Forgotten

by Barnholdt, Lauren;Gorvine, Aaron

She nods, kisses me softly on the lips, and then turns and walks away. She looks back at me only once, right before she rounds the corner and disappears.

  I’m alone in an empty hospital cafeteria. I stand there for a moment, looking around, feeling kind of dazed, until finally, there’s nothing left for me to do but leave.

  A few minutes later, I’m in the elevator heading to the parking garage, and then I’m in my dad’s truck, pulling out of the hospital and onto the traffic circle. In the rearview mirror, I can see the bright lights in the windows of the gray building, and I wonder if Nat is looking out, watching me go.

  Chapter Five

  Natalia

  When I get back to my room, my mom’s waiting for me. And she’s not happy.

  “Where the hell were you?” she asks. “I was going crazy!” She grabs my shoulders and starts looking me over, like maybe something horrible happened to me while I was gone.

  “I just went for a walk,” I say, shrugging her off. “I was getting stir crazy just sitting here.” Her face softens. Either she feels sorry for me, or she’s just happy that I wasn’t with Cam. Probably both.

  “My poor baby,” she says. “We just have to wait for the other doctor to get here and then –”

  “No.” I shake my head. “No more doctors. We’re going home.” She starts to open her mouth, probably to tell me no. “Mom,” I say. “We. Are. Going. Home.” I’m not using mind control on her, but there must be something in my voice that lets her know I mean it, because she nods.

  “Fine,” she says. “But on one condition. If you start to get a headache, or you feel sick, or dizzy, or anything, you tell me immediately so I can bring you back to the hospital.”

  “Deal.”

  We fill out the discharge papers, which seems to take forever. The nurse in charge of them is either new or set on moving at the speed of a snail, and so by the time we get out into the fresh air, I’m starting to go a little crazy. I take a deep breath and turn my face to the sun, happy to be away from the sterile air and antiseptic smell of the hospital.

  “Whose car is this?” I ask, as my mom unlocks a gray Audi sedan that’s sitting in the parking garage.

  “It’s Jerry’s,” she says.

  “Jerry from next door?” I ask. “Why are you driving his car?”

  “Because Natalia,” she says, opening her door, “when I got a call saying you were at a hospital in Maine, I needed to find transportation. I had no car because you took mine, remember?”

  “Sorry,” I mumble, climbing into the passenger side and buckling my seatbelt.

  She doesn’t reply, just starts the car and pulls out, stopping to pay the parking lot attendant before guiding the car onto the traffic circle. We’re on Route 95 before she speaks.

  “So you’re not going to tell me anything about what happened?”

  “What do you mean?” There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts cup sitting in the holder between us, and I stare at it, squinting my eyes until the orange letters blur together. I wish I had a coffee. I wish I had a mochachino with extra whipped cream, and Cam and I were sitting in a cafe, drinking it together, watching the leaves fall through the window while we listened to the slow indie music they always play in coffee shops.

  But I’m not. I’m with my mom, in our next door neighbor’s car, on the way home from the hospital.

  “Well,” she says, “you told me you left Santa Anna because you were following Cam. Is that true?”

  I turn away and look out the window. “I’m not sure,” I say. “I don’t remember.”

  According to Cam, I was following him. I had Raine in the car, and he was with Hadley.

  But I don’t remember any of it, including whether or not I told my mom I was following Cam. Obviously I wouldn’t have told her the whole truth, but I don’t even know what kind of lie I made up, or if it even involved me following Cam.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mom glance at me. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  We’re quiet for a few minutes. “Natalia, this might not be the time to bring this up,” she says. “But I need you to know that you’re not allowed to see Campbell anymore.”

  “Yeah, I kind of figured that out when you called the police on him,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Which, by the way, was a really shitty thing to do. You don’t just go around calling the police on people like that, Mom.”

