Lucy’s house is huge. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t exactly live in a shoebox, but she has five bathrooms—five. And there are only four people in her house! And her bedroom has a little alcove in it where she has a sofa, sort of like my sister’s room, except it is not supposed to be the master. She has a pool and a big back yard with lots of flowers in it and even a fountain. Seriously. A fountain.
I think my dad doesn’t like driving me to Lucy’s house because he feels a little inferior. Like I said, he hasn’t driven me over in years, but when I was younger he used to drive me, and he’d say things like, “I hope no one minds the rims on my truck,” like people were staring out their windows at our vehicle. I always shook my head at him but didn’t ever bother to argue because I didn’t even understand what he was worried about. Now that I’m a little older, I understand it more, but it’s still not a problem. My parents have always done a great job of providing for us, and I would never complain about not having something I needed, or even wanted. It just so happens Lucy’s dad is a lawyer and her mother is an accountant. She’s very down to earth about it and doesn’t even make the rest of us feel inferior when she disappears into her walk-in closet full of designer clothing.
My dad pulled to the curb in front of Luce’s house and I gave him a half-smile. “Would you rather I just forget to call you to come to get me and walk home? So Mom doesn’t make you come back out?” I knew he wasn’t the one who thought I shouldn’t walk.
“No, honey, it’s fine,” he said, patting my knee. “So long as they don’t close the gates on my old jalopy.”
Lucy’s neighborhood is not gated. I rolled my eyes at him. “Okay. I’ll see you in a few hours.” I reached for the door handle. “Thanks again, Dad!”
He waved and shifted his truck into gear but didn’t leave yet, and I knew it was because he was waiting for me to get safely inside of the house before he pulled away, not because he thought anything weird was going on, like my mom apparently did, but because that’s what he has always done.
I didn’t even get to the front door before it opened. Lucy was standing there with her extremely long brownish/blondish hair in a ponytail, her hands on her slender hips. She was looking at me like she was ready to pounce on me, and my mind wandered back to the notebook I’d shoved in my backpack before I left the house. She must’ve been talking about what I’d written there, even though I didn’t remember writing it down or mentioning it to her.
“Hi, Lucy,” I said with a friendly smile. She narrowed one eye at me. “What’s up?”
“Cassidy Elizabeth Findley, get in here.” She stepped out of the way and I entered into a foyer with floors made of marble and a grand staircase with ornate moldings cascaded from the second story behind my diminutive friend.
Emma came bounding in from the adjoining living room, straightening her glasses. Her short brown hair was a little frizzy, and I thought about asking her if she remembered to use her conditioning spray this morning. Lucy and I have been trying to get her to understand different products we use, not because we care so much what she looks like but because we feel it is our duty as her friend to explain the purposes behind the things that we do that Emma doesn’t get or doesn’t care about. I pushed the thoughts aside and said, “Hi, Em.”
Without looking at my face, she said, “Hi.”
“How are you?” I took a few steps toward her, and away from Lucy who had shut the door behind me as if she was sealing the world out to give us some privacy.
“Fine.”
Never in the ten or more years that I’ve been friends with Emma has she ever once asked me how I was doing, and that’s okay. It’s not that she didn’t care, she just didn’t think to ask.
“Well?” Lucy said, clearly put out by my insistence on being polite to my friend instead of disclosing to her everything I know about whatever happened with Drew.
I let out a sigh and said, “Can we at least sit down somewhere?”
An exhalation that loud shouldn’t be able to come out of such a tiny person. “I suppose you want a pop, too? Maybe some popcorn?”
“Clearly, I am exhausting you with my civility,” I said. “Would you rather just stand here in the entryway and talk?”
Lucy didn’t answer; she just stormed past me into the living room and plopped down on the sofa, grabbing a throw pillow and holding it against her stomach.
I followed and sat down a cushion away from her while Emma sat in a nearby chair. The TV was on, but Lucy turned it off, once she got over her exhaustion with me enough to pick up the heavy remote. “Well?” she said again.
Before I could start to say anything at all, Emma said, “Guess what, Cassidy?” You don’t get a chance to answer that when Emma says it. “I defeated the third level of my game last night.”
“You did?”
“Yes. It was really hard, too, because….” This is the point where she lost me. Emma continued to talk about how she beat the level for about ten minutes, and I nodded along. I never have any idea what she’s talking about and really didn’t care, but she loves to talk about her video games, so I played along. Usually, Lucy does, too. But not that day.
“Emma Jane! Shut it! We need to talk about Cadence and Drew.”
Emma’s eyes widened, and I felt a little sorry for her, but I knew it didn’t bother her as much as it would most people, even if she doesn’t know how to tell when Lucy is really mad or when she’s just frustrated like she was at that moment.
