” I launched myself off my bed. My chest tightened and I had to steady myself on my feet. “Please just trust me on this.”

  She snorted. “Yeah. Trust you. Okay, Georgie. Whatever.” She jammed her hat on her head. “I’m sorry you had to have a
heart transplant. I’m sorry you don’t feel like the same person anymore.” Ella bit her lip. For a second, I thought she was going to cry. “But I’m really sorry that the new Georgie doesn’t feel like she can trust her friends. Because I would’ve trusted the old Georgie with my life.” She flung open the door. “The new one? I’m not so sure.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Right after Ella left, Mom knocked on the door but I didn’t answer. I stood in the middle of the room, my whole body shaking, my scar prickling. It wasn’t the new Georgie who couldn’t trust her friends. It was Annabel, insinuating herself into me. Annabel couldn’t trust anyone, and she’d imprinted that instinct on her heart.

  I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself, trying to get warm even though the cold came from inside me. There was no place that was off-limits to her, no place where she didn’t knock me out of the way and take over. Playing Hearts with my family, dancing at the annual Valentine’s Day party, hanging out with my friends…either the Catch or the discovery of a lost memory interrupted. Nowhere was safe.

  I blinked. There was one place she couldn’t enter. I marched to that corner and dragged my music stand to the center of the room. When I fit my oboe together, the keys were warm beneath my fingers, the heft of the instrument so right in my hands. I ripped through a set of scales and went right into the Mozart concerto, gliding up and down the notes as if I’d been playing them since I was in the womb.

  Warmth spread up my spine. The old Georgie was still here. As my fingers danced over the keys, any shred of Annabel left me. She had no place in this world, the world of reeds and symphonies and intricate fingerings. This was my world, the one I’d always felt at home in.

  I played for so long that Dad had to knock on the door and tell me to stop because everyone was going to bed. After he left, I sat on the floor and pulled the oboe apart to clean it. I took a long time, polishing in between the keys until the rosewood gleamed. Then I nestled the pieces back in their velvet-lined case and sat with the case open on my lap.

  I really did want to volunteer for the Teen Crisis Line. I really did admire the work Nate did with FAIR Girls, and I wanted to help him. But as much as I knew that, the oboe was still who I was. I was still destined to go to Juilliard and play with the New York Phil. Music was still my core, and not even Annabel could change that.