Everyone We've Been

by Sarah Everett

  I turn to the back of the booklet and read the title on the last page: A Brief History of Overton. Two men in their sixties are pictured, smiling and wearing lab coats.

  It was more than three decades ago when two highly revered neurobiologists formerly employed by the University of Maine conceived of a cure for military personnel suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. They researched, experimented, and conducted longitudinal studies. By the time the Gulf War ended in the early 1990s, it was more than an idea. The theory: that the soldiers were held captive not by PTSD itself, but by memory. The cure: memory splicing, a technique that could wipe clean the worst of their memories, while preserving the best. After years of thorough trials, the Overton technique, as miraculous as it was exact, was made available to the general public. A number of refinements to the Overton technique have since been implemented, including limbic shaving—a tweaking of the emotional components of memories, the feeling and connotations of certain memories.

  A chill runs down my spine. They can change the way your memories feel?

  What is this place?

  I thought they’d give me memory exercises or teach me techniques, that they’d make recommendations to improve my concentration. Wasn’t that what it said online? Something about improving your memory and sleep?

  I glance up, and the receptionist smiles at me. Feeling weirdly like I’ve been caught doing something bad, I quickly look away and keep reading.

  Since its development, the Overton technique has saved and improved countless lives, and it continues to do so. Since 2013, a team of highly qualified doctors led by Dr. Stephan Overton has maintained the private clinic cofounded by his father.

  I skim to the bottom of the page.

  Rhys Overton, MD, and John Salisbury, MD, continue to oversee the research portion of their facilities. Over twenty memory-splicing clinics have opened around the world, adhering closely to the Overton method.

  I’m starting to feel a little claustrophobic. When we learned about Overton in school, we learned that they helped people with memory problems and trauma. I know I saw online that they could also help sleep and cognition. But removing memories completely? Altering them?

  And it’s dawning on me just how deliberate everything is in here. How much it’s supposed to look and sound and feel like you could come here for a flu shot.

  My hand is shaking by the time I hear my name.

  I jerk my head up to find a man in a button-down shirt, glasses, and loafers smiling patiently at me. Dr. Overton…Jr.? He must be. He’s younger than the founders in the picture, forty at most.

  “Hi,” I say, standing. I can’t exactly run out of here, can I?

  “How are you today?” He holds out his hand, and I shake it. A male nurse hands him a chart—mine, I assume—and whispers something to Dr. Overton, who nods and peers at it for several seconds. The doctor instructs me to follow him to an office down the hall, where he slides behind a desk and motions for me to sit, too. He seems a little distracted, still reading my chart. Do all doctors have access to a person’s full medical history? Because the chart he’s reading is way thicker than the forms I just filled out.

  Finally he glances up and smiles at me. “So how can I help you?”

  Dr. Overton picks up a half-eaten granola bar and finishes the rest in one bite. The music from the waiting room—a piano piece by Schumann—drifts in under the door of his office. “Sorry,” the doctor says, scrunching up the wrapper and throwing it at the small garbage can against the wall. “Low blood sugar.”

  I’m surprised by how casual he is. How friendly and informal. I relax into my seat across from him, trying to let the unsettledness from a few minutes ago pass. It’s not like he’s going to operate on me.

  “I’ve been having some issues with my memory,” I tell him. “I was in a bus crash twelve days ago.”

  He sits up straighter. “Not that one up by Greenvale? I heard it was very scary. How are you doing?”

  “Um, not so good,” I say. “I mean, that’s why I’m here. I’ve been having…” I can still hear whispers of piano music outside, the very deliberate lilts and lurches in the tempo. Can you usually hear the waiting-room music in the doctor’s office? Do they want to make sure the appointment is as soothing, as uneventful, as the wait?

  “I haven’t been sleeping well since the accident. And I keep, like, losing my concentration and forgetting little things.”

  “And this just started after the accident? It’s not something that’s been ongoing?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “Also, I’ve been seeing things.”

  There’s a long crease down his forehead now. “What kind of things?”

