The Apprentice's Apprentice

Part 7

Cora flopped backwards onto her bed and stared up at the smooth expanse of her white ceiling. Distantly she could hear her brother shouting about something, but it was muffled enough that she could ignore it and focus on what was really important. And that was figuring out what she was going to do about Warren.

She'd done as much investigating as she could during her history class while Zoe and Warren were both safely in English. Erin and Bianca both remembered Warren when she'd asked them about him. Erin said he was really nice and had helped student council with one of their PowerPoint presentations during their monthly assembly while Bianca had mentioned the time he'd written an essay in Spanish class about how he was his own hero.

That had brought home the fact that Cora really seemed to be the only person who didn't remember him. She'd been in Bianca's Spanish class last year and she knew Warren hadn't been in there with them. There'd only been two guys in their class, Ben and Hunter, and neither even looked like Warren.

Cora was beginning to feel like her whole school was going crazy. How else was it that they all seemed to be sharing the same hallucination? Because Cora didn't feel like she was crazy. She was sure Warren hadn't been there last year. But the longer she thought about it and the more people she talked to, the more she felt like maybe she was wrong. She didn't have any other explanation for things.

Cora groaned and rolled over onto her stomach. Why couldn't she remember Warren? It was like there was a block in her memory or a blank space. It was almost like someone had gone into her head and photoshopped Warren right out of it. But seamlessly, so that it was like he'd never been there in the first place.

Googling forgetting people hadn't been much help. Besides the sites about forgetting someone on purpose, all of them were for break-ups, the only information she'd found was on different types of amnesia. Cora was pretty sure someone would have mentioned her getting hit on the head; her mom would still probably be hovering if it had happened, and as for the psycho-whatever amnesia, she hadn't been involved in anything traumatizing enough for that to be the case. Hell, the most traumatizing thing that had happened to her was when she was a kid and she'd watched a cat get hit by a car.

From what she'd read, it would have made sense if she'd forgotten Warren because he'd died in front of her or something, but that definitely wasn't the case. And he really didn't seem to know who she was, she didn't think. At least, he'd never called her by name or said much except when he'd opened her locker for her.

None of this made any sense. How could anyone forget just one person? It wasn't like she'd forgotten everything surrounding Warren, she still had her memories of the Spanish and English classes she'd apparently had with him, but it was just Warren who was gone. At least as far as she knew. What if she'd forgotten someone else? Would she ever know?

Cora closed her eyes. She'd rather just go on thinking this was a dream or a joke by Zoe. Anything except the fact that she was somehow losing her mind. Maybe she should give it a week or so, see if things didn't get better and then talk to her parents about going to see a therapist. If there was even anything they could do. Nothing she'd read online had given her any hint of a disorder that matched her symptoms not that she'd gone that in depth with any of the ones she had looked at. And she was no kind of professional.

Maybe she should talk to Warren. Maybe he'd know of a reason she'd forgotten him. Of course asking him would be kind of rude and Cora really wasn't sure how you'd open that. She shoved herself into a sitting position and said quietly "Hi Warren, just wondering if you know why I can't remember you? Or better yet, Hi Warren, who the hell are you?" She grimaced. There was no way she'd be able to do either and that was without the story likely spreading through her classmates like termites through wood.

Zoe was right. There was something wrong with her, just not as mild as they'd both thought. Cora rolled ungracefully off her bed and went to her computer. She'd rather read her comics than worry about the fact she was going crazy. Who knew how long she'd still be able to do normal things? And if she was going to get committed to an asylum or wherever then she was going to enjoy her freedom as much as she could until then.