Page 43 of Forget Me Not

Marcia stared down at the strip in her hand, the little blue square staring straight back.

She didn’t know what to do, what to think, other than sit on the edge of the water-stained tub as she held the thing between her slick fingers.

Her head felt detached from the rest of her body, her limbs tingling like they did every time she sucked from one of Mitchell’s thin joints, sipped from a mug of his homemade tea.

In truth, she didn’t even know this kind of technology existed .

She had simply been doing the same thing she’d been doing for weeks: rooting around in a stranger’s cabinets as she and Lily hit a house a few miles from the Farm.

They were closer to home than what they normally liked but they only needed a few things this time: toilet paper and towels, some food for dinner.

Lily was on the hunt for a dress, beelining straight to the bedroom closet, so Marcia had come into the bathroom on her own, combing through cupboards until her fingers grazed against a box wedged in the back.

Big blue words screaming at her in the dark.

Then she had leaned back on her legs, a queasy feeling sliding through her stomach as she ticked off the last few months in her head.

Her parents had never really bothered to teach her these things, though she knew the basics from health class at school, and she suddenly thought it strange that she couldn’t actually remember when she had her last period.

It had been a few months, at least.

“Marcia!”

She twisted to the side at the sound of her name, Lily’s voice echoing from the other side of the door.

“What are you doing in there? It’s been forever.”

She turned back around, staring down at the strip in her hand.

Blinking a few times as if the blue box was nothing more than a mirage and a simple flip of her lids might make it dissolve back to white.

Of course, she hadn’t actually been expecting it to be positive.

She took the test out of pure curiosity, closing the door with a quiet click and that creeping heat rising into her cheeks only once the color started to change.

Then she began to tally all the evidence she had simply shrugged off: the fact that her stomach had started to look so subtly swollen, those waves of nausea she sometimes felt when she caught a whiff of something strong on the Farm.

Up until that point, she had attributed those things to all the changes that had taken place in her life.

Her diet was different. She didn’t eat much anymore, all their food in such scarce supply, but the things she did eat were often rotten, leaving her feeling bloated and ill.

“Marcia!” Lily called again, sounding impatient, so she tucked the strip into her pocket as she tried to think through what to do next.

“What?” she asked, emerging from the bathroom to find Lily sprawled across a king-sized bed. She was wearing a coat of faux white fur, something bulky and black in her hand. Then Marcia saw a bright light, a mechanical whining as Lily laughed out loud.

“Say cheese,” she said, giggling as Marcia blinked away the black spots.

“What are you doing, ” she snapped, her vision swimming as the room slowly started to come back into view.

“Relax,” Lily said, lowering the camera as she climbed off the mattress. “It’s just a picture.”

“I don’t want my face on there.”

Marcia stared at the girl, realizing the magnitude of what she’d just done: the flash preserving her image in ink, proof of their presence in this place where they didn’t belong.

“Take it out,” she hissed, gesturing down to the camera before her eyes darted to something strange on the headboard, that familiar sentence etched into the surface and the coiled wood shavings dusted across the duvet.

Lily was here .

“I’m serious,” Marcia pressed, suddenly seething at the hubris of it all. The way Lily was flaunting their crimes as if it were all a big game. “Take it out.”

“Fine,” Lily muttered, popping open the camera and dumping the film onto the bed. “What is with you today.”

Marcia stalked into the closet, not even bothering with a response.

Then she started flipping through hangers, opening drawers.

The test hot in her pocket as the reality of her situation settled in like a sickness, the last handful of minutes since she learned she was pregnant enough for her to have experienced a small mental shift.

She felt a new kind of clarity as she looked at her life, the plates in her mind clicking into place to reveal the full picture of what it had become.

In the beginning, those early days at the Farm had felt like an escape.

She had been dipping her toes into forbidden waters, getting a taste of a life she had spent so much time watching from afar.

A life of brazen independence, of wild free will.

The exact opposite of the life she had at home…

but slowly, silently, she had started to realize it was all just pretend.

Like sneaking into that theater at night, losing herself in some faraway dream, it was an illusion, a fantasy.

She was playing a part in a film that wasn’t even her own.

“Are you okay?”

She turned around to find Lily standing in the entrance of the closet, her expression twisted in genuine concern.

“I’m fine,” Marcia lied, turning back around as her mind continued to spin.

In truth, it was the picture of Annie that had started all this: plucking it from the fridge that day and glancing at the girl with another man by her side, a look of love scribbled all over his face.

It made Marcia realize that Mitchell had never looked at her that way; whatever he felt for her, it wasn’t that .

Instead, he looked at her the way a wolf looks at a flock of lost sheep, zeroing in on the runt of them all before separating it slowly from the rest of the herd.

“I don’t believe you.”

Marcia ignored her, kept opening drawers as she thought back to that day in Annie’s kitchen.

How Lily had grabbed the picture from between her slick fingers before they both went back to the Farm.

Lily had brought it with them, eager to show Mitchell what she had found—but then, Marcia took it, slipping it into the spine of her diary so she could glance at it whenever she was alone.