  The music is still slipping in from under the crack of the door. My nails are digging into my palm. Why am I here?

  Tall. A boy my age. Big smile. I see him, but nobody else does.

  Instead of giving him the description I gave Katy or the manager at the Cineplex, I say, “Just, um, things.”

  “Hmm,” he says, still watching me with concern. Then he asks if I’ve been having headaches.

  “No,” I say.

  Nausea? Auras? Blurred vision?

  “No.”

  “Hmm.”

  He is silent for a few moments, then he explains that they specialize in memory procedures, not more general problems like mine. They wouldn’t be able to do anything without a guardian’s consent, anyway, because I’m only seventeen.

  “It’s possible you have a concussion that wasn’t detected at the hospital,” he says. “And I’m happy to do a very basic test for that, but I’d really make an appointment with my family practitioner if I were you.”

  “You’re not a doctor?” I ask.

  Hearing the alarm in my voice, Dr. Overton laughs. “I am.” He points at the MD certificate and a dozen others on the wall to my left. “It’s just that we don’t practice family medicine here, and the medical community is quite uptight—no, let’s go with ‘stringent’—about these things.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “But let’s have a quick look at you anyway,” he says.

  He has me sit on the edge of the exam table and shines a light into my pupils, just like the doctor in Greenvale did after the accident. He checks my reflexes, has me read from an eye chart, asks me random trivia questions—what day it is, who is president, when I was born.

  He tells me at the end that I have no signs of a concussion.

  “A CT would give us more certainty, but…” He trails off, thinking. “I think we’d better leave it up to your doctor. I’ll send him a note. It’s Dr. Langley, right?”

  I nod, realizing I won’t be able to keep this from my parents any longer. If he can’t help me, what choice do I have?

  “I wish I could have been more helpful,” Dr. Overton says, giving me a rueful smile as I leave.

  When I get back to the reception area, there’s an old man in the waiting room, flipping through a magazine. And suddenly it hits me that there are people in this town who come to a place like this. I try to imagine a world of normal-looking people who’ve visited Overton. I try to imagine them all being okay with the words I read in the pamphlet while I was waiting—“splices” and “removals” and “shavings.”

  The man who’s training is sitting at the computer while the receptionist fiddles with the coffeemaker on the far side of the counter. She sees me and starts to come over, but the man shakes his head.

  “I can do this one,” he says. “Hi, Addison. So you saw Dr. Hunt today?”

  “No, I think it was Dr. Overton.”

  The man frowns at the computer screen, his face scrunched up as he clicks around. “Oh, my mistake. Dr. Hunt was last time. Okay, so did Dr. Overton give you…”

  Everything freezes.

  “Last time?” I croak.

  The man’s eyes widen. He barely has enough time to blink before the receptionist is back, pushing him out of the way.

  “Brendan, you have the wrong
patient’s file open.” She looks at the screen, then smiles at me. That same warm smile that somehow makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong. “He had the wrong file open,” she repeats, apologetic. “Did Dr. Overton say you needed a follow-up?”

  I shake my head, but my throat is closing up. “What did he mean, last time? Have I been here before?”

  Her smile stays in place. HEIDI, her name tag reads. “Like I said, it was the wrong file. I can’t reveal anything about other patients.”

  “I had the wrong file open,” Brendan blurts out again.

  “Nice meeting you, Addison,” Heidi says, smiling broadly, but there is something tight about it now. Something off.

  Nice meeting you. She says it with such force, like she wants to convey more than she’s saying.

  This was your first time here.

  We’ve just met.

  I mumble a goodbye and stumble outside, through the parking lot. I sit in the car, blinking at the setting sun, and now it’s Brendan’s words echoing in my mind.

  Dr. Hunt was last time.

  It wasn’t another patient’s file. I saw it in their reactions.

  Heidi’s immediate coolness, Brendan’s panic.

  Dr. Overton’s chart that was thicker than it should have been.

  I’ve been here before.

  I’ve been to Overton before.

