Everyone We've Been

by Sarah Everett

  “Well, that’s good! Right?” He watches me carefully.

  I shake my head. “No, that’s not good. He’s all I have.”

  Of the first time I fell in love. Of the two people who were erased from my mind.

  Dr. Overton’s forehead furrows and he seems unsure what to say for a second. Finally he chuckles. “He’s not all you have, Addie. You have two parents who would do anything for you and—”

  “You don’t understand,” I say, speaking over him. “I feel like there’s a giant hole.” I hear my voice catch as I continue. “And I don’t know how to fill it. How to go back to being normal and happy. How to look at my family again.”

  To know that they’re not who I thought. That I’m not who I thought.

  The crease remains in the middle of Dr. Overton’s forehead.

  “I want you to fill it,” I say slowly. “I want you to give me my memories back.”

  He is silent for a long moment before he exhales through his nose. He gives me a sad smile then, like he actually understands, genuinely feels for me.

  “Addie, I wish I could, but I’m afraid I’m not in a position to do that,” he says.

  “That’s not good enough,” I say, my voice rising. “All I hear about is how easy memory splicing is, how easy it is to take away the past. So it must be just as easy to bring it back. Saying you can’t do that is not good enough.”

  I know I’ve crossed the line into disrespectful, but when I finish speaking, he looks shaken, not angry. His eyes are full of something like empathy, like conflicted feelings.

  “Addison, I know you’ve been through a tough few days. I know you’re upset—and you are well within your rights to be. If I were in your shoes, well…” His voice fades out. “Do you know what I love about this job? What I love about our minds?”

  Thankfully, he doesn’t wait for me to respond.

  “I love the idea of us carrying around fragments of places and people and things we’ve experienced. It’s so unlikely and almost miraculous, when you think about it. All the things that matter stay with us. They take up space inside us. Sometimes outside us, too, I suppose.” He smiles at me then, and I know he’s talking about Memory Zach. The apparition I was seeing.

  He runs his hands over his eyes, and I can see that this is something he has thought about a lot. “Every now and then, often in fact, I’m reminded that I’m not playing with neurons or electrodes or even memories. I’m playing with fragments of people’s lives, people’s hearts. And I don’t take that lightly. I really don’t.”

  There’s a long silence between us then, and I take the opportunity to say, “So help me? Please?”

  “I wish I could. I really, truly do. But we’ve never done a successful retrieval procedure. My father is working on it, but it’s years away. There’s nothing I can do.”

  I bury my face in my hands.

  Memory Zach is really gone. My brother is really gone.

  And what was the point? What was the point of the last few weeks? Only to make me more aware of what I was missing, what I’ll never have?

  How will I ever feel anything now that’s not incomplete or hollow or a shadow of what’s real?

  How do I go back to dreaming of New York, making plans for college and the rest of my life, when massive chunks of it—of who I am—are gone forever?

  How do I move forward?

  All I have in place of my past is brokenness. This sadness that nothing can lift, a fog I can’t see through. This knowledge that my family lied to me for years and years, that I lied to myself. That I’m the reason my family crumbled. That if I had done something different, my little brother might still be alive.

  I can’t take it.

  It’s too much.

  How do I move forward? That’s what I want. To move on—it’s, in a way, what I’ve always wanted. After Rory died. After Zach broke my heart.

  It’s why I’ve been itching to leave Lyndale my whole life.

  I want what’s next.

  “Addie, I’m so very sorry,” Dr. Overton says, sounding like he means it.

  I can’t stop shivering, but then a thought hits me.

  I pull my fingers away from my face and look at him.

  If there’s no way to bring back my memories, to fill this new and ugly void in my life, maybe there’s something else I can do.

  “If you can’t bring them back,” I whisper, “can you take them away? For good?”

  Now it’s not just my hands shaking; my voice is, too.

  “What do you mean by ‘them?’ ” The line of concern down his forehead is even more etched now.

