Page 1 of Forget Me Not
PROLOGUE
I dream of you sometimes.
Erratic and impulsive, just like in life, I never know when you might show up. When I might close my eyes, attempt to lose myself in the merciful black, only for your face to click into existence like an intrusive thought. Like an unwelcome visitor, your foot wedged in the door, coercing your way inside my mind the way you always did.
The dream, though. It’s always the same. Walking into the bathroom at night, bare feet cold on the slick white tile. All the lights off as I stare at my reflection in the vanity mirror—only it’s you I see, not me. It’s you: haunted, strange, features murky like old bathwater, rippled by time and the lukewarm memories. Eyes like sea glass, foggy and unfocused. The kind we used to collect at the beach. You’re eighteen in my dream, the age you were when you disappeared. Forever young, eternally perfect, preserved in amber like an ancient relic. No matter when you come to me, though, always, every time, you stare at me and I stare back. Always, everytime, I see your face instead of my own. Every tilt of the head, every twist of the neck, like the mirror is glass and you’re right there, right in front of me. Twenty-two years spent trapped on the other side.
Mocking me, miming my movements. Unattainable yet somehow still within reach.
I just wish I knew what you were thinking. I wish I had access to that beautiful brain of yours so I could wade through the folds of it and finally understand.
So I could dissect it, dissect you: Natalie Campbell, my beguiling big sister.
Instead, in my dream, I extend my fingers and you extend them right back. I reach out to touch you, to prove to myself that you’re still real, but before I can get to you, before I can feel your skin on mine, you turn to fog in my grip and waft away like the wind.
CHAPTER 1
Sounds of the city slither into the dark bubble of my apartment: cars coughing awake, the impatient honk of a rush-hour horn. I’m listening in the way one might listen to a late-night siren shrieking down the street, a neighbor’s angry whispers seeping through the walls. Detached, distant, just barely conscious enough to register that it’s early evening, I think, judging by the string of orange light leaking through the crack in my curtains. The overwhelming smell of garlic that permeates my apartment whenever the Chinese restaurant beneath my building gets their dinner rush.
My phone is buzzing across the coffee table again and I try to ignore it but the sound is incessant, pesky as a mosquito, so I roll over on my couch and glance at the screen, a cascade of text messages staring straight back.
Helloooo? Claire?
Are you alive?
I gaze at the words, guilt licking the back of my neck for ignoring Ryan like this. I don’t really want to talk to him right now, I don’t want to talk to anyone, but at the same time, I know I owe him a response. He didn’t do anything wrong.
No
I type at last, flipping onto my back before dropping the phone on my chest.
That’s too bad
he promptly replies.
I was just starting to like you.
Despite my mood, it elicits a smile.
Where are you?
he asks as I glance around my living room, wincing at the takeout cartons and cloudy glasses. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it’s starting to smell a little sour in here. Like old laundry and self-loathing. I should probably take out the trash.
Home
I say, watching as an ellipsis appears and disappears. Ryan, apparently, trying to decide how to respond.
So you’re not coming?
I stare at the screen, attempting to decipher what exactly he means when the sting of understanding shoots through my chest followed by a deep wave of shame.
“Shit,” I mutter, finally realizing why he’s been calling, texting, no doubt waiting for my arrival at the bar down the street. It’s Saturday, which means his party is tonight. A party to celebrate his recent promotion.
A party that’s been planned for over a month now, one I promised I’d attend.
I sigh, pushing the heels of my palms into my eyes. Then I reach for my phone again, ready to tap out some half-hearted excuse when it buzzes in anticipation, beating me to it.
It would mean a lot if you did.
