Track 21

“I Forgot to Remember to Forget”

Present Day

As soon as I step into the shoddy, windowless room with its semicircle of mismatched plastic chairs and faux wood paneling, I immediately want to step back out. The decor isn’t the repellent. No, it’s the lean man—or being?—in the gray alien mask, standing with his back against a chalkboard. A plain black tee and dark blue jeans complete his look. I hope to God he really is human.

I whisper to Hayden. “Why would anyone go to an alien abductee support group dressed like that?”

Hayden glances at me. Color drains from his face. “Desensitization technique? To try to normalize aliens?”

At a makeshift table, we write our names on tags and stick them onto our shirts. I notice Hayden has dubbed himself Anonymous. After a few seconds of thought, I discard my tag with my real name on it and scrawl 867-5309 on a fresh sticker.

“Aliens are not normal. Not on planet Earth, anyway,” I reply in a dark tone. I steer Hayden to a pair of empty seats as far from the “alien” as possible. The chairs are spaced a few feet apart from one another.

“Oh, you’re an expert now?” Hayden teases. “Maybe he’s taking the ‘anonymous’ in Alien Abductees Anonymous seriously.”

“Could you please stop saying that word?” asks an older man in the chair next to Hayden. His name tag reads “Richard.” He’s wearing a light-yellow short-sleeved business shirt and black polyester trousers. The end of his tie looks like it has been dipped in coffee by accident. It couldn’t be by design. He clicks a ballpoint pen repeatedly.

“I’m sorry. Uh, which word?” Hayden asks warily.

“The ‘A’ word,” is Richard’s tense reply. Click, click, click.

Hayden and I exchange confused glances before he says, “I’ll do my best.”

“Appreciate it.” Click, click, click.

The room fills up slowly. I try to keep my eyes off Alien Man, as does everyone else. By eight o’clock, I’m surprised to see only a couple of chairs remain unoccupied. I count ten of us here.

Discreetly, I check everybody out. Our fellow abductees are a snapshot of North American life. There’s no common demographic thread here. We’re all different ages, all shapes, all sizes.

A man named Bill, identified by his name tag and by the embroidered patch on his coveralls, stares wearily at the floor. Bill’s bulky form dwarfs the chair, making it look more suited to a kindergartener. The fabric on his chest and thighs are smeared with black, oily handprints. Obviously soap and hand towels are in short supply where he works.

In contrast, a reed-thin woman in her forties with fresh makeup and an immaculate suit sits upright. The letters on her name tag, spelling out “Julia,” are also sharp and upright. Her dark eyes are wide and alert. Despite her patent-leather stilettos, she looks like she’s ready to sprint downtown.

An elderly woman contemplates a seat beside me, groaning and sighing as if every move she makes causes immense pain. She grips the back of a chair with knobby fingers. Purple veins pop up under the surface of her crepe-thin skin.

“Are you okay, ma’am? Can I help?” I ask. “Katherine” is written on her name tag in shaky letters that gradually slope downward.

Leaning heavily on a cane, Katherine plants her hunched body with a heavy thump. Her watery eyes are magnified behind thick gold-rimmed glasses. Patting my arm and smiling kindly, she says in a croaky voice, “I’m dying, but I’ll be all right.”

“Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry!” No wonder she looks so frail. Now my eyes are watering.

She chuckles. “Don’t worry, child. I’m not the only one. We’re all dying.”

“What…?”

“Radiation,” Katherine says. “From the abductions.”

Click, click, click.

I stare at her in shock. My heart stammers in time with the clicking pen.

“No one’s ever told you about galactic cosmic radiation? GCR?” Katherine asks. “Don’t they teach you kids anything in school these days?”

“I…I take AP classes,” I stammer. “Of course I know about GCR.”

Katherine grunts and folds her arms.

The door opens with a whoosh, sucking warm air out and pushing cool October winds in.

“I’m sorry I’m late, fellow travelers.” A figure in green, purple, and red glides past us and takes a chair at the right-hand end of the semicircle. Moira, our fearless leader. She drops a satchel on the floor and unwraps a red silk scarf from her neck. Even seated, her larger-than-life presence fills the whole room. “I was held up.”

A woman with pin-straight black hair frowns with concern. “Were you abducted, Moira?”

I cast a look at the man beside Hayden to see how he reacts to an “A” word. The pen now in his shirt pocket, he sits on his hands and leans forward. Alien Man lingers by the chalkboard.

“No, Minh. I got caught up at work,” Moira says, stripping off more of her outerwear, finally revealing the black dress she had on earlier. I note her gold eyeliner has been replaced by tons of purple glitter. She looks spectacular. And really out of place in this drab room.

