The Forgotten Girl

by Rio Youers

  “They’d better be damn good chimichangas,” I whispered to Sally, and she laughed—a simply gorgeous sound—then strode to an empty table. I followed, feeling infinitely safe with her: the cutest little warhead in town.

  * * *

  It wasn’t set in stone, but we figured staying for one drink after we’d eaten, then heading back to the motel. We had to get up stupid-ass early to be on the 5:30 bus to Blythe, and getting as much sleep as possible beforehand was the smart thing to do. However, smartness is apt to go bye-bye when you plug a beer into my fist and load the jukebox with classic rock. Not only that, but the bikers proved to be friendly old bears, buying us drinks, showing us their scars and tattoos. When “Touch Me” by The Doors came on the juke, Sally bounded from her seat and hit the dance floor at a whirl. A sleuth of biker guys and gals followed, and pretty soon the joint was jumping. I knew then that an early night wasn’t in the cards.

  I loved every moment, though. Sally did, too. I saw how she laughed—how she lived—without burden. Her delicate arms, the softness of her face, the lightness of her step, belied the terrifying energy she had inside.

  “Dance with me, Harvey.” She beckoned, shimmering from everywhere.

  I caught her hand and danced, my own burdens hovering just north of my shoulders, and I remember thinking that we could do this. We could live and be happy. We could run and dance at the same time.

  “I’m glad you found me,” she whispered.

  I pulled her close. Our bodies connected—they locked. “There,” I said, but kindly, and kissed her, and for the next few hours, there she stayed.

  * * *

  It was just shy of midnight by the time we made it back to the motel. We weren’t drunk but we had a buzz going, as much from the good times as the booze. I punched a 5 a.m. wakeup into the clock on the nightstand, giving us thirty minutes to get showered, dressed, and out the door. Time enough for a couple of cats who weren’t too crazy about making themselves pretty.

  “We got five hours,” I said. “Better get sleeping.”

  We didn’t get much.

  * * *

  “Wake up, baby … it’s time.”

  I felt Sally’s body close and warm and turned my head, blinking in the darkness. The glowing digits on the clock read 3:53. “Whuufuck?” I groaned. “What’s going … it’s only…” My head thumped back on the pillow and I would have gone down but Sally shook me gently, whispered close to my ear:

  “It’s time.”

  I groaned again and half sat up, turning toward her. She reached for the light on the nightstand, flicked the switch. I squinted, looked at the clock again—maybe I’d read it wrong. But no: 3:54.

  “It’s early, baby, we—”

  “I’m restoring your memories,” she said. “All of them. Right now. But we have to move quickly afterward.”

  It took a second for this to sink in, and when it did I sat up fully, not quite bushy-tailed but not sleepy, either. A loop of nervousness and excitement hummed to life deep inside me. It made everything run faster.

  “Something happened when I attacked Lang,” she said. Her voice was low and serious, but steady, and I don’t know if that made me feel better or worse. “I wounded him so deeply that I left a piece of myself behind. Imagine a car hitting someone hard enough to leave paint chips embedded in the skin.”

  A graphic image, but it worked.

  “We’re connected,” she continued. “It’s a thin thread, but it’s there—it’s real. I can feel him sometimes, and I know he can feel me.”

  This triggered a memory: Lang slumped in his chair, drawing feebly on his oxygen. I can still feel the girl, he’d said, his voice little more than a whisper. Nine years later, I can feel the impact—the emptiness of what she took from me.

  “He’s been using this thread to hunt for me,” Sally said. “But it’s too thin, too weak. Most of the time. When I use my ability—and I’m not talking about little mind grabs; I mean when I really use it, when I let the red bird fly—the thread expands and sends out a pulse. It’s like a blip on a radar, and it tells Lang where I am.”

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Lang sends the hunt dogs to come looking for me, to sniff out any and all information. They could be here in a day or in a couple of hours, depending on how close they are. This is why I had to leave Green Ridge—and you—in an awful hurry. And it’s why we have to haul ass after I give you your memories back.”