  “Everything I’ve figured out. Everything starting from when the boy got on the bus—no, before that. I don’t want the Bach suite—the concert, either.”

  Dr. Overton looks confused, but he lets me go on.

  “I don’t want to know about Rory or about Zach. I don’t want to know that I erased him or to remember meeting him today. I want everything from the last three weeks gone.”

  He’s shaking his head. “That’s three procedures. We’re still monitoring for the effects of the accident. I don’t think we can do that.”

  “It’s not dangerous. All the pamphlets and stuff say that. And you said my CT was clear. It’s what I want. Please.” I’m practically hysterical at this point.

  “But, Addison,” he says now. “You do realize that you won’t get them back? That these memories will be gone for good if we go through with what you’re asking for?”

  The thing I want most is to move on. And the procedure helped me do that before, didn’t it? Maybe not completely, but mostly. That’s why I came back for the second one. Why I’ll do it again now.

  “I know,” I say, still shaking.

  “Okay,” Dr. Overton says. “Okay.”

  The waiting-room music is slipping in under the door, and I dig my nails into my palms. I don’t want to think about anything right now.

  “One problem,” Dr. Overton says. “You’re still only seventeen. There’s absolutely no way we can proceed without a parent’s permission. And given the circumstances surrounding your last…Well, one of them has to be with you for the procedure.”

  AFTER

  January

  Bruce, Mom’s boyfriend, is the first person to see me when I enter the Channel Se7en building. “Hey, little miss!” he exclaims when I hurtle into the office area, full of cubicles, where he’s standing reading a sheet of paper. He’s wearing a checkered sweater vest, gray dress pants, and black oxfords. No socks, as usual. “Everything okay? Where are we going in such a hurry?”

  “I need to talk to my mom,” I say. “Do you know where she is?”

  He frowns at me, concerned, then glances down at his watch. “She’s probably in a meeting. It’s in the boardroom, but I can run over and stick my head in for you and we’ll tell her you’re looking for her, okay?”

  “Thanks,” I say as he starts down the hall to get her.

  Bruce is fond of the royal “we.” If, God forbid, he impregnated my mother, he’d be one of those men going around announcing, “We’re pregnant.”

  But he’s always been nice to me and Caleb.

  I pace around now as I wait for him to return. It’s past four. Less than an hour till Overton closes. And what if Dr. Overton changes his mind about attempting the procedure?

  Mom’s clicking heels announce her presence before she rounds the corner. “What’s wrong? What is it?” she asks, hurrying toward me. “Bruce said you looked like something was wrong.”

  “I want to forget all this. The past few weeks. Finding out about Rory,” I tell her once she’s stopped in front of me. She glances around and then leads me into her office. She shuts the door after us. “Dr. Overton is willing to do the procedure as long as you’ll sign for it and be there.”

  “Addison,” Mom says. She looks stunned. “But you were so adamant that it was the wrong thing, that we should never have done it to erase…your brother.”

&
nbsp; Even now it’s hard for her to say his name to me.

  Rory, Rory, Rory.

  I do it for her while I still can.

  I do it for him, too, before I betray him a second time. A third time.

  He’s dead because of me.

  I wasn’t even strong enough to remember him.

  In the cemetery, I promised him I’d remember him from now on, but Zach was right.

  I’m a coward.

  “Well, I guess you were right the first time. I’m not strong enough for the truth.” I burst into tears now, and she wraps her arms around me. Smooths my hair from my face.

  “Oh, honey,” she says. “Oh, Addie.”

  She’s quiet for a second, tracing circles over my back, and then she says, “You know, you were different after the first procedure.”

  I remember that feeling of things vanishing, the feeling of wanting more than I had. Did my mother feel guilty because of what she’d taken away from me or because she was finally sleeping for the first time in months, knowing that I was, too?

  “I remember,” I say.

  “You know your father won’t support this. You know how he feels about Overton.”

