Page 33 of Forget Me Not
It was dark, I remember. The kind of dark that swallows everything, my own hand lost in front of my face as I tried to find silhouettes in the murk: the canopy above me, cast wide like a net. My closet in the corner stretching like an inkblot or bleeding black hole.
“Claire, what are you talking about?” Ryan asks as I feel my body tucked deep in my childhood sheets, the smothering silence like cotton in my ears.
“She was always sneaking out,” I say, thinking about how I heard Natalie’s window slide open; the scrape of her jeans over the ledge and the crank of a car before it rolled down the drive. “I knew she was, because I could hear it through the wall.”
I imagine myself getting up slowly, slinking my way into the hall before creeping into her bedroom behind her.
Yet another long night spent reading her books, wearing her clothes.
Painting my face with her makeup as midnight stretched into morning, as I tried to understand what it might be like to be her.
“I was by myself a lot as a kid,” I continue, that familiar shame climbing the length of my spine as I picture Bethany sitting in the kitchen, the pity in her eyes as I stood there alone. “I didn’t have many friends, but especially that summer, with my parents’ divorce—”
I stop, trying to work out how to explain.
“Those nights in her bedroom, they were an escape for me,” I say at last. “They were a few hours where I could pretend to be someone else for a little. Someone who seemed to have all the things that I wanted. Who was pretty and popular, outgoing and brave.”
Ryan stays silent on the other side of the line and I take it as my cue to keep talking, to purge the guilt I’ve been carrying for the last twenty-two years.
“That night, I fell asleep,” I say, reminiscing on how I woke up in Natalie’s bed with a start.
I was still wearing her sweatshirt, all those unfamiliar smells wrapping me tight like a hug, before I sat up quick, bleary eyes blinking while I turned to the side.
The clock on her nightstand reading five A.M .
“Normally, I would see her headlights shining in through the window. I would leave just as she was getting back home.”
I remember perusing her room in a lazy haze, vaguely wondering where she could be before slipping out of bed and making my way into the bathroom we shared.
Bare feet cold on the slick white tile as I stared at my face in the moonlit mirror; streaks of her lipstick staining my skin as I longed for her reflection instead of my own.
“But then, she never came home,” I continue. “I knew from the second I woke up that something was different, but I didn’t say anything. I just went into my room and went back to bed.”
“Claire,” Ryan says. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes, it does,” I say, louder now as I think about my mom and me at the table that morning; her scream from upstairs and her mug on the ground.
The way I sat there silently, already knowing my sister was gone.
“Even when the police came, I still didn’t speak up. I didn’t want to get into trouble.”
I drop my head in my hands now, imagining the cops picking over our house as Detective DiNello leaned on the table, looked my mother square in the eye.
She probably spent the night at a friend’s house or something. You know how girls can be.
“They told us everything was probably fine,” I say, shaking my head as the tears stream out faster. “That she took a bag and she’d be back soon, so I never mentioned how she’d been sneaking out for weeks at that point. That I thought she was seeing someone because I could smell it on her clothes.”
“ Claire, ” Ryan says again. “None of that is your fault.”
“But what if I could have helped her?” I yell, the sentence coming out with a wet choke.
“What if I had told someone sooner? My mom was so distracted that summer she never even realized what Natalie was doing, but maybe if I just told her she would have grounded her or something. She would have stopped her from leaving.”
“You don’t know that. You have no way of knowing that.”
“But instead, I kept it a secret because I liked going in there. I was selfish,” I say, the weight lifting from my shoulders as I confess it all for the very first time.
“And I was scared, Ryan. A few days later, the police found Jeffrey’s car, that shirt with her blood, and it felt like the truth didn’t even matter. More than that, it felt like my fault.”
Ryan is quiet as I think back to those first few days, the slow realization of what my silence had done.
My sister losing her life in the very moment I was trying it on, twirling around in her mirror to admire the fit.
Soon, I could no longer stand to be in her bedroom.
The constant reminder of all the ways I had failed her haunting me quietly, driving me away.
“I think you should come back,” Ryan says at last, bringing my attention back to the phone. “Going out there might have been a mistake. And I’m sorry, I know I said it would help, but I can see now I didn’t know the full story.”
“I’m staying,” I say, my newfound resolve settled in deep. “I have a bad feeling, Ryan, and I’m not going to ignore it. Not again. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life wondering if I could have made a difference had I done something different.”
The line stays silent for a few more seconds until a thrash of rain rails on the roof. Then I turn toward the window, a bright strike of lightning illuminating the sky as the wind whips through the trees, invisible gusts making them bend.
I open my mouth, ready to tell Ryan I’m sorry, that I know he doesn’t agree but this is just something I have to do, when another crack of thunder cuts through the silence.
It sounds like a gunshot, furious and loud, and my hand shoots to my chest as the lights blink out, my little house now shrouded in black.
“God, that scared me,” I say, wondering if Ryan heard it, too. He’s still silent on the other side of the line and it dawns on me suddenly as I wait for a response.
If the power is out, then the internet is, too.
I lower my phone, the call dropped as I stare at the exclamation point in the place of where the signal once was. Then I turn toward my laptop, sighing as I realize I won’t be able to use that, either.
That this gift of a free day is suddenly gone.
I glance back at the bed, the rumple of covers like a shadow in the dark. With no other options, I peel off my wet clothes and slide into the sheets, gliding my hand through the blankets until I come across the diary, patiently waiting for me to make my return.
I pull it out, resting it against my propped-up knees and squinting as I take in the cover. It’s too dark to read without the bedside lamp or light of the sun streaming in through the windows… but then I look down at my phone again, realizing it still has a use without a signal.
I tap at the screen, navigating to the flashlight and turning it on. The battery is drained after taking those pictures, my conversation with Ryan, and constant search for a signal, so I figure I only have about an hour until it dies for good.
I perch the phone on my chest before opening the diary, the flashlight aimed at my next page.
Then I lick my finger, rubbing it gently against Marcia’s words and watching in silence as the blue ink smears.
The smudge is subtle, but it’s definitely there, and I realize with a sense of acute exhilaration that I altered it, this thing that was written over four decades ago.
I changed history, left my own mark, and there’s something about that that gives me hope. The idea of then and now coalescing.
The present tenderly dipping its toe in the past like a grape seed in water, dozens of ripples made by one small change.