Page 49 of Forget Me Not
Marcia hadn’t even heard her open the door.
A laugh erupted from somewhere down the hall and Marcia watched as the steam dissipated before her, the words on the mirror fading away as she stared at her own reflection. It was a bit jarring, the face that stared back. All the changes etched into her skin; the contours of her body so foreign and strange. She had lost weight, definitely, her hips protruding into two sharp right angles, her arms even bonier than they were before, though her stomach seemed bloated in that malnourished sort of way. Her legs like stilts, long and skinny and awkward under her gaze. It had barely been a month since she had come home that last night, Lily’s suggestion that she could stay with them festering like an infection as she sat in the camper with her hand on the handle, her eyes trained on her house in the distance and her mind on her parents just inside. She had been thinking about the routine that awaited her the second she stepped through the front door, the reliable tedium of her everyday life, and the fact that Mitchell would soon drop her off for the very last time.
The truth—a truth she had been doing her best to avoid—was that she would be graduating soon, in less than six weeks, and once that happened, that would be it. Her small semblance of freedom would come to a close. She wouldn’t be able to get away with it anymore. She would lose the only real life she had ever actually known and the thought of having to give it all up was suddenly so suffocating it felt like lopping off a limb, an amputation so severe she might not survive it. So, she made up her mind, creeping throughthe house after her parents went to sleep, adrenaline twitching the tips of her fingers as she tossed a few items into a bag.
A spare dress, a sweater. The diary she kept tucked in the back of her dresser, every single detail of the last few months written about with meticulous care. Her father would find it, no doubt about that. He would find it and he would read it so she had taken that, too, stuffing it into the bottom of her duffel before slipping out the window for the very last time.
She blinked, the memory fading like the fog on the mirror as her pupils traced the borders of her naked frame. Then she leaned forward, rifling through cabinets as she looked for a towel.
She dried herself off, combing through her hair with her nails before getting dressed and stepping into the hall.
“Why do you do that?” she asked once she found Lily in the kitchen. She was sitting on a counter, legs absentmindedly kicking the cabinets.
“Do what?” she asked as Marcia stared at her silently, this girl with whom she now shared so much. She was fascinated by her, terrified of her. Envious of the way she carried herself; a liquidity to her movements like she had long ago stopped caring how she came across.
“You know what.”
Marcia walked deeper into the room, too comfortable in a home that wasn’t her own. Ever since she had moved onto the Farm, she had quickly come to learn that any time they left for supplies, they weren’t shopping in any real store; instead, they were shopping in houses, Montana waiting in the car outside as Lily perused through people’s belongings like she had broken into her own personal mall. At first, Marcia had been jumpy whenever she tagged along. She was in disbelief about how easy it was to get inside; that most people left their doors unlocked, others kept keys in the most obvious of places. Beneath doormats or inside of fake rocks, on the ledges ofwindows that were well within reach. Over time, though, she had learned to relax. People were at work, or in school, and they always hopped between towns, careful not to hit the same spot twice.
Still, there was something strange about the way Lily meandered around, flipping through closets and slipping rings on her fingers. Sauntering around in fur slippers two sizes too big. Not only that, but she went out of her way to move things slightly out of place in the process: a carton of milk left to spoil on the counter, the TV turned on when it had been off when they arrived. And she always scrawled her name somewhere—Lily was here—in the surface of a countertop, written in lipstick on a hallway mirror.
Now, staring at the girl as she sat on the counter, Marcia wondered if it had to do with her upbringing. The fact that she spent her life getting moved from place to place, never welcome for long enough to leave any real mark.
“Look what I found,” Lily responded, once again not bothering with a real answer.
Marcia cocked her head, watching as Lily dug her teeth into an apple, a drip of juice quivering on the curve of her chin.
“The fridge,” Lily directed, jerking her neck to the appliance beside her. Marcia walked toward it, reaching for the handle, when Lily’s voice rang out again. “On it, not in it.”
She stopped, hand hovering in the air as she took in all the magnets stuck to the surface. There were Polaroids and postcards, a short grocery list scribbled in pen—and then she caught sight of a familiar face, a face she hadn’t seen in almost two months.
“It’s Annie,” she said, grabbing the picture stuck to the center as she stared at this girl she so briefly knew. She looked more put together than she ever had at the Farm: split ends trimmed and grazing the bones of her shoulders, a new weight settled into her cheeks. “Did you know?” she added as she looked back up. “That this is her house?”
Lily just smiled, the rhythmic smack of her heels on the cabinets matching the pulse of Marcia’s heart in her ears.
She thought back to that day by the river, a strange sensation slipping through her stomach as she picked over the moment Lily declared the girl gone.
She wasn’t committed, she had whispered.To the family, to us.
At the time, the way Lily said it had made Marcia assume that wasn’t necessarily by choice—but now, now that she could see that Annie was okay, she found herself wondering why she had never even questioned the suggestion that she had been harmed. Instead, she had simply swallowed her guilt like she had always done, pushed it into the depths of her chest the same way she had when she snuck out her old window, slid her way into the back of that theater. Left her parents without so much as a note and settled into her new life at the Farm, every small step shedding a layer of the person she used to be like a serpent molting a too-small skin.
She stared at Lily, watching as the girl hopped off the counter before dropping her chewed-up core into the sink.
“Come on,” she said at last, plucking the picture from between Marcia’s grip before making her way toward the front door. “Montana’s waiting.”
CHAPTER 33
My flashlight clicks off, the room around me dreary and dim. There’s been a tangible shift in the air, another stretch of lost time I can’t account for as I let myself get wrapped up in Marcia’s old memories. Tales of her past devouring my present with an inexplicable strength.
I look down at my phone, the screen dead and the battery drained. Then I flip the book closed, dropping it onto the mattress before glancing out the window to find the rain still falling. Water coming down in vicious sheets I’m sure are flooding the marsh.
I slip out of bed, gooseflesh erupting across the skin of my legs as I pad my way to the other side of the room before tapping impatiently at the keys on my laptop. The power is still off. I’m not connected, I know I’m not, but my fingers are practically itching to pick back up on my search.
To try and make sense of these pieces that seem so disconnected, so impossibly hard to grasp.
I slap the lid closed, sliding open the desk drawer instead and staring at the gun stashed inside next to that sentence crudely etched in the dark. Then I hear a low rumble and glance out the window. There’s a figure making its way across the lawn, barely visible beneath the bloated gray clouds.
It’s hunched over, attempting to hide from the sideways rain. Beelining its way straight toward me.
