Page 10 of 16 Forever

Or I try to, anyway, but I can’t even do that because I’m crying too hard.

Yesterday Carter knew me.

Today he does not.

And this pain right now—this brutal, kidney-wrenching pain—is why I can’t do this again.

Why I can’t talk to him.

Why I can’t know him.

Why, starting now, I can’t eventhinkabout him.

Because it’s hopeless.

Like voluntarily putting my hand into a paper shredder.

Even Carter agreed. (The one from yesterday, not that zombie I just saw in the hall.)

(Is it offensive to talk about his condition that way? I’m sure it is. I’m a terrible person.)

(You’re allowed to be a terrible person when your heart’s in chunks on the floor.)

(I should make that into a T-shirt.)

(Or at least a mug.)

Point being: I know Carter would understand. We’ll both move on.

Me knowingly, him... not so knowingly.

Mom will definitely be happy. She’d already been saying that continuing to date Carter would be “throwing away more time on someone who’s just gonna forget you anyway.”

I hated her saying that. But she’s not wrong.

I spent the past five months with Carter, and he doesn’t even remember it happened. So what was the point?

And where could we possibly go from here?

Am I going to be seventy years old, playing mah-jongg with my friends while my sixteen-year-old husband goes to high school?

Oh wait, that would be impossible because, at a certain point—probably somewhere in my early to mid-twenties—the very act of me flirting with Carter, once he has YET AGAIN forgotten who I am, will become definitively creepy and inappropriate.

So it ends now. We’re done.

And I can enjoy some me time. I just got all my college applications out a few weeks ago, so bring on the BIG SENIOR-YEAR ENERGY. Time to hang out with my friends. Kiss new boys. Play with myband.(Which most of my friends are in, so the first and third items are pretty much the same thing. Makes me sound cooler if I say them separately, though.) Live my goddamn life!

Ugh, who am I kidding?

I can’t be chill about all this. Not yet. It’s too horrible.

The Carter Cohen I knew has died.

And there’s no funeral to provide closure.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Shana asks, handing me a tissue, ostensibly to deal with the mascara swamp on my face. Of course I spent way more time than usual putting myself together this morning. So that, if the worst happened, at least I would make a good first impression.

“Yeah.” I swipe the tissue down my cheeks. “I can’t start this up again. With Carter. It’s too much.”