  “When my daughter shows up at a hospital in the middle of the night with cuts all over her body --”

  “Oh, please,” I say. “I don’t have cuts all over my body. And it wasn’t the middle of the night. Stop being dramatic.” I want to sound angry, but I can’t manage it.

  I don’t feel angry. I just feel sad and beaten down.

  Besides, how can I be mad at her when she’s right? I mean, as far as she can tell, it seems like Cam took me to some isolated woods in Maine and did terrible things to me.

  She’s not acting crazy. She’s acting like a mother. And the worst part of all, the worst part of this whole screwed up situation, is that I can’t even tell her the things I do remember -- the stuff that’s been going on with Raine, the crazy things I’ve been seeing and doing. If she knew exactly what had happened, she would realize Cam’s not a bad guy, that he would never hurt me, that all he wants to do is protect me.

  “You’re not going to see him,” she says. “And that’s that.”

  “What if I get my memory back?”

  “This isn’t up for discussion.” Her hands tighten on the steering wheel.

  “I’m not asking to discuss it,” I say. “I’m just asking what happens if I get my memory back.”

  “If that happens then we’ll talk about it.” Her tone sounds a little dismissive, like she’s already decided that even if my memory comes back, there’s no way I’m going to be allowed to see Cam again. And that does make me angry.

  “You can’t stop me from seeing him, you know.” This time, my tone is bratty.

  A little bit singsong, like I’m almost daring her to tell me that she can. Which, of course, she does.

  “As long as you’re under eighteen, I can.”

  “I’ll sneak out.” It’s a ridiculous stupid, thing to say. But I say it anyway, and in that moment, it feels good.

  “I’ll come after you.”

  I snort, then look back out the window. “In whose car?” I ask. “Yours is gone.

  Although I guess you could always call the police on me, the way you did with Cam.” I can’t remember the last time I talked to my mom like this. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever talked to my mom like this. But if she’s surprised, she doesn’t show it.

  “If that’s what it takes,” she says quietly, “then that’s what I’ll do.”

  I feel my eyes start to fill with tears. A range of emotions flow through my body, all within seconds. Anger, sadness, frustration. And then, before I can stop them, my tears spill over and I start to cry.

  “Natalia,” my mom says. “Honey, please, what’s wrong?”

  But I’m crying too hard to answer. She guides the car off the road at the next rest stop, pulling into a parking space behind a rusty red truck. I keep crying, my shoulders shaking, and my mom releases her seatbelt and pulls me toward her.

  I rest my head on her shoulder, tears sliding down my face.

  “It’s okay,” she says, stroking my hair. “Natalia, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay.”

  She repeats the words over and over, and I let myself, just for a second, believe they’re true. I pretend she can take care of it, the way she used to take care of me when I fell off my bike and scraped my knee, or when I had a bad dream in the middle of the night.

  After a while, my crying gets softer and less intense, and I sit up, wiping at my eyes with my sleeve. My mom reaches over and pulls a napkin out of the glove compartment and hands it to me. I blow my nose and dry my eyes. The napkin is scratchy against my face, but when I’m done, I keep it in my hand just in case I
start to cry again.

  My mom doesn’t say anything for a minute, and I take deep breaths, my heart rate gradually slowing, my anxiety ebbing away little by little.

  “Feel better?” she asks.

  “A little,” I admit.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Her voice is soft, and I turn to look at her. I can see the concern and worry in her eyes, and I feel bad for the way I was treating her earlier. I wish I could tell her. I wish I could tell her everything. She’s my mom.

  She’s supposed to know what to do. I might not be a kid, but I’m definitely not an adult.

  And these are adult problems that are happening to me, things that I shouldn’t have to be dealing with.

  I shake my head, about to tell her that I can’t. But before I can, she reaches over and takes my hand. “Honey, please,” she says. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

  I want to believe her. I want to believe her so bad. I want to believe that if I tell her the crazy stuff that’s going on, she’ll have some explanation for it. Maybe she knows something she’s not telling me. Maybe she’s encountered something like this in the past.

