Damaged

by R. R. Banks

  It had been nearly two weeks since the crash when I looked at Micah over the cup of hot chocolate that I was drinking.

  "Is the car that I was driving when I crashed still there?" I asked.

  He looked up at me, his expression as surprised as I felt to have finally asked. I had been thinking about the car and the crash itself for days and my curiosity finally took over.

  "I'm not positive," he said, "but I would assume that it is. The rangers haven't announced that everything's clear yet. The second storm that blew through knocked them back even further, so I don't think they've made it anywhere close to this far up the mountain yet. If they had, they would have announced that the tree had been moved and the road was passable again."

  "So, you don't think that it's been moved?"

  "No. Why?"

  "I've just been thinking about it. Do you think that you could bring me to it?"

  "Are you going to try to drive around the tree?" he asked.

  I knew that he was kidding, but there was a hint in Micah's voice that said he was actually concerned that I was going to try to make my way down the mountain. I shook my head and laughed, reaching for his hands and bringing them up to my mouth to kiss them.

  "No, I'm not going to drive around the tree. I'm just curious. I just want to see it and find out if it jogs anything. Maybe I haven't actually lost my memory, maybe it's just on pause. If I go back to the last moments before I remember anything, maybe it will hit the play button again. "

  "That's an interesting theory," Micah said. "I'll take you, if you're sure that you want to go, but it's kind of a long walk. Have you ever used snowshoes before?"

  I glared at him.

  "If I knew whether I had used snowshoes or not, do you think that I would need a memory reset?"

  "Another very valid point. Well, we're going to go with the working theory that you haven't. I have an extra pair, but there is a bit of a learning curve."

  Scout came up and nudged me. I looked down at him and he wagged his tail so hard his little butt began to swing back and forth.

  "Scout says that he believes in me and thinks that I'll be able to walk in them just fine."

  As I watched Micah put on his snowshoes later that afternoon I had the immediate thought that it looked like he was walking around with tennis rackets strapped to his feet and I wondered if moving around in them could possibly feel as awkward as it looked. It turned out that it was exactly as awkward as it looked and felt just like I assumed it would to walk around with tennis rackets strapped to my feet. As I stumbled along through the snow toward the woods, however, I felt laughter bubbling in my chest. Rather than feeling embarrassed or uncomfortable, I was having fun trying to figure out the maneuver, and when I felt Micah reach out and take my hand to help drag me out of a particularly deep snow drift where I had gotten myself, and subsequently Scout, stuck, I had a sudden question cross my mind. Why would I think that I should be embarrassed or uncomfortable?

  Micah hadn't been exaggerating when he said that it was a bit of a walk and far sooner than I would have liked, I started to feel a burn in my thighs and felt breathless. I was starting to fall behind Micah and he had to stop and pull me along. If ever there was a moment in my life when it would be appropriate to fling myself on the ground and call out 'save yourself', I figured this was it. Determination, however, kept me on my feet and aimed toward the crash site. Finally, I saw a break in the line of trees.

  "It's just ahead," Micah said. "There's a ridge that we have to go down. It's steep so you might not want to go."

  "I want to try," I said.

  A few moments later I stood at the top of the ridge and looked down at a massive mound of snow pressed against a tree that wore a thick layer of snow on top. Though my eyes were only seeing the white hill, I knew in the back of my mind that it wasn't actually a snowdrift. Instead, I was looking at the car that Micah had pulled me from two weeks before. I waited for something to resonate with me. I waited for anything to strike me, to jostle my mind and bring back what had happened that had left me here. It seemed like there were two parts of me. There was what I was and did before the crash and then there was what I was and did after waking up. The crash itself was the link that I thought might bridge the two, yet as I stood looking at the very place where Micah found me, likely in footsteps that he left but that were now fully covered with snow, it was like I had never been there before.

  "Anything?" he asked.

  I shook my head.

  "How did I get from the car to the lodge?" I asked.

  "I carried you."

  "The whole way?"

  He nodded.

  The thought nearly took my breath away. This man didn't know me, he knew nothing about me, and yet he had carried me in his arms up the rocks of the ridge, and through the snow and the woods just to keep me safe. I turned to him and reached up for him, cupping my hand around the back of his head to draw his face down toward me so that I could kiss him. I wished that I could say something to him, that there were any words that could even begin to express what I felt, but I had tried that before. I had tried to thank him. It wasn't enough then and it was even less now.

  "Do you still want to go down?" he asked.

  I drew in a breath and nodded.

  "Yeah. I want to see it."

  He took my hand and started leading me down the ridge. It was slippery and steep, but by the halfway point I was more worried about Scout making it down safely than I was about myself. I stumbled a few times, but Micah was right there beside me to catch me, helping me back to my feet so that we could make our way down the rocks. Finally, my feet touched ground that was more horizontal, and I could take the few steps over to stand beside the car.