“Are you sure?” Minh persists. “Did you lose time? What’s that mark on your neck? You didn’t have that last time I saw you.”

“I’m fine, I assure you. It’s only the same mole I’ve had all my life,” Moira says. She glances at Alien Man standing awkwardly by himself. “Hi there, fellow traveler. Come on and sit down.”

We all watch as Alien Man waits ten seconds, then slinks toward an empty chair. I notice he’s wearing a name tag, but it’s blank. If his plan was to be invisible or unobtrusive, it wasn’t working. His rubber soles make a squeaky noise on the linoleum.

“It’s nice to see some old friends again. And new faces,” Moira says. There’s a flare of recognition in her eyes as she looks my way. “Thank you for coming at such short notice.”

Everyone murmurs.

I shudder—not just at Moira’s “fellow travelers” catchphrase.

“We should go over some ground rules. No ridicule, no judgment.” Moira glances sideways at Alien Man, who’s clutching his phone. “And definitely no recording on any device. What goes on inside an AAA meeting stays inside an AAA meeting.”

“Hey, guy, are you filming us?” Richard asks in a shrill voice.

Alien Man rapidly shakes his head while pocketing his phone.

“Now that we’ve got those rules out of the way, let’s talk about last night’s reports.” Moira’s gaze skips over me and lands straight on Hayden. “You look particularly…haunted to me. Tell us what brought you here.”

Hayden coughs into his elbow. He crosses and uncrosses his arms over his sweater. I can almost feel the “I hate being called on” vibes shimmering off of him. His eyes meet mine and I send him a silent apology. Even though it’s Moira who should be sorry for putting him on the spot like this.

“Well, my name’s…Anonymous. I’m only here to observe, really,” he says, coughing again. “I don’t know what people think they saw last night. I’m pretty certain I haven’t been abducted by aliens, so I wouldn’t say I’m haunted by anything.”

“What makes you so sure?” Moira asks Hayden. She leans forward, her gaze so intense it could burn holes into a brick wall.

“I would remember something like that,” he replies simply.

Laughter erupts around the semicircle of “fellow travelers.”

Hayden and I glance uncomfortably at each other. What is so funny?

“Most of the time, they melt the part of our brains that deals with recall,” Bill says, his voice sounding like his throat has gone through a shredder.

Richard’s nose makes a high-pitched noise, while Katherine murmurs knowingly.

“That’s not quite true,” Moira says in an authoritative tone. “They just disable memories, if you will. But they can be enabled again.”

“How?” I ask.

Moira squints at my name tag. “I take it you’re Anonymous’s girlfriend, uh, 867-5309?”

“Is that the number the aliens assigned to you?” Julia asks.

Jon, a man with long brown hair streaked with silver, laughs. “It’s a song, right? By Tommy Tutone, right?”

“Yeah, my mom loves that song.” My lips tug into a smile. “It’s on a playlist she made for me.”

Moira clears her throat. “Well, 867-5309, hypnosis is one method. I myself am a trained hypnotherapist—”

“Jenny,” Jon interrupts. The fluorescent tube right above his head flickers. “That’s the name of the girl in the song. That’s your name, too, right?”

“Um… Sure, yeah. Right,” I say. Jon pumps a fist like it’s the first win he’s had in his life.

“Good. Jenny.” Sounding eager to move on, Moira clearly doesn’t care what my name is. “Tell us about your experiences.”

“Okay, other than telling you Hay— Anonymous is not my boyfriend, I can’t tell you a whole lot.” I glance around the group. “But this is what I know. We drove over Saddleback Ridge to my house last night, around 7:30. Separate cars. I had a boiling-hot Bolognese in a bag beside me.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” asks a frizzy blonde on the far side. I can’t read her name tag, but I can read her face—there’s boredom written all over every wrinkle.

“I’m getting to that,” I reply, smiling tightly. “I’ve lived in Dawson all my life. Made this trip dozens of times. I get past a curve in the road that I always take at twenty miles per hour, rain, hail, or shine. One minute, I’m looking at distant lightning, wondering when the storm is going to hit.”

As I speak, the fluorescent light blinks intermittently. Two seconds on, two seconds off. Everybody is focused on me. How is it possible they’re not bothered by the light situation?

“And the next minute?” Moira prompts me.

“Sorry. Th-that light tube is distracting,” I stammer, pointing at the ceiling. Two seconds off… “The next minute, I’m pulling up in my driveway. The pasta is stone-cold. And it’s 9:53.”

