He is silent for a long moment before he exhales through his nose. He gives me a sad smile then, like he actually understands, genuinely feels for me.
“Addie, I wish I could, but I’m afraid I’m not in a position to do that,” he says.
“That’s not good enough,” I say, my voice rising. “All I hear about is how easy memory splicing is, how easy it is to take away the past. So it must be just as easy to bring it back. Saying you can’t do that is not good enough.”
I know I’ve crossed the line into disrespectful, but when I finish speaking, he looks shaken, not angry. His eyes are full of something like empathy, like conflicted feelings.
“Addison, I know you’ve been through a tough few days. I know you’re upset—and you are well within your rights to be. If I were in your shoes, well…” His voice fades out. “Do you know what I love about this job? What I love about our minds?”
Thankfully, he doesn’t wait for me to respond.
“I love the idea of us carrying around fragments of places and people and things we’ve experienced. It’s so unlikely and almost miraculous, when you think about it. All the things that matter stay with us. They take up space inside us. Sometimesoutsideus, too, I suppose.” He smiles at me then, and I know he’s talking about Memory Zach. The apparition I was seeing.
He runs his hands over his eyes, and I can see that this is something he has thought about a lot. “Every now and then,oftenin fact, I’m reminded that I’m not playing with neurons or electrodes or even memories. I’m playing with fragments of people’s lives, people’s hearts. And I don’t take that lightly. I really don’t.”
There’s a long silence between us then, and I take the opportunity to say, “So help me? Please?”
“I wish I could. I really, truly do. But we’ve never done a successful retrieval procedure. My father is working on it, but it’s years away. There’s nothing I can do.”
I bury my face in my hands.
Memory Zach is really gone. My brother is really gone.
And what was the point? What was the point of the last few weeks? Only to make me more aware of what I was missing, what I’ll never have?
How will I ever feel anything now that’s not incomplete or hollow or a shadow of what’s real?
How do I go back to dreaming of New York, making plans for college and the rest of my life, when massive chunks of it—of who I am—are gone forever?
How do I move forward?
All I have in place of my past is brokenness. This sadness that nothing can lift, a fog I can’t see through. This knowledge that my family lied to me for years and years, that I lied to myself. That I’m the reason my family crumbled. That if I had done something different, my little brother might still be alive.
I can’t take it.
It’s too much.
How do I move forward? That’s what I want. Tomove on—it’s, in a way, what I’ve always wanted. After Rory died. After Zach broke my heart.
It’s why I’ve been itching to leave Lyndale my whole life.
I want what’s next.
“Addie, I’m so very sorry,” Dr. Overton says, sounding like he means it.
I can’t stop shivering, but then a thought hits me.
I pull my fingers away from my face and look at him.
If there’s no way to bring back my memories, to fill this new and ugly void in my life, maybe there’s something else I can do.
“If you can’t bring them back,” I whisper, “can you take them away? For good?”
Now it’s not just my hands shaking; my voice is, too.
“What do you mean by ‘them?’ ” The line of concern down his forehead is even more etched now.
“Everything I’ve figured out. Everything starting from when the boy got on the bus—no,beforethat. I don’t want the Bach suite—the concert, either.”
