With my parents’ back-and-forth, I almost can’t hear the waiting-room music today.
The doctor arrives then, holding not an X-ray but several pieces of paper. “Thanks for your patience.” He smiles before sitting across the desk from us. “Your scan looks perfect. Even with the two procedures, there doesn’t seem to be anything of concern. There are no lesions; there’s no irregular activity. I think at this point we just want to monitor your symptoms—the sleeping, the appearance of the boy, any headaches, that kind of thing. But as far as we can see, your brain looks healthy.”
“Thank God.” Dad sighs again.
“So what’s the problem, then?” Mom asks, not ready to be relieved yet.
“Well,” the doctor says, a thoughtful expression on his face, “it’s hard to say. It’s hard to say if it evenisa problem.”
“You said you’ve never had this happen to a patient,” Momsays.
“That’s true.” The doctor nods. “I don’t know if you know much of our history, but Overton started primarily to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the key symptoms of PTSD is re-experiencing the traumatic event, whether through flashbacks or spontaneous memories. When you think about it, reliving things that have happened is not just associated with severe trauma; it’s something we all do, and depending on how we are built, we can do that to different, sometimes clinical extents. So when it becomes a source of distress or impairment, that’s when we treat it. We target the memory itself.”
I can’t help myself—I have to interrupt. “Okay, but Rory wasn’t just one memory. He was alive for eight months. How did you erase all that time if I still remember things from that year, from around the time he’d have been alive?”
“Good question. The answer is a little technical, so bear with me,” he says. “You see, every memory has a focal point. The procedure completely removes all memories where the person you want to erase is the focal point—where your primary attention was directed toward that person when the memory was formed. In memories where the person we’re erasing is part of the background, a secondary figure, the memory simply gets a little hazy. For example, you might remember what was said, but not who said it. Or you’ll remember the gist of an event but not specific details about it.”
This explains why my memories around eleven are so hazy and vague. Why I don’t remember my mother being pregnant. Why I don’t remember arguments between my parents after my younger brother died or them taking down his pictures. I only remember that suddenly things were changing and I couldn’t wrap my head around why. Not all the memories of my life in the time frame surrounding Rory’s life are absent; some are just cloudy.
Dr. Overton continues to speak now. “My father believes—always has—that memory is like a string of DNA. Linear building blocks, linked to one another to form an entire molecule. He’s going to beveryinterested in your case.”
We gape at him as he keeps talking. “My belief—no empirical evidence, mind you—has always been different from my father’s. I’m not sure memories are particularly distinct. One common theory is that memory is not localized in the brain but distributed among various neural circuits. Which means that even when we are able to isolate specific events, specific memories, the other components accompanying them, such as spatial recognition, emotional memory, or even implicit memory, as the case may be…”
It’s only now that he has the sense to look up and realize he’s lost us. “Let’s try that again,” he says with a light chuckle. “I like chocolate granola bars way more than is good for me,” he says, pointing to a crumpled wrapper beside his computer. “Obviously, Irememberthem. I have a stored and existing recollection, a database of chocolate granola bars.”
I shoot my parents a skeptical look. Are they following this?
“And,” Dr. Overton continues, “if I wanted to forget granola bars, I could splice out every instance of ever having had one. Every time I tasted one, every time I saw one. Every memory where a granola bar is the focal point, and every memory where it is part of the background—everything. And theoretically, I should not know what a granola bar is.”
None of us speak, but he goes on.
“The possibility stands, though, that if I were ever to taste a chocolate granola bar again, even after the splicing, it might feel familiar. And it’s not a failure of the technique or equipment or my mind or any nameable source; it’s just one conceivable way the brain works. So I might forget the instances—allinstances—of eating a granola bar, but perhaps not the experience.” He looks right at me. “I think this might be what has happened in your case, Addie. You’ve forgotten every specific instance you shared with this boy, but not the experience. The million-dollar question is, Why now? My first guess would have been that the accident played a role—”
“I told you it started before,” I say, and Dr. Overton nods.
“Right. Well, that leaves us with a question: What could have happened to trigger your Memory?”
The room is silent, and I can hear Dr. Overton’s and my parents’ minds whirring at the possibilities.
For once, I think I might know the answer.
On the night I first saw the boy—before the bus crash—some of the music at the concert made me feel something I couldn’t place, something that felt like waking up.
But there’s no way I’m going to tell them that.
I don’t know why, but I think all this is because of a piece of music.
BEFORE
Mid-September
“Why does violin music always sound sosad?” Zach asks, glancing around the gym of Lyndale Community College, which tonight is a makeshift auditorium. Mrs. Dubois sent out an email to all her students, like she always does when there is a music event happening close by. She saw me from across the gym when Zach and I entered and was beaming and waving so wildly I could almost hear her bracelets clinking from all the way over here. As usual, I am the only one of her students who actually came.
I shift in one of the plastic chairs that line the whole back of the gym. “Classical music isn’t always sad. It’s expressive.”
“…-ly sad?” Zach says, but he’s grinning at me, his eyes playful. I smile back. My hand is wrapped in his, our fingers tangled around each other’s in a way that feels natural but still sends an inexplicable tremor along my arm, then throughout my body.
Ever since I asked him two nights ago whether he wanted to come with me, I’ve wavered between regret and doubt.
