The Leaving Part 23

She wanted a good reason.

She said, "I guess if you really were hiding something, you'd come back with a better alibi-not this crazy story about not being able to remember anything."

He nodded.

She nodded.

Some kind of agreement.

They both went back to looking around.

But she couldn't stop herself, couldn't hold her tongue. Needed to know whether he was with Scarlett without actually asking . . .

She said, "It seems like Adam and Sarah are a couple. Which would be really weird, right?" Her face felt hot. "Like if they somehow remembered that?"

"Yes," he said flatly. "That would be weird."

And the way he said it, she just knew.

She'd had a calendar once-one she'd made by hand with a ruler and pen. It was a countdown to the approximate day she'd be able to go away to college. She wondered where it was now. Wondered whether anything-anyone-could get her to stay.

"My father is going to post a reward," she said. "For information leading to finding Max."

Lucas said, "That's great."

"He thinks it's just going to bring the crazy people out, but I said he has to do it anyway."

Talking was a good distraction from feeling her heart being broken without warning. A balloon that had a tear in it before it had even had a chance to fill up and float.

"Sometimes crazy people know what they're talking about." Lucas was looking through another stack of papers, oblivious to the fact that everything he said or did now mattered in a new way she didn't even understand.

"You think?" Maybe she was the crazy person here. Allowing herself to even feel . . . what . . . attracted to him? Like she was falling, and in a way that she'd never fallen for Sam.

"Sometimes, right?"

"I don't know." She flipped through some papers, too, and now couldn't get Sam out of her mind. "Some crazy people think that those memories of yours are clues to some target you're all going to blow up when you awaken from your brainwashed trance."

He got very still, and she half wondered whether he couldn't say for sure or not if it was true.

"You're serious?" He sounded so innocent, almost hurt. He was that new human again. His skin not toughened in the right places.

She nodded and he shook his head, like he was disappointed in whoever was saying that-or in her-then went back to sifting.

He had his back to her so she was able to take in the whole of him. The way his s.h.i.+rt stretched a touch too tightly across his shoulders, the way his jeans fit just right, the way he stood-feet pointed straight ahead, perfectly aligned with his shoulders. Like a castle guard.

Beyond his sneakers, back against the wall behind the desk, an old book lay near a large clump of dust. "There's something back there."

She went over and bent down and couldn't reach, so she had to get on her bare knees-rug burn-and stretch far enough that she pulled a muscle in her arm. Nerve endings in her neck woke up, annoyed.

It was an old paperback-like from the 1960s or '70s was her best guess.

It was the kind of thing she'd find on the bookshelves in the guest room where she slept when they went to see her grandparents-small, dusty, pulpy.

When she stood and read the description, he was so close that she could hear his breathing, feel his elbow against hers, bone on bone.

IN A FUTURISTIC SOCIETY, SCIENTISTS INSPIRED BY FREUD, WHO SAID THAT THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A HAPPY CHILDHOOD, HAVE SET OUT TO ELIMINATE CHILDHOOD COMPLETELY. BEGINNING WITH SIX TEST SUBJECTS, THEY HAVE PERFECTED AN ELABORATE MEMORY-WIPING TECHNOLOGY.

NOW THE COUNTDOWN IS ON, TO THE DAY WHEN ALL CHILDREN WILL BE SENT AWAY FOR A PERIOD OF TIME THAT WILL COME TO BE KNOWN AS THE LEAVING.

"I don't understand," Lucas said.

Avery felt a singular chill run through their bodies.

Scarlett

Scarlett knew the answers to all the history questions, filled in a map of the world without blinking, and was a virtual math whiz. She imagined the others had all come back with the same skill set and liked the idea that they could all sail through high school as seniors next year, get into good colleges, and just forget about The Leaving-

Forget about The Leaving?

The thought made her happy anyway.

She had more memories from before The Leaving than she'd realized-only thought of them because Sashor had asked.

Like so: Remembered drawing a picture book in preschool, about a girl named Jane who had a pet dolphin.

Remembered dressing up as a mermaid for one Halloween.

Remembered falling off a high pool ladder at her mother's friend's house-blood cutting a river down her leg.

When Sashor seemed to be done with his questions, she asked, "Do you think it's possible we'll start to remember? Like in a year or even ten?" Because she didn't want to find herself, a decade from now, in that Adirondack chair, surrounded by fluffy, raked piles of red and yellow leaves, suddenly remembering the horrors of her lost childhood. That would ruin the scene entirely.

"I'm honestly not sure," Sashor said. "There was a famous case of something called transient global amnesia. A man who just turned up at a Burger King one day and had no idea how he'd gotten there or who he was. He had a handful of vague memories about his life, but no one ever came forward to ID him.

"That is really depressing." She wondered whether Tammy would have come to claim her at Burger King if she'd had to. "Is that what you think we have?"

She watched Sashor.

Counted his blinks.

One.

Two.

Three.

"No"-his eyes wide open and unblinking now-"I mention it only as an example of how complex and unpredictable these kinds of retrieval disorders can be."

"Retrieval disorder," she repeated, thinking that was a good term to describe the situation with the object inside her, too.

There was still no, well, movement.

Sashor said, "It's possible the memories are still there and that your brain just can't access them."

"Eleven years' worth of memories?"

Tried really hard then.

To retrieve.

Like with a long arm.

"Well, you have to remember that the average sixteen-year-old only has a limited number of memories of the last eleven years of their life as well."

Now she felt her own blink. "How many?"

376.

4,567.

1,111.

6,984.

786.

7,493.

3,049.