  “Which explains why we’re doing this now,” I said, flapping a hand in a vaguely westerly direction. “Right before we hop on a bus and blow this chimichanga stand.”

  “You got it,” Sally said.

  “Then let’s do this thing. I’m ready.”

  She nodded. Her eyes glimmered in the dim light. I took a deep breath and flexed my fingers, feeling like I was about to do something dangerous but exhilarating. A walk across hot coals, perhaps, or a bungee jump. I thought Sally would clasp the sides of my head and go all spooky-eyed, or at least raise one hand to better direct her energy. Instead she surprised the hell out of me by peeling off her T-shirt and tossing it onto the floor. Her breasts swayed gently with her body movement, and I thought the sublime shape of them would complement my palm in the same way her face did. I’d seen them before, of course, but couldn’t remember seeing them, so this was like the first time. I have to say—for me, at least—they were perfect.

  “Right on,” I said.

  The panties came next. She peeled them over her thighs, over her knees, then kicked them from the tips of her toes, revealing an unkempt triangle of pubic hair the same dark color as her eyebrows.

  “Is this how it’s normally done?” I asked.

  “No,” Sally said, dragging me on top of her. “But it’s how we’re doing it.”

  * * *

  Her hair had the same peppery smell of the Cypress air and I dipped my face into it and filled my lungs. When I kissed the shelf of her jaw she turned her head and the side of her throat rose, too inviting, and the taste of her there was watery sweet—how rain tastes, unscented but fresh—and she sighed, batted a loose fist against my shoulder. I lifted her at the small of her back and she bowed. My mouth found her breast, first around, then upon her nipple, not biting or sucking, just holding it gently, feeling it knot against my tongue. “Here,” she said. “Baby, here.” And she ushered me to her mouth, but also—my hand—between her legs. I pressed with my tongue, with three fingers, and a storm of red feathers swirled through my mind.

  * * *

  We were inside each other. Surreal. A contradiction. It was like being dry underwater. Hollow and full.

  I followed her through darkness, not a red bird, but a naked girl who ran as she would through a field of flowers. Red light spooled from her hair and body, an endless ribbon that pulsed softly and shimmered. I ran beside, passed through, caught hold of it. By its glow I saw pieces of nothing and bulky chunks of everything. There was no symmetry or continuity—only Sally and the light she left behind.

  I was silent and screaming.

  * * *

  What did you expect? The Sally and Harvey photo album? A home movie reeling off all of our wonderful moments together? It doesn’t work that way, baby. Memories are made up of scattered, breakable components. They’re new things built from old pieces. It’s like making art out of junk.

  * * *

  The ground softened, disappeared. I fell and the red light wrapped around me like a sash and lifted me, then set me down on a narrow bridge that spanned a canyon with no bottom. Sally waited on the other side and I crossed quickly. Around her, I heard ten thousand sounds and saw things crumble, then reform, subtly different. The sky was full of red lightning and stars and so many things rained from it but didn’t land.

  * * *

  Locating the memories was the easy part; I was the leading lady, after all. The hard part was reconstructing them in your mind, then recording the sequences—those billions of neurons working at starlight speed. Then I cl
osed out the memories and sabotaged the processes needed for recall.

  So what’s happening now? I asked, except I didn’t have to ask anything.

  I’m using the sequences I recorded like a blueprint, Sally replied. I’m repairing the connection points, soldering the neurons, getting everything back the way it was.

  I watched a baby-blue Schwinn topple from the darkness above and my mouth filled with the taste of strawberries. Sally danced within her own red glow. I heard “Abilene.” The lightning jagged brightly. I looked up and saw Michael Jackson—the cat, not the superstar—and a mannequin with two left hands.

  I think it’s working, I said.

  * * *

  Come with me.

  I followed the girl, the light, so like a flame, but in my mind it was a giant red feather rippling. I traversed rivers flowing with mental bric-a-brac and scaled awkward peaks that rippled beneath my hands and feet.

