CHAPTER 1
Ava
The first time I lost all memory of Tucker, we had just met.
A nurse in pale pink scrubs led me to the disco room of the epilepsy ward of our children’s hospital, assuring me that the lights and dancing would help induce a seizure. Once the doctors had the data they needed, I could go home.
Colored starbursts cut through the semi-darkness, music pulsing from a speaker in the corner. A tall man in scrubs stood by the door and nodded at me as I stepped inside.
The nurse had told me the disco room would be swarming with other teen patients, but at first it appeared completely empty.
Then I saw him.
A boy leaned against the far wall, a mirrored ball spinning confetti bits of light across his face. White gauze fastened with blue tape covered the electrodes glued to his head.
The colors muted and changed, breaking my view of him into fragmented pieces like a puzzle not yet puttogether. Even so, I could tell he was close to seventeen, same as me.
I never got to meet boys my age. Or any boys. Mother made sure of that.
My fingers trailed along the textured wall, my head angled down to conceal my interest. Music blasted through the space, thrashing like a mechanical monster trying to escape. I didn’t recognize the song, but that wasn’t unusual. I wasn’t allowed television, movies, or the internet. My mother controlled my home environment completely.
But not here.
I paused to adjust the cluster of wires snaking from my scalp to a backpack on my shoulder. There was no point in getting to know this boy, even if I dared to approach. Once the seizure struck, everything would be lost. My favorite food. The books I loved. My entire history. Even my name.
The person I knew as myself would be wiped, and I’d be transparent as newly Windexed glass. Vulnerable, too. My hard-won toughness would be replaced with confusion. The next iteration of Ava might be meek. She might even enjoy her mother’s company, at least for a while.
I’d been through this before.
I stole another glance. The boy tapped a glowing white shoe. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me. We were supposed to dance, get overheated and tired. They needed data from our heads to flow down the wires to our backpacks. The disco room was the last resort for those of us whose brains weren’t cooperating. This boy was probably in the same boat.
We stood on opposite polarities, on the brink of the next terrible thing. Would we collapse at the same time, or would one bear witness to the other?
I began walking again. The two nurses remained near the door, one occasionally checking the bright rectangle of a phone. But they weren’t close to us, which meant I still had time.
Before today, I’d never known precisely when the erasure was coming. My seizures struck on their own schedule, often years apart. Scarcity was my condition’s only good point because it took weeks, sometimes months, to read my journals and reorient myself to the girl I once had been.
But this hospital visit was a planned reset. I’d prepared as best I could, spreading notes to myself throughout my room. My mother was undoubtedly searching for them while I was away, ready to remove any evidence of my past that she disliked. She had her reasons.
I left easy ones to fool her, placed between clothes in my suitcase or sticking out of books. But the good stuff would be impossible for her to find, words in Sharpie written along the edge of the shower curtain in the hospital bathroom. Others were bits of paper hidden in plain sight, tucked among the safety notices tacked on the bulletin board.
The absolutely critical information was written on my body, low enough on my belly to prevent easy detection. I’d been writing on myself since I was old enough to understand that I should.
Trust only this handwriting.
Find your notes.
Remember your life.
I moved within a few feet of the boy, and he looked right at me. I froze, not sure what I was doing. If I had no record of him, no notes or references, he’d be lost to me completely as quickly as he’d arrived.
But maybe that was good. I could live in this moment, only this very one.
His brown hair spilled out beneath the strips of gauze and covered the tops of his ears. I spotted a name stitched on an oval patch over the pocket of his shirt. I couldn’t read it from here, and I didn’t want to stare.
The song ended, and in the moment of quiet, I could almost hear his breathing. My heart thumped so loud it could have been the opening beats to the next melody.
But then another edgy pulse of notes filled the room, making my body vibrate.
