If I Forget You (2 page)

Avery yelled goodbye and headed down the sidewalk shaded by tall, leafy trees. The sidewalk was uneven, and some of the cracks were filled with damp moss the same bright green as her skirt. The sky was hidden with low-hanging clouds, and Avery was glad she had put her umbrella in her messenger bag before leaving. She had a feeling she should always carry an umbrella in this city.

Chloe lived ten blocks from campus, which was one of the reasons Avery had decided it was a good idea to live with her. She could ride the bus on bad weather days, but she would probably walk most of the time. She liked to look at the plants as she walked by them, recalling the names of a few and wishing she could remember people’s names just as well. Biology was the only major that seemed to fit just right. Her bedroom back in Spokane had always been filled with flowers, climbing ivy, and little potted trees. She would have to get some new plants for her bedroom here.

Passing by the neighbor’s house, she peeked over to see if she could spot Nameless Phone Guy again. She had lived in Seattle for two weeks now, but had yet to see anyone come or go from his house. The only sign of life was a shiny bullet bike occasionally parked in the driveway.

When she reached campus she had almost broken a sweat. Despite spending a week on campus for orientation and advisor meetings and three days of classes after that, she still had to pull out her map.

It was a good ten minutes before she reached the correct building and made it to the second floor for her English class. The door clicked behind her and a knot formed in her stomach. She couldn’t see the professor anywhere. She couldn’t even remember what he looked like even though she’d just been in this class on Friday. She was in the correct class. Right? She had English Mondays and Fridays for two and a half hours. School had started on a Wednesday last week, so she’d only been here once. She was too embarrassed to dig in her bag for her schedule
.

Her experience with the entire high school student body turning against her last year should have numbed her to other people’s opinions, but it hadn’t. It had only made her anxiety worse.

She closed her eyes for a moment, focusing on her dad’s voice when he’d told her to visualize how she wanted other people to see her when she felt out of her element.

“A fish can’t turn itself into a bird,” he’d explained, “so think of yourself as a bigger fish, that’s all. Still be
you.
”

He’d said that when they were out deep-sea fishing on one of his friend’s boats. He and Avery tried to go once a month between his deployments. She remembered the salty breeze and the fishy smell of the nets covered in shiny scales. A pang of sadness washed over her as she realized she hadn’t been fishing since he’d died.

Why was she thinking about this
now
?

Taking a deep breath, she blinked away what could easily have been a wave of tears and tried to visualize herself as confident and relaxed. She scanned the occupied desks in front of her, finding an empty seat next to a guy who looked vaguely familiar. He had light blue eyes she probably wouldn’t remember later. She focused on his hands, curled around a brand-new pen. Hands were always easier for her to remember than faces. His were medium-sized, with all the fingernails chewed but not too far down, stubby pinky fingers, and moderately tanned skin.

“Hi again,” he said, grinning. “Saved a seat for you.”

“Oh, uh, thanks.”

She returned her attention to his face as she sat down. He had a nice symmetrical face with prominent eyebrows and a strong jawline. Something fluttered in the back of her mind. She must have seen him on Friday, but she couldn’t remember anything from the encounter. It must have been brief. She hoped he hadn’t noticed her memorizing his hands. Awkward.

She pulled her bag off her shoulder and slid it neatly under her chair. Did he want her to say something else? The desks were uncomfortably close. If she moved her arm too far she would probably brush his elbow.

“You look a little nervous,” he said, leaning closer.

She tried not to blush, realizing someone actually
was
giving a crap about her nervousness.

“Yeah,” she answered in almost a whisper. “For a minute I thought that I was in the wrong classroom, that’s all.”

A soft smile spread across the guy’s face. It may or may not have been expressing pity. She couldn’t tell. “This is my second year. I’ve walked into wrong classes before, so you’re not the only one. Besides, you must be pretty smart to take this class as a freshman.”

She tried to keep her smile strong, wondering how he knew she was a freshman. She must have told him on Friday. “Not really. I just took concurrent enrollment classes in high school.”