  Nearly there.

  I was breathless but didn’t stop. I crossed chasms, sometimes latching on to the feather, other times needing a bridge. Before long, though—no matter how quickly my heart ran, or how shallow my breaths—I could make the leap on my own.

  Do you remember?

  Sally slowed down … stopped. I caught up to her with my chest tight and my legs trembling. Tiny insects vibrated in the evening air and a pink waterfall roared. Above this, I heard music: my version of Van Morrison’s “Someone Like You.” I felt a comfortable weight against my body and looked down to see my guitar—my old Washburn with its split bridge and buzzing top E. I strummed and it was perfectly in tune.

  The ground steadied beneath me. No lightning, only the sky, pink and blue, smeared with dusty cloud, like a chalkboard.

  Do you remember me now?

  * * *

  “Yes,” I breathed and pressed my forehead to hers, said it again, but louder: “Yes.” My face was curtained with sweat and the pit of my stomach danced. I groaned as if I was hurt but only the opposite was true. I pulled out of Sally very slowly and her body responded by curling gently.

  “Baby,” she moaned.

  I kissed her eyes.

  “Baby.”

  We lay beside each other for … I don’t know how long, catching our breaths, full of color. We never stopped touching. Our lips, our hands, our feet; there was always at least one part of bodies making contact. Not our minds, though. The bird was back in its cage.

  “I could stay here forever,” I said. “This moment, right now.”

  “If only,” she said.

  “Right,” I said. “He knows where you are.”

  “To within a five-, maybe ten-mile radius, but there are no other towns around here, so yeah, he knows.”

  “We’d better hustle.”

  “As long as we make that five-thirty bus, everything’s cool.”

  “What if they get here quickly,” I asked. “Follow the bus?”

  “They won’t know we’re on it,” Sally replied. “I checked the schedule. Three buses pass through here in the next two hours. Eight before midday. We might have caught any one of them, heading in any direction. Also, we might be driving or walking.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Only thing they’ll know is that I was here.” Sally kissed my chin. “So take a moment, baby. It’s all good.”

  My chest rose as I inhaled, then I half rolled toward Sally, touched her lips, slowly trailed my fingers to her right breast, played with the fine black hair sprouting from the soft skin there. I’d mentioned this hair in my Book of Moments, but now I remembered it—the many times I’d brushed my tongue across it, plucked it tenderly between my teeth. I did so again now, then lay my head down. Her heart drummed beautifully.

  “Your favorite song is ‘Ruby Tuesday’—the Melanie Safka version,” I said. “You once found twenty dollars on the number nine bus and gave it to the homeless dude who hangs out on the corner of Trenton and Main. Pickles make you gag. You’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird eight times. You told me your parents’ names were Bruce and Wanda and that they died in a car accident when you were four years old.”

  “You know the truth now.”

  “You broke three fingers playing softball when you were nine years old.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Your first crush was Enrique Iglesias.”

  “Can you blame me?”

  “Not at all, he’s fucking gorgeous.” I ran my fingers along the inside of her thigh and she quavered. “Your favorite color is green. The first album you ever bought was Fly by the Dixie Chicks. You call being ten pounds overweight your ‘Happy Zone,’ and to hell with anybody who disagrees.”

  “Yeah, fuck ’em.”

  “You’re not a vegetarian but you don’t eat beef. You once marched on Washington with me for gender equality and—”

  “Hey,” Sally cut in, tilting my face toward her, placing a finger on my lips. “You don’t have to remember everything at once. It’s all there”—her finger moved to my forehead and tapped twice—“when you need it. So just relax. Breathe. Enjoy.”

  I nodded, closed my eyes, and sought composure—even the merest thread of it—amid the busy intersection my mind had become. I took slow and steady breaths, smiling as Sally ran her fingers over my recently smoothed skull.

  “Your poor dreads,” she said a moment later. “I’m sorry you had to cut them.”

  “It’s just hair,” I said. “I’ll grow it out again. One day. When this is all over.”