“Same exact thing happened to me! Missing time!” Minh exclaims, sympathy oozing from her dark gaze as she nods. The bored frizzy blonde seems unimpressed by my story.

“Apparently.” I sink down in my seat, using a hand to shield my eyes from the stupid light.

“And, Anonymous, where were you?” Moira asks. “Jenny said you were in separate cars?”

“Yes, I was following in my truck. It’s heavier and can’t take the curves as fast, so I kept losing sight of her.” Hayden shoots me a glance, his brow furrowed. “But I didn’t see any aliens.”

“Ah, but did you see a UFO?” Jon asks.

“No, like I said, I would have remembered something like that…” Hayden’s voice fades. The light is still proving to be a major distraction for me and only me.

Parting my fingers, I glance up at it. Two seconds on, two seconds off. Two seconds on, two seconds off. It’s unrelenting. Unnerving. Even Richard’s pen-clicking wasn’t this level of annoying.

Two seconds on, two seconds off…

A sharp jab into my abdomen makes me scream. The heat that follows has volcanic intensity. My whole belly feels like it’s being ripped to pieces. Panicked, I try to lift my head to see what the hell they’ve done to me. Two beings pierce my skin with the longest, fattest needles I’ve ever seen. Roughly, they wriggle the needles, making me scream and scream again.

“Jenny?” says a far-off voice. “Jenny, do you need a moment?”

A croaky voice calls, “Jenny?”

I feel something jabbing into my side. It’s not sharp like a needle. But it is invasive enough to make me cry out.

“Jenny? Oh, for heaven’s sake, Anonymous, wake poor Jenny up,” orders the croaky voice.

Who’s Jenny?

“Cassidy.” Hayden’s breath is warm against my ear. I snap out of my trance. Blinking, I stare into his deep brown eyes. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”

“Hayden,” I whisper. The room falls away as I focus on his face.

“I’m here. Everything’s fine.” He smiles and brushes my cheek. A spark zaps up and down my body in response.

“Somebody get her a coffee. And do something about that light, for heaven’s sake. It’s driving me batshit crazy,” Katherine says. She’s leaning on her cane beside me and that’s when I realize she was the one who jabbed me. And thank God she was there to help me out of the bad memories.

Hold up. Memories?

Is it possible? Have I somehow enabled the part of my brain that stored memories of my abduction?

Hayden steps out of the way. Seconds later, a steady hand presses a lukewarm cup of coffee into my grip. I look up. Looming over me is Alien Man. He bows his head. I send him a wobbly thank-you smile and he returns to his chair.

Jon gets busy taking the faulty fluorescent tube out of its socket. It’s not a huge loss to the decor. The place is that little bit dimmer.

Moira cranes her neck at me. “Are you okay to continue, Jenny?”

I open my mouth to speak, then catch sight of Hayden. His expression is full of concern. He assured me we’re safe.

But are we really?

We’re in a room full of alleged UFO abduction veterans. Surely the aliens could grab the whole lot of us in one hit if they decided they wanted to take another stab at kidnapping?

My chest starts heaving again. I sip the coffee, even though I know it’ll make me even more jittery.

Without looking at Hayden, I speak up. “That’s…that’s all for now, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.” Moira looks around. “Anyone else?”

“Moira, can’t you command that traveler to take off his offensive mask?” Richard says, clicking the pen madly.

“I can’t command him,” Moira replies, then swivels to Alien Man. “But I can politely ask and he can politely refuse. So, you’re among friends here, fellow trav—”

“Just take the goddamn mask off, son. You’re giving us all the heebie-jeebies,” snaps Katherine, saving us all from hearing “fellow traveler” for a fourth time.

Everyone stares at Alien Man. The mask’s enormous black eyes, though plastic, somehow make him look scared. Cornered. His shoulders go from rounded to straight as he seems to make a decision.

Millimeter by millimeter, his slender brown fingers pull the mask upward, first revealing a muscled neck, then a strong, stubbled jaw. Short, curly black hair frames ears pierced with intricate ivory studs. Then cheekbones that look like they were carved by an artist…

“He’s human,” Minh says, as if that was ever in doubt.

Alien Man’s lips form a tight smile in response. He looks my age. Maybe seventeen, eighteen. I tilt my head. That smile looks so familiar. Finally, he whips off the mask and it drops to the floor by his sneakered feet. I look up and stare into deep hazel eyes framed by long black eyelashes. He’s human and he’s beautiful.

And Hayden’s gaping at him like he’s just landed from outer space.