Page 34 of Forget Me Not

I nod.

“And your friend, Cooper, she was already in there?”

I nod again. I keep nodding. Over and over because words, words are gone now. Just the flashes of memories. Her tiny voice telling me not to be scared. Her scrap of an old beach towel, the only blanket she had, and she still shared it with me. The smell. God, the smell. And the constant darkness...

“Gunnar.” His voice cuts through the chaos and I snap my head back to look at him. “What happened next? How did you guys get out?”

I swallow down the sick and mucus clogging my throat, forcing everything else down with it, back to the pit of my stomach, the core of my being, where that darkness still lives, never sleeping, never at peace.

“She didn’t. I did. Monday morning, I was sitting back in school, because missing class would have been a problem for ‘Mr. Follow the Rules’ Ray. I told my teacher what happened the second I walked in. I was sitting in the back of the social worker’s van and headed to a new home before first recess. Cooper was too. Because she wastroubledandunsafefor the other children,” I drawl. What a fucking joke. I stare at my fingers. My thumb’s bleeding from where I was chewing on the nail. Or where there used to be one. I wipe it on the side of my pants, smearing a long red streak along my thigh.

“No one believed you,” Mr. B says quietly.

“Nope.” I sniff loudly. Not because I’m about to bawl my eyes out. I’m not. But this shit makes me feel like I can’t breathe. Makes everything feel tight and constricted and clogged up and the sniffing just happens, like some instinct to make sure I can still take in air.

“They’d believe you now,” he offers. It’s bullshit. We both know it.

“No one believes a screw-up,” I remind him, grinning, because it’s either laugh or die around here.

“I do.”

“You’re the first.” I sit up to match his pose, elbows on the table, hands folded, leaning forward. “Five months. That’s how long I lived there. Five months and I never met her. Never had any clue she fucking existed. Until that Friday afternoon in the closet.” I hold his stare. “Tell me how to deal with that. How to accept it. Because I can’t. But I’ll damn sure screw up as often as it takes to make sure she never gets locked in a fucking closet ever again.”

Reed

Present Day

One hour. A one-fucking-hour drive. That’s how little it took to cross the distance between Cooper and where I’ve been living the last seven years. I don’t know how to wrap my brain around this anymore. I don’t know how to make sense of her being here this whole time and my never knowing, my never being told by anyone. Worse yet, being lied to. But it stops now. Today. Starting with my sister.

“Kerri!” I shout her name loudly while I proceed to pound on her door. The bell would probably be more effective but also far less satisfying at this moment. Therefore, I keep pummeling away at the wood with my fist until she answers.

“Reed? Oh, my God!” She completely ignores my attack on her entry way and instead comes flying at me with outstretched arms. Within seconds, she’s a blubbering mess. “I was so worried about you. Where the hell have you been?”

I don’t hug her back. I can’t. “I went to find Cooper.”

Instantly, her arms slide down my neck and she takes a step back. She looks scared.

“Guess that answers the question of whether you knew or not,” I sneer.

“I can explain,” she says hastily, her fingers twisting at her stomach. Kerri’s dramatic as it is, but this is sincere. She’s nervous. She has reason to be.

“I’d love to hear this.” I don’t spare her any sarcasm.

She turns over her shoulder then glances back at me. She doesn’t want to do this outside for the whole world to see. Appearances, my family lives and breathes for those.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know, just please come inside,” she begs, “Let me make you some tea and we can sit down and talk.Reallytalk.”

“Whatever.” I brush past her into the house and don’t stop until I’m in her kitchen. I can hear her shut the door and start to walk in my direction but as slow as she’s moving, she’d get here faster if she hitched a ride on a freaking turtle. “You’re my fist stop, Kerri. Hurry it up. I’ve got more places to hit before heading back to the coast for dinner tonight.”

She shows up in the doorway. “You’re going back to see her later?” She looks surprised.

“Yeah, Kerri. I plan on seeing her a lot from now on. I have seven years ofnotseeing her to make up for.”

Her head goes down as she passes me on her way to the stove. “I know you’re probably confused right now, Reed. But you have to know, everyone did what they thought was best.” She fills the kettle with water and places it on the burner closest to her. She looks up toward me. “Best for both of you.”

“What?” I shake my head. I can’t even believe she’s saying this. She can’t possibly believe that. “How exactly was it best for me to be separated from the woman I love? How was it best for me to be lied to? To be denied the one single solitary memory I had of my life before?”

She cringes. “You have to understand what it was like, Reed. Can you imagine what that did to Mom? You waking up and not recognizing her? The woman who gave birth to you, who raised you? But asking for a girl you barely knew, spent maybe half a year of your life with? A girl who nearly wrecked your whole future? Mom was devastated.”

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