  “Well, he’s not here, is he?”

  “And what about the side effects from when you erased the boy? That had never happened to a patient before. What if it’s not safe? What if your side effects are even worse this time around?”

  “Mom, please,” I say. My mother has always tried to protect me because, I realize now, her biggest fear is that she can’t. So I appeal to the part of her that hopes something else will help me, even if it’s not her. “This is the worst thing. Having some of the pieces but not all. Knowing the worst parts and not the best. I don’t want it anymore. Any of it. I just…I want to be able to move on. I want to forget.”

  BEFORE

  December

  “Doesn’t it seem a bit extreme?” Katy says, and she shivers a little. “They’d be messing with your brain.”

  “Maybe my brain needs to be messed with,” I mumble, afraid it is true.

  I’m lying on my side on my bed, eyes swollen and puffy from crying. Katy is lying on the floor, facing me.

  “I want to knock his effing teeth out but I still can’t stop thinking about him,” I tell her, feeling myself beginning to tear up again. And then I want to knock my own teeth out, because why am I still crying? It’s been days since I saw Zach and Lindsay at his father’s store. More than two weeks since I first saw them together. Days of my mother worrying, hovering and stone-faced like she’s seen a ghost, and even Caleb feeling sorry for me.

  And I’m feeling this panic, like I’m falling into a hole that I can’t get out of. That I don’t know how to get out of.

  “I must have been wrong about the whole thing. All along, it was probably just in my head.”

  Katy shakes her head. “It wasn’t in your head. If anything, he led you on. Maybe he led himself on.”

  I don’t know if it hurts more because being with him made me feel like I’d always wanted to, made me hum with electricity and lightness and life. And maybe most of that wasn’t even Zach, not specifically the boy, but the way love pries your eyes open and forces you awake.

  “Everything reminds me of him. Food tastes awful. I don’t get it,” I sniff. “What does food have to do with him? I didn’t eat because of him, you know? I was never anything because of him.”

  “Except a Ciano fan,” Katy points out with a smirk, but gently, like she’s been doing since Zach and I broke up.

  “Well, maybe that,” I admit, turning onto my back. “God. Why did I date him when he told me he was still in love with her? Before anything happened, he told me.”

  “Bad move on your part, but still his fault,” Katy says. “Keep your freaking tongue in its trap. It’s not a hard concept.”

  I stare at the ceiling, the tiny cracks and dips.

  “My mom is worried that there’s something, you know, clinically wrong. Or that there will be soon. Poor appetite, bouts of uncontrollable crying, eternal desire to live in sweats.” I’m worried that there’s something wrong. I’ve never felt like this before. I turn to Katy. “What’s your diagnosis?”

  She pretends to think long and hard about it. “Clearly, a Depressive Episode. Unanticipated heartbreak, not otherwise specified. Moderate to severe, but definitely curable.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you give a positive prognosis,” I say, trying to sound lighthearted. But I’m doubting her prognosis. Every cell that zinged with happiness and excitement now throbs with a sharp, awful pain.

  I just want it to stop.

  “Well, you know, atypical circumstances. You’re my badass best friend. And you can do so much better. You’re going to do so much better. I don’t know why you’re even entertaining the notion of…what’s it called? I’ve already forgotten the name. The memory sprite thing.”

  “Memory splice,” I say, remembering all the pages and pages of information I’ve read about it. I remember finding the ad on Zach’s windshield on our mundane day. Ironic.

  The splice means I’ll forget everything about Zach. His eyes, his face, his smell. I’ll forget filming our movie and falling asleep in his arms and laughing so hard in the park while we got chased by birds. Plus, it seems safe and fast. Legit.

  “Addie, I know places where they do legit amputations, but it doesn’t mean I have to have one. And what about your parents, anyway? They’ll never agree to this.”

  “They don’t necessarily have to know.”

  Katy gasps. “How would we manage that?”

