Chapter 26 #3
“We met during New York Fashion Week. We were standing next to each other in line and she told me she liked my tattoo.” Cassidy held up her forearm to show Eduardo the tiny script across the edge of her outer wrist.
“What’s it say there?” he asked.
“How embarrassing to be human,” Cassidy and Edie answered in tandem.
From where she sat, Edie couldn’t see the tattoo, but she knew what it said.
Like remembering the lyric from a song she’d forgotten, it appeared whole in her mind along with the entire memory of meeting Cassidy in the queue.
But had she remembered it because Cassidy said it and made it true, or was Cassidy recalling a real memory?
Goosebumps rose on Edie’s flesh despite the ever-growing heat onstage as she concentrated hard on the memory and realized she knew more than what Cassidy described.
Back then, Cassidy’s hair was a jagged bleach blonde mop and she wore a magenta crop top and skirt combo with the Mizzu logo across the bands.
Edie could tell Cassidy was nervous and that’s why she’d commented on the tattoo.
At first, Cassidy was hesitant to talk, and then she realized that Edie didn’t know who her parents were and had no ulterior motives in speaking to her.
The world spun around Edie again, and she braced her hands against the table to stay upright.
I’m only remembering things because she said them and made them real. It’s just a rumor. She made it up. I only met her this week.
To prove it, she thought about meeting Cassidy in the hot tub that first night, coming to the villa after something happened and her friend Apple was upset, Cassidy surfing in the morning.
No, that last one didn’t seem right, and yet the image of Cassidy in a wetsuit in the golden light of the morning imprinted itself in her memory. Behind her in the distance, waves broke against sheer cliffs.
Not on the island. When she came to visit me at home.
Cassidy sat laughing beside Edie now as Eduardo led the contestants through another challenge, and again Edie felt torn between two realities.
Just as easily as she could picture Cassidy on that surfboard, she could also picture someone else with dark skin and twists in their hair. Was that Rose, or someone else?
What did Rose look like, after all?
Edie closed her eyes, struggling to remember. In her mind’s eye she saw a figure in a crowd with slender shoulders and a cloud of hair. So much hair, and no face.
She pushed the memory away. Think of what Rose looked like.
A dark shape in dim blue light reached out through her memories to touch her. The shape had a nose and lips but no real features.
“This is a really unbecoming look on you,” it said.
Edie gasped and opened her eyes, planting herself in the uncertain safety of the present once again.
“Are you okay?” Cassidy whispered so the mics wouldn’t pick them up.
Edie covered her mic with a hand. “Tell me something you remember about your friends.”
“What friends?”
“The ones you came here with.”
Cassidy opened her mouth to say something, but paused. Her brows stitched together in confusion. “I came here with you.”
Edie inhaled and set her jaw. Why did this have to happen on a stage in front of people? She wanted to scream, but instead just showed Cassidy her left palm.
“I came here with Rose. You came here with Apple and Debbie, remember?”
Cassidy shook her head, but Edie stopped her from saying anything.
“Whatever you say becomes the truth, okay? Don’t say you don’t remember—” the crowd below burst into cheers as one of the contestants emerged victorious from a challenge.
“We have our winners!” Eduardo announced.
Edie and Cassidy stood and clapped, but Edie wanted to make sure they didn’t lose something else. She pulled on Cassidy’s shirt hem and indicated to follow her. They walked around to backstage and Edie gripped Cassidy by the shoulders.
“We have to remember what things were like before if we want all of this to work, okay? If we want to get our friends back and go back to our normal lives off the island, we have to remember them. Just say what you want to be true and nothing else.”
“I don’t remember what you’re talking about, Edie! My normal life off the island was with you.”
Edie threw her hands in the air and had to take a step back from Cassidy to keep from slapping her.
“Did you not hear what I just said? I have someone that I remember and I want her back, okay? Can you at least help me with that?”
Cassidy shrugged with indifference or compliance but Edie couldn’t tell which. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Say something about your best friend, like I would say ‘Rose is my best friend. We met each other in school and have known each other since we were ten years old.’”
“Okay,” Cassidy breathed, holding onto the final vowel as she thought. “Apple and I met at a house party in the Hills when we were both in high school and we mostly bond over music.”
They hadn’t convinced one another or even themselves, Edie knew, but without daring to speak the obvious truth, they were left with speaking halfhearted wishes or nothing at all.