by Hayley Stone
Apparently this business of killing me is taking too long—or will be over too soon—because she yanks me back by the hair and then slams my head forward into the wall. I barely have enough time to cushion the blow with my arms before I’m being pulled back and thrown at it a second time.
“You’re wrong,” I grind out through my locked jaw, bracing once more for impact.
Except when she tries it a fourth time, I anchor my arms against the wall and push backward, connecting our heads with an unpleasant crack.
My arms come up in a defensive technique I don’t remember ever learning. But just as she comes at me again, the door opens. I’m dizzy and seeing fuzzy stars when Camus sweeps in, rushing Zelda with an effective combination of force and surprise. He twists her arms behind her back, causing her to give a sharp cry. The shine of Rankin’s bald head catches my eye a moment before he steps between the pair of them and me.
“Enough,” Camus says, his voice low and dangerous. Zelda continues to resist, forcing him to tighten his grip. “Enough, Zelda. It’s done.”
Her hazel eyes are red, hurting. She’s crying, I realize numbly, even as she continues spitting curses at me.
Camus restrains her while her anger runs its course. His features are stoic, complete steel except for his eyes, which show hints of the man I used to know. Empathy, and understanding. He knows this grief.
Eventually, with Zelda refusing to be sensible, Camus has no choice but to pass her off to Rankin, who escorts her from the room in handcuffs.
Only once we’re alone does he finally look at me.
“I apologize for that,” he says, weirdly professional, like I’ve simply been given the wrong room at a hotel. “It won’t happen again, I assure you. I’ll send someone to tend to your injuries shortly.”
As he begins to leave, I panic. “Camus, wait!”
To my relief, he stops on the threshold, although he doesn’t turn around. There must be a million different things I want to tell him, but I can’t organize my thoughts into the right words. There’s no convenient greeting card sentiment for Congratulations! Your Girlfriend’s Not Dead!
“If…you’re going to judge me,” I say, faltering, “do it on the merits of who I am, not who I’m not.”
His hands ball into tight fists at his side. He releases them after a moment, flexing stiff fingers. “I intend to,” he says, and is gone.
Chapter 7
After that incident, I become McKinley’s worst-kept secret. It’s certainly no coincidence that I’m moved to new quarters in a different corner of the level the next day.
I don’t know Zelda’s fate, because no one will tell me when I ask, but I have a feeling she’s occupying my former cell. This bothers me a little. Even though she tried to kill me, there’s still an unreasonably large part of me that cares what happens to her, because Zelda’s as much a victim of recent circumstances as I am. Only I don’t see myself as a victim; I see me in the same way I’ve always seen myself—as a survivor.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” I ask Samuel while investigating my new living situation. The place is the size of a small apartment—a considerable improvement on the holding room. It’s furnished with modern amenities, and finished with a flourish of sunny colors on the walls and bed. Yellows, oranges, browns, to name a few. They remind me of autumn, and I recall the sensation of leaping into a pile of leaves my father had just finished raking in the front yard of my childhood home.
“Difficult to say,” Samuel answers, hovering near the open door, watching me. Feelings are still tender from last night. “Everyone handles the death of a loved one in their own way. Zelda just needs time, I think.”
I pick at the withered buds of a dead flower arrangement, trying to picture what it looked like in full bloom. “Is it weird that I feel bad for her?”
He shakes his head. “I’d say it speaks to your character. It’s good. Human.”
Hearing him affirm my humanity is reassuring. Especially since I haven’t told Samuel—or anyone else for that matter—about the vitriol Zelda spat at me during the fight. I know it was said in the heat of the moment, a product of anger, but it still made me think, wonder, and worry. I give him a weak smile of appreciation for the words, even though he’s unaware of their significance for me.
“She blames me for Ulrich’s death,” I tell him.
He’s quiet for a moment. “There’s nothing more frustrating than the senselessness of death,” he explains, drawing an answer from somewhere between science, observation, and feeling. “We, as humans, are programmed to find the logic in everything—even when there is none. She wants a reason, and assigning blame is the easiest way to achieve one.”
“Maybe.”
After giving my non-answer, I try to take my mind off Zelda by exploring the rest of the apartment. Only after a few minutes do I realize it’s decorated in the exact fashion that appeals most to me. Everything from the lemony smell of the linens to the organization of the furniture sparks recognition. I see myself in the little details of the room, as if I had a hand in the design.
“This was my room.”
Samuel nods. “I didn’t want to say anything before. I wanted to see if you’d remember.”
I forgive him the test, preoccupied with the niggling feeling that something’s off. I turn in a small circle, surveying the room with a critical eye. “Something used to be here,” I say, laying my hands on a waist-high dresser. “And here.” I move to the desk in the corner. “Pictures. There were pictures.”
“I’d guess Camus has them.”
Dust has collected on top of the desk like a second carpet, which I find strange. It’s not been that long since I died. A week, tops. I think back to my flowers. No one could be bothered to water my flowers or dust for one week?
That off feeling persists, and I rub my arms.
“Well, you can tell Camus I want them back,” I say, feeling petulant.
