Extracted

Katherine

I want to ask about my brother, about Tyler, about everything that’s happened. What is this place? Where am I? Down by my thighs, I pinch the material of my gray track suit. “I don’t understand what’s going on.” That’s true enough. It takes everything to not let Jeremy’s name rush out. I look for a phone. There’s nothing on his desk, not even a laptop.

The director leans back in his chair. “How so?”

“I don’t remember anything.” The lie comes easily, born of the wariness in the pit of my stomach. That and the intense brown eyes of a boy I don’t even know. But something is off with this place. With me. The boy’s warning circles my thoughts. Fake it. So I fake it. It won’t hurt anything for now and when I figure out that he is full of crap, I can suddenly have a miraculous memory break through.

“Nothing at all?”

“No.” I shake my head. “I’m told my name is Katherine.”

“That’s right.”

“Was I in some kind of accident?” I venture. A muscle in his cheek twitches and I know immediately I have made a mistake. This is stupid. Why do I feel this unease? My gaze drops to his hands still spread flat on the desk. He has a dark mole near his thumb.

“What makes you think that?”

They’ll take your memories away. “I can’t remember anything and I woke up in a hospital. Is that what happened to me?”

“Of a sort.” His features smooth into a pleasant mask. He’s about forty, I think, though it’s hard to tell. He’s blond, thick-jawed, light eyes, like an old Californian surfer. Goose pimples rise along my skin. He watches me intently and I’m getting a little freaked out by it.

I’m not this Katherine. I know I was in an accident. I wasn’t ill. I lean forward in my chair and clutch at the edge of the desk, trying to look desperate for answers. It isn’t a stretch to pull off. I am desperate. “Please, can you help me understand?”

“I can, yes, though it will be difficult for you to hear.”

My fingers curl harder around the edge of the desk. I nod for him to go ahead.

He glances at my hands, rearranging his expression into one of sympathy. It doesn’t sit on his skin right. “You’ve been ill for quite a long time.”

I stare at my thin, pale arms.

“The country’s been hit with a terrible plague. Hundreds have died, parents, children, brothers…” He lingers on the word. “Those who have survived…the children left without parents…are brought here to this school where you’ll be provided for and given an education to become a productive member of society.”

The way he says productive scatters chills across my shoulders. It’s all possible. After the accident, I could have contracted a disease, especially one so rampant that it has taken the lives of hundreds, especially if I was already recovering in a hospital where others with this illness had been taken. With all that happening, it isn’t beyond belief that I could have gotten mixed up with some girl named Katherine, brought here instead of her. I should tell the director this, ask him to contact my parents because I know they’re alive and will come to get me and Jeremy. They must be going crazy with worry.

Except…

My heart pounds. I’m afraid. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I should trust that boy instead of the director of a facility helping people. I’ll keep playing along for now. I can’t explain why—just a feeling of wrongness. But wouldn’t waking up after a long illness feel this way? Feel wrong? Disconnected. Or maybe it’s not that I feel wrong, just weird. Why wouldn’t I? I’ve just been in an accident and I don’t know where I am or where my brother is.

“Why can’t I remember any of what happened after the accident?”

The director doesn’t miss a beat. “A side-effect from the illness. Neural networks within your brain, or nerve cells, were unfortunately dealt a blow to the part of the brain responsible for long-term memory. Altered. It’s a terrible thing to wake up like this, I know. Some things are remembered like how to speak, read, movies once seen, lyrics to songs, but large chunks of who you are and your family, friends…gone. I’m sorry for that. Truly grieved by it.” His voice is swallowed beneath the rushing of blood in my ears. “…in the end, it’s better to be alive, to have survived such a terrible tragedy. You’ll find all the children here suffer from the same malady. This is a good place to be, Katherine, among others as yourself, where you can learn to cope…”

Including that boy Mitchell. I shouldn’t believe someone whose brain cells are scrambled. I should believe the director of the school that has taken in recovering orphans. Except I’m not one of them. I’m not an orphan. And my brain cells aren’t altered. I remember everything. This has all been a mistake. I don’t belong here. I need them to call my parents, let them know I’m here.

I start to tell him that I do remember. That the illness didn’t affect me that way. They should be happy—thrilled—to have a survivor unscathed from memory loss, but the words bloat inside my throat like bread that has gone down the wrong way. My eyes water and I blink rapidly.

“With so much lost,” he continues, “we’ve found it’s a kindness to not try to force anyone to remember.”

A kindness. Instead of telling him everything, I choke out, “My parents? You think they are both dead?”

“Both?” Light brows wing up.

I shake my head. This isn’t like explaining to Mom why I came in late from a movie when I was really at Tyler’s. “Did I not have both?” He really doesn’t know who I am. “Do you know who they are? Maybe one survived.” It kills me not to ask about Jeremy or Mia, my two-year-old sister. What if they’d gotten sick too? What if Jeremy didn’t survive the truck rolling over? No, no, they think I’m Katherine. I wet my lips. They expect me to simply accept that I’m her for some reason. I can’t ask about Jeremy. It’s killing me. But if I’m supposed to have no memory, how would I know the difference? I have to figure out what is going on, then maybe I can find a phone, call my parents. They’ll come for me, get this all straightened out. Jeremy and Mia are with them. Safe and healthy. They have to be.

My throat tightens. Why didn’t they come before now? In the hospital mix up, were they told I was dead? This doesn’t make sense.

All of a sudden I can’t wait to get out of this cramped office. It’s too hot. It’s hard to breathe. I need to find a phone. I glance at his jacket. There has to be a cell phone in one of those pockets.  

“Are you all right?”

My head snaps up. “No. I just found out my parents are gone and I have no memory of them.” The lie comes out awkwardly, surreal. “Do you have pictures of them? Names?”

His eyes widen. That question seemed to throw him off. Like it’s never been asked before, which if what he’s telling me is true, why wouldn’t it have been? If they’ve been taking in orphans who don’t know who they are, he should have heard that question dozens of times, anticipated it.

As it turns out, he has. He pulls out a file from the desk drawer and flips it open and hands me a photograph of a dark-haired woman and balding man, posing in front of the giant heads of Mount Rushmore in the distance. I’ve never seen them before. They are strangers.

“Aida and Shawn Freemore.”

I rub a hand beneath my eyes. I don’t know these people, but it hits me hard that somewhere there’s a girl named Katherine who belonged to these people. Does she even know her parents have died or is she one of the nameless victims of the disease who can’t remember them? If she even survived. “Can I keep this?”

The director’s face softens. Maybe I simply imagined the hardness I saw before. “Of course.”

I take the small photo and cup it in my hands, willing all of this to be a dream I’ll soon wake up from, but the glossy picture in my palm is real, even though the people are not. They can’t be. At least not for me.

The director comes around the desk, dwarfing me with his size and extends his hand. “Cecelia will show you to your room.”

He opens the door, which I take as my dismissal and I go out into the sterile corridor. The director never even told me his name.