Page 24 of This Love
* * *
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.