Samuel smiles, but doesn’t promise me anything.
I drop down onto the bed, and Samuel joins me a moment later. “You should know it wasn’t by chance they moved you back here,” he says. “I suggested it.”
“Why?”
“I wish I could say it was so you’d be more comfortable, but that’s only half the truth. I had hoped it might jog your memory.”
I sit up, immediately attentive. “Did the tests reveal anything?”
“Yes and no. Matsuki and I have developed a few working theories based on yesterday’s scans.” He pauses, rearranging himself on the edge of the bed, leaning toward me. “I hesitate to ask after what happened yesterday, but I wonder if you’re feeling up to that cognitive interview right now?”
“You’re the doctor,” I say, partly teasing. “You tell me.”
“Despite the blows to the head, there were no signs of a concussion,” he answers seriously. I don’t like this wall he’s built between us, particularly because I’m on the wrong side of it. “But it’s ultimately your choice.”
The smile leaves my lips. “Okay, then. I’m ready when you are.”
He stands and retrieves an electronic pad from the desk, then pulls up a chair next to the bed.
“I don’t need to lie back or anything, do I?” I ask.
“Not unless you want to. Whatever helps you relax.”
I nod, remaining upright, watching him flip through digital pages full of diagrams until he comes to whatever he was looking for. He opens a new page, lined for notes. His fingers perch over the screen. “Could you close your eyes for me?”
I’m not comfortable with limiting my senses, but I trust Samuel. I close my eyes.
“I’m going to ask you questions using some mnemonic devices. They’re memory-retrieval techniques intended to help you revisit details from your past that you might have forgotten. I’ll guide you through several key periods in your life to see which events you remember the most.”
“What if I can’t remember anything?”
Since my eyes are closed, I can’t
see Samuel’s expression, and his silence makes me nervous. Then I feel the warmth of his hand as it closes around mine. “I think you’ll be surprised how much you remember, but don’t worry if you can’t. We’ll just move on to something else. Okay?” I nod and the comfort of his hand disappears. “Let’s begin with your family. What can you tell me about them?”
“My father was a soldier,” I say, one of the things I’m sure about. “And my mother was a career politician. I don’t remember having any brothers or sisters. Wait. That’s not right. Did I have any siblings?”
“Slow down. Let’s go back to your mother. What position in office did she hold?”
“She was a senator.”
“No,” he says. “This is a recollection exercise, Rhona, not a multiple-choice test. It’s all right if you don’t know or can’t remember, but please don’t guess. It’ll upset my observations and make it more difficult to ascertain the extent of your amnesia.”
“Sorry,” I murmur.
Samuel’s expression softens. “Don’t be. You were close, on both accounts. Your mother served as a state representative. She was very popular for her progressive stances.”
“And siblings? Do I have any brothers or sisters?”
“You had an infant brother named Conrad—but he died from SIDS when you were six. That’s probably why you couldn’t remember him. Your mother and father kept trying for another child, but she had several miscarriages, and then your father was killed in action during an operation in Pakistan.”
“How do you know all this? I mean, the miscarriages. You would have been the same age I was when they happened.”
“During her career, your mother was an outspoken advocate for infertility programs, determined to make them affordable for lower-income families. It’s a matter of public record. Plus, I had to do a school project about her once. It came up in my research.”
This makes me smile. “You had to write a paper on my mom?”
“It was a letter to her, but close enough.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking his hand.
He bends toward me, eyebrows pulling together. “For what?”
So many, many things. “For helping me fill in the gaps. It doesn’t feel right to complain—I’m alive when I should be dead—but it’s hard. Not knowing who I was, what events shaped me. I hate the idea of forgetting people, places…all these little moments that survive or die depending on whether I remember them or not.”
Samuel hesitates. “I never thought about it like that.” He quickly moves on, visibly uncomfortable. Does he feel guilty, because it was his project going wrong that left me in this half-finished state? “Let me know when you’re ready to continue with the exercise.”
I repress a sigh. “No time like the present.”
The next two and a half hours are spent reliving my past through the details I remember. My mind resists at first, but through patience and careful instruction, Samuel begins to coax out reluctant memories.
What begins in my childhood home in New Mexico suburbia ends on an away mission near Anchorage to rescue refugees. It’s not easy facing a lifetime in 140 minutes. We stop several times so I can recover from a forgotten memory, or explore it in depth. Like my dad dying when I was only ten and mom throwing herself into her career, to the exclusion of her family. I remember talent shows and opening-night fumbles. I wanted to be an actress, which was, as my theater teacher used to say, “Like a politician, but more honest”—either not realizing or (more likely) not caring who my mother was. In some ways, it feels like I got my wish.
I remember awkward, fumbling first kisses—on the bus, at school, beneath a tree at a park two streets over from where I lived, the playground half sand most of the time, and filled with prickly desert bushes that exploded with flowers at the oddest times. After a particularly bad experience with a boy who called me slobbery, I remember practicing my technique on Samuel, and the way his neck turned all red beneath my hand.