She didn’t know what it was about the picture that gave her such a small semblance of hope.

Maybe it was how Annie looked so healthy, so strong, all that new weight back on her body that wasn’t there just a few months before.

Maybe it was the fact that she had a home of her own—a real home, not a mattress in a barn or a camper she shared with so many others—and that served as a quiet reminder that perhaps one day, Marcia could still have those things, too.

She felt Lily slide up beside her just as she opened the very last drawer—and then she froze, a knot in her throat when she saw what was there.

It was a handgun, shiny black metal resting on top of a few folded-up shirts.

She reached out to touch it, the air between them silent and still as Marcia’s fingers lingered a foot from the trigger, this simple escape so close within reach.

“Marcia…”

She dropped her hand, suddenly terrified of the dark thoughts that had seeped their way in.

Then she dug into her pocket, fingers brushing against the blue strip.

She wasn’t yet sure if she wanted Lily to know—but at the same time, she didn’t know what else to do.

If her math was correct, she should be about four months along.

Soon, it would be obvious, and by the end of the summer, a baby would be here…

but Mitchell didn’t believe in doctors, in hospitals.

They barely had enough food to survive. Some mornings, she’d wake up in the barn with little red welts peppering her ankles, the sting of fleabites that itched so bad she’d feel the skin rip beneath her nails as she scratched.

It was no place to live, let alone raise a child, so she pulled it out quickly, handing the test over before she could change her mind.

Lily looked down in silence, an inscrutable expression emerging on her face.

“Is this—?”

Marcia nodded, guilt and shame creeping into her cheeks.

“You have to help me,” she whispered. “I have to leave.”

The two girls stayed silent, both of them staring at the strip in her hand, until a new voice cut through the quiet.

“Who the fuck are you?”

They whipped around fast, startled to see a woman standing a few feet away. She was small and slight, brown hair slicked back in a tight bun.

“What are you doing in my house?”

Marcia stared straight ahead, the realization of what was happening dawning on her like the slow parting of clouds. She had been so wrapped up in her own thoughts, her own problems, that she hadn’t even heard the door open downstairs.

She hadn’t registered the sound of footsteps as they ascended the staircase, made their way into the bedroom from down the long hall.

“We were just leaving,” Marcia said, holding up her hands as if in surrender. Then she watched as the woman blinked, eyes widening as she stared at them both.

“Oh my God,” she muttered. “You’re Marcia Rayburn.”

Marcia turned to the side, wondering how the woman could possibly know who she was, though Lily’s expression was just as vacant. Her mouth cut into a thin, straight line.

“You’re missing,” the woman continued, taking a step closer. “Your parents are looking for you.”

She didn’t want to react at the mention of her parents, though she could already feel the sharp sting of tears.

That word, missing, like a knife through the heart.

She had tried not to think about them over these last few months, but they often weaseled their way into her mind uninvited whenever she found herself wondering what they would do if she ever went back.

She imagined the flick of her father’s eyes as he opened the door, his gaze trailing down the length of her stomach as he muttered those words— Neither can filthiness or anything which is unclean be received into the kingdom of God— before turning around and closing it again.

“Your picture was in the paper a few weeks ago.”

Marcia blinked, watching as the woman gestured to a stack of newspapers on the top of a chair. Then she took a tentative step toward them before reaching out, shuffling through a few sections and holding out a page from the back.

“They miss you.”

Marcia looked down, the image on the front of her and her family. The headline shrieking at her from the top of the page.

DRAPER, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEEN GOES MISSING

RAYBURN FAMILY DESPERATE FOR ANSWERS

“Are you girls living with that man by the river?” she continued, a softness in her voice that made Marcia want to cry. “He is not a good person,” she said. “We all know what he’s been doing and he’s not going to get away with it much longer.”

Marcia swallowed as she remembered the older woman she saw during her first drive to the Farm, glaring eyes on the camper as they roared past.

“I’m a cop,” she continued as Marcia’s eyes darted back to the gun in the drawer. “My name is Carmen, and I can help you.”

“We don’t need help,” Lily snapped as Marcia felt herself flinch, turning to look at her friend by her side. In the midst of the moment, the memories of her parents winding around her, she had somehow forgotten Lily was even here.

“Yes, you do,” the woman pressed as Marcia felt her fingers twitch, a sudden desire to run toward this stranger starting to work its way up her legs. “Whether you were taken against your will or you think you went there on your own accord, I can help you. I can bring you both home.”

Marcia tried to talk, though the words got stuck somewhere deep in her throat. Just a croak coming out when she parted her lips.

“ No one will blame you,” the woman continued like she was somehow reading her mind. “All your families want is for you to come home.”

Marcia found herself nodding, tears streaming down her cheeks as her hand hovered over her stomach. Then she opened her mouth wider, finally ready to speak, when a loud crack from the corner made her let out a scream.

She turned to the side, the gun from the drawer now in Lily’s right hand and pointed at the woman on the other side of the room.

Then Marcia spun back around to watch the woman’s wide eyes look down at her chest, the slow bloom of blood unfurling like a flower just before her body crumpled onto the floor.