  “I’d like that. Who cut it?”

  “Dad.”

  Something about this tickled her. She giggled, cupped her mouth. “You’re sweet, Harvey.”

  “He did an okay job.”

  “Yeah. It’s okay.”

  My smile widened, remembering how Dad had delighted in snipping my dreads, forging me into a version of his younger self. This led me on a train of thought, taking me away from that busy intersection, if only for a moment. I went from Dad to his booby-trapped yard, to the clear water lapping at the edges of Spirit Lake, to the smaller lake within earshot of Mom’s grave, to the Sentinel offices where she used to work—right beside the police department in Green Ridge, and from there to Chief Newirth …

  I leapt out of bed as if someone had doused it with gasoline and dropped a match. My body grew rigid and loose at the same time—the oddest sensation—and I slumped stiffly against the wall.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. My voice was too loud.

  “Shhh,” Sally urged, and then, almost under her breath, “I was waiting for this.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “It’s done, baby. In the past. No one will ever find out.”

  I pushed off the wall, paced for a moment, then sat on the edge of the bed. Sally shuffled closer, encircled me from behind. The shitty little motel room—which had taken a few woozy rolls—began to steady.

  “Who was he?” I asked.

  “A hunt dog,” Sally said. “His name was Corvino.”

  My memory was particularly sharp at that moment; all the neurons were fully juiced and ready for action, and that name—Corvino—triggered another sequence: the cinderblock room, my body bruised and bleeding, feeling nauseous and violated after having Lang so deeply inside my mind. He’d beckoned Jackhammer close and told him to check out Asbury Park—to go gently.

  Jackhammer: You want me to go alone?

  Lang: Is Corvino still MIA?

  Jackhammer: Yes.

  Lang: Then no … definitely don’t go alone.

  Sally turned me toward her, kissed my face all over—Jesus, maybe a hundred times.

  “You want me to take it away?” she asked between kisses.

  “No,” I said. “It’s mine to carry.”

  I’d remembered what I’d done with the shovel.

  * * *

  The pieces were starting to fit, but there was still something missing. An important something. I looked at the clock. 4:42. Now was not the time to discuss it, but I couldn’t wait.

&nb
sp; “Corvino came looking for you,” I said, holding Sally’s face in my palm, always amazed at how perfectly it fit. “He knew where you were, which means you sent out a radar blip—you used your power.”

  “Yes,” Sally said.

  “You were forced into a corner,” I said, speaking as the thoughts occurred to me. “You reacted. That’s what started all this.”

  “Yes,” she said again.

  “Well…?”

  “We don’t have time. I’ll tell you on the bus.”

  “You can tell me now,” I insisted, pointing at the clock. “We have sixteen minutes before the alarm goes off.”

  “That’s not enough time.”

  “CliffsNotes, baby.”

  Sally sighed. She wasn’t getting out of this—not without zapping my mind, at least—and she knew it.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  She told me.

  * * *

  Just after five o’clock. Sally was in the shower so I took a moment to grab some fresh air. Hell, I needed it. It had been forty minutes—give or take—since she’d restored my memories and that intersection in my mind still purred. Not only that, but the information she’d just shared had set the room askew and I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. I leaned over the railing outside our door and took several deep breaths but it wasn’t enough. I needed to walk out the jitters. A couple of minutes—to the other side of the parking lot and back—would help no end.

  I started for the stairwell leading to ground level, dressed in my jeans, my Flaming Lips T-shirt, no shoes or socks. The lot was half-filled with bikes resting on their stands, chrome glimmering softly. I saw a TV flashing infomercials through the front office window. No one at the desk. A payphone was bolted to the wall outside.

  I looked at it for a moment, then pulled my wallet from the back pocket of my jeans and flipped it open. There was the red feather, and behind it a scrap of paper on which I’d written Chief Newirth’s number. It was after seven on the east coast. Chances were, he would’ve just sat down at his desk, coffee in hand, the back of his neck still smelling of soap.