Chapter 8
Ava
I took my time leaving the car and walking up the sidewalk to the blue house.
Pink flowers lined the path, just like Tucker had said.
Tucker ran ahead to unlock the yellow door. My father waited behind me, holding the itchy dress and painful shoes.
I didn’t like being between them, and something urged me to escape, but I had nowhere to go. I was at their mercy.
The flowers were tall bursts of green topped with tiny blooms. I ran my hand along their petals, which tickled my palms. The sidewalk was warm beneath my feet. I inhaled slowly and carefully, then let the air go. It helped. I wondered how my body knew to do that.
Up ahead, Tucker opened the door and waited.
I wasn’t ready to be trapped again, like I had been on the bed in the curtained room. I paused to look at a rock that was different from the other gray ones. It was bright blue. Then another, yellow.
The colored ones had numbers on top. 2018. 2019. 2021. The last one was white and black. 2025. Something about this one drew me to it. I picked it up.
Now that I was looking more closely, I could see the white part had a pattern like my dress, and the black had a V of white in the middle like Tucker’s suit.
“Each rock has a date for a significant part of our lives together,” Tucker called out from his position near the door. “That one we put out yesterday for our wedding day.” His mouth was grim, the corners turned down.
I glanced over the other rocks again. I wondered what was significant about the other dates. Maybe the book would tell me.
I couldn’t see my tattoo because of the long sleeve of my sweatshirt. It was hot out, though, and the longer I stood in one place, the warmer I got.
I moved to the shade of the front door, although I stepped aside to avoid being too close to Tucker.
My father followed. “Are we ready to go in?”
Tucker looked at me.
“Okay,” I said.
Tucker led the way. I followed him into a narrow space lined with photos. To the left was a bright white room with a blue sofa and a television.
I turned to the images. I spotted myself, although my hair in these pictures was longer than it was in the video I’d made with Vinnie. Vinnie was not in any of these photos, but many of them had Tucker. I also saw my father and the woman who’d been with him. Plus, the two other girls from the limo.
There was one with the tiny gray-haired woman from the waiting room.
I stared at all of them, trying to find meaning in any of the faces or scenes. Looking at them made me feel better than I had since waking up in the limo, though, so I kept doing it.
“You’re a photographer,” Tucker said. “Oh, right. Vinnie said that in the video. But you’re really good. You took all of these, even the ones you’re in.”
I nodded. Maybe that was why they were so pleasing. They looked exactly the way I would have wanted them to.
Tucker took a step toward another room at the back, and the floor creaked. I startled at the sound and then laughed. “You should fix that!” I said in a voice I scarcely recognized, bright and happy.
I clapped my hand over my mouth. It had popped out without my thinking.
For a moment, Tucker smiled in a way that made his entire face beautiful. My stomach flipped. I smiled back, touching my cheeks. So many things were happening here that I didn’t quite control.
“You always say that,” he said. “I’ll get to it, I promise.”
“Is that typical?” my father asked. “For her to just say things she used to say?”
“Yeah,” Tucker said, then turned to me. “If you’re distracted or startled, there are things you do and say that are the same across all the memory losses.”
That was interesting. So, something inside me was still me.
He kept walking toward the bright room. It was a kitchen lined with cabinets. A small table with metal legs and a white cloth on top sat in the middle. It was piled with boxes and flowers and small bags.
More boxes were piled on one cabinet.
“It’s messy due to all the activity,” Tucker said. “You had your hair and makeup done in here, plus a brunch with Tina and your sisters. Normally, you like things very neat and orderly.”
“We should check her meds,” my father said. He folded the wedding dress over a chair and sat the shoes on the floor.
Tucker opened a cabinet and pulled down a purple plastic case. “We keep them organized by day so she never misses.” He angled it toward us. “Saturday is in here. I guess in all the craziness, she forgot to take them.”
My belly quivered. So, this was my fault? The way I was feeling, the missed wedding, the fear? Because I didn’t take a pill?
I stumbled backward, running into the stove. When I pulled away, my sweatshirt caught on one of the knobs, making it turn. A click-click sound startled me, followed by a whiff of a new, sharp smell.
“That’s the gas!” My father lunged at me.
I let out a shriek and dodged to the side, but he was aiming for the knob. He flipped it off and picked up a towel, flapping it in the air.
I was trapped by my father near the door to the hall where we’d come and Tucker on the other side. I could escape only if I ducked under the table.
That sounded good. I dove beneath it, pushing aside a chair to give me room. I pulled my knees up, pressing my face between them. Rocking back and forth was soothing, so I did it fiercely, trying to tune out anything happening in the room.
“Ava, I’m sorry. I had to turn off the gas on the stove.” My father’s voice was close, so he must have kneeled down.
“Let her have a moment,” Tucker said. “This is overwhelming.”
The room fell quiet. I breathed into my knees, my back already hurting from my cramped position. But I kept rocking.
“Ava, I’m going to get your book,” Tucker said. “You can look at it down here.”
I turned my head and opened my eyes. His shiny black shoes left the room. My father’s were still here.
He pulled out a chair, and I almost bolted, but he sat down on it, a few feet from me. I watched his shoes and legs. One of his hands rested on a thigh, his thumb tapping rapidly.
Did that help? I tried it, resting my hand on my leg and thumping it with my thumb.
It didn’t. I gave up and rocked some more until my butt started hurting, too.
