Forget Me Always

  “Yeah.”

  She folds her hands over each other, like a dainty lady, and for the billionth time I’m reminded of how mature she is compared to me. The nurses gossip about her; the way she’s been in the hospital for five years, the way she has no family—her mother and father died in a tragic “accident,” and her grandmother raised her, but she passed a few years ago, leaving Sophia all alone in the world. Mostly they gossip about the boy who comes to visit her, Jack, the same guy who happened to see our house door open and saved Mom and me from Leo. He wasn’t quick enough to stop Leo from flinging me into a wall and cracking my skull open, but he was quick enough to save Mom, and that’s all that matters.

  Infuriatingly good-looking, and an infuriatingly Good Samaritan, Jack apparently visits Sophia a lot. But since I got here, apparently he hasn’t visited her at all. He’s sent letters to Sophia (Letters! In this day and age!), but he hasn’t come personally. The nurses love to gossip about that, too. I scream politely from across the room correct them whenever I can; I don’t know him! He barely knows me! I’m indebted to him, sure, but there’s nothing going on and there never will be because duh, all boys who aren’t Hollywood actors with prestigious superhero careers are gross!

  “I’m sorry,” I blurt.

  “For what?”

  “For your boyfriend. He’s…he’s stopped coming around since I got here, and if it’s because of me, I’m sorry, and I know that’s arrogant to think, but the nurses blab and I can’t help but think—”

  She pats my hand and smiles. “Shhh. It’s okay. They don’t know anything. He’s just busy. He works a lot, and he has school.”

  “I have school,” I grumble.

  She plops the book she brought down on my lap. “That’s right! And you have two acts of The Crucible to read if you wanna catch up before you go back next week!”

  I contemplate seppuku, but after remembering how big the medical bill for a cracked head is, I refrain. Mom’s having a hard enough time paying without adding spilled organs and general death to the list. Besides, I can’t die yet. I still gotta thank Jack properly. Dying before you pay someone back for saving your mom is just plain rude.

  “I don’t wanna go back to school,” I say.

  “Yes you do.”

  “I totally do. It’s a snoozefest in this place.”

  “Then we’d better get reading.” Sophia smiles. I groan and roll over, and she starts reading aloud. She enjoys torturing me. Or she’s just happy to have someone here with her. I can’t decide which. We might get along great, but she’s still a huge mystery to me. Me! The queen empress of deducing what people are all about! I study her face, her hands, her dress as she reads. Everyone in the hospital knows Sophia, but no one knows what she has, exactly, except her doctor. The nurses don’t like to talk about it. I asked Naomi, and she glared and told me it was under doctor-patient confidentiality. Sometimes Sophia stays in her room for “treatments,” and those last for days. She doesn’t limp or cough or vomit, and no bandages or stitches are on her. Except for the fact that she’s so pale and thin and sometimes complains she has migraines, she’s perfectly healthy as far as I can see.

  “Soph,” I interrupt. She looks up.

  “Yeah?”

  “I know this might be super invasive, and historically, invading has been pretty bad overall, but I don’t think I can physically contain my curiosity any longer. Or, I could. But I’d like, implode the star system from the stress.”

  She laughs. “It’s okay, Isis. You can ask whatever you want.”

  “Why are you in the hospital?”

  Sophia slowly closes the book. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

  “Remember what?”

  Her eyes dampen with sorrow. She stares out the window for a long time before sighing.

  “What?” I insist. “What is it?”

  Sophia looks back at me. “Oh, nothing. It’s just sad, is all. I’m sad for him. He was so happy, for a while. No—it was more than happiness. It was like he was alive again, with that fire in his eyes.”

  I wrinkle my nose, and before I can explode with the demand for answers, Sophia starts talking again.

  “I have the same thing you have.” She taps her head with one finger. My mouth makes a little O.

  “You…split your head open like a melon, too?”

  She laughs, the sound like bells made of crystal. “Something like that. Our heads are equally broken. Maybe not in the same ways, but broken all the same.”

