The Unhappening of Genesis Lee
Page 30
“How did you—how did you—” Her eyes were wide, thankful. Unrecognizing.
The blankness in her face shattered me again. I didn’t know I could splinter into so many pieces, so many times.
“Just keeping a promise.” The chill of a tear cooled my cheek. “I’ll see you around.”
I walked down the steps.
“Wait,” she called. “Do I know you?”
I turned, hopeful. “Do you?”
She studied me. “I don’t recognize you. But I feel like I should.”
Maybe like me with Kalan, her heart remembered me when her mind didn’t. A few pieces of my soul knit together.
“You will know me.”
She put one hand on her hip and cocked her head, her confused stance. As the door closed, she turned and cried, “Mom!”
The walk to my own house was short. And long. Distance does funny things to your head when you’re tired. My hand rested on the white front gate when I finally stood outside my home. It still felt like mine. It was mine.
“Gena?” A soft, accented voice from behind me knew my name.
I whirled to see Zahra rushing toward me. She put her hands on my shoulders, familiar and frightened. A whimper escaped my throat.
“Gena, where have you been?” she cried. “Cora said your parents took you from the concert, but I haven’t heard from you, and your parents, I called them, but they did not even remember your name! The police, all your neighbors, they have forgotten you. How can they not—”
I threw my arms around her neck and buried my face in her hijab. “You remember me!”
“Gena, what is going on?”
Zahra didn’t have Link buds. With her old-fashioned attitude from growing up outside tech-crazy Havendale, she’d never bought them.
I wanted to hug her forever. I wanted to be with someone I knew who knew me too. Take moments to talk, to heal, to reminisce. With a sigh, I pulled myself away.
“It’s a long story, Zahra, and I have to see my family right now. But I’ll tell it to you tomorrow. Okay?” The last word came out pleading.
Zahra’s smooth face wrinkled with concern. “All right, ma chouchoute. But tomorrow for sure. You scared the heebie-jeebies out of me.”
I smiled at her bungled phrase.
“You are okay?” she asked.
“I will be.”
She squeezed my shoulder. I watched her walk until she disappeared in the darkness. One more person who remembered. That was enough.
I stepped to my front door and hesitated. It would scare their hair off if I walked in. This was a new beginning, and I wanted it to start right. I smoothed my ash-streaked, blood-stained, water-logged clothes and laughed. I was going to scare their hair off no matter what.
I counted my breaths. One-two-in, out-three-four. As I reached up to ring the bell, the door opened. They must have heard me laugh. Dad stood in the door frame, his face twisted and terrified.
“You!” he cried. “You! You’re in my house. How are you in my house?”
I opened my mouth to say I wasn’t in the house yet when I remembered. Mom’s memories. They’d found the fragments of me that Mom had scattered into her precious objects. I was, quite literally, in the house.
Dad’s forehead glistened with sweat in the porch light. Funny, him scared of me now. Twenty-four hours ago, he hadn’t batted an eye while I yelled at him for stealing my memories. Now he backed away from me. The ghost who haunted his home and teased his subconscious. He had no idea how he still tortured mine.
Behind him, Mom came into view. She leaned toward me, almost reaching out. “It’s you,” she whispered.
The joy in her voice wrapped around me. She had forgotten me, but she hadn’t forgotten her love for me. I could bask in that tiny glory for years.
“It’s me,” I said. “Can I come in?”
Dad stumbled away from the door, but Mom moved forward. With a gesture she hadn’t used since that day on the swings, she took my hand. I stepped inside my home.
And I felt a new life happening all around me.