by Jessi Kirby
When I’d asked her what the necklace meant, she didn’t know, but said she’d seen a lot of surfers wearing them. When we’d looked it up, it turned out she’d bought the wrong saint. Surfers wore Saint Christopher medals. This was Saint Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost things, just like Walker had said. At first she’d been disappointed, because she’d been thinking it’d be cool to get me an Italian surfer necklace, but I’d told her I loved it anyway, and that I would always wear it in case I needed to find something I lost. And I guess I had.
Out of nowhere, a wave of sadness hits me, and I feel like I might cry at the irony of holding this thing in my hand. So much is lost to me, and I’m beginning to think it’s actually gone for good. But Jules shouldn’t be. I take a deep breath and tuck the Saint Anthony into my pocket, and in my mind I say the little prayer we found when we looked it up: Anthony, Anthony, please come around. Something’s lost that must be found.
And then I make my way down Ruby Street, to In Focus, hoping to start there.
When I reach the shop, I can see Jules through the window, sitting behind the counter, reading a book. I take a deep breath and then push through the door.
She looks up, and her eyes widen in surprise for a moment, then she puts a slip of paper in her book and closes it. “Hi,” she says, standing.
“Hi,” I answer back.
It’s quiet, except for the low sound of the machine printing photos behind Jules. She tilts her head. “You have some more film to drop off?”
I shake my head. “No, I . . .” I don’t know where to start with this. “I just wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Okaay . . .”
“It’s—this is really strange for me, but it’s also important, so I’m just gonna say it.”
Her brows furrow. “Okay. What?”
“I lost my memory in the accident,” I blurt. “Not all of it, but four or five years, and when I woke up and Paige was there, and you weren’t, she said we weren’t friends anymore, and I didn’t believe her, but then the other night when I came in with Matt, it felt like we were strangers, so I knew it was true, and I don’t understand, Jules—why aren’t we friends anymore?” I take a breath, fight the tears I can feel rising behind my eyes. “What happened? With us?”
Jules doesn’t say anything for a moment, just blinks in shock, or confusion, or both. The silence stretches out, and with every second, I’m sure it must’ve been something terrible. That I must’ve done something terrible.
Then slowly, she comes out from behind the counter to me, so we’re standing face-to-face. “God, Liv,” she says, and she puts her arms around me in a silent hug. “It doesn’t matter, not with this happening to you. That was a long time ago.”
I cry into her shoulder. “What? What was a long time ago?”
She pulls me back by my shoulders. “Nothing. Don’t even worry about it. Are you okay? How are you doing life right now like this?”
I laugh and wipe at my eyes. “I don’t know. I’m just lost . . . all the time—not literally—I still know my way around town, I just . . . don’t really know my way around my life.” It’s a relief to say it out loud to someone who’s not so closely tied up in it. I catch my breath. “So maybe you could just tell me the part about what happened to us,” I say. “Please? I just . . . I feel like I need to know.”
Jules runs her eyes over my face like she’s checking to be sure I’m okay. Then she shrugs. “It wasn’t anything big or dramatic,” she says, “so it’s hard to even know how it started, but I remember feeling like we were growing apart.” She pauses. “I hate to say it, because I don’t want to blame Matt—he’s a great guy—but you two got together and started hanging out with Paige and her boyfriend at the time, and I just kinda became the fifth wheel.”
“I’m sorry,” I say softly.
Jules waves a dismissive hand. “You don’t need to be sorry.” She smiles. “Not now, at least. My feelings were hurt at first, but then I started hanging out with other people too. That’s what happens in high school. Groups break up, friends drift. People change. It’s just how it goes sometimes. We didn’t hate each other or anything, we just didn’t really know each other anymore.”
I sit there quiet, relieved that I didn’t do anything terrible to her, but still sad at the thought of us just drifting apart like that. My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I check it. My mom.
Everything okay? Sam just got home and said you left work before him. Where are you?
“Sorry,” I say to Jules. “I need to answer my mom real quick or she’ll get worried.”
“No problem,” she says.
Stopped by In Focus. Heading home soon.
My mom texts me back a thumbs-up.
“Anyway,” I say, looking at Jules again. “You’re here for the next few weeks?”
She nods. “Yep. And this place doesn’t see a whole lot of action, so feel free to stop by anytime.” She squeezes my hand. “There’s nothing that says we can’t know each other now, right?”
“Right,” I say. “I definitely will.” And I know it’s true. This feels right, her being a part of my life. Like a tiny bit of that big emptiness is gone.
I walk home feeling like I just found another little piece of myself that fits. It makes me want to tell Paige about it—and everything else that’s happened in the last couple of days. She doesn’t know about the interview, or work, or anything. I’ve been kind of a loner since I got home, and Paige has been trying so hard, and after talking to Jules, I want to make sure we don’t drift too, so I decide to stop by her house on my way home.
