6. Rickie
Rickie
The tap on my bedroom door is bashful. But I'm a psycho in the nighttime, so the sound is enough to startle me into wakefulness. I jackknife into a seated position, my book flopping off my chest and onto Dylan's quilt.
Tap. Tap . It’s just a fingernail on the door. Quiet as a mouse. But my pulse is ragged nonetheless as I swing my legs out of bed and get up to face my midnight visitor.
I unlock the door and open it to find Daphne standing on the other side. She wears soft shorts that show off plenty of thigh, and a tiny little tank top.
No bra , my libido adds. There’s no denying that my sex drive has roared to life, like a long-forgotten engine that still manages to catch on the first try when you turn the key.
But I step back like a gentleman and allow Daphne into the room. I close the door, just in case I'm about to get lucky.
Although the look in her eye right now is not sexual. It's pure curiosity, with a side of anger. Daphne always looks a little angry. I may have an anger kink. Who knew?
"You don't remember driving with me from Harkness," she hisses, her voice hushed.
I circle the bed and then get into it, crossing my arms behind my head and leaning back against the pillows. "I told you I had a terrible memory," I remind her.
"But you really don't remember," she repeats. “You don't remember the highway exit with no matching entrance. You don’t remember driving there at all .”
She's right, and I'd been willing to explain it earlier today. I was going to take Lenore's advice and spill my guts over ice cream.
But then I'd kissed her instead.
“Look,” I begin. “I know it's awkward. But it's not just you. I don't remember anything from July through December of the year we met.”
Her eyes pop wide, so I don’t add that the following January, February, and March are a little hazy too. But I'd been on painkillers. And then I'd become dependent on painkillers, so I had to be weaned off them slowly.
It was a long nightmare.
“ What? How do you forget six months of your life?" She plops down on the end of the bed.
This is closer to another human on a bed than I’ve been in… Wow. There’s some depressing math. But she’s not here to fuck, she’s here to interrogate me. She's waiting for an answer.
See, Lenore? This is the opposite of sexy. "I got injured at the Academy. Badly. Broken bones and a head injury."
She blinks. "Like a TBI?"
"Yeah." Although I rarely use that term. Traumatic Brain Injury . Gross.
“And you just... forgot that semester.”
"Right."
A crinkle appears between her eyebrows. "But last fall you recognized me. When I showed up in Burlington, I walked in and my brother asked if we knew each other. And I said no, but you said yes.”
This, of course, I remember perfectly well. “Yeah, I know. And then I said don't worry, you'll figure it out. And then you did."
"Of course." Her cheeks pink up. “It took me a second. The context was all wrong. And you looked so different." She winces. “That was embarrassing. But your hair is so much longer now, and you weren’t wearing your uniform."
"My uniform," I echo. I know I wore one.
There's a photo of me from drop-off day, and I'm standing shoulder to shoulder with my dad in front of the campus gate.
He's smiling like he just won the lottery.
I'm decked out in a green wool jacket with gold buttons, a dress shirt, pressed trousers and shiny boots. Plus a cap.
But I don't remember putting that on. I don't remember if those boots were stiff or comfortable. I don't remember if the collar of that shirt was loose or tight, or how it felt to slip the cotton onto my skin. It's a blank. And when I see that photo, it's like looking at some other guy.
“And after I heard you laugh, I realized who you were. But you recognized me . I know you did. So how could that be?"
I cross my arms in front of my chest. And then I actually flex, like a tool.
But it works. Daphne's eyes dart to my half-naked body. I see her drink in the view of my tattooed biceps and chest. But then her eyes snap upward again, and they narrow. "Answer the question.”
Oh well. I tried. “That's happened before," I admit. "I recognize a face from that time, but I don't know why. It’s…” Maddening. Terrifying. Pick an adjective. “Frustrating. But since you couldn't place me at first, I assumed we'd barely met."
She chews her pink lip. I’d like to cut these questions short and bite it for her. But I can see that she’s wrestling with my story, trying to figure out if she believes me.
“Look, you wouldn’t be the first person to think I was bullshitting you. Why do you think I don’t explain this to people? It sounds bonkers.”
“Sorry,” she says, rubbing a hand across her forehead. “It’s just so weird.”
“Welcome to my world,” I mutter. I’ve spent so much time these past two and a half years straining to remember those missing six months. I’ve visited every page of the USTSA website, squinting at photos of cadets, looking for my own face in those pictures. Looking for anything that’s familiar.
