Page 87 of Amnesty

Holy shit, she doesn’t mean that hole in the ground, does she?

“I’m ready to spend more time with you.” She finished.

She thought her home was with me. Oh, that stung. Like saltwater in a deep cut. She looked small and wounded in the center of the bed, buried beneath my hoodie and gazing at me with wide brown eyes. I was her home.

I wouldn’t tell her otherwise, even though I knew she couldn’t move in with me. It would break Amnesia.

“What do you want to do first?” I asked, shifting the subject. “See Loch Gen? Go to the bakery? Go shopping?”

Her eyes clouded over, and I worried I said something wrong. “Is everyone in town talking about me?”

I couldn’t lie. I leaned close, as though I were telling a secret, and made sure my dimples were on display. “You know the people in Lake Loch. They love a good rumor.”

She smiled. “They always did.”

“Ms. Scarlet is still obsessed with apples.”

She giggled. It was a pure sound that made me feel everything was going to be okay.

“Do you need anything?” I asked. “What can I bring you?”

“I don’t need anything but you,” she said. After an awkward silence, she went on. “I thought about you all the time. I wondered if you thought of me. He always told me I was his… but I remember Eddie. I remember I was yours first.”

I thought I’d waited to hear those words for twelve years. Hearing that, seeing her… it’s what I’d wanted more than anything. I’d thought it would fix everything.

I was so wrong.

So utterly mistaken.

I felt almost gross hearing her say them. Not because I loved Amnesia. Not because I didn’t love Sadie (I did in my own way). Because I was naïve.

That didn’t fix anything. It almost made everything worse.

I didn’t know what to say or how to react. It seemed everything I could say was wrong. She waited and watched me, openly wanting an answer I didn’t have. Carefully, I chose what to say. “You were—no,aremy best friend. Of course I thought about you. Every day.”

She nodded. “I was yours,” she whispered again.

“You aren’t anyone’s Sadie. You belong to yourself. You have control over your own life.”

Her brow furrowed as if she didn’t quite understand. As if she didn’t know how to be in charge of herself.

“But I…” Her eyes lifted, confusion swimming at the surface, and I saw tears about to fall.

I went to her, hugging her close. She put her arms around me and held tight. I stroked my hand down her long, soft hair until I felt her body relax.

We sat like that for a while. The entire time, I marveled about how I’d imagined this moment a million times, and each of those million, I never once imagined it to feel the way it did now.

Sadie wasn’t my future. Maybe she never was. Maybe she was just a catalyst, an unfortunate victim of life bringing me to where I really belonged. With whom I really belonged.

It wasn’t fair. Life rarely was.

After a while, Sadie pulled back but took my hand and held on. “You thought she was me, didn’t you?”

“Everyone thought so,” I said, knowing she meant Amnesia. “At least at first.”

“That’s why you love her,” she murmured. “Because it was supposed to be me.”

Everything inside me revolted, sickened. It was a stronger reaction than even I expected because, yes, it was true. I was first drawn to Am because of Sadie. Because I thought she was her.

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