Page 27 of Forget Me Not
She was quiet, teeth digging into her bottom lip as she thought of just how little she knew. It was embarrassing, really. Her lack of experience. Her entire existence whittled down to this one small town. All the same people in all the same places.
“Society is a trap,” he continued, eyes on the ceiling. The ripping fabric and smears of black smoke. “A cage they use to corral and control. Independence is the only true form of freedom. You know that, right? You understand that?”
She thought of her parents, her teachers. The passages she recited like clockwork each night, all of it beaten into her as indisputable fact.
“Of course,” she said, immediately hearing the uncertainty in her voice.
They both fell quiet, no movement between them except for the occasional plume of warm, thick breath. Then she heard him sigh—a deep, disappointed sound—before he reached out his hand, trailing his finger across her cheek.
“I’ve known so many girls like you. Girls who are lonely, girls who are lost.”
She felt a catch in her throat, ashamed he had picked up on it so easily. The very essence of her as something aimless and adrift.
She hadn’t known it was that obvious.
“But Iseeyou,” he continued, his hand moving down her throat before pushing a finger deep into her chest. “I see who you are. At your core.”
“I know you do,” she said as she felt a sharp pain between her ribs—but it was a good pain. The kind of pain she sometimes felt when they came together, an aching pleasure that felt so intense, she thought her body might tear in two. She had never known anyone like him. He was a mirror, a pane of smooth glass that reflected back her own insecurities. Liquid smoke that seeped inside her so quickly, filling in her hollow grooves.
Marcia squeezed his fingers, watching as Mitchell smiled in the dark. His breath warm as he leaned in close. Then he cupped her cheek with his free hand, his thumb rubbing against her smooth skin.
“You’re ready,” he said, a conviction in his voice she didn’t quite understand.
“Ready for what?” she asked, eyebrows bunching as she watched him turn back around, staring at the ceiling as if talking to himself.
“To meet the others.”
CHAPTER 17
It’s early morning and I’m standing outside, watching the sun rise slow over the water. The color trickling into the cotton-candy clouds like the slow bloom of a flower as it turns its face toward the light.
There’s a mug of coffee pushed hot in my hands and I inhale it slowly, the bitter smell of the beans keeping my breath soft and steady. The air is dewy, but my eyes are dry, every flip of lids feeling like sandpaper scratching the surface.
I stifle a yawn, pushing my hand flush to my mouth. I slept terribly last night.
Lying in bed, not nearly as exhausted as I was the first time I collapsed onto those sheets, I had noticed that the mattress was hard, metal springs stabbing the flesh of my back. The quilt was scratchy, the pillows limp, but it was the diary that kept me awake. I had stayed up reading for entirely too long, all of Marcia’s memories so vivid and real it felt like cracking open her skull and dippinginto her brain. Wading through the murky inner workings of an eighteen-year-old girl.
I look down at the water now, the tips of my shoes at the edge of the dock as I stare down at my own reflection. Then I kick a pebble over the ledge, the rippling liquid twisting my features into a face that appears distorted and strange.
I turn around and start my walk back, eyes on the guesthouse and my mind on the diary safely tucked into the back of the desk. Earlier this morning, after hours spent reading through my hosts’ most intimate moments, I had started to feel like something of a voyeur. A Peeping Tom at the edge of their window, helping myself to their private lives. I had read about Marcia losing her virginity, recounting every subsequent encounter in more detail than I have any right to know. She had seemed so young, so naïve, that even though she had been eighteen—technically legal, a certifiable adult—it felt wrong imagining the things they did together, her mind more immature than her body itself.
I lift the coffee to my lips, draining it completely as I will my brain to stay awake. Of course, I’m still interested in all that I’m reading. There’s still so much I want to know. The diary is hundreds of pages, every single one filled front to back, and I’m tempted to keep going, to finish the whole thing… but at the same time, it’s starting to feel wrong, finding it all out like this.
I’m starting to wonder if I should justask,learn more about them the regular way.
I’m getting ready to head inside when a gust of wind whips off the water, a strange new scent traveling with it. I lift my nose, inhaling deeply as I try to place it. It isn’t pluff mud, that familiar odor of curdling decay. Instead, it smells like something rancid and sour.
It smells, I realize, like death that’s fresh.
I step off the dock before walking toward the edge of the water,the scent getting stronger the closer I get. The bank is peppered with plants, bushy shrubs and swaying reeds, and my eye catches on something red in the distance. A tuft of fur blowing in the briny breeze.
I squint, realizing it’s an animal, maybe a fox, lying motionless on the rim of the marsh. It’s definitely dead, and I’m still staring at its limp little body when a noise from behind makes me jump.
I twist around, recognizing the slap of the screen door from the main house behind me. Marcia is on the porch now, making her way to one of the gliders and easing herself gently down. She’s in a white bathrobe, that same braid draped over her shoulder, and I raise my arm to wave in her direction—but instead of smiling or waving back, all she does is stare straight ahead. Almost as if she can’t see me at all.
I feel a twist in my chest, a subtle unease about how she hasn’t spoken a single word since I got here. She’s barely even acknowledged my existence… although maybe I caught her at a bad time. She seemed out of it that first night, groggy like I had woken her up, so I decide to walk over now, wondering if maybe this is my chance.
I close the distance in less than a minute, climbing the porch stairs two at a time.