He leaned even closer, his elbow brushing hers. A little shiver of excitement rippled through her, but she wasn’t about to react to it. For her, relationships with guys were dangerous. But dang, he was hot in a way Ryan had never been. He was wearing a nice pair of chocolate brown corduroy pants and Vans that looked like they’d been tracked through a mud hole. Why all of that was attractive to her, she had no idea. She liked the creases around his eyes and how he kept leaning closer to her, as if he wanted to get to know her right away. This was weird. This was not normal. This was … nice.

She looked at his face again, wondering if she would remember the soft sweep of his almost-blond hair contrasting heavily with his dark eyelashes, or the way he bit his lip before opening his mouth to say something else.

Before he spoke, a loud, “Good morning, class!” from the professor at the front of the room made her jump. Her elbow slammed into Nail Biter’s elbow, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“Don’t be so nervous,” he said with a laugh. “I know we barely met on Friday, but I hope we can keep sitting by each other.”

She let out a heavy breath and nodded her agreement.

No big deal. He was right.

She needed to be herself, just like her dad had always told her.

She pulled out a notebook and turned to face the front of the room where the lanky professor she now recognized began his lecture. She started writing, her focus quickly drifting away from Nail Biter. He and his pretty dark eyelashes would have to consume her attention some other time or she’d never remember what was covered in class. Writing everything down was crucial. Nobody else was taking notes, so she tried to write as discreetly as possible.

Halfway through class, she peeked over at Nail Biter’s face one last time and then slid her pen over to the margin in her notebook and wrote:
Long eyelashes. Light blue eyes. Angular features. Nail biter.

* * *

When class was over, she rushed out of the room before Nail Biter could talk to her again. She only had a few minutes to make it to her biology class. She found it and made it through without speaking to anyone. When that class finished, she slipped down the hallway and out the main doors. The clouds had cleared and the sky was a bright blue as she walked across campus and came to the quad filled with cherry trees. She had heard the trees were beautiful in the spring when all the blossoms opened into an explosion of pink. A quick search on her phone informed her they were Yoshino cherry trees.

Making a mental note of the name, she kept walking. It was helpful that she could remember
some
things. Getting into college would have been impossible otherwise. It was
people
she forgot most, which was why she had notebooks just for them
—
usually a new one every month or two. They were notebooks she had never shown a living soul, not even Tam, her ex-best friend who knew the full extent of her forgetfulness and the damage it could cause.

Avery’s stomach growled and she pulled out a map to find where she could get some lunch. She hadn’t eaten much breakfast, and now she was regretting it. Most everything was off campus, but when she checked her watch she realized she only had fifteen minutes to find food, order it, eat it, and get to class.

Finally remembering the food trucks she saw the week of orientation, she headed in that direction and stopped in front of the one with the shortest line. She stared at the menu, confused.

“Cream cheese?” she asked the guy when she finally got to the window with eight minutes left before her class began.

“Yeah, we got cream cheese,” the guy answered as he pulled at the elastic wrist of his clear plastic glove and looked at her like she was crazy.

“No, I mean, does that taste good? I’ve never heard of that on a hot dog.”

“Of course it tastes good
—
if you like cream cheese.”

“You have to try it,” a voice behind her said, and she turned sideways to see who it was. A pair of blue eyes met hers. Was this Nail Biter? She looked for his hands, but they were shoved into the pockets of his brown slacks. Great. Maybe it was him. Did he have dull blond hair like this guy? Or darker hair? She remembered the eyes, at least, and something about his features reminded her of squares
—
her mom’s squares she used to sketch angular faces. Yes, it had to be Nail Biter. She had seen someone else in the past week with a face like that, but she couldn’t remember who it was, or if it was all the same guy.

She opened her mouth to say she was sorry she had rushed out of class, but he spoke first.

“Everybody around here likes it.”

“Thanks,” she answered, and turned around to order. She wasn’t sure what else to say without launching into a conversation, which she didn’t have time for. Punctuality was something her parents had drilled into her since the day of her birth when she had arrived at precisely 12:00 a.m.