Good choices and bad choices and times when I had no choice; I remember matters that at the time felt like life or death, but weren’t—and matters that were life or death, but didn’t feel like anything at all. This is what it was to be young Rhona Long. I grew up in the shadow of my parents’ great love, glimpsing my mother like sunlight falling from a high window after my father’s death. It wasn’t her fault, and I try not to blame her for the small hole in my heart, the one I’ve tried filling with other people, through popularity. Some people are just better at loving widely, better at caring for strangers instead of the people standing right beside them.
I remember a lot more than I thought I did.
But for those missing memories—events, places, names and faces—it’s like I was never a part of them at all. Rhona took them to the grave. But Samuel is able to fill in a few of the gaps, which makes me grateful we remained close enough over the years that he can now act as my personal historian. We even laugh over some mutually remembered absurdities—some little, like the time I made him laugh so hard during recess that he peed himself and had to go home early from school, and others larger, like the time Samuel had to bail me out of jail after I got picked up at a party for underage drinking. He’d had to use all the money he’d accrued from his paid internship, money he was saving to attend a scientific conference on retinal neurobiology and visual processing in Colorado. I paid him back, he tells me—with interest. Not only did I pay for his flight and hotel room out of pocket (Hello, cheap comedy-club gigs, and a part-time job at a fast-food place, and coming home smelling like French fries and onion rings for three months), I also joined him, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the nightmare of traveling alone.
“On the first day alone, you sat through several keynote speakers and postgrad presentations without making a single joke,” he says admiringly.
Of course I did, I think, but don’t say. I was trying to understand what you cared about.
For those few moments, as we reminisce, it’s like the past five years haven’t happened. The world is right again.
“I’m glad you’re here, Samuel,” I say, reaching for his hand, needing contact. “I’m not sure what I’d do without you. I mean it.”
“I’m sure you’d manage,” he demurs, his smile faint.
He runs his thumb gently over the back of my hand. I watch our hands together, fitted to one another’s palms.
“At the risk of sounding juvenile, are we okay again?” I ask.
“Did I give the impression we weren’t?”
“Well…”
“Sorry,” he says, bowing his head beneath the weight of the apology.
I don’t want him to feel guilty. I just want him to be honest with me. “I’ll take that apology and raise you an explanation.”
Samuel is quiet for a long time, for so long I think he might not answer me at all, but then he says, “Our friendship has always come easy, ever since the first grade, when you kicked that fifth grader in the shin after he kept picking on me.”
I smile, even though the memory is fuzzy, at best. Combined with my other recollections, it seems we’ve always looked out for one another—a fact that comforts me.
“But sometimes—recently, a lot more than usual—I think I made a mistake between then and now.”
“How so?”
“Do you remember the summer before you left to study abroad in England?”
“Probably not as well as you do.”
He gives me a drawn look, lips pulled together in a line. “Rhona, could you be serious for two seconds, please?”
“Sorry. Am I supposed to be remembering something in particular?”
Most of the summers in my teenage years blur together into sun, heat, and lawlessness. Recalling specific days is a challenge. I try to think of anything that stands out, but my memory pulls me in the direction of the following August. When I first met Camus.
The details of that early time are still fuzzy to me, like trying to peer through a glass clouded with milky water. I
came to Reading for its annual music festival, a year before the Machinations started—six years ago now, if my math is correct. I remember Camus hated the noise, the crowds, the cloud of sweat and weed and sex that hung over the entire place, and I teased him about it. What kind of self-hating introvert decides to spend his weekend at a loud, hectic concert venue? Remarkably, I haven’t forgotten the quirk of his lips, followed by his smooth reply: The kind who hopes to meet someone like you.
“I had just started dating a girl. Bethany Tallis,” Samuel adds for clarification, but it doesn’t help position me in the timeline. I nod anyway, sensing she’s not a point of importance in this story. “And I stayed up late helping her work on her submission for a scientific journal the night before your flight, so I didn’t make it in time to see you off.”
Because I can’t recall the exact shape and look of the terminal in question, I conjure up a generic one in my mind’s eye and populate it with myself and faceless strangers. The feeling that follows is one of loneliness, partial abandonment. Waiting for someone who doesn’t show. “That I remember,” I murmur, reliving the disappointment. “But you’ve lost me. What does this have to do with anything?”
Before he can answer, a tinkling chime signals someone at the door.
“I should’ve been there,” he finishes, standing. I stand with him. “That’s all.”
“Hey,” I say, grabbing his arm. “I’m still not sure I get what’s going on inside that genius brain of yours.” I give him a friendly poke to the forehead, and he smiles bashfully. “But you’re here now, and now is when I’ve needed you the most. So I think I can forgive you for one instance of friendship malpractice that happened years ago.”
“Yeah,” he says lightly, nervously, and I let him escape my grip. “We should probably see who’s at the door.”
Our visitor turns out to be Matt. He’s wearing a white lab coat, per his usual dress code. “Doctor Lewis,” he greets Samuel, then leans around him to give a conservative wave to me. “Rhona.”
“Hey, Matt,” I reply.
His attention reverts back to Samuel. “There have been some developments. If I might have a few moments of your time, Doctor?”