  BEFORE

  Mid-July

  Because I am a glutton for punishment, or because the nineteen uses of the word “conscientious” on my report cards over the years are true, I don’t send Zach a text to say I’m dropping out of his movie. Yes, I want to keep my word. But I also imagine Zach’s disappointment, him scrambling to find a new Lindy, Raj sighing as he dons my nun costume, Kevin calling me a beeyotch for abandoning them when they need me the most. I don’t have great reasons—the most convincing is that I’ve been having fun with them, feeling like I belong somewhere during this Katy-less summer—but they are enough to bring me back for the final two days. I won’t die from another ten to twelve hours of filming. And more importantly, I can’t fall any harder for Zach in that amount of time than I already have. Can I?

  On Thursday after filming, I present Zach with the CD, and he plays it as we clean up for the day.

  “This is fantastic!” Zach says, eyes wide. He reaches out and hugs me, a normal three-second thank-you hug that my body misinterprets as permission to get warm all over and tingle. When we pull apart, he’s beaming at me. And I realize right then that I was wrong—I can fall harder for Zach, and I won’t even need ten hours.

  “I like a woman who can plaaaay,” Kevin says, wiggling his eyebrows as he helps Raj push the furniture back into place.

  “Kev,” Zach sighs.

  On Friday, our last day of filming, nostalgia hits. Raj asks if I want to keep the nun costume when we’re done or if I plan on “breaking the habit.” I tell him I do—plan to break the habit. Kevin asks if I’ll miss him when we aren’t spending hours in a basement together every day.

  I feel a twinge of sadness. We are having a viewing party tomorrow—Zach is editing all the footage overnight—so it isn’t goodbye yet. But still, I wonder when I’ll get to see them, if I’ll get to see them all again. We haven’t spent so much time together that Raj or even Kevin and I are friends. And Zach…well, it probably isn’t a good idea to try to be friends. But I hate the thought of not seeing him every day, even if he is just recommending a new slasher or we are washing his car or I am thrashing violently on the floor while he bends over me, filming every twitch, every tic. I’m not even self-conscious anymore.

  And despite that awful talk with Zach, being around him still makes my cells shiver, tremble like the vibrato of my viola strings. A song too quiet for anyone but me to hear. Whenever it’s playing, I don’t feel like I’m sleepwalking.

  Zach seems distant the whole time we are setting up. I wonder what he is thinking, if he is thinking the same thing I am.

  And then, as he and Raj sit on the floor, putting together the camera equipment, he says, “Do you think we should send Lindsay the DVD?”

  “Are you kidding?” Raj asks.

  “It’s just,” Zach says, “she paid for half the ketchup.”

  “So?” Raj says.

  “She didn’t even give us the trampoline!” Kevin interjects.

  “I didn’t ask her,” Zach says quietly. “Maybe she would have.”

  Raj snorts. “She would not have.”

  “Okay, but she’s seen every single one,” Zach continues.

  I busy myself spreading sheets over the furniture, smoothing them out, tucking them in, smoothing them out again.

  Raj gives the longest, heaviest sigh I’ve heard him give yet, and that is saying a lot. “It’s too weird, man. Give it up.”

  “It’s weird?” Zach repeats, genuinely surprised.

  “It’s fucking weird!”

  “Kevin.”

  “Yes, it’s weird,” Raj confirms, then whirls around to face me. “Ask Addie. She’s objective. Is it weird?”

  “Sending her a DVD?” I ask, as if I’ve only been casually listening. Oh, Katy should see my acting now. One week in the horrody genre and I am an ac-tor.

  Raj nods, but Zach only watches me, gauging my expression with interest.

  “If I was Lindsay,” I say slowly, measuring my words, “I’d call the police.”

  Kevin giggles.

  “You can’t send your ex a slasher in which a thinly veiled version of her is nearly decapitated. You just can’t,” I finish.

  “Lindy isn’t—” Lindsay, Zach starts to say for the fiftieth time since we’ve started filming, but he stops himself. “She’s the only one who survives.”