  I look over at the bag she brought. A bunch of romance books crowd it, various clones of Fabio flashing their brooding frowns on every cover as a scantily dressed female is in the inevitable process of fainting on a rock somewhere nearby, preferably directly beneath his crotch.

  “Why do you even like those? Aren’t there just like, princesses and kissing and misogyny?” I wrinkle my nose.

  Sophia shrugs. “I don’t know. I like the princesses.”

  “They’ve got great dresses and fabulous hair and loads of money. Kind of hard not to like ’em.”

  “I suppose I like the way the stories always end happily. Since…since I know my story won’t end as happily.”

  My heart twists around in my chest. She sounds so sure of herself.

  “H-Hey! Don’t talk like that. You…you’re the closest thing I’ve ever met to a princess. Like, a real-life one. Minus the tuberculosis and intermarrying. And, uh, beheadings.”

  Sophia laughs. “You’re a princess, too, you know. Very brave. And noble.”

  “Me? Pft.” I buzz my lips and a delightful spray of saliva mists the air. “I’m more like…more like…I guess if I was in one of those books I’d be like, a dragon.”

  “Why?”

  “It just makes more sense!” I smooth my hair. “Fabulous glowing scales. Beautiful jewellike eyes.”

  “Wings for arms?” Sophia smirks.

  “That’s a wyvern! Dragons have wings independent of their limb system! But I forgive your transgressions. I’ve encountered a bit of heartburn today and am not in the mood to eat a maiden like you in the slightest.”

  “What would you do as a dragon?”

  I shrug. “You know. Fly around. Collect treasure. Burp infernos on some townspeople.”

  Sophia is quiet for a moment.

  “But I still don’t get it,” she finally says. “Why does a dragon make sense for you?”

  “Think about it. I’d just make a badass dragon. I mean…nobody really likes the dragon. You get to be alone, in a cool, quiet place. No one likes you because you’re too loud and full of fire. But if you’re a princess, everybody likes you and you gotta be in the middle of hot sweaty balls all the time.”

  Sophia raises an eyebrow.

  “Ballroom…balls. Dances. Ugh.”

  She laughs that chime-laugh, and I can’t help the laugh that bubbles up, too.

  “And I mean,” I add, “you know. Dragons never have to worry about. Um. What I mean is, princes don’t fall in love with dragons—”

  Ugly.

  “—they fall in love with princesses—”

  Did you think that’s what this was? Love? I don’t date fat girls.

  “—so it makes more sense, you know?”

  Sophia nods, and for a moment we’re both dead silent.

  Finally, she smiles. “I think you underestimate princesses.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah! Everyone only pretends to like them because they have to. They don’t have any real friends, because they’re locked away in the castles all the time. Every princess wants to be free. Every princess wants freedom more than anything.”

  Her words ring with a deeper truth, like it’s something she’s been thinking about for ages, not minutes. But she smiles, and suddenly the tension is gone. She reaches into her bag, a little leather thing she keeps makeup and stuff in, and pulls out tiny airplane bottles of booze.

  “Where did you get these?” I ask. Sophia shrugs innocently.


  “Some rich college frat boy got checked into rehab in the next wing over. They made him empty his pockets, and then it was just a simple matter of sneaking them off the confiscation cart.”

  “You never told me you moonlight as a master thief.”

  “When you’re trapped in a hospital most of your life, you learn how to YouTube everything. Including sleight-of-hand tricks.” Her smile is so warm. “And, as a bonus”—she pulls out a can of spray paint—“the janitor left this in his closet.”

  “Oh my God, you’re like a cat burglar. A huge cat burglar. A tiger burglar.”

  “I just know this hospital really well,” she insists.

  “And what debauchery have you planned for the evening with these supplies, madam?”

  “I’m thinking we drink these.” She motions to the bottles. “And tag that awful security guard’s booth with a middle finger or two.”

  “Giant genitalia is much harder to clean off.”

  She points at me and winks. “Now you’re thinking with evil.”

  “I prefer the term ‘chaotic neutral.’” I unscrew a bottle’s lid and down it, the familiar smell of rum searing my nose.

