But I did not find any of this reassuring. In my muddled, throbbing mind, this was not proof of my ordinariness but the magnifying glass under which the strangeness of this world was clarified for me.
“Memory deletion?” I echoed, breathing so fast I felt faint, my mind dwindling back into darkness. “What are you talking about? Why is this happening to us?”
“It’s not happeningtoyou,” explained Kai in a measured, patient tone of voice. “It’s probably something you requested and then, for some reason, forgot about.”
Trembling all over, dumbfounded, I demanded, “What do you mean I requested it?”
“It’s one of the procedures you can get done during your assessment. If you have any memories you don’t like, you can choose to delete them, so your mind is free to create new ones. It helps some people unburden. You know how information can be overstimulating at times? Well, maybe you needed a clean slate, or maybe you—” Something in my expression must have revealed the magnitude of my horror, for he stopped himself abruptly and leapt from the sofa. “Listen, speculating will only make things worse. You’ve been through enough as it is. Let’s just go to the Center and get some answers.”
Part of me knew he was right. But for some unfathomable reason the mere thought of going back to the Center appalled me,physicallyrepulsed me, my muscles ossifying with resistance.
“Kai,” I choked out, “don’t you think it’s strange that I don’t remember asking for this procedure?”
“I do think it’s strange,” he agreed. “That’s why we need to go—”
“No.”
“Please, listen to me—”
“I don’t want to go there.”
“Anya—”
“You cannot make me!” I shouted, my voice like a bell, struck and resounding.
A beat passed. Then another. Kai’s lips parted and shut, his eyes flashing. “Fuck, Anya,” he sighed. “Of course I won’tmakeyou.”
I felt so solid then. Solid and eroded. Ancient piece of stone pulled up from the earth. Something without a name. Something too disfigured by the passage of time to ever have a name again. I could not understand what was happening to me. I couldn’t make sense of all the ugly feelings in my chest. The anger, the fear, the guilt. Where had these things come from? From what unholy grave were they unburied? Was this who I really was deep in my soul?
I squeezed my eyes shut, choking down yet another sob. “Kai,” I whispered, “am I going insane?”
“No,” was his immediate, irrefutable answer.
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
Through the liquid darkness of my closed eyelids, I sensed him stir closer, calling to me even before he uttered the words. “Anya, will you look at me for a moment?”
Slowly, laboriously, I lifted my head and let him see me as I was. An open wound of a person.
His eyes were soft, but his voice was sharp like the edge of a knife as he asked, “Do you think they did this to you without your consent?”
Frightened, shrinking at the mere thought, I whispered, “I don’t know.”
“Do you want me to go to the Center and find out?”
“No,” I gasped. “Don’t go there.”
He ran his hands down his face before letting them drop resignedly at his sides. “What can I do?”
But there was nothing either of us could do but reach out to the people of the Center. They were the ones with all the answers. They were our point of connection. To reject them was to become disconnected. To reject them was to notbeat all.
With a shudder, I murmured, “I want to go home. Will you give me a ride?”
Kai nodded, releasing another quiet sigh between his lips. “Yes, of course.”
And despite everything, all the dark inward terror, all the questions left unanswered, all this unbearable tension building between us, he still managed to affect me with his collectedness, his solidness, his strong physical presence. It was a superficial soothing, I knew, like throwing a blanket over an unmade bed and calling it tidy, but I could not resist its influence.
