Mindwalker (15 page)

“I won't,” I said fiercely.

He smiled at me, but there was something terribly sad in his eyes.

We got into the car—this was back when most cars were still manually operated—and he took me to Lowen Hills. It was an institution, he told me, for the sort of people that no one else would take. People the world had given up on.

I remember everything about that place. Every image, every sound, every smell.

There was a woman who'd clawed off most of her face so that only an eyeless, bandaged lump remained. There was a man with a bald, scarred head who peered through the windows of a gray door, grinning, and whispered all the things he wanted to do to me. Another man was curled in the corner of his room, pulling out clumps of his own hair. On the wall of an empty cell, someone had written:

During the drive home, I was silent. After a while, my father said quietly, “I'm sorry for putting you through that, but you had to see it, sooner or later.”

I didn't reply.

“The world is filled with suffering,” he continued. “Humans have an obligation to each other, but there are many ways to give back. You have a choice, Lain.”

“I understand, Father.” My own voice seemed to be coming from far away.

For weeks afterward, I woke screaming from nightmares. Eventually, Father took me to a doctor, and the doctor gave me little white pills that made my sleep deep and dreamless. Father kept apologizing, but I didn't understand why. All he did was show me the truth. The happiness I'd grown up with was the exception, not the norm.

In the end, my visit to Lowen Hills just made me more determined.

Once the bad dreams and anxiety attacks subsided, I began my training with the Mindgate. Father was reluctant. I was only thirteen, after all—too young to treat clients—but I wanted to start learning. So he let me try the Gate with some of his less traumatized volunteers. Soon I became his apprentice. And through me, he discovered a fact that changed everything—adolescents can master the art of Mindwalking much faster and better than adults. A developing, flexible young brain can absorb information and new skills far more efficiently. Within a few months, I had surpassed Father in my ability to navigate and alter the memories of others. My most dramatic success was a young man named Thomas, a Three who'd been severely abused as a child. His parents used to lock him in a tiny wooden box and keep him imprisoned there for days on end. His life before the treatment was an endless struggle with depression, addiction, and self-injury. Once the memories were gone, that all ended. He went on to start a successful business, marry, and have two children, things that would probably never have been possible for him before.

I still remember his sad, gentle brown eyes.

When IFEN learned about my success, they started recruiting more teenagers. Father was uneasy, but he went along with his colleagues because he believed so strongly in the therapy's potential. So I continued my training while IFEN began pushing the program more and more aggressively.

Father had begun to change. I could see it. He looked tired, hollowed out, like something inside him was gnawing away at his strength. He argued with Dr. Swan and the rest of his colleagues—when they talked at all. He stopped seeing clients, for reasons he wouldn't explain, and had to hide away his Gate or risk having it confiscated. He told Dr. Swan he'd scrapped it.

There is one memory that stands out with eerie clarity. I'd spent the night tossing and turning. Finally, I came down the stairs for a glass of water and heard my father in the kitchen. I froze just outside the doorway, holding my breath. I could see his shadow on the wall as he paced, a phone to his ear, talking in a hushed, fierce voice. I couldn't make out the words, but I could tell he was angry. Very angry and very scared.

A part of me wanted to go into the kitchen, to ask him what was wrong, but I was afraid. I'd never heard Father sound like that. So I crept up the stairs, to my bedroom, and hugged Nutter to my chest.

Father's death occurred just a few months later. For years afterward, I wondered: If I had done something, told someone, could I have saved him?

My cell phone alarm beeps. I groan, roll over, and fumble until I knock the phone off my nightstand. The beeping falls silent. After a while, I sit up, pushing tangled hair from my face, and squint at the clock. Adrenaline jolts me.

I'm late.
Extremely
late.

I scramble out of bed, shower, brush my teeth, and throw on my uniform in record time. On my way out of the house, I grab a cereal bar. I hold it in my mouth as I button up my coat and shoulder open the front door. A blast of cold, crisp air hits me in the face.

I stop. There's someone standing in my driveway: a girl in a pink coat with long, messy dark hair. With a shock, I recognize her. The cereal bar slips from between my teeth and falls to the ground.

What is she doing here? She shouldn't even remember me.

I advance cautiously, the way I might approach a wild animal. “Debra?”

She stands stiffly, hugging herself, her breath steaming in the cold air. “Are you Lain Fisher?”

“That's me.” I give her a smile, but her expression remains tight and unyielding. I clear my throat and put on my calm, empty Mindwalker face. “How can I help—”

“What did you make me forget?”

My stomach muscles tighten, squeezing.

I've heard of this happening to other Mindwalkers—clients putting the pieces together, realizing that they've had their memories modified, and tracking down the one who did it, demanding answers. But it's only been a few days. How did she find out where I live?

“What did you make me forget?” she repeats, louder.

I shift my weight, uneasy. “I can't tell you that.”

“Oh, I think you can.” I can almost feel the heat radiating from her glare.

I breathe in, remembering my training.
Just hold firm.
“I'm sorry. We had an agreement, even if you don't remember it now. You wanted to forget everything.”