Footsteps returned. Tucker’s shiny shoes appeared.
“Ava, I’m going to give you two things. One is the book so you can check the handwriting and remember your life.
The other is your laptop computer, which is open to the video you made for yourself a few years ago the last time this happened.
It’s a better one than the one with Vinnie. It tells you more.”
He sat down on the floor in front of me, but well away. He showed me a large book with a black-and-white cover. On the cover were the words:
Trust only this handwriting.
This is the book.
Remember your life.
My stomach quivered as he pushed it toward me. This was it. I shoved my sleeve up to my elbow and compared the handwriting on my tattoo to the book.
It was a match.
I clutched it to my chest for a moment. Tucker was watching me.
“And here is the laptop.” He moved it under the table.
I didn’t want that. I wanted the book.
“Where can I go to look at this by myself?” I asked.
“Anywhere you want.” Still, he didn’t move. Neither did my father’s legs or shoes.
“I want to come out.” My back was hurting a lot.
“Okay.” Tucker scooted backward. “But I wish you’d look at the video first.”
I crawled out from under the table, clutching my book. “No.”
He glanced at my father.
“Did you fix things?” my father asked.
“No,” Tucker said. “I couldn’t take anything out. It’s what her mother used to do. I never want to be like her.”
“Mom is bad,” I said. “I have the tattoo.”
The two of them glanced at each other again.
No more. No more. I raced from the room and realized there was another way out of the hall with the pictures. It led to another small hall with three doors.
I dashed into the first one I came to. It was a bathroom. Perfect. I slammed the door and stood with my back against it so I would know if anyone tried to come in.
This room was blue and white. It took a moment to identify everything by name, as if my brain was only slowly finding words. Shower curtain, toilet, rug, sink, mirror.
Mirror.
I stepped away from the door and set the book on the small counter. I didn’t look like any of the versions of myself I’d seen so far. In Vinnie’s video, my hair was shorter than in the photos on the wall.
Here, my hair was everywhere. Some of it was stuck to the side of my head with sparkling combs. Other parts fell to my shoulders in thick coils.
I pulled on one of the spirals to make it straight. When I let go, it bounced back into place.
The combs didn’t come out easily, caught in tiny strands of hair. I jerked them out and left them on the counter. I opened a few drawers, finding hairbrushes, combs, and tubes and bottles of all sizes.
I could read the labels, but I wasn’t sure what some of them meant. Lubriderm. Colgate. Burt’s Bees.
I didn’t have time to investigate. I picked up my book and sat on the floor with my back against the door. Time to read.
My fingers trembled as I opened it to the first page.
The correct handwriting continued, but my breath caught as my eyes scanned the page.
Mother stole the last book.
I can’t believe it.
How could she!
I knew things were missing. I knew it!
I hate her! I hate her! I hate her!
Here’s what I know:
The year is 2017.
You are 17 years old.
You have epilepsy.
At some point (age 6? 7?) the seizures got worse, and you started losing your memory. First, just stupid stuff, like what you had for breakfast. Then bigger stuff, like your last birthday. Holes. Like a Swiss-cheese brain.
Now, you sometimes wake up, and your whole life is wiped clean.
You started keeping a diary when you were nine so you could keep track of things.
You often talked about Mother.
She can’t STAND you talking bad about her.
So she STOLE your book.
GOD!
Then she tried to replace it with HER OWN. In HER handwriting! How much you love her. What a good girl you want to be. BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.
No!
You’ve hidden notes to yourself. Search hard because she knows you’ve done it and will find anything easy. The notes will lead you to a book. There will always be a book. It will always have THIS handwriting.
Listen to the voice inside to find it. Something about it stays with you even if you lose your memories. There’s a part of you that is always you.
Trust it.
Trust nothing else.
I pressed my hand to my neck. Everything in me shook. Mother was bad. Very bad. I set down the book and stood up, pushing the white sweatpants down to look at the tattoo again.
Mom is bad.
Did I have anything else tattooed on me? There was the warning on my arm, of course. And the name and birthday.
I stripped off the sweatshirt and pants.
Yes. Another one. On my collarbone.
I spun around so my back was to the mirror. Nothing back there.
I examined my belly, my legs, my ankles. I lifted my hair and looked at my neck.
The collarbone one was the only other one.
I leaned into the mirror to see if I could read it.
It was a symbol, the number eight, only sideways.
Infinity. That’s what it was. An infinity sign with a small heart.
There were words along the edges. It was hard to make them out in reverse, but I took my time.
The words read, the heart remembers.
But I didn’t.
Not anything.
I flipped the book open again to a random page.
Men can’t be trusted.
I scanned the page. I was living with a bunch of women then. I sounded upset and scared.
This I could relate to.
I flipped to another one.
Taking photos is the best! The words were above several images taped into the book.
At least I sounded happy there. Maybe it wasn’t all bad.
Another page had a photo of a long counter. A man with a heavy beard stood behind it, in front of a huge sign that read, “Big Harry’s Diner.”
Beneath it, I had written a paragraph.
Big Harry saved you. He owns a diner on South First and gave you a job, helped hide you from your mother, and gave you money for your first college classes. If you are ever in trouble, Big Harry is the one to find.
Huh. Had anyone mentioned Big Harry? This man wasn’t at the hospital. Where was he? Would he help me this time? I had no idea where to look.
I closed the cover.
I was so tired.
I wanted to be alone. Lie down. Not think anymore.