  Micah had brought a stiff straw broom with him. I thought that it was an odd choice when I first saw him grab it from where it hung on the wall in the mudroom, but now I saw what had motivated him bringing it along. He walked up to the side of the car and used the broom to knock the thick layer of snow off of the top, windshield, and sides. I watched as the car came into better view, waiting for that flash of memory. He kept the snow over the back of the car, and I could only assume that he didn't want me to see what I had gone through. He reached into the deep pocket of his coat and pulled out a can of de-icer that he used on the handle to the driver's side door.

  "Do you want to go in?" he asked.

  I took a breath and nodded. The door resisted Micah pulling on it, but finally he managed to wrench it open and he stepped aside to gesture toward the open door as if inviting me to go for a ride. I walked up to the door and ducked down to look into the car. It was still and unassuming. The front of the interior of the cabin looked nearly perfect, as if I had just pulled up to the tree, got frustrated that it was in my way, and left it behind to walk the rest of the way down the mountain. Just inches to the side, however, I could see the back of the car crushed into the backseat.

  I climbed into the driver's seat and rested my hands on the steering wheel. There were a few drops of blood on the top, but when I was sitting in this position, that was the only indication that there was an accident at all. I wrapped my hands around the wheel and leaned my head back against the headrest, closing my eyes. I tried to remember anything. I searched my brain for even the smallest imprint of the sounds, smells, or sights that I might have experienced when the crash happened. Somewhere in the back of my mind I could see the snowflakes falling in front of the windshield and feel the chill from getting into the car and not turning on the heat. I felt a jolt of fear and saw the image of the tree in front of me. My eyes snapped open as I drew in a sharp breath.

  "Are you alright?" Micah asked, coming to the still-open driver's side door and leaning down to look at me. "Did you remember something?"

  "I'm fine," I said. I let my hands fall away from the steering wheel. "I still don't know what happened. I don't understand how I got here."

  I leaned to the side and opened the glove compartment, wondering if there mig
ht be anything inside that could tell me more. It was pristine and virtually empty, containing only a slim folder that looked like it had been there since the car was purchased. I snapped the hatch closed and sighed.

  "Is there anything I can do?" he asked.

  I shook my head.

  "Just take me back up to the lodge," I said. "There's no point in me being here."

  Micah reached in and offered me his hand. I took it and let him guide me out of the car. He pulled me in to hug me as he closed the door. I clung to him, burying my face in his coat to warm the chill on my skin. When we stepped away from each other, we headed back up the ridge. I struggled with each step and again felt a sense of amazement that he had done this with me in his arms. Though the snow wasn't as deep then, it still would have been difficult, and I squeezed his hand in another thank you.

  Nearly an hour later we were sitting in the great room. I was curled up on the couch, my hands wrapped tightly around a hot mug of coffee as I stared into the dancing flames of the fire that Micah had built. This was a real fire, not like the one in the library, and the sound of the logs and smell of the burning wood surrounded me. I drew in a breath of it and felt my lips curl up into a smile as my lungs filled with the smell.

  "I love the smell of Rome burning," I said.

  Micah straightened and looked at me strangely.

  "What?" he asked as he put the fireplace tool back into its stand.

  "Spaceship Earth," I said. "Have you ever ridden it? There's a part where the libraries are burning and there's this amazing smell. I know it's supposed to be a little bit scary, but I've always loved the smell. There was a time when Madeline and I thought about starting our own business making handcrafted soaps and candles and that smell was one of the ones that we wanted to try to recreate."

  Micah was staring at me, his jaw set.

  "Madeline?"

  "My sister. The younger one." I took a sip of my coffee and let out a short laugh. "She is going to be so pissed at me when she sees what I did to her car."

  The realization of what I had just said, the whole exchange that we had just had, hit me as hard as the impact of the crash and my mouth fell open. I nearly dropped the mug in my hand and Micah took it from me as he came to crouch down in front of me.

  "What did you just say?"

  I looked at him, feeling almost like I was looking at him for the first time. The familiarity was there in his eyes, but now I knew why. There weren't any questions anymore. Suddenly and painfully, it was all there again.

  "I remember. My name is Charlotte Dabney. I came onto the mountain to spend Thanksgiving with my family." I said. I felt my heart clench. "I remember you."

  "You do?"

  He reached up to touch my face and I pulled away from him.

  "We went to high school together. You were on the football team."

  You were the gorgeous, popular boy who I was head-over-heels for even before I met Daniel.

  Oh, god. Daniel.

  I scrambled off the end of the couch and ran toward the memorabilia room. The door was locked, and I pounded on it, letting out my frustration and anger until Micah came up behind me and unlocked it. I ran directly to the high school display in the back corner and pointed at the jersey.

