The Memory Thief Read Free

but—”
    â€œAnd I won’t. Why can’t you believe me?” He strokes my hair. His blue eyes are wet, the lashes matted. “Listen,” he says. “I swear I’ll come back to you, all right? I promise I will come home.”
    I know this is supposed to make me feel better, but it has the opposite effect, like he’s shaking a fist in the face of fate. “You can’t make a promise like that, Aidan,” I say, my voice uneasy. What I really want to say is,
Take it back.
    He holds his fingers to my lips, shushing me. “Don’t worry, Maddie, okay? Don’t worry, honey. Don’t worry.” His mouth takes the place of his fingers, and he kisses me like he is pouring out everything he wants to say, like he is trying to leave part of himself here with me. “I love you,” he says. He says it again and again. “You’re my life,” he says, kissing my neck, my breasts, my face. “You and Gabe are all I’ve got. I can’t lose you. Do you hear me?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œTell me it’s going to be all right, then.”
    â€œNo,” I say. “I can’t tell you that.”
    He gives a long, frustrated sigh. “Then tell me you love me, at least. Say it now so I can hear.”
    â€œI love you,” I tell him. “I love you more than you know.”
    He grins at me through his tears. I can see it in the light that filters in from the street, from the headlights of passing cars. “Not as much as I love you.” It is an old joke between us. “But I can deal with that.”
    â€œYou’re wrong.”
    â€œNo,” he says. “I’m not.” And then he kisses me again, and he is making love to me there on the couch in the dark, both of us still crying. There is a desperate edge to the way we come together, each of us afraid that we are going to lose the other—him to the mountain, me to whatever mysterious forces drive couples apart. Remember this, I tell myself as he arches over me, as I rise to meet him. Remember.

Two
Nicholas
    I am somewhere. Where, I am not sure. It doesn’t seem to matter. A big white room, maybe, or a dark tunnel. Sometimes there are flashes of light, explosions of bright color that I watch with interest. Then they go away again, and there is nothingness, like when you stare up at the ceiling of a room at night with the lights turned off. None of this bothers me. It is quiet where I am, for the most part, and peaceful.
    I’m unaware that my body has been gone until it starts coming back, in sharp, alarming gusts of pain that fade as quickly as they come on. My legs, my chest, most especially my head. I try to figure out why this should be, but come up with nothing. Then there are voices, and a needle, and the pain retreats again. Back I go to the big white room. I lie there, waiting to see what will happen next. It occurs to me that maybe I should panic, but what would be the point? Besides, I don’t seem to have the energy, what with the flashes of light and the pain and everything. So I lie still, there inside my head in the big white room. And possibly, I fall asleep, assuming that I was awake to begin with. The reason I think this is that I am suddenly cold, and instead of seeing the big white room or the dark tunnel around me, I see the side of a mountain, which I am climbing. I can feel my body again, and it doesn’t hurt. In fact, it feels pretty damn good, and I am—happy.
    I climb and climb and watch the sun rise. Even through my glacier glasses, it burns my retinas, but I refuse to look away. They are opposing elements, fire and ice, and I am caught in the middle. The light is pitiless, shining from the sun, reflecting off the snow. It washes me clean, lays me bare.
    For a moment I am frozen. There is no
before,
there is no
after.
There is only me, strapped to this hunk of rock, something the earth coughed up when it was having an off day. I