Page 129 of Amnesty

Just before I made it to the porch, a blur burst out from inside, causing the door to slam against the side of the house.

“Eddie!” she yelled hysterically. “Help me!”

I barely had time to brace myself before she flung herself into my arms and practically crawled up my body. She trembled like a leaf, her face buried into my neck. Long strands of silky hair blew out over my bare shoulder. Instinctively, my arms locked around her, offering solace and protection.

Water dripped from my hair, down into my eyes.

“She’s trying to kill me,” she said against my neck. “Please protect me. Don’t let me get hurt again.”

“Shh.” I soothed as movement in the doorway caught my attention and a figure staggered slowly outside. Her hand was pressed against her side, her shoulders hunched. She was hurt, bleeding.

“Amnesia,” I whispered.

Sadie pulled back from my arms, her hands still clasped behind my neck. “Yes, Amnesia, Eddie,” she answered. “She’s trying to kill me. She wants to keep us apart.”

And then I realized something.

The lake wasn’t friendorfoe. Not to me.

It was its own entity, an omega.

It had its own set of rules and balances. Its own system of justice and punishment.

It took Sadie but gave me Amnesia.

Then Sadie came back. I had one too many of its secrets.

Lake Loch might have warned me, but it wasn’t without consequence. It wasn’t without blame.

I was going to have to choose. Here and now. Past or present.

Sadie or Amnesia…

The girl I lost or the girl I found.

I knew not to look in the yard, yet my eyes lingered there anyway.

But not at what I knew to avoid.

No, there was something even more horrific than my memories out there in the dark.

The broken make the most conniving. Perhaps because they were once victims, because devious behavior became so normal it developed into reality. A person gets very good at becoming something if they live it long enough.

Hadn’t I gotten good at being Sadie?

There was a difference, though, wasn’t there? A difference between being something because you didn’t know any better and being something because it was all you knew. Because it was a learned behavior.

Actually, that didn’t sound that different.

And it made me feel worse.

My head was throbbing. I felt confused. All my thoughts were jumbled, and the vision of Eddie—a bright spot in the dark yard—with Sadie wrapped around him as she begged for protection from me was one of my deepest fears.

Watching Eddie turn away from me. Watching him decide all he ever saw in me was Sadie sat right below remembering my past on the checklist of things I never wanted to do.

Here I was, though, staring it in the face.

I trusted him wholeheartedly. The words he whispered to me in the dark of the night, in the dawn of the morning, even in the stockroom in the middle of day, swirled around inside me, giving me hope.

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