There’s so much I want to talk to her about. I go over it all in my head as I walk, order it into priorities: what just happened with Jules, how to fix things with Matt after that interview, my camera, the pictures, the things scrawled all over my wall, all of it. The walking and the cataloguing are calming, like I’m moving forward and have a plan, instead of being lost and grasping at things I can’t remember. Before I know it, I round the corner to her street, and I feel something I haven’t since I’ve woken up. Hopeful for what’s ahead.
Then I stop short.
At first I’m confused. I look around to make sure that I didn’t get lost, that I still know the way to the house Paige has lived in ever since I can remember. I do a complete turn, check the street names, and verify that I’m definitely in the right place. It’s just that there’s something else that seems to be in the wrong place. And that thing is Matt’s truck, parked in Paige’s driveway.
I stand there frozen for a moment, trying to make sense of it, reminding myself that we’re all friends. He probably went to her to talk too. Maybe even to ask her the same questions about how to handle everything that’s happened to us. I turn off the sidewalk up to her walk. But then her front door opens, and the two of them come out together.
I duck behind a shrub and watch as they come down the walk to his truck. Their faces are serious.
Matt stops, rests one hand on the hood. He shakes his head, then looks at Paige. “I don’t know. I’m trying, and I can tell she is too, but it’s like she doesn’t know me.”
I bite my lip, because I can feel my eyes start to water at this.
Paige takes a step toward him, then rests her arm on the hood, mirroring him. “You have to give her time. I know she’s different—I was over there the other day, and . . . it’s hard. I think—” She pauses, shrugs. “I don’t even think she knows herself right now.”
Her words sting, and all the hope and reassurance I’d felt just moments before rush out of me. It’s one thing to have thought it myself, but it’s entirely different to hear Paige say it out loud. That I’m not myself. That I’m different than before. That I don’t know who I am. But she’s right, and until this moment I thought, or at least hoped, that maybe no one else realized that what I’ve been so afraid is true.
Paige brings a hand to Matt’s shoulder. “We’ll get her back, I promise. It’s just gonna t
ake a little time, and a few more gentle reminders of who she is, and what matters to her,” she says confidently. “And hopefully it’ll be even better than before.”
Matt’s quiet a moment, and I can almost feel the same question I asked my mom on the tip of his tongue: What if it isn’t?
But he doesn’t ask it. “I hope you’re right,” he says, mustering a smile I don’t believe.
Paige smiles back, and I don’t believe hers either. “I know I am, because I know Liv,” she says. “Come on. Let’s go get something to eat, and we can figure out what to do next.”
He nods. “Yeah, okay.”
They part, walk to each side of the truck, and get in. For a second I worry they might see me when they back up, and I look around for somewhere to hide. But it doesn’t matter. Matt’s truck rolls right by me, with Paige saying something I can’t hear, and him smiling at it, and it’s like I’m not even there.
I watch, frozen, as my best friend and my boyfriend drive away together to figure out how to get me back, and what’s next, whatever that means. I watch until they turn the corner and disappear, trying to sort out what I’m feeling. It’s not anger or jealousy. Those would be easier, because there would be someone else to blame. But the only person to blame here is me. I feel like I’ve failed—at being Paige’s friend and Matt’s girlfriend. At being the girl they knew—or thought they knew.
The other thing I feel is a creeping sense of guilt. At what they don’t know, and what I’m just beginning to know. That I’d been keeping secrets. Hiding things from the two people who were closest to me. Hiding myself, really.
TWENTY-ONE
WHEN I MAKE IT to my driveway, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. My dad is supposed to be at work, but his car is here. At home. I take a deep breath, then go up the walk to our door. When I get there, I can see through the living room window that my parents are together. Waiting for me.
I can tell my dad must’ve called off work early, because he’s still in his work boots and pants, and he’s dressed down to the plain white T-shirt he always wears under his uniform. The TV is on. My mom is pacing.
The interview must have aired.
I stand on the step and take another deep breath, and then I open the door. Both of their heads swivel in my direction.
My mom stops pacing and crosses her arms over her chest. “Have a seat, please.” Her voice has that barely-containing-her-anger shakiness to it.
I open my mouth to try to explain, but I don’t get the chance.
“Go ahead and sit down, Liv,” my dad says. His voice is calm. Good cop to my mom’s bad cop.
Both of them look older and more tired than they should, even accounting for my time gap, and I feel guilty about doing the interview. And bad that they had to find out about it like this. Some tiny part of me was thinking that maybe they wouldn’t even have to know about it, but I realize now that was foolish.
“What were you thinking, Olivia?” my mom practically spits as soon as I sit down. “An interview? With that woman?” Her voice rises with each question. “And God, the video.” Her eyes start to water, and she goes quiet a moment. Then she takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. “I wish you’d never seen that.”
“I had to see it.”
My mom shakes her head. “You shouldn’t have. It’s awful.”
“Yeah, it is. But it happened to me, and to Matt, and I needed to see it.”
My mom sits, massaging her temples. My dad puts a big hand on her shoulder and squeezes.
“Why the interview?” he asks. “Did that reporter come to the hospital? Call you? Pressure you into it somehow?”