  She’s older than me, she has more experience, she’s my mom for God’s sake. She’s supposed to protect me.

  “It’s hard to talk about.” My fingers twist the napkin I’m holding.

  “You can tell me,” she says. “Whatever it is, Natalia, we can deal with it.” I don’t say anything, wondering where to even start. “Does it have to do with Cam?” she asks gently.

  I shake my head. “It doesn’t,” I say. “I promise.”

  “Is Derek bothering you again?”

  I shake my head again. “I wish that were it.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s these girls at school,” I say, deciding to frame it in a way that she can hopefully understand. “This one girl Raine in particular.”

  “Okay,” my mom says, nodding. There’s a slight look of relief on her face, and I know what she’s thinking -- that if it’s just girls at school, then it’s nothing she can’t handle. Her lawyer brain is probably already formulating a strategy, coming up with a plan of action – letters to the superintendent, phone calls to parents, emails to members of the media to put pressure on the school district. “She’s been giving you problems?”

  I nod.

  “Okay,” my mom says. She pushes her shoulders back resolutely. “We’ll take care of it. As soon as I get home, I’ll start making calls. We can get –”

  “Mom, no,” I say, “it’s not going to help.”

  “Of course it will,” she says, with the kind of confidence that only lawyers can have about situations like this. “We’ll sue them if we have to.”

  I shake my head. “Mom, this isn’t…Raine isn’t…” I try to find the words to explain what’s really going on, the words to tell her exactly what it is that’s happening.

  “What is it, Natalia?” she says. Her voice sounds a little angry now. “Just tell me!”

  “Mom, Raine……she has…she’s powerful.”

  My mom snorts. “Some sixteen-year-old little brat is not powerful.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I don’t mean that girls at school are afraid of her. I mean, yes, the girls at school are afraid of her, but that’s not what I’m talking about. She has powers. Like, actual powers.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean she can make people do things with her mind.” I think about adding that I can do it, too, but I stop myself because I can see the look on my mom’s face slowly changing from one of confusion to one of fear.

  “Natalia,” she says, sounding deliberate. “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind,” I say, turning back and looking out the window. It was stupid to think she could do something, stupid to think she could help. No one can help me. No one even knows what’s going on except for Cam.

  My mom pulls the car out of the rest stop and back onto the highway. I pretend to be asleep, sliding my seat all the way back, keeping my eyes closed. At one point, I do doze off, and in my dreams, Raine is chasing me down a long hallway at school, yelling that she’s going to call the police on Cam, that I can’t have him, that she’s keeping him for herself. When we finally pull into the driveway, it’s a relief, mostly because now I can retreat to my room and get away from my mom.

  But when I open the door to get out, she stops me. “Natalia,” she says.

  “Yeah?” I turn around, my door open, my feet on the driveway.

  She’s not looking at me. “I’m going to make an appointment for you to talk to someone about this.”

  “Mom,” I say, “you really don’t have to do that. I’m fine. I don’t need to talk to anyone at school, it’s only going to make things worse.”

  “Not at school.” She’s still staring out the windshield at our garage door. “A counselor or a psychiatrist.”

  Heat rushes to my face, and a lump rises in my throat. I’m about to fight her on it, but instead, I step out of the car.

  “And I meant what I said about you not seeing Campbell.”

  I don’t answer. Instead, I slam the car door and head into the house.

  Chapter Six

  Campbell

  The ride back to Santa Anna is long, and since I have no car, my dad had to drive me, which hasn’t made him the happiest camper. He’s not very friendly on his best day, so the car ride has been mostly quiet. Once or twice we attempted to make small talk about football or school, but the conversation would die out after a few exchanges back and forth. I’d like to say it doesn’t bother me, but that wouldn’t be true.