I never found it.
“So what was this accident like?” Daphne whispers. She’s hugging herself now. But she seems to believe me. “It must have been bad.”
“Bear in mind that I don't remember.” I chuckle.
“Right. Sorry.”
“They told my parents that a group of cadets brought me into the ER from an off-campus party. They said I’d climbed a wall on a dare. And then fell off.”
Her perfect eyebrows shoot up. “Because you were drunk?”
“That's what I assume. But there’s no evidence of that. Why else climb a wall, though?”
“Because it’s past curfew?” She shrugs.
“I’d thought of that. But it was Open Weekend.”
“Open Weekend,” she repeats. Then she looks at her hands.
“Apparently it was one of the few times when there was no curfew. But that’s all I’ve got. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to remember what happened. But it hasn’t come back.”
“So…” She lifts her brown eyes to mine. “You’re like a character in Proust, hoping that some small thing triggers your memory?”
“Nah, this is way past Proust,” I grumble. “I’d need to be Marty McFly from Back to the Future .”
She lets out a startled laugh. “So you could go back in time and see what happened?”
“Or tell myself not to climb the damn wall. That’s what McFly was trying to do, right? He wasn’t there to watch. He was there to change the outcome.”
“Yeah, I get it.” Her big brown eyes search mine. “Can I borrow the time machine after you’re done with it? I have a few messes I’d like to clean up, too.”
“Sure, Shipley.”
We’re quiet for a minute, and I close my eyes and try to imagine myself visiting the past. I’ve done this before.
I’ve tried meditation, hoping that a memory will surface.
I’ve spent many an hour trying to picture myself climbing a wall.
I concentrate, trying to imagine the texture of the bricks against my fingertips—and my feet scrambling for purchase as I struggle toward the top.
"Who dared you to climb it?” she asks suddenly, and my eyes snap open. “Don't you want to kick his ass?”
Oh, Daphne . Can’t she see that we’re on the same wavelength? “I would love to kick somebody’s ass,” I admit. “But the Academy wouldn't tell me who I was with.” They remained silent even when my father—an alum—raged at them, begging for information.
Cadets are supposed to know better than to take a dare , they’d said. It was an attempt to shame us into silence.
It worked on my dad. But not on me.
“And you don’t have friends from school who could…” She stops in the middle of the sentence. “Oh.”
I snicker. “Yeah, if I had friends, I’ve forgotten them. And you already know that gets awkward.”
“Wow, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I say immediately. “My life was waylaid for a while there. Look at me now. I’m healthy. I’m fine.” I hold my arms out wide. “Why don’t you come a little closer and let me demonstrate.”
This wins me a rare smile from Daphne. And, man, that smile is something else. I would like to give the word waylaid an entirely new meaning with her.
But then she says, “I think you only hit on me to distract me.”
“No way,” I argue. “I hit on you because I’d like to know how you feel underneath me.”
She smirks and shakes her head.
“Fine, fine. You can ride me instead. I’m flexible on this point.”
But that’s when she gets up and heads for the door. “Night, Rickie. Sorry to keep you up.”
“You can keep me up longer.”
She gives me a wry grin and leaves the room, closing the door behind her.
I get up and lock it again, because I’m funny like that. But it’s a crappy lock. So I’m also tempted to pull the wooden chair out from Dylan’s desk, and lean it against the door, with the back pressed up near the doorknob, as an extra layer of security.
But I don’t do it. The flimsy lock is as much leeway as I’m willing to give my phobia.
I go back to bed and shut off the light.
* * *
“Hey McFly!” Daphne shouts to me over the loud beat of live music.
“Hey, Shipley. Happy birthday!”
“Thanks!” She stands on tiptoe to speak into my ear. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
“Yeah?” I give her a hot look. “That’s good news.”
She ignores this blatant come-on and says, “I can’t imagine losing six months of my life. I guess it would be much more inconvenient than forgetting where you put your car, no?”
“Definitely.”
It’s Friday night, and we’re at Dylan and Daphne’s twenty-first birthday party. I’m holding the dregs of a craft beer and tapping my foot to a live band on the back patio at the Gin Mill, a bar owned by Alec, the boyfriend of May Shipley, the twins' older sister.
The good news is that Daphne is no longer avoiding me. The bad news is that she wants to ask a million questions about my head injury, while I’d rather be talking her into bed.
“How about a drink?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Sure, I’ll have a Coke,” she says.
“A Coke. On your twenty-first birthday?”