  “We wouldn’t, but maybe Beatrice Lane and Kathleen Kelly could.”

  “Addie…”

  “It’s supposed to be super safe. And it’s not that expensive—I could cover it with my savings.”

  “As in all the money you’ve been saving up to leave this town? You can’t!” Katy sits up and looks me in the eye. “I know it hurts right now, Addie, but are you sure it’s worth it? Are you sure it’s what you want?”

  “If I don’t have it…” I’ll be stuck here, trapped reliving the pain and heartbreak and anger over and over again. It’s like something is wrong with my mind.

  And I can’t imagine running into Zach and Lindsay, seeing them together again.

  “You’ll be okay. I know you will,” Katy says.

  But I don’t. I can’t remember ever feeling this broken.

  “If I could only stop thinking about how hard my heart was beating the first time he kissed me or the way my stomach kept doing somersaults for the first week after. He was the first boy I was with,” I say, swiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “I think I’d feel better if every single thing I ever felt for him or with him wasn’t running through my body every second of every day. I wish I’d never met him.”

  My heart feels shredded and raw and small.

  Maybe I’m not strong enough. Maybe I can’t handle the full spectrum of good and bad, the blunt surfaces and sharp edges of life. Of love.

  Maybe my mother is right to always be so overprotective.

  Maybe the only way to feel better now is to forget.

  AFTER

  January

  Mom drives fast—we left my car in the parking lot at Channel Se7en—so we can get there before Overton closes. I’m glad that there’s no time to talk more about it. No time to think more about it. If I did, I’d doubt myself. I’d hear Zach’s words in my mind telling me that erasing him was cowardly. I’d question whether maybe in time I’d be grateful for the pieces of my life I got back—Memory Zach, Rory—and for understanding finally why my family is the way it is. Why I am the way I am.

  But there’s no time for that.

  Dr. Overton is finishing with his last patient when we arrive. I fill out a form about my medical history while my mother fills out a consent form. Did they make me fill out something like this the last time I had this procedure? Did I put Katy down for my emergency contact, and did it feel this
scary, this strange, signing away part of my life?

  I think of Katy.

  What will she say when she finds out I did it again?

  Will she be disappointed? Angry? Relieved?

  And what about Caleb? What about Dad?

  What about Zach?

  I push them all out of my mind.

  An imaging technician comes to get me after I’ve changed into a green cotton gown.

  “First we’re going to do what we call a baseline scan,” he says, then explains how the machine works and how I’ll be positioned in it. “It tells us what your brain looks like in its neutral state and also lets us double-check that it’s safe to perform the procedure. I want you to focus on the pictures that come up on the monitor while we capture the images. Any questions?” I shake my head and then slide into the same donut-shaped machine as last time. This time, the technician pulls down a small white monitor, and pictures of different shapes—chains of triangles and circles and polygons—dance across the screen while the machine purrs quietly. Afterward, I’m sent into a room where a nurse I haven’t seen before helps Dr. Overton run the computer, then watches as he puts the electrodes on my head. Mom sits in a tiny attached room, like those for X-ray technicians, watching through the glass, fidgeting like it’s the night of the crash and she’s in the hospital beside me again.

  Did she sit there, too, the first time I was here? When they erased Rory?

  “Sleep is our main tool for the consolidation process, so we’ll be giving you a sedative and you’ll feel fairly groggy afterward.” Dr. Overton goes through a list of things to expect during the procedure, then some side effects: the worst are headaches, a rash from the electrodes, nausea, and drowsiness. I get to go home afterward, but because I’ve had complications in the past, he’s given Mom his number and will be on standby for the next forty-eight hours in case anything goes wrong.

  “It’s not an invasive procedure, so I truly don’t expect any problems,” Dr. Overton says to reassure me.

  Finally I am lying on a hospital bed, all hooked up to electrodes, Dr. Overton and the nurse looking at the computer, which shows an active picture of my brain. My fingers tingle with nerves, with fear.