The Forgotten Girl, Page 3

  Going into my closet, I stand up on my tiptoes and grab the box from the top shelf. Lifting the lid, I drop the new button into it, feeling a brief moment of gratification, but the feeling goes away the instant I put the lid on, as if I’m shutting a door closed that carries secrets to myself. After I put the box back on the shelf, I go into the kitchen, where my mom is cooking over the stove. The air smells like chocolate and cinnamon and there’s dough all over the countertops. She has her apron on, the fabric covered in melted chocolate and flour. There’s even some in her greying hair.

  She has her back to me, but hears me come in and peers over her shoulder. “Oh, you’re ready early today,” she says as she skims over my outfit and gives me an approving look. “You look very nice, Maddie.” She walks up and smoothes the invisible wrinkles in my shirt.

  I give her a tight smile as she brushes her hand over my head, putting some of my stray hairs into place. “Thanks.”

  I sometimes wonder if she still sees her little girl when she looks at me, the one I don’t know, but who she likes to remind me once existed and that needs to be taken care of. My mom’s not a terrible person. She’s nice, caring, giving, although she worries about me way too much and is very controlling. But any faults of hers can be blamed on her twenty-one year old daughter still living with her who can’t remember anything before the age of fifteen. It’s not like I want to be living with her still, but every time I suggest moving out she says I need to act more responsibly. But I feel like I am. I have a job. I can dress myself. Make decisions. Granted maybe they’re not always the best. But I’m not incompetent and I wish she’d realize that. Although, sometimes I think she does know it and she just has issues with letting me go. I’m the only child and my father passed away when I was seven, something told to me in a very rushed story. “He died in a car accident, my mother told me when I asked her once. “That’s all you need to know.” Then she dismissed the conversation by leaving the room, I’m guessing because it’s too painful for her to talk about. So I don’t bring it up, even though Lily tries to get me to all the time.

  “Did you remember to pack your scarf and gloves just in case it snows tonight and the car won’t start?” my mother says, interrupting my thoughts. She’s packing a bag of cookies for me like I’m going to school and she needs to make my lunch. “I hate that you work clear out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Yes mother.” The possibility of it snowing is slim to none, but arguing with her does no good, something I’ve learned over the last few years.

  “And you remembered to put your paycheck in your purse so you can deposit it right?” She hands me the bag of cookies with worry all over her weathered face.

  I nod, patting my purse as I drop the bag of cookies into it, trying to resist the urge to mess around with the collar on the shirt that’s so tight I feel like I’m being strangled. “Yes, I have everything I need, so can I please go to work now?”

  Her worry increases, making more lines appear on her face. I saw pictures of her a few years before my accident and there were hardly any lines at all, but six months after, wrinkles were flourishing all over. “Maddie, since you’re leaving early, can you please stop by and put that check in this time? If you keep forgetting then it’s going to expire and then it isn’t going to be any good anymore.”

  “I know that.” I reach for my coat draped on the back of the kitchen chair. “And I promise I’ll put it in.” But I won’t because I’m making a stop somewhere else, the same stop I make every couple of days, the one stop that makes being two people just a little bit easier.

  “I’m worried about you, Maddie,” she says. “You’ve been so irresponsible lately. With the checks. Coming home late. It’s so unlike you and it worries me that maybe something’s going on with you that you’re not telling anyone.” She stares me straight in the eyes without blinking and it wigs me out.

  “Nothing’s going on.” Unlike you. Seriously? I bite down on my lip, trying to stop myself from saying it, but the urge overpowers me. “How do I know for sure if it’s unlike me,” I sputter. “I mean, are you really sure that six years ago I wasn’t irresponsible? Maybe I’m returning to my old self again.”

  She either looks horrified or extremely angry—I can’t one-hundred percent tell which one, but thank God, it gets her to blink again. “Let’s get one thing straight,” she snaps. “You were never irresponsible. You never talked back. Never did anything wrong. You were the perfect daughter and never think otherwise.”

  I want to drop it, but Lily is persistent. “No matter how many times you say that, it seems highly implausible. No one is perfect.” I should just stop there. She seems frazzled and usually I don’t try to push her buttons, but I’m not sure I’m really myself at the moment. Lily feels very powerful, Maddie really tired, and I’m starting to wonder if the hypnotherapy set something off. “Besides, you say all these things about me—that I was responsible, never talked back, a good girl—yet it doesn’t feel like that’s my nature.”

  “Maddie Asherford.” Her tone carries a warning as she reaches to turn the oven timer off as it buzzes. “You’re a good person. You’re just confused because you can’t remember anything—all the good stuff you did.” She pauses. “Preston said you’ve been a little uncooperative the last few sessions. Is there anything you want to talk about?” she asks, reaching out and petting my head again. “Anything at all.”

  Anger flares up inside me. “Preston’s not supposed to be talking to you about what goes on in therapy,” I say in a low tone that startles us both. I’m not even sure why this is bothering me so much. “It’s confidential.”

  She flinches at the tone of my voice and her hand stops moving over my head, but remains there. “I asked him to tell me today if you were doing okay or not, considering you’ve been a little out of it at home.”

