Unforgotten(9)

But none of that was true.

I was never on the plane.

I was never a normal sixteen-year-old girl.

I had no family or friends.

I ended up in the year 2013 by accident. When Zen and I were attempting to escape. We were supposed to come here—to 1609—but something went wrong.

Something neither of us has been able to figure out.

“What happened?” I asked Zen after we’d been here a week. “How did we get separated?”

He got very quiet then, refusing to look at me. “You let go,” he whispered.

His response startled me and I nearly choked on my next word. “What?”

He finally brought his eyes back to mine but something had clouded them. A layer of doubt that I’d never seen before. “You let go of my hand,” he explained. “I felt it at the very end. Like you’d changed your mind or something. When I opened my eyes and found myself here—in 1609—you were gone.”

“It must have slipped,” I reasoned, unable to believe what he was saying.

But he shook his head. “No.” The confidence in his tone made my throat go dry as he repeated the three words that still send chills through me whenever I think about them. “You let go.”

Regardless of the reason, I ended up in the twenty-first century alone and scared, without an identity or a single scrap of memory. In a time period I knew nothing about.

I became an instant celebrity. The police broadcast my picture to the world, certain it would only be a matter of time before someone came looking for me.

That part they were right about.

Someone did come looking for me. But it wasn’t my family. It wasn’t my friends. It was them.

And they almost managed to bring me back.

Thankfully, Zen found me first. He tried to explain to me what was happening. Why I was there. Who these mysterious people chasing me were. I didn’t believe him at first. I didn’t recognize him.

But something inside me—some deeply buried spark—lit up whenever he was around. Somewhere beyond my vacant, spotless, overly logical brain—beyond my fear and distrust and burning need for answers that made sense—I still remembered him. Still trusted him.

Still loved him.

I’m startled by a quiet rap on the door and I push myself up to a seated position, pull my sleeve back down over my wrist, straighten my shoulders, and call, “Come in.”

The door creaks open but I don’t see anyone on the other side. At first I think a breeze from an open window might have pushed it but then my gaze slides down about three feet and I see Jane’s tiny blond head poking into the room.

Just like in the barn this morning, her presence takes me by surprise.

Jane quietly pads into the room with Lulu, her doll, tucked in the crook of her elbow. She closes the door behind her without a word. Then she walks right up to the edge of the bed and stands in front of me, staring at me with a gentle but intrigued gaze. Lulu’s two black button eyes watch me with matched curiosity.

I feel uncomfortable and am tempted to look away but something about Jane’s innocent features keeps my eyes locked on hers. She bites her lip in concentration and her forehead crumples as she looks at me, like she’s trying hard to decipher something on my face.

Then, finally, she opens her mouth and in her small, docile voice and precious accent says, “Why do you never tell us any stories?”

The question catches me off guard. I’m not sure what I was expecting from her, but it definitely wasn’t this. I don’t have much experience with little children—none, actually. To be honest, they make me nervous. So small and fragile and unpredictable. Like they might punch you in the stomach, or burst into tears, or shatter into a million pieces at any moment.

“U-u-um,” I stammer. “I-I-I don’t know. I guess I don’t have any stories to tell.”

“Then why don’t you make one up?” she suggests, her voice clearly implying that this is an obvious solution.

“You don’t like Ben’s stories?”

She teeters her head from side to side, the straps of her little white cap bouncing on her shoulders. “I do,” she replies, sounding almost diplomatic. “They’re for boys, though. I want to hear a girl story.”

She’s looking at me with big, round, eager eyes and it takes me a second to realize she really is expecting me to just make up a story. Right here. Right now.

“Um,” I say again. “Okay, I guess I can make up a story for you.”

Her lips spring into an ear-to-ear grin, revealing two rows of miniature crooked teeth. One is missing from the bottom. She climbs clumsily onto the bed—hands and knees and elbows everywhere—and sits down right beside me. She places her doll in her lap, wraps one arm around its waist and the other she rests casually on my thigh, clearly thinking nothing of the gesture. As though we’ve sat like this a dozen times before.