Page 4 of That's Not My Name

He leaves the room, and I readjust the blanket around myshoulders. The wool prickles against my neck but I can’t muster enough energy to care. Between the blanket and the sweatshirt, I’ve created a cocoon of heat around me, but I still can’t stop shivering.

Bowman returns with a fresh icepack. I carefully press it against my hairline. It stings but dulls the throbbing.

He pulls his notepad from his pocket and sits. “Okay, so let’s talk. I want to go on the record and say you’re not in any kind of trouble. I only want to figure out what happened to you out there.”

How could he know if I’m in trouble or not if neither of us have any clue where I came from? I could have stabbed someone in the face, and he’d have no idea. “You and me both.”

His brow furrows. “You don’t have any memory at all? Nothing before waking up in the ditch?”

I shake my head. “I thought I saw hands reaching for me, but I might have been spooked by the dark.”

He writes on his pad. “Do you know how old you are?”

“Nope.”

“What about family? Can you tell me who your parents are?”

I stare at the clock on the wall, watching the second hand tick around. “No.”

“Okay. You look young enough to still be in school. Do you remember its name? Maybe the mascot? A phone number we can call? Anything?”

I shrug again. “I don’t know.”

“Did you run away?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Couldyou have been in a car accident?”

I let out the most epic sigh. How many times do I have to say it before “I can’t remember” clicks in his brain?

When I don’t respond, he frowns and taps his pen on his chin. “Okay. New plan. I’ll be right back.” He disappears into the main office and reappears a minute later with a laptop. “To be honest, this is way above my pay grade. I basically write speeding tickets. I put in a call to my boss, but he probably won’t answer until morning when the precinct reopens, and I don’t want to wait that long to start getting you some answers.”

That makes two of us.

“So let’s do what we can in the meantime. Since you have no ID, we’ll search missing person reports, first here in town and then expand our reach. Someone must be missing you, and your face could be here in the database attached to a name and contact info for your family. It might take us a while but finding out who you are is the first step to finding out what happened. So let’s see what we can dig up, hmm?”

I nod, and he starts typing.

We spend the next hour sifting through files. We weed out the locals almost immediately. There’s only one missing person in town, and it’s some old Santa-looking man who “disappeared” while barhopping. Bowman makes some comment about having to track down that guy every other month, then moves on to the county’s missing list. Turns out Alton is about halfway up the Oregon coast.

I wait for any of this to feel familiar, but it doesn’t. I can’t even tell him if I live in this state. How messed up is that?

I mostly sit and drink my hot chocolate. He convinces me to drink another cup and eventually the sandwich he packed for his night shift.

“Well, you’re definitely not eleven, so this isn’t you,” Bowman mumbles at about one thirty in the morning. He clicks to another listing and squints at the screen.

I wonder how long we’re going to keep this up. At some point, Ihave to leave this place, right? The thought fills me with dread. Where would I even go?

“What happens if you can’t figure out who I am?” I ask.

He looks up with his kind lemur eyes. “You have nice clothes—if you look past the blood. Name-brand shoes. You’re in good health. You don’t appear to have been living on the streets. You must belong to someone. We’ll either find your people, or they’ll find you. We may have to kick this up to a more-equipped precinct in the morning though. This is a small office for a small town. We don’t have the same resources as the larger stations. I have to sift through these reports one at a time, and I’ve barely worked through half the missing persons in this county, much less the state or beyond.”

I nod. That makes sense. This whole office is basically an open space with two desks, this conference room, a short hallway with bathrooms, a break room with a copy machine, and a holding cell.

A loud bang comes from the front of the precinct. I jump out of my chair and into the corner of the room.

Officer Bowman peers though the doorway and turns back with his hands out, palms facing me. A gesture clearly meant to calm the spooked animal in front of him. Someone’s knocking on the front door. “You’re safe. Nobody’s going to hurt you here.”

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