“No. I . . .” I almost want to tell them that Matt asked me to, but I know that wasn’t the only reason. I had my own reasons. “I called her,” I say.
“Without asking us? Why would you do that?” my mom asks.
I look at my dad. “Because I knew you would’ve said no.”
He nods. “Yeah. We would’ve. You don’t need to be doing that right now. What you should be focusing on is healing and moving forward.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.” I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. “But how am I supposed to do that if I don’t even know everything that happened to me?”
“This isn’t like you, Liv,” my mom says. “Sneaking around, not telling us where you’re going, not answering your phone calls. This isn’t you.”
It’s that last part that puts me over the edge, especially after what I just overheard in Paige’s driveway.
“Maybe that’s because there IS no me anymore!” I surprise all of us with the force of my response. “Can’t you see that? There’s nothing there, it’s just blank, and I was . . . I’m just trying to find out who I even am.” I pause, look down at my hands. Rein myself in a little. “I thought it might help somehow, but it didn’t. It just . . . made things worse. Matt hasn’t called me since then, and Paige thinks I’m different, and I don’t know what to do anymore.”
I sit there wishing I could somehow stop the tears that have started streaming down my face without my permission.
It’s silent for a long moment.
“Oh, honey,” my mom says, crossing the space to the couch. She sits on the other side of me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were struggling so much with this. You’ve seemed like you’re doing okay . . .”
“That’s because everyone wants me to be. Everyone wants me to just go back to normal, and I’m trying, I really am, but I don’t even know what that is.” I sniff. “And people keep trying to tell me what to do, and I know they’re trying to help, but what if they don’t even know who I was?”
I think of Paige saying she knows I’ll go back to the way I was before because she knows me, but what if there’s a part of me she doesn’t know? What if I was one person with her, and someone else with Matt, and maybe even someone else with another person I don’t remember? I still don’t know what other secrets I’d been keeping, or why.
I look at my parents, who have both gone quiet. “What if I was the only one who really knew who I was before? Where does that leave me now that it’s all gone?”
My dad takes a deep breath and gives my mom a look like he hopes she takes this one.
She does. “Liv, honey, figuring out who you are—whether you’ve had an accident or not—is what being a teenager is. It’s what being a person is.” She pauses, thinking, and then goes on. “Of course you were different when you were with Matt or Paige, as opposed to us. That’s normal. We’re all a little different around different people. I’m different at work than I am at home. Different with your aunt than I am with your dad. Even different with you than I am with Sam. But they’re all small differences.” She pauses again. “The point is, I’m the same person at my core. And so are you.” She takes my hands in both of hers and lowers her chin until she catches my eyes. “You’re not empty. The things that make up who you are? They’re still there. They didn’t go away just because you can’t remember them. They’re in you. So you just need to trust your gut. Really listen for what you think and feel. That’s you.”
My dad is nodding. “Yep. Like with the tacos that first night you were home.”
My mom and I look at each other, and then at him for an explanation.
“What? When you reached for the meat and your mom reminded you that you were a vegetarian.”
I laugh. “What?”
“Bruce. Tacos?” Now she laughs too.
My dad shrugs. “Yes, tacos. It’s a perfect example of what you just told her.” He looks at me now. “You gotta go with what seems right to you, not what you think you should be doing because it’s what you’ve been told. You’re allowed to change. We all are.”
“Wow,” my mom says. She smiles and reaches out for my dad. “Eloquently put.”
My dad grins. “Sometimes the words just come to me.”
Sitting there between my parents in that moment, I feel a little bit better. Like they just so
mehow gave me permission to be more okay with who I am right now. I wipe my tears away, trying to see myself from their perspective. One in which it’s okay to be different from what people expect me to be. I don’t feel like I’m there yet, but it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable idea when I think about it that way.
“So here’s the deal,” my dad says. “From now on, maybe don’t focus so much on trying to remember how you were. Stop thinking about that all the time. Just go with the now. Does that make sense?”
I nod.
“And talk to us,” my mom adds. “Ask questions. Let us know what you’re feeling. This is a tough situation, and one that you need to have support in. But we can’t give that to you unless you let us know what you need, okay?”
I nod again. “Okay.”
“Yep,” my dad says, “we’re always here if you want to taco ’bout it.”
“Oh my God, Dad.” I roll my eyes, but this gets me and my mom both laughing.
“Please don’t ever say that again,” my mom says.
Upstairs in my room, I sit down on the bed and check my phone—three more missed calls, two from Paige and one from Matt. I still feel a little unsettled about seeing them together earlier, but I tell myself that they both care about me, and they’re both trying to figure things out the same way I am.
Still, I don’t call or text them back. Not yet. I get up and take the three pictures from my bulletin board and examine the one of myself again, like maybe I’ll see something different this time. I try to trust my gut like my mom said, and what I feel is that this picture of me is important. Because it was taken using my camera, and because I look so incredibly happy in it, and because whoever took it captured that moment. Captured me. More than any of the other pictures I’ve seen of myself. It makes me think if I find the person behind the camera, then maybe I can find myself—and Matt and Paige are my two best options.