She takes a step toward me. “Yesterday, a girl came to my house, wanting to talk to me. My mom tried to chase her away, but I snuck out to see her. She asked me why I hadn't been coming to the support group lately. At first, I thought she had the wrong person, but she called me by name. I asked her what support group she was talking about. It was a group for abuse survivors.” Her shoulders tremble. “Mom claimed that the girl had confused me with someone else. But I kept asking. I asked over and over until she told me the truth—that I'd had my memories erased. She wouldn't tell me
what
had been erased.
But I put the pieces together.” She bows her head, clutching her coat tightly around herself. “It was my stepfather, wasn't it?”

My stomach sinks. If she's already learned this much, there's no point in denying it. “Yes,” I whisper.

She nods slowly. “I just needed to hear you say it. To
know.
”

For a few heartbeats, a wall of silence stands between us. “How did you find me?” I ask quietly.

“I remembered seeing your face when I woke up in that place. It was cloudy. Like a dream. But it was enough.” A flat, bitter sound, more sob than laugh, escapes her lips. “I guess everyone thought it was for the best. I mean, I spent years being miserable, didn't I? I don't remember it now, but I probably tried a lot of stuff. Medication. Conditioning. And none of it worked. If it had, I wouldn't be here now, would I? So much easier to just wipe away everything bad. But now …” Her breathing echoes through the silence. She presses slender fingers to her temples. “I remember how to do math and drive a car. I remember that Paris is the capital of France, and I remember all these stupid commercial jingles and pop songs. But I try to remember who I am, what I'm like, and there's nothing but fog. That girl, the one from the support group … she says I was the only person who ever really understood her. After the treatment, I didn't even remember her face.”

A twinge of pain shoots through my chest. I close my eyes for a moment, collecting myself. “Your memories were deeply rooted. I had to take out a lot. I explained all that to you before the procedure.” Of course, that means nothing to her now. “I realize this is difficult. But it gave you a fresh chance. A new start.”

“So I'm supposed to pretend like it never happened?” Her
hands squeeze into tight fists. Slowly, she raises her head. Her eyes are hard, despite the tears on her cheeks. “That's not healing. It's just a lie.”

The words hit me like a slap. I take a step backward.

“Never mind,” she mutters. She turns and walks toward a car parked in the street, her steps quick and jerky.

“Debra, wait.” I follow her. “You're upset right now. I understand that. But you
wanted
this.” I place a hand on her shoulder. “This is something you chose for yourself—”

She pulls away from my touch and spins to face me. “
I
didn't want the treatment. My mom wanted it.”

I freeze. “What?”

“The girl from the support group told me. It wasn't my idea to get my memories erased. My mom pressured me into it because she couldn't deal with all the crying and pills and bad dreams. She couldn't deal with
me.
” She wipes her face and shakes her head. A few tears fall to the pavement. “You scraped out everything inside me to get rid of the rotten stuff, and now there's nothing left.”

The world seems to be spinning slowly around me. “Debra—”

“I'm not Debra. I don't know who the fuck I am.” She looks away. “I don't even know why I came here. It's not your fault. You only did what they told you to, right? It's just a job.” But the way she says it makes it sound like a curse.
Just a job.

“No,” I say. “It's not like that.”

She scrubs tears from her eyes with the back of one hand and looks at me. The hard edges of her expression soften, anger crumbling to expose the fatigue and sadness beneath. “I've got to go.” She gets into the car and drives away.

The world feels very still. There's no breath of wind, nothing to stir the few autumn leaves still clinging to the branches. Everything looks the way it's always looked, the houses neat and orderly. But when I turn to walk toward my car, the ground seems to shift beneath my feet. I stumble. My body moves on autopilot as I get into the car.

My chest hurts. It's becoming more difficult to breathe. Dizziness swims over me, and I realize with academic detachment that I'm having a panic attack. I close my eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out. I recite the standard lines in my head—no one has ever died from a panic attack, in ten minutes this will be over and I'll feel fine, I just have to let my body do what it needs to do. Gradually, the iron bands around my chest loosen, and air flows freely into my lungs. I look into the rearview mirror. My face is a calm mask once again. But Debra's angry words still ricochet around my head.

The cool, dry voice of my psych-ethics professor rises up to counter them:
If a client lashes out at you, you must remember it's not
you
she's angry at. It's herself or someone who hurt her. Clients often redirect that anger toward us, because we're a safe outlet. Don't take it personally.

But even if that's true in some cases, it seems a little too easy, too convenient a dismissal—a mantra of rationalization.
It's not me, it's not my fault, it's never me.

The truth is, it
is
my fault, at least partly. I should never have erased Debra's memories. I should have sensed that she didn't truly want the treatment, that she was being manipulated. Should have asked more questions. Should have checked with someone else. But I didn't. And now half her life is gone.

Am I even qualified to be a Mindwalker?

I float through my morning classes in a haze. Once again,
Steven's not at school. At lunch, I sit in my usual spot. The cafeteria is as huge and barren as the rest of Greenborough, a windowless cement cube filled with long, narrow tables and echoing voices. At one end of the room, a row of women in hairnets dish up imitation beef patties in gravy and mounds of gluey macaroni and cheese. I pick at the food, which holds even less appeal for me than usual.