I wasn’t sure what I’d ordered. That was stupid. I’d pointed at some picture of a special drink and said I’d take that, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I hoped it wasn’t gross.
It was probably going to be gross.
Damn it.
The noise in the coffee shop was abrasively loud, and the guy behind me had been grumbling for me to hurry up, and I was still flustered from that girl.
It was stupid not to order something I actually wanted. Stupid to let myself get so flustered that I couldn’t think. I hated it when I did something stupid like that.
But I’d already paid. Now, I just had to wait and see what it would be. I glanced at the posters of drinks behind the counter. None of them looked good.
Dang it.
This coffee shop was huge with plenty of tables, and since it was attached to a bookstore, I loved studying here. My friend—Georgine—was meeting me here to study for our exam tomorrow. I’d been so distracted by going over my list of things to memorize before morning that I bumped into a girl on the street.
It was my fault. I totally got that, but she freaked out. She called me by a different name. Talked about my husband.
Husband?!
I wasn’t married.
But there was something about her that kept nagging at me. This little spot in the back of my mind that couldn’t brush off the encounter. There was something in her brown eyes, in the way she recognized me. It was making me question everything.
I wasn’t married.
Was I?
No. I would remember that. My mother would’ve told me if I was married.
Wouldn’t she?
Of course she would. I was being insane. There was no way she’d keep something like that from me.
And I wasn’t even dating anyone. Georgine kept trying to set me up with guys in our classes. After three really bad dates—and one completely horrible one—I was done with being set up entirely. I had better things to worry about than finding a boyfriend.
Like the girl who nearly knocked me down, and then freaked out—screaming in my face, asking where had I been, and then ranting how people had been looking for me.
What people? No one was looking for me. It was one of the first things I checked when I woke up in the hospital.
That girl was clearly nuts. I hugged myself as I scanned the place for her, but she hadn’t followed me. Thank God.
“Cassie!” The barista called out.
I stepped up to the counter. “That’s me,” I said, but the barista was already gone, busy filling another order.
God. Why was I always so awkward?
I grabbed the drink. Dang it. It was iced and way too pink.
It had to be one of those new caffeine-infused tea things. This was definitely going to be gross. I took a sip.
Yep. Gross, overly sweetened tea. I hated tea.
Whatever. I wasn’t that thirsty anyway. I just felt like I had to buy something if I was going to spend the next few hours studying. The line was too long to get back in it now, but if I stayed for more than an hour and a half, I’d buy something else. Maybe some food, too.
Definitely some food.
I just ate an hour ago—so I shouldn’t need to eat again—but I was hungry. It seemed like I was always eating, and yet I was still too thin. My weight had worried my doctor for a while, but he saw me eat, and I wasn’t sick. So, he figured I just had a superfast metabolism.
I wove my way through the crowd waiting for their drinks to the wooden table where my friend was sitting. Georgine was beautiful. Like the kind of beautiful that made everyone stop and look at her. She had blonde hair like mine, but a glossier, longer, curling mane. She didn’t wear makeup, but she didn’t need it. Her skin practically glowed. Her small nose, big ice-blue eyes, and full red lips made all the guys in class fall over themselves to get near her. It was almost funny to watch. Almost.
I wished I was as pretty as her, but my blond hair and blue eyes were as plain as plain could get. And that was fine. Maybe not all the way fine, but I was working on that being fine.
I just didn’t feel like myself most days. I wasn’t sure if it was the amnesia or the brain injury or the fact that I was always hungry. I kept losing weight, no matter how much I ate. Some days I thought that my body was slowly committing suicide.
“Hey. Are you okay?” Georgine’s voice sounded like little wind chimes ringing softly in the air.
Shit. Wind chimes? Maybe the doctor was right. Maybe I was a little bit crazy.
Georgine was a normal girl. A beautiful, normal girl. There was no twinkling chimes in her voice. There was no golden glow to her skin. I couldn’t think those things anymore. I didn’t want to get sent back to the doctor. He gave me a severe case of the creeps.
“Hello?” Georgine snapped her fingers in my face. “Cassie? Are you with me? Or do I need to call your doctor again.”