“Emma, can you tell me the rest later?” I asked in a calm voice. “I think Lucy wants to talk about something else.”
“Fine.” Emma shrugged and fixed her glasses again. Then, as if rehearsed, she looked at Lucy and said, “What would you like to talk about, Lucy Burk?”
I think Emma’s tone must’ve made Lucy realize she was being unreasonable because she closed her eyes for a second and settled back into the couch. After she’d composed herself, she said, “Cassidy, when we spoke on the phone Thursday, you mentioned some weird things were going on, and you wanted to wait until we could talk about it in person, remember?”
She was talking to me like I was either a three-year-old or clinically insane, but then, the way my memory was working at that point, I wasn’t sure that she was wrong to do so. “I vaguely remember that conversation.”
I could tell she wanted to let out another whopper of a sigh, but she held it back. “Cassidy, I’m a little concerned about you. Maybe the stress of this situation with your sister is starting to get to you.” Lucy folded her arms across her chest, the pillow now in her lap.
“Or maybe you’re just bonkers.”
We both turned and looked at Emma, who had a sly smile on her face. “Ha, ha! Emma O’Sullivan makes the funny jokes!” I said, proud of her for the effort. She just grinned. “Okay, I’ll admit, something weird is going on.”
“I know. And that’s what you’re supposed to be telling me about,” Lucy replied, matter-of-factly.
“No, not just with my sister. With me.” It wasn’t easy to say out loud, but it was true. Ever since I found that notebook, I hadn’t stopped wondering when I’d penned what was written there. It was my turn to sigh. “Let me show you something, and then maybe we can figure it out together.” Lucy nodded and Emma leaned forward in her chair.
I reached into my backpack and pulled out the notebook. I’d dog-eared the page when I found it, halfway thinking I might not be able to find it again later and think that I’d imagined the whole thing. “Here.” Relieved to still see the message I’d left for myself, and nervous about what Lucy and Emma might think, I handed it over to Lucy, and Emma came to sit on the arm of the couch. I was glad she seemed interested in helping. We would likely need her brain power. Lucy and I are smart, too, but not genius level smart like Em.
They read it over, and then Lucy stopped and stared at me for a moment, her pretty little face puckered. She opened her mouth, closed it, and dipped her head once more, and I assumed she was reading it again. After she finished this time, she set the notebook down on the couch between us and simply asked, “What the crap?”
“I know,” I said, with a shrug. “But here’s the thing, you guys. I don’t remember writing that.”
Lucy cocked her head to the side, and Emma said, “Hmmm.” Then they looked at each other.
“Seriously. Like, I found it, and I don’t know when I wrote it.” I was beginning to panic a little on the inside. What if I started to forget other things, too, like my friends or the days of the week?
“Well,” Emma said, straightening her glasses as she got up and moved back to her chair, “I guess that means you don’t remember any of those things actually happening either?”
It was a good question, and the short answer was no, I didn’t. But then, I’d just discovered this page before I’d come over, and I hadn’t really thought about trying to remember.
“This is so bizarre,” Lucy said. “What would make you write something down and then forget it? Were you sleeping when you wrote it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember writing it.”
“Okay—well what is the last thing you do remember? Maybe we can work backward.”
Emma had a good point. I took a deep breath and started talking through my day. “I remember riding over here with my dad, finding the notebook, asking my parents if I could come over while eating pancakes. And… Aaron came by this morning.”
“Aaron? The same guy you wrote about?” Lucy asked, gesturing at the notebook.
“Yes. And I know that wasn’t the first time he’s been there, but I don’t really remember anything about what he said the first time he was there. I know that doesn’t make sense.”
“But the first time you talked to him wasn’t the first time he was there,” Emma reminded me. “Your notes say he was in your sister’s room the night Drew died.”
“That’s true. There’s something about his voice. It’s hard to describe, but it’s memorable. I think he was the one in my sister’s room that night. But I don’t really remember what happened the night Drew died. I just have a feeling about it.” I let out another sigh, this one in frustration. “It’s so hard to explain.”
“That’s okay. We might be getting somewhere,” Lucy said, reassuringly. “So, you do think what you wrote here is accurate?”
“I do.” My voice didn’t sound too resolute though. “I think I remember enough to say it’s probably accurate—at least according to what I knew at the time.”
“All right, so that strategy seemed to get us somewhere. What did Aaron say today? Do you remember that?”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at her. “I remember today, Luce.”
“Well, I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I remember yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that….”
“All right,” I said, cutting her off. “I couldn’t really hear a word Aaron was saying, but I did hear some of my parents’ responses. So… they said Cadence was sleeping.” I tried to go back over their conversation in my head. “Oh, and they said something about a procedure.”