  “Minus the left part of her body!” Kevin reminds him, slapping the carpet with his palms.

  “See?” Raj says triumphantly. “It’s weird. Send her a box with all her stuff cut up like a normal heartbroken lover.”

  It is crazy to associate the word “heartbroken” with Zach, with his impossibly bright smile, his dancing eyes. Only when he mentions Lindsay, when he speaks about her, can I see it. His eyes get a little dimmer, his shoulders less square, his smile less bright. Lindsay must be a bitch after all. Who the hell would do that to the world?

  I notice that Zach is still staring at me, watching me, and I say evenly, “That’s just me, though. I’m not Lindsay.”

  I don’t watch his face to see if he gets the dig. Instead, I hold out my elbow for Kevin, saying, “I’m ready for the chair.” And we go up the stairs to start makeup.

  While he’s mixing face paint—lots of black and blues, since my character, Lindy, is barely hanging on at this point—I say, “Kevin, what’s Lindsay like?”

  “Eh,” he says, concentrating hard as he dabs makeup on my forehead. “She has kind of a horse face.”

  “Kevin!”

  He plunges a sponge into a tray of paint and then applies it to my cheek. “I’m just sayin’,” he drawls, “her jaw doesn’t hold a candle to yours.”

  I don’t know if it’s true or not. But Kevin beams his Zach-like smile while I try to hold still, and somehow I feel the tiniest bit better.

  BEFORE

  Mid-July

  On Saturday, with no lesson and no filming—only the viewing party at Zach’s tonight—I decide to sleep in. It’s past eleven when I get up and pad down the hall to the bathroom. I see that Mom’s door is open, and it sounds like she’s talking to one of her friends on the phone, so I stick my head in to say good morning. But she doesn’t see me, and she’s still in bed, phone cradled between her head and neck. What catches me off guard is the tremor in her voice, like she’s been crying.

  I quietly step out of view and listen for what she’s saying.

  “It’s always hard around this time.” There’s a pause, and then she says, “I know. And sometimes I think we’re not being careful enough.”

  I keep listening, but the conversation turns to some project she’s doing for work,
and I keep wondering why she can’t get over reliving the divorce this time of year.

  It’s weird because Mom is the one with the boyfriend; she’s moved on far better than Dad has, so why is she still so shaken about the divorce after so many years? Is it because he was the one who left?

  I ride over to Zach’s around six, excited to see the finished product but sad that filming is over. I let myself in and take the stairs down to the basement. Zach meets me at the bottom of them.

  My hair is wet from the shower, falling in damp curls over my dress. Zach blinks at me and then blushes as he realizes he’s staring. At which point I remember that he’s used to seeing me in a ketchup-drenched habit, my hair sticky and frizzy and awful. If he doesn’t think I look better, I should be worried. Plus, I might have put in a little more effort than usual, some mascara and my favorite watermelon lip gloss.

  “Um, where is everybody?” I ask, looking around.

  “Kevin’s working an extra hour, but Raj should be on his way. Raj should be here.” He glances at his phone like he’s expecting his friend to spring out of it. “I called him an hour ago and he’d completely forgotten, but that was an hour ago.”

  “Oh, okay,” I say. I glance at the couch, where Zach’s laptop is surrounded by a clutter of cords and CDs. “Did you get all the editing done?”

  “I did,” Zach says proudly. “I wasn’t going to sleep until I did.”

  “And?” I ask. “What’s the verdict?”

  “I like it,” he says. “It’s no Ciano, but definitely an improvement over our other stuff.”

  Zach walks to the couch and sets his laptop on the floor, then swipes the CDs and everything else off. “Wannasit?”

  “Thanks.” I walk over to the couch and sit.

  “Yeah, no problem. Do you want popcorn? Or something?” he offers, picking things up, moving as he’s speaking. He is strangely fidgety.

  “Popcorn would be great,” I say. “Can I help?”

  “No,” he says quickly. “Relax. I’ll be right back.”