  Rum. Rum and the fizz of Coke on my tongue. The warm heat of dancing bodies all around me. Music. Music so loud I can’t hear myself think. A soft, smooth chest behind my shoulders, giving me stability, keeping me standing. A feeling of being safe.

  “Are you all right?”

  Sophia’s soft voice breaks me out of the memory. I blink four, five, ten times, the hospital coming back into focus. What the hell was that? Who was the person behind me, making me feel that safe? Not even Mom makes me feel like that, not since I was little. She’s been too fragile. But whoever that was gave me an inner peace I can still taste on my tongue.

  “I’ll be better when I’m drunk.” I grab another bottle. If I keep drinking, maybe I’ll remember more.

  “Hey, slow down! Leave some for me,” Sophia insists. She swallows a bottle eagerly. We trade sips, and when we start giggling at each other for no reason, I know we’re drunk.

  “I feel so warm and weird.” Sophia laughs.

  “Is this…” I hiccup. “Is this your first time drinking?”

  “No!”

  “It is!” I pat her shoulder. “I feel so honored to accompany you on your maiden voyage down the rabbit hole.”

  “Underage drinking is bad,” Sophia whispers, then laughs. “Except I can’t wait until I’m of age. Because by then I’ll be dead!”

  I flinch. Sophia stops laughing, her smile fading.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I don’t mean to be a drag.”

  “The only thing that’s dragging is your shot count.” I pass her another bottle. “But it’s okay for you to drink, right? You won’t—”

  “I’m not that fragile.” She frowns.

  “Sometimes medication makes people fragile! I was just checking.”

  “Why would you care?” Sophia snaps. “We barely know each other.”

  I freeze. Sophia goes still, too, her dark blue eyes widening.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry. Sometimes it happens like this, I say things without thinking. It just comes out and I can’t stop it and then I feel so horrible.”

  “Hey, shhh.” I pat her back. “It’s okay.”

  “That’s what they all say. They all say it’s okay when it’s not, and the resentment festers in them until they hate me.”

  “You…you don’t know that. You can’t read people’s minds! It would be tight if you could, and you’d probably be some young adult novel protagonist with fairy powers, but you can’t! Unless…” I look her over suspiciously. “You can?”

  “I can’t.” She frowns. “But that doesn’t change the fact everyone learns to hate me. Eventually. You’ll be no different.”

  “No.” I set my chin. “You were right. We barely know each other. That’s the truth. But that doesn’t mean I can’t care. People like to say time is a big deal, but it’s not. I care more than I should, faster than I should—”

  The memory of someone’s lips touching mine, someone I wanted to be happy. Someone I cared about, was starting to care about, more than I cared for anyone in a long time—

  I shake my head.

  “Time doesn’t matter, okay? You’re my friend. I don’t hate you.”

  “You will.” She stares sadly at another bottle. “Words hurt. And I say words without thinking.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugs. “It’s part of my condition. Irritability. Mood swings. Behavioral changes. I’m not who I used to be, and people are starting to leave me because of it.”

  There’s a quiet, and then she laughs despairingly.

  “You got off easy. Head injury, but nothing psychological. Except for—”

  “The memories,” I finish. She smiles.

  “Sometimes forgetting can be a blessing. If I could forget him like you have, if I could forget it all, move somewhere new, start over fresh—”

  She stops herself. I lean over and grab her shoulder.

  “Wait, what? ‘Him’ who? What are you talking about?”

  She chews her lip, then bolts off the bed and grabs the can of spray paint.

  “Last one to the guard box is a pile of garbage!” she shouts, suddenly all joy and effervescence. Confusion ringing in my ears, I chase after her through the halls. The interns shout at us to slow down, but I can barely hear them over Sophia’s chiming laughter. I follow it like a bloodhound, down the steps, around the hedges outside. The hospital is still and quiet on the east side—no parking lot, only an expanse of garden they grew for rehabilitating patients. The guard patrols the parking lot more than here, which makes it the perfect time to commit a crime and not do time for said crime.

