Chapter 13
Imust have fallen asleep because when I wake up, the room is dark and quiet. No light outside my window, no clinking of dishes beyond the door.
My eyes search for the alarm clock, and when I find it, I see that it’s three a.m. I’m tired, but I move to switch on the light. My day is a blur, a pile of unsorted emotions.
I try to swallow, my throat dry, when I see my coat folded over the edge of my bed. Mercy must have brought it in here after dinner.
I jump out of bed and search the pockets frantically. When my fingers close around the journal, I exhale, relieved. But soon that relief is replaced with anxiety. A frightened curiosity.
For years I’ve watched Monroe take notes in this small bound book, never really wondering why. But now I know that it could hold the key to my survival. And that he had it all along.
Taking the book into bed with me, I ease under the covers, holding it tight. I turn to the first page and begin to read.
12/5
Lourdes never showed up for our appointment. When I went to speak with her husband, he didn’t remember her. Looking over my last journal, I can see the pattern. It seems once the Forgotten get toward the end of their life span, they become less memorable. Almost like the people who they touch have short-term memory loss. And their families start to forget little things, little bits of their lives, until they are erased entirely.
During our last visit, Lourdes told me that her husband didn’t remember their honeymoon. He claimed that they never had one. She pressed him and tried to find the pictures to prove it, but they were gone. Instead her husband said they stayed home, although he couldn’t remember exactly what they did. So she stopped going back to her house. She gave up.
The memories will become foggy—like the person never existed. The writings, pictures... all gone. It seems that all that’s left behind is space. Empty spaces or the tricks that the mind uses to fill the time. Filling it with familiar things, almost like how you can drive home without ever having to think of where to turn.
Lourdes’s husband asked me if I was some kind of freak when I showed up at their place. He didn’t remember his wife, and I’m just glad they didn’t have children. I’ll miss her.
3/8
Today I went to see Theresa but she was gone. Her room at the hospital was empty and the nurse couldn’t remember ever having treated her. Again, I’m the only one to hold her memories, and it hurts. She was my friend. I feel lost without her.
She never had children, which is another common thread among her kind. They do not reproduce. There’s no one to remember them but me. And eventually they all withdraw from society when the forgetting becomes too painful, until they disappear from it completely.
I’ve asked myself a million times, Why me? Why am I the one who sees them? From all of my research with religions and early societies, I’ve learned that the other Seers throughout history were thought to be clairvoyant, or ill. But I’m no fortune-teller. I’m cursed with knowing ghosts. I wish I could meet another Seer, but they’re hard to find. I have yet to meet someone else like me, even though I know from the scriptures that they’re out there. Searching for their lights to guide. I’m waiting for my last Forgotten. And when he or she comes, the light will be different. Stronger. It will let me go. I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to be free of this.
I start flipping through the pages, trying to find out where I come in. I find passages about the Forgotten crossing over, the brilliant burst of light as they fall from some high place so that they can scatter. How it’s themost beautiful thing in the world. But I’m starting to hate the word “beautiful.” There’s nothing beautiful about me. And then I find a page that makes me gasp.
8/12
I met her today. Onika Nowak was standing in front of the college when I walked by. As she and I exchanged a glance, a woman in an old Chevy drove up and yelled to her in Russian. She pretended to not hear the woman, but I suspect it’s her mother. I could tell by the way she ignored her. It was kind of cute. Onika is in my class and she’s beautiful and blond, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. She is
The page stops, likes he’s cut off mid-sentence. Like something important had happened, stopping him. I read over the entry again. And then again.
A memory floods back and I can hear Onika tell me that Monroe used to be her Seer. “Oh my God,” I murmur. She didn’t cross over. She’s still here, which means that Monroedoesknow how to stop this. I start shaking with the first real possibility of it.
My heart pounds wildly in my chest as I turn the page.
8/24
Onika and I are going out tonight. She said she’d eat Italian, Thai, or anything that’s not Russian. I think it’s because of her mother. I don’t blame her. Onika makes me feel normal again. I think I’m falling in love with her.
From there, the journal jumps wildly. Some pages are blank. Some are just one-sentence bits of nonsense. By the next full entry, nearly three months had passed.
11/30
It’s happening. I don’t know how I didn’t see it sooner, how I didn’t know she was a Forgotten. I can’t lose her like the others. I have to stop this.
My eyes widen. Monroe was so insistent that there was no cure, but he had tried for Onika. It worked, so why not for me? Doesn’t he care about me, too?
The entries turn into formulas, medication combinations, and lists of names. It’s becoming frantic, impersonal. I start blazing through the pages, looking for the result.
1/6
