When I pull back, her eyes are wide. The smile is gone from her face and she doesn’t nod. She just gets in the car and closes the door.
I claim my spot in the back seat and pull my phone out of my pocket. There’s a reminder set on it, so I open it.
Go to the police station first. Get the backpack and read every note and journal entry you can…as fast as you can.
I close out the reminder, knowing I’ll get about five more reminders in the next two hours. I know this…because I remember setting every single one of them last night.
I remember writing all the notes in this small hotel trash bag that I have clutched tightly in my hand.
I remember grabbing hold of Charlie’s face right before the clock struck 11:00a.m.
I remember whispering never never to her, right before I kissed her.
And I remember ten seconds after our lips touched…she pulled back and had no idea who I was. She had no memory of the last forty-eight hours.
Yet…I remembered every single minute of the last two days.
I just couldn’t tell her the truth. I didn’t want to scare her, and making her believe I was in the same situation as her seemed to be the more comforting option.
I don’t know why I didn’t forget this time, or why she did. I should be relieved that whatever the hell has been going on with us seems to be over for me, but I’m not relieved at all. I’m disappointed. I would rather have lost my memory again with her than to have her be alone in this. At least when we were in it together, we knew it was something we could work out together.
What seemed to be a pattern has now been broken, and I feel like this just makes it even more difficult to figure out. Why was I spared this time? Why was she not? Why do I feel like I can’t be honest with her? Have I always shouldered this much guilt?
I still don’t know who I am, or who I used to be. I only have the last forty-eight hours to go by, which isn’t much. But it’s still better than the half hour of memories Charlie has.
I should just be honest with her, but I can’t. I don’t want this to scare her, and I feel like the only comfort she has right now is knowing she’s not alone in this.
Landon keeps glancing back at me, and then looking at her. I know he thinks we’ve lost our minds. We sort of did lose our minds, but not in the way he’s thinking.
I like him. I wasn’t sure if he’d show up this morning like I asked him to, since he’s still doubtful. I like that he doubts us, but his loyalty to me trumps his reasoning. I’m sure very few people have that quality.
We’re mostly quiet on the way to the police station, until Charlie turns to Landon and glares at him.
“How do you know we aren’t lying to you?” she asks him. “Why would you even humor us unless you have something to do with what’s happened to us?” She’s more suspicious of him than she is of me.
Landon grips the steering wheel and glances at me in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know that you both aren’t lying. For all I know, you’re getting a kick out of this. Ninety percent of me thinks you two are full of shit and have nothing better to do. Five percent of me thinks maybe you’re telling the truth.”
“That’s only ninety-five percent,” I pipe in from the backseat.
“That’s because the other five percent of me thinks I’m the one who has gone crazy,” he says.
Charlie laughs at that.
We pull in to the police station and Landon finds a parking spot. Before he turns off the car, Charlie says, “Just to be clear, what do I need to say? That I’m here for my backpack?”
“I’ll go in with you,” I tell her. “The note said everyone thought you were missing and that I was suspected in your disappearance. If we go in together, they’ll have no reason to pursue anything further.”
She gets out of the car, and as we’re walking into the police station, she says, “Why don’t we just tell them what’s going on? That we can’t remember anything?”
I pause with my hand on the door. “Because, Charlie. We specifically warned ourselves in the notes not to do that. I’d rather trust the versions of ourselves we don’t remember than trust people who don’t know us at all.”
She nods. “Good point, ” she says. She pauses and cocks her head to the side. “I wonder if you’re smart.”
Her comment makes me chuckle.
There’s no one in the lobby area when we walk in. I approach a glass window. There’s no one behind the desk, but there’s a speaker, so I press the button next to it, hearing it crackle to life.
“Hello?” I ask. “Anyone here?”