The guy at the window handed her the cream cheese and grilled onion hot dog and she moved out of the line.

“Hey,” Nail Biter said before she had a chance to rush off. “I’m Owen.”

She looked down at his outstretched hand. She could see his thumbnail. It was chewed.

“Avery,” she answered, accepting the handshake. Owen’s hand was warm and his grip steady. He gave his order to the guy at the window before turning back to her.

“Maybe I’ll see you in class,” he said with a quick wink. “Or next time you’re ordering a hot dog. You’ll be hooked. Promise.”

She gave him a warm smile and looked down at her watch. The face was cracked diagonally across the middle, but the hands ticked as faithfully as a heartbeat. Her dad had given it to her. As long as it kept working, it felt like a part of him living on. “Thanks. I gotta go. Class in two minutes.”

He nodded goodbye and she took off.

Owen. Owen. Owen. O. O. O. Remember the O.

“Hi, Avery!”

She looked up to see a girl with dark brown hair waving at her as she hurried by. Forcing a smile, Avery waved back. She had no idea who she was or where they’d met, and part of her was too tired to try to remember. She kept walking.

Owen. Owen.

If she hadn’t been so busy shoving the hot dog into her mouth, she would have stopped to write his name in her notebook. But he was right. The hot dog was amazing.

* * *

Chloe never talked about her job at home, but now that Avery was sitting next to her in the basement of the main library, she wouldn’t shut up about it. The smell of old books was heavy in the air. It was almost stifling, mixed with a tangy, glue-like stench and Chinese food. The Chinese was from Chloe’s lunch. She slurped a noodle as she grabbed a book out of the huge stack on the wide worktable.

“Attention to detail is everything,” Chloe said in between bites as she focused on the book in front of her. “Book repair is an art.”

Avery wondered if Chloe should be eating around these fragile books, but she kept her mouth shut. “I’m really glad for the job,” she answered, smiling. “Thanks again.”

Chloe opened the book, revealing sheaves of loose, yellowed pages and a broken spine. “Heaven should be here any minute. She’ll teach you everything you need to know. Might take a few weeks, but you’ll learn it all.”

“Heaven?”

Chloe took a huge mouthful of rice and mumbled, “Oh, yes, you’ll love her. She adores it down here. Favorite place in the world. I’ve never seen anyone repair books like she does. Hopefully she’ll teach you everything she knows so when she graduates next year I’ll still have you. I don’t have time for this stuff and hardly anyone else wants to do it.”

Looking around, Avery wondered what kind of person would find this place better than anywhere else. Upstairs was incredible. The reading room was a grand space with a vaulted ceiling and countless rows of study tables, but down here it was practically a tomb
—
dank, dark, and musty. Metal shelves spanned the length of the room, filled with books needing repair. Even the walls were yellow, like old paper. Avery would have to put some plants and sun lamps down here or she’d go absolutely bonkers.

Chloe started explaining the basics of book binding repair and Avery tried to keep up. Taking notes was impossible. Chloe was showing her stuff about headbands and natural twine, none of it hair-related, when a thin girl dressed all in black walked into the room.

“Finally got me some help in here, huh, Chloe?” she asked as she set down a big black bag made out of what looked like zippers sewn together. Her skin was a pretty sort of pale, like angel food cake, and her dreadlocks were dyed a deep fire-engine red. They hung all the way to her hips. Avery was sure she wouldn’t forget her anytime soon.

“I’m Avery,” she said, reaching out a hand. Heaven stared down at it like it was something foreign, and Avery finally lowered it.

“Chloe’s told me all about you,” she said in a kind voice. A smile spread across her lips as she walked around the table and sat next to Avery … then scooted several inches away. Avery noticed her long legs were covered in black Victorian lace stockings. “How are you liking classes?”

“They’re all right so far,” Avery answered as Heaven arranged things on the table in front of them. It was cluttered with everything from cups stuffed with paintbrushes and rulers to stacks of pre-cut waxed paper, balls of twine, scissors, and who knows what else. Avery figured she’d learn what everything was for eventually.