She was not calling my doctor. I couldn’t believe my mother gave Georgine his number. “I’m here, George.” She hated it when I shortened her name. “I’m fine.” I took a sip of the tea to stall for time and regretted it. It was too sweet and too tea-ish and had an aftertaste of flowers. It was like drinking perfume.
I thought about spitting it back through the straw, but would people notice? It might be too gross to do that in public.
I glanced around the room, then back at the cup.
Yes. It was way too gross to do that in public.
I forced myself to swallow and cleared my throat. “I’m fine. I just ordered the wrong thing.”
“You wouldn’t have ordered the wrong thing if you were paying attention. You look weird.” She reached for her phone. “Maybe I should call your mother.”
“And tell her what? That I’m a little spacey. She’d be annoyed at you for wasting her time.”
Georgine looked from me to the phone. Me to the phone. Me and then she put the phone down.
“I’m really fine.” I wasn’t sure how to get out of telling her what happened. She was letting it go for now, but she wouldn’t stop until she knew what was wrong with me.
And there was something wrong. A lot of things wrong. Like how I hated that she was way too close to my mother. She ratted me out all the damned time, like a meddling older sister. Or maybe jailer was a better term for her. It was exhausting. She was exhausting. Then again, I thought everything was exhausting since I woke up in the hospital.
I’d been in an accident a year and a half ago and suffered what my doctor called a traumatic brain injury. I couldn’t remember anything from before the accident. I took six months off school after I woke up, but then finally convinced my mother that I should go back. So, I moved into my apartment and was a month into my third year of college.
Sometimes I felt lost in my classes. I couldn’t remember what I’d learned before the accident. My mother told me that I could either pick up where I left off or not go at all. She told me the fact that I was struggling was proof that I shouldn’t be in school at all. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what she was doing.
My mother wanted me to quit—that much was clear—but I wasn’t a quitter. So, I did what I could to keep my grades up.
I stared at Georgine. She occasionally did this thing where she’d look me in the eye, and we’d see how long it’d take before I’d look away. I never looked away first, and I wasn’t about to start today. If I got her to look away first, then she’d drop the whole texting my mother thing. I’d win.
At least Georgine wasn’t rooming with me. If I had to do staring contests with her multiple times a day, I’d lose whatever was left of my mind. I was fine studying with Georgine—we were both psych majors, so it made sense—but anything beyond studying every few days was a hard pass for me. My mother said that we’d been best friends since grade school, but some days I found that hard to believe.
Or maybe the accident had fundamentally changed who I was.
Every time I thought about the accident, I got angry.
I was angry. Angry that I couldn’t remember anything. Angry that my past was gone. Angry that it was never, ever coming back. That I was missing so much of my life hurt me in a way that I couldn’t describe, but it literally gave me a migraine to end all migraines when I tried to remember anything. So, I had no choice but to focus on my future.
Like school. Like the books in front of me. Like the test I had tomorrow.
Georgine finally dropped her gaze, and I wanted to cheer myself on.
At least I could win one battle today. “If we don’t get started, we’ll be here all night.” I busied myself with pulling my books and notebooks out of my backpack, then notecards, then my highlighters, and finally, my bag of pens. I lined everything up and then looked at Georgine.
She was glaring at me. Again.
I didn’t set everything out to annoy her, but it was a solid side benefit.
“God. Why do you still use that stupid bag?” Georgine hated me. It was clear every time she said anything to me. Her tone was utter garbage.
I looked at the pen bag in question. There was a wolf howling at the moon printed on it. “Because it makes me happy.” I gave her a painfully fake smile and unzipped the bag, pulling out my favorite blue pen.
My mother was wrong. Georgine and I weren’t friends. We weren’t even close to being friends.
But my mother wanted me to be nice. She didn’t like it when I acted differently than she was used to. So, I’d be nice. For now.
There was an itch between my shoulder blades—the kind that made me feel like someone was staring at me.
I turned to look around the room.
“You keep doing that. Is someone meeting you here? Are you looking for someone?”
We were going to keep circling around to this unless I told her. We’d get no studying done. I should just tell her and get it over with. “Someone bumped into me outside.” I clicked my pen. “They thought I was someone else, but it was weird. I just checked to make sure that they didn’t follow me in here. And they didn’t.”
Georgine went from glaring at my pen bag to staring at me. “What?”