  “You have no right!” My voice cuts through the air like a knife as I tighten my jaw and lean against the countertop.

  “I have every right, Maddie, and you won’t talk to me like that. I’m your mother and everything I do is to help you, whether you can see that or not.” There’s this plea in her eyes, begging me to stop. “Please start trying to act like the daughter I used to know again. It feels like I haven’t seen her in weeks.”

  I want to say a million things to her, tell her everything. How I feel. How I walk around in this world, being told what I was, how I used to act, yet no one understands that that person doesn’t exist anymore. She died the moment she woke up in the street, bloody, mangled, and a bundle of confusion. And that I don’t believe I was ever a good person considering how fucked up I am now. I think, like humans in general, she believes what she wants to believe because it helps her sleep at night and be able to get out of bed in the morning.

  “Fine, mother. I’m a good girl and I’ll do what I’m told.” It’s the biggest bunch of bullshit. I can only be what I can be and right now that’s a mixture of a lost girl named Maddie, who wonders why she ran out in front of the car in the first place, and a girl named Lily who wants to believe that I chose to forget all of my memories for a reason. Someone who isn’t good and bad. Who rebels yet sometimes wants to obey. Breaks rules and follows. Craves danger and fears it. Basks in the darkness and embraces the craziness living inside her and who sometimes cries over it.

  My mom looks partially convinced then hugs me and returns to the kitchen to take out the next sheet of cookies from the oven. “Call me if you need anything.”

  “I will,” I say, stepping toward the door, the toe of my shoe slipping into the sunlight, me inching my way to freedom. Lily starts to stir inside me. Let me out. Let me out. I need to breathe. I take another step and then another, waiting for my mom to say anything else. When she starts to hum under her breath, picking up the spatula on the countertop to scoop the cookies up, I know that the conversation has ended and I’m dismissed. I swing open the back door and hurry outside into the frosted driveway where my car is parked. I try to keep Lily sti
ll inside me for just a few minutes longer. Try to keep myself contained. Just enough so that I can get out of the driveway and down the road to the corner. She’s restless and by the time I’m pulling into the driveway of a quaint antique shop on the corner, I’m practically hyperventilating in my seat to get out of these stuffy clothes and into something else.

  The lights are off in the building, the closed sign up. I leave the engine running as I hop into the backseat, tousling my fingers through my hair, freeing my gel sustained locks. I pick out a nasty clump of it and flick onto the floor. Then I kick my shoes off, remove my pants, and unbutton the stuffy shirt, breathing the fresh air in with each button unfastened. When I shuck it off, I feel like I’ve shed off all my skin and air can finally get to my pores, only it still feels like there’s a layer of dirt on my skin, filthy, disgusting. I can breathe again. I feel both disgusted and pleased with myself for feeling this way. Confliction. It’s become my middle name.

  Beneath the banker-like attire, I’m wearing a short, tight, black Metallica shirt and leather pants. I’m a biker chick today and maybe tomorrow I’ll be mod. I change my look quite frequently. Play different characters, trying to discover my true identity, feel a spark inside me that says hey, that has to be me. But as usual, I feel disconnected so I’m guessing I wasn’t a biker badass in my previous life.

  After I adjust the shirt into place over the massive scar on my side, I get back into the driver’s seat. Road rash, I was told, scraped quite a few layers off my ribs and left a massive, gnarly scar about the size of my fist. It’s sort of hideous, but there are worse things in life. I also have one on the palm of my hand where I was gripping the object that cut open my skin. It kind of looks like a burn mark with these weird diamond shaped patterns attached to a long thing line that teethes out at the bottom and when I squint closely at it, I can almost make out the number fourteen in the center of it.

  Once my outfit’s in place, I reach under the seat of the car and grab the duffel bag I keep hidden there. I take out my leather collar and matching bracelets, hoop earrings, and my lace-up boots. After I put them all on, I apply red lipstick and kohl eyeliner, and then grab my pack of cigarettes, feeling inner peace for the first time today, free. Glancing in the rearview mirror, the confusion in my eyes from earlier has settled as I light up my cigarette. Smoke encircles my face. I’m smiling at the same time tears are rolling down my face. I feel darkened. Sedated. Just like my soul. But as I pull away, heading to my secret spot to see my secret friend, I feel even more hope of some sort of peace for the day because where I’m going I can be anyone. Good or bad.

  Chapter 4

  Maddie

  I discovered this place about a year after the accident. I was having a hard day, because I felt like I was about to fall out of my skin. I’d spent hours listening to my mother recollect memories of me as a child. Good ones, her eyes so full of hope and by the time she was done, I wanted to end it all. Throw myself out the window or run into the street again. Not exist in the confusion that had taken over me. But I talked myself out of it—or Lily did, anyway.