“A procedure?” Emma asked. “Like a medical procedure?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I couldn’t hear the context. Just that the procedure went well. I don’t even know if it had to do with my sister.”
“That’s bizarre.” Lucy scratched her chin for a second. “You know what, we need to write this down in case you forget again.”
“Good idea,” Emma agreed.
Lucy got up and walked to a desk across the room, producing a pen. She came back and started a fresh sheet. “I don’t want to contaminate your questionable work.”
I absently wondered if I might, at some point, forget there were now two important sheets in the notebook. Lucy began to write. “So… after that, I heard the name Jamie. I am pretty sure I’d heard that before.”
“Yep, it’s right here,” Lucy said, turning the page and pointing to the last paragraph I’d written. “This says Jamie has a process—do you think that might be the procedure Aaron was talking about today?”
“Those words are very similar in meaning,” Emma noted.
“Maybe. It’s a possibility.” Lucy wrote that down. “And I heard two new names today. Eliza and Christian.”
“Are you sure they weren’t saying someone is a Christian?” Lucy asked. “You know, like religious?”
“I don’t think so. I think my mom said she’d never met Christian, but I couldn’t make out the exact sentence. I think it’s a person named Christian.”
“Do you think the purple-haired girl you mentioned is this Eliza?” Emma asked.
“Maybe.” It seemed like that was my favorite word now. “I thought my mom said something about a car in that sentence. Like maybe Eliza would be the one bringing Cadence home tomorrow.” I was seriously considering rigging up some sort of surveillance in the living room so I could hear my parents’ conversations from now on.
“Anything else today?”
“Not when Aaron was talking to my parents,” I said, feeling more confident than I had about anything else. “But my parents did say something weird when they got back to the dining room table.”
“What’s that?” Lucy asked, pen poised.
“My sister is dropping out of college.” I couldn’t even believe the words, so I didn’t expect them to.
“Shut up!” Lucy said, her mouth hanging open in disbelief.
“That’s unfortunate,” Emma stated quietly. “She won’t be able to find gainful employment easily that way.”
“Actually, that’s the thing,” I said, “my parents said that she was going to be working with Aaron.”
“Say what?” Lucy asked. “Doing what?”
“That’s also weird.” I replayed the conversation with my parents. I realized I hadn’t asked a lot of questions, and I remember feeling, at the time, that I didn’t really care about the answers. I had no idea why that might be. I certainly cared now. “My mom said security, but that it was complicated. But…” something in my notes jarred my memory, “My dad said that Aaron used to work with my grandma—but he almost said grandparents.”
The other two girls exchanged glances. “Why is that weird?” Emma asked.
“My grandpa died in the ‘80s, a long time ago. Aaron looks like he’s about my sister’s age, maybe a little older. I’d be shocked if he’s even thirty.”
“So… he couldn’t have worked with your grandpa unless he was a little kid or something,” Lucy reasoned.
“Exactly. And my grandpa was an engineer, like my dad.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe your dad misspoke?” Emma asked.
“Maybe.” There was that word again. “But even the idea of Aaron working with my grandma doesn’t make sense to me. As far as I know, she’s never had a job. Not in my lifetime.”
“So weird.” Lucy’s pen moved to capture every word. “What else? What about this other dude who showed up?”
I inhaled through my nose, trying to remember. The notes I’d written down seemed so cryptic now. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I remember there being another guy.” I closed my eyes. I thought back to when Aaron had knocked on the door that morning. My initial reaction was to hope that it wasn’t him. That it was someone else. “Elliott.” My voice was a whisper.
“Who?” Emma asked.
“Dr. Elliott Sanderson.” It was coming back to me now. “The guy with the curly hair, the one I wrote about, he was the doctor. He was there the night Drew died. And he came to talk to me about it.”
“Hold on a minute,” Lucy said, setting the notebook down. “You mean, the last thing you did before you talked to that doctor was write in your notebook that he was at your house, and then you don’t remember having written this stuff down?”
I nodded. Things were suddenly starting to come back to me now. I remembered sitting across from Dr. Sanderson, the soothing tone of his rich voice, the things he said to me about Drew. “Lucy… do you think he has something to do with me forgetting?”
“Uh, yeah,” she said, her face turning even more pale than normal.
I couldn’t believe it. I had trusted that guy. He seemed legitimately concerned about me. And my parents had encouraged me to talk to him. “So… all those things he said to me, about Cadence being okay, and Drew’s death being no big deal… all of that was just in an attempt to… to….”
Emma finished my sentence for me. “Brainwash you.”