“It’s not a big deal. She just flustered me.” I shouldn’t have told her. I should’ve brought up something else.
I could almost see the questions forming in her mind. I waited while she picked what she wanted to say first.
I slouched back in my chair. I didn’t care about being cool or wearing the right designers. I wore jeans and T-shirts and cardigans everywhere. If you asked me what brand they were, I couldn’t tell you. My hair was always slopped into a messy bun. I didn’t look like her. I couldn’t.
Georgine looked as if she’d walked out of a magazine. Her hair flowed in perfect waves down her back. Any makeup she wore was always on point. Her clothes looked expensive and like she’d planned out every bit of an outfit—down to the last accessory—the night before. Guys stared at her wherever she went, and everyone seemed to trip over themselves to get to her first. To be her friend first. To impress her the most.
I’d never be as beautiful or popular, and that was fine by me. I didn’t want that kind of attention. And I certainly didn’t need or want her approval, especially on something so insignificant as a pen bag.
And no matter what she asked me, I didn’t have to answer.
“Who was it? What did they look like?” She stood up and started looking around. “Were they tall? Muscular? Are they still here?”
Tall? Muscular? Was she looking for me to set her up with them?
“I’ll be back.”
Great. Now Georgine was going to make this into a big deal and call my mother, and then somehow, this would turn into me getting put back in the hospital. Again.
I’d been back four times already, and I wasn’t going back for a fifth time.
I was putting an end to this. I grabbed her arm as she tried to squeeze between my chair and the person sitting at the table behind me. “I don’t see her anywhere. It’s fine. Sit back down.”
She jerked her arm free, taking one long look around before going back to her chair.
I took a sip of my drink and choked it down. “I don’t know why I got this. I hate tea.” I muttered under my breath.
“Go get something else. While you get in line, I can take a look around outside for that crazy person if you tell me what she looks—”
Shit. I wasn’t siccing Georgine on some poor girl who had the bad luck to bump into me. “I’m fine. It was a few blocks away, and the girl is long gone. She didn’t follow me here.” My words were harsher than I meant them to be, but I wasn’t in the mood for one of Georgine’s drama fits. “I’m going to go grab a Diet Coke. Want anything?” I tried to soften my tone, but Georgine wouldn’t look at me.
Whatever.
Georgine grabbed up her cell and started typing. “I don’t need anything,” she said without looking up from her phone.
I stood, staring at her for a second before walking away.
She was texting my mother.
I knew she was texting my mother.
God. Georgine was annoying. What kind of friend is constantly texting a friend’s mother to tattle on them? How old were we? If only I knew what she was thinking, then maybe I could get her to calm down. I didn’t even understand why she was so compelled to keep in constant contact with my mother. But short of reading her mind—which was impossible—I’d never find out.
I couldn’t remember what my relationship had been with Mother before the accident, but now it was tense. Very, very tense. And Georgine was always making it worse.
I wasn’t sure how much worse our mother-daughter relationship could get, but apparently, I’d find out soon enough. I couldn’t wait for that phone call.
I took some calming breaths while I waited in line. If I really thought about it, I had nothing to complain about. Not when you thought of all the real things people had to worry about. Mother apparently was born wealthy because she didn’t seem to have a job yet always had an abundance of money. It angered her whenever I asked, so I left it alone. All I knew was that my bank account was ridiculously full. My apartment was paid through the next five years. My fridge was packed with food. My bills were paid, including tuition. I could go to school and literally not worry about anything but learning and becoming the person that I wanted to be.
Except I had this giant missing part of myself.
I’d forgotten so much, and sometimes it felt like it was too much to ignore. Like there was this part of me that was supposed to be there, but it wasn’t. And when I realized that, it felt like this black pit of emptiness that was too big to even really comprehend. Sometimes I wasn’t sure that I could keep going without fixing it.
But I never ever talked about that anymore. The last time I did it earned me a nice ten-day hospital stay.
Mother mistook my words. She thought the emptiness meant that I was suicidal. But I wasn’t. It wasn’t that. It’s like I was forgetting something.
And I was. I was forgetting a whole bunch of somethings.
But I had to just keep moving forward. I couldn’t change the past, so I had to keep doing the things I was supposed to do. Eventually, if I tried hard enough, I would become who I was meant to be.
I just wished I knew who that was.