  But I had to get out of the house and away from my mother’s smothering, so I took a joyride. I was sixteen and technically didn’t have my driver’s license yet, but I could drive. And boy did I drive. Up and down the town, through the neighborhoods. But it wasn’t enough. I needed to go someplace further, away from everything, where I could breathe again. So I headed down the highway toward the foothills with no real destination in mind and ended up on a turnout on a dirt road that wove through the trees. The area seemed familiar, but then again all the foothills looked the same.

  Eventually the road came to a dead end, where the trees opened up a little and I got a full view of the town below. Nearby, surrounded by dead grass and dying flowers, was a log cabin. I found it fascinating to look at, out there in the trees, untouched. It was beautifully haunting and I instantly fell in love with it and everything that it represented. And my love for the place only grew when I discovered Ryland living in it, a guy who seemed just about as broken as me.

  At first he didn’t seem too fond of me just walking into his house. Quite honestly, I’d thought it was vacant when I’d entered and was startled by the fact that someone was living in the minimally furnished house. But Ryland is a minimal person, something I quickly found out and thankfully I quickly wore on him enough for him to let me keep visiting, because the cabin—he is my sanctuary.

  On my way up to the cabin today, I pick up a takeout for Ryland and me to eat. After I pick up the food, I make the ten-minute drive up the hill, my heart leaping with excitement the closer I get. It’s the only time my pulse ever does that—usually it’s out of fear. By the time I spot the cabin, I feel elated. Whole. At peace with myself, whoever I might be. I park the car just a ways off, then slip on my jacket and grab the bag of food before climbing out of the car. I take my time walking through the dried out grass, the cool breeze caressing my cheeks and whispering through my hair. I feel a sense of tranquility up here with the town below, in the distance, where I have to live my life as someone I don’t think I am.

  “I didn’t think you’d show up.” As soon as I hear Ryland’s voice floating from the cracked window of the cabin, a smile touches my lips. A real one too, not the fake one I show everyone else.

  Even though I can’t see him, only hear him, I know he’s inside—he’s always in there and I pick up my pace across the field, feeling myself getting closer to him. “I told you I’d be back,” I call out. “I’ll always come back, Ryland.”

  “You say that now, but one day, you’ll stop coming up here,” he utters softly. I see his shadow cast across the window as I approach the front door. There are bits of logs and bricks piled out front in the yard and the entire house looks like it needs a bit of maintenance, but to me, it just makes it look more welcoming—ruined, rundown, imperfect.

  “Never.” I duck my head below the low porch and step inside, the floorboards creaking beneath my shoes. The roof showers a bit of dust on my head and I brush some off my hair as I walk toward the living room where there’s a rocking chair and a fireplace, along with a window. Rays of sunlight glimmer through the glass as I take a seat on the floor on the rug. I set the bag down and relax back on my hands, tipping my head back and basking in the warmth of the sunlight through the window as it kisses my face. Then I wait for Ryland to come to me—always do. He’s skittish, something I learned when I first met him and he barely would talk to me or stand near me. He has social anxiety and a bit of agoraphobia because of something that has happened to him in his life—he’s never given me the exact details, only that he never can leave this place. He’s not crazy or anything despite what some people might think—I’ve been coming up here for six years to visit him and he only makes me feel safe and welcome.

  “I brought you food,” I entice, without opening my eyes. “You better hurry up before it gets cold.”

  I hear him chuckle, this low chuckle that makes me shiver in ways I’m not comfortable with, whether I’m Maddie or Lily because it confuses me. No one makes me feel the way that Ryland does and it seems like every time I come up here, he brings out another new emotion I have to spend days figuring out. And by the time I’ve figured it out, a new one’s arose.

  “You really think I mind if my food is cold?” he says and I feel the warmth of the sunlight leave my face and I know he’s right in front of me.

  I peek open my eyes and smile up at him. “Took you long enough.”

  He shakes his head, almost smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes—never does. “That’s because I was hoping you’d leave me.”

  “When will you start realizing you’re good enough for me to visit,” I say to him as I sit up, taking in the sight of him. He’s always wearing a plaid shirt with missing buttons over a t-shirt and his jeans are so worn there’s several holes all over them. He’s around my age with sandy, untamed hair that flips up near his ears and hangs in his eyes. His eyes are actua
lly strange in a fascinating way. Two different colors if you look closely; one green and the other a greenish blue, almost like he could be two different people completely, depending on which angle you look at him. His legs are long, his body lean, he has smudges of dirty skin and the holes in his clothes. If I was an artist, I’d draw him all the time, something I actually looked into after the accident, when I felt this dire need to sketch. Turns out, I was never an artist, or at least said my fucked up doodle of what was supposed to be a tree and some flowers, but sort of looked like a garden gnome stepping on ants when I closed one eye and stared at it.

  “When will you realize I’m not good enough for you to waste your time with? You really should let me go,” he replies. I stare at him and he stares back. There’s this unspoken rule that whoever looks away first, loses. He always loses and finally he sighs, sitting down on the air mattress beside me. “Fine, you win for today.”

  I grin. “I always win.” I nudge the food bag toward him and he reluctantly takes it, putting it on his lap without opening it up. He gazes off at the window across from us and through it, I can see the quiet city below and the leafless trees.