  He knew I was taking Natalia to the hospital, knew she couldn’t remember anything, and yet except for a quick “How’s your girlfriend doing?” when I got back to his house, he hasn’t asked me a thing about her. I can’t help but wish that I had at least one parent I could talk to if I need help. Instead I have a drunk for a mom, and a dad that forgets I exist except when I can come work for him at his business during the summer.

  We pull up in front of my house and most of the lights are off. My dad leaves the car running and doesn’t say anything.

  I let out a long sigh. “Her car’s here so she must be home.”

  “I guess I can figure out what that means,” he says with disgust.

  I look at him. His eyes are hard, unforgiving. I want to ask him why he married her if he hates her so much. And then I wonder if his hatred for her extends to me for some reason. But I don’t say any of that. I know he wouldn’t answer me.

  “Well, thanks for the ride.”

  He grunts and nods his head.

  I get out of the truck and he’s gone before I even hit the front door.

  My mom’s probably going to be pissed off at me for leaving like I did, going away for nearly three days. But she’ll get over it. She always does. Whatever crap I pull, she never stays mad at me for too long.

  When I get inside, I flip on the hallway lights. “Mom?”

  No answer. I walk into the kitchen. The light is on over the oven and there’s a pan of macaroni and cheese on the stove. It looks old, like it’s been sitting for hours and hours.

  “Hello?” I call again, louder this time.

  Still no answer. I go into the living room and there she is. Even after so many times of seeing her like this, I still feel the same sense of revulsion and surprise.

  The TV is on, but the sound is off, so it’s just pictures flashing in the darkened room. My mom’s sprawled out on the sofa, looking like a doll that’s been carelessly tossed aside. She’s wearing a gray, tattered nightgown and one of her legs hangs over the side of the couch. Her face is turned to the wall, mouth open, and she’s snoring softly.

  There’s got to be at least six or seven empty bottles of wine on the coffee table.

  “Mom, wake up.” I walk over and shake her roughly.

  She doesn’t stir at first, so I shake her shoulder again.

&
nbsp; Finally, her eyes roll and she sits up with a start. “Cam. Honey.”

  “You passed out.”

  “I’m sorry, I just got so tired.”

  “You mean you just got so drunk.”

  “Don’t be like that.” She rubs her face and sits up a little straighter. “What time is it?”

  “Too late to deal with this crap.”

  “I made some macaroni and cheese. You should have something to eat. How was practice?”

  I just stare at her, realizing we’ve hit a new low. She has no idea I’ve been gone.

  “Practice was awesome, Mom. Thanks for asking.”

  “Good.” She’s barely listening to me. She stands up and walks unsteadily to the kitchen. “I need some water.”

  “I’ve got to take your car,” I tell her.

  “Where’s yours?”

  “In the shop, remember? I told you that last week.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

  “So can I borrow yours for a few hours?”

  “Sure, honey.”

  It’s pathetic how easily she buys my lie about the car being in the shop, but that’s how it is when she’s been on a bender. It makes me feel guilty, but only for a second.

  I shake my head, grab her keys off the ring by the garage and then leave without saying goodbye.

  ***

  I’m not sure when I decide to go to Natalia’s, but I should have called first. I realize this when I pull up in front of her house and honk my horn. But I’m not really thinking straight. I’m angry. Really angry. Angrier than I’ve been in a long time. I feel pissed at everyone and everything but her. She’s my beacon of hope and I need to see her now.

  But when the front door opens, it’s not Nat who’s standing there.

  I get out of the car and wave. “Hi, Ms. Moore. Sorry to stop by so late unannounced. I know I’m probably not your favorite person right now.” That’s an understatement, I think. She only called the cops on you and tried to get you thrown in jail.

  “Campbell, you’re not welcome at our house and I’m telling you right now that Natalia isn’t allowed to see you anymore.” She’s not wearing a coat, and she crosses her arms over her chest, hunching her shoulders against the slight wind that’s blowing.