  "I went to that high school," I said. "That's why it looked familiar when I first saw it. I couldn't remember, but there was something about it." I reached down and grabbed one of the yearbooks displayed on the lower shelf. I flipped through the pages until I found the senior pictures. "Because we went to school together. You knew who I was." I slammed the yearbook down on the surface of a table in front of me and pointed at my picture. "You've known who I was for fucking years."

  Micah took a step toward me.

  "Charlotte, listen to me."

  "No," I said, shaking my head. "No, I don't want to listen to you. How could you do this to me? You must have known who I was as soon as you saw me."

  I could see Micah's face from when he was in high school. He was slimmer then, his younger face smooth and bare. The image of him in his football uniform, laughing as he walked through the halls like a king holding court, stood in stark contrast to the rough, bearded man who stood in front of me now. The mountain had changed him. The years had changed him. I knew that they had changed me as well, but not as wholly, not as completely as they had changed Micah. I wondered if even if I had had my memory when I first woke up in the lodge, or if I could remember that first moment when he took me out of the car, if I would have been able to recognize him. I knew that his eyes had stayed with me since high school. The expression of those eyes in the few times that he had looked at me. I never really knew if he was actually looking at me. There were times when we were both going down the hall and he seemed to turn his attention toward me, but he never spoke to me. He never even seemed to acknowledge that I was there. But I always knew that he was there. There was something about him, something that I couldn't explain, that drew me to him even then.

  It wasn't just that he was gorgeous. He was beautiful then, in a different way than he was now, in a different way than the other guys I went to school with us. But it wasn't just that that made me want to be near him. Any time I was close to him, or even just looking at him across a room or that one time when I mustered up my courage and went to a football game, I felt somehow changed. I couldn't explain it then, and I couldn't explain it now. In truth, I shouldn't have been afraid of him. We were in the same social circle, were meant to have the same friends. But he was outgoing, loud, boisterous, charismatic. I was shy and quiet, never really able to step into the role that seem to have been made for me. People expected me to be like my sisters. My older sister before me had been the queen of the school. Micah was two years older than me, which meant that if Miranda had been just a year or two younger than she was, it would have been likely that she and Micah would have dated. They would have ruled the halls of the high school without question or opposition. Even those who criticized Micah because he didn't come from the same zip code and wasn't backed by a name that went back decades or even centuries in our town couldn't stand in his way. I was never like that. I didn't like to be the center of attention. I never had the courage or the confidence to even try. I always felt as though I was existing just on the edge of everyone else. I orbited around those who should have been my closest friends and confidants. I orbited around Micah.

  "Please, Charlotte," he said. "Just let me explain."

  "How are you going to explain this?" I asked angrily. "What could you possibly say that would excuse you for not telling me?"

  "I should have told you," he admitted. "I did know who you were as soon as I saw you. At least I thought that I did. It's been a long time since I saw you and I couldn't be completely sure. When I realized that you had lost your memory, I didn't know if I should tell you who I thought that you were. I didn't know if it would cause damage or force you to remember something that you weren't ready to remember yet."

  "But you told me my name" I said.

  "I did," he said. "I thought that I could at least give you that. I wanted something to call you and the longer that I spent with you, the more confident I was that you were who I thought you were."

  "You lied to me. You kept something from me that you had no right to keep from me."

  Micah stepped toward me again, but I stepped out of the way. I didn't want him anywhere near me. I wanted to get out of the room and away from him. I was angrier than I could put words to, but I was also hurt beyond description. I couldn't believe that he had done this to me. It felt even more than deceptive and manipulative. It felt abusive. It felt like he was purposely trying to keep my identity and my memories from me so that I wouldn't have any context, so that I wouldn't have any choice as to whether I wanted to stay with him or find a way to leave. He wanted to make sure that he could control me in exactly the same way that I had always been controlled. This was the very thing that I have been trying to escape and I had ended up right back in it.


  I maneuvered around Micah and rushed out of the memorabilia room and toward the guest room. I dragged my suitcase out from under the bed where I had tucked it and dropped it down onto the mattress just as I had the day that I had run from my parents' cabin. Some of my clothes were still upstairs in Micah's bedroom, but I didn't care. I had closed the door to the guest room as soon as I stepped in and I didn't intend on opening it again until I had figured out a way that I could get away from the lodge and away from Micah. I didn't want to see him again. Even as I thought this, however, tears burned in my eyes and my heart ached. I had known that my memories were probably going to come back at some point and that it would change things, but I couldn't believe just how quickly and excruciatingly the world around me had crumbled.

  After I packed everything that was still in the guest room and the attached bathroom, I zipped the suitcase closed and put it beside the door so that I be able to access it easily. I looked out the window and saw that it had begun to snow again. Behind me the door to the bedroom flew open and I realized that I hadn't locked it. I whipped around and stared at Micah, furious, but also wishing that I could curl into his arms and find the comfort and reassurance that had been there for the last two weeks.