  “Sophia! Wait!” I shout after her, but she’s so fast. She shouldn’t be this fast—she’s sick. Or is she only sick in the head? Is that what’s wrong with her? I contemplate it as I catch up to her. She kneels by the guard box and shakes the spray can. She spritzes the air experimentally and wrinkles her nose.

  “Oh, it smells gross.”

  “Here.” I fish out a napkin from dinner and shove it at her. “Cover your mouth and nose so you don’t breathe it in.”

  “It’s nice of you to play mom.” She laughs, takes it, and starts spraying a delightfully realistic middle finger on the white wall. “I never had a mom.”

  I’m quiet, half keeping lookout and half burning alive with curiosity.

  “Well, I did.” Sophia shakes the can and starts on the other half of the graffiti. “But she decided she didn’t want me. Or Dad. No, Mrs. Welles decided she’d had enough of both.”

  “Soph—”

  She finishes the middle finger and nods, satisfied. She offers the can to me.

  “Anything you want to add?”

  I shake the can once, admiring the vivid black obscenity staring back at me. I add a tiny, misshapen heart below the middle finger, like a signature. Sophia laughs and pulls me by the hand back into the hospital, the both of us high on adrenaline and paint fumes.

  But it wears off, like all things do. Sophia goes back to her room for her medicine, and I spend some quality time with my laptop. Facebook is about as interesting as a sack of rotting tomatoes, except at least tomatoes don’t post racist-slash-sexist rants.

  Before I know it, I’m staring at an empty Google search bar. My fingers fly across the keys.

  Sophia Welles Ohio.

  I never knew Sophia’s last name before now. And suddenly a world opens in front of me, a dark, twisted world. Article after article details exactly what happened to Sophia’s family. Her mother, after struggling for years with schizophrenia and a heroin addiction, snapped one day and killed her father, then overdosed. Sophia came home from school and found the two of them when she was only seven years old. Her grandmother took her out of the big city of Columbus and came to Northplains to get away from it all.

  Sophia’s been through more shi
t than anyone.

  I close my laptop and stare at the ceiling for a moment. How the hell do you keep moving on from something like that?

  You don’t.

  You end up somewhere like here, covered in mental scars.

  It takes me two days to work up the courage to go see Sophia again. She hasn’t missed me, considering she’s been going in and out of CAT scans and minor surgeries for twenty-two hours of it. When I open her door, she’s lying in bed with deep purple circles under her eyes, a patch of shaved hair on the base of her neck split in half by an ugly threaded scar, and a faint smile.

  “Hey,” she croaks.

  “What did they do to you?” I stroke her hand.

  “Oh, rummage around in my head, pull out a few lumps, sew my cranium back up. The usual.”

  “You have lumps in there?”

  She motions for her water bottle on the side table, and I give it to her. She unscrews the lid and takes a deep drink before sighing.

  “I’m a drug baby. Lots of complications. I’ve been in and out of hospitals my whole life. And then one day, when I came with Gran, they found the tumor.” She winces. “I didn’t let it stop me, though. I convinced Gran to let me stay in school until at least the first year of high school. But then—”

  Sophia looks at her hands. A bird outside her window chirps eagerly, its red breast bright against the bleak gray sleet of Ohio. We watch it fly off together.

  “I should’ve died a long time ago.” Her voice is small. “But they won’t let me. They keep making me live.”

  “Because they care about you,” I insist. “Who else in their lives is going to be as disastrously kind and beautiful as you? Who else will break the hearts of a thousand men and also ships because…your face launched them!”

  Sophia sputters a laugh. “You mixed up those sayings a bit.”

  “Like a cake batter,” I chime in. “Smooth and delicious.”

  Her laughter lightens her expression, the shadows gone from it for a moment. For a second I’d been scared. For a second she sounded like Mom used to sound, at the beginning, when we were first reunited after her breakup with Leo. Hopeless.

  “Isis?” Naomi knocks on the door and pokes her head into the room. “Ah! There you are. I knew you’d be here. Let’s go. It’s time for your session with Dr. Mernich. Hi, Sophia. How are you feeling?”