“Wait here,” the girl says. She frowns at me, then jogs away to get the towel while I’m left standing in the surf.
Not Lo, not Lo. She feels like another person lurking in my head. I don’t want to be her. I try my best to cast her memories away. Think about something else—the house, the house I lived in, and the forest around it, the way it went on forever. So far from the ocean that the world smelled of pine trees and heat. Just as I remember it, though, the memory starts to fade, and I realize I can’t quite remember what pine sap smells like. Salt? No, I’m getting confused; that’s just what I smell right now. Pines are different; they have spindly needles and layered bark. I think. Why can’t I remember?
The girl returns with the towel, wraps it around me. I look at the shore longingly—I want to sit in the sand, I want my body to dry out entirely, but Lo’s voice is in the back of my head: No, no, I live in the water. I can’t go on land like that—
“Naida,” the girl says, and I force Lo away. “Do you remember now?” She touches my shoulder, and her eyes change, get distant, like she sees something I don’t see.
How could I forget the scent of pine trees? They were all over the place in the woods surrounding our house. They shed so many needles that sometimes the ground looked like a red-brown carpet, and during summer thunderstorms, they swayed and thrashed against one another like giants at war.
I want to sit down. I wince and force myself to walk forward. My vision goes bright from the pain. The girl pauses, then loops my right arm over her shoulders. Walking still hurts, but with most of my weight on her, it’s not quite as bad. As soon as we make it to dry sand, I collapse, staring at the trail of my blood leading back to the water.
“Who are you?” I ask her.
“My name’s Celia,” the girl answers. “Celia Reynolds. We met last night—”
“I remember that,” I reply. “Sort of. It feels like it didn’t really happen, though.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Celia answers, words slightly muttered.
“All my memories feel real—but they aren’t complete. There are parts missing.”
“Like what?”
“Like the faces,” I answer slowly. It’s getting dark now; the sun is out of sight over the palmettos behind us, but remnants of its light still cling to the sky. My hands don’t look quite as wrong now, though I’m not sure if it’s because I’m drier or because it’s darker. I look out over the water, try to remember the faces of my family, of the people I lived with. I can see their hair, dark chocolate brown, but that’s it. Their faces are blurry, their voices distorted save for the occasional laugh or when they say my name. I realize I remember exactly how my name sounded on their tongues.
“Do you remember your last name?” Celia asks. I shake my head. “Do you remember… something frightening?”
“What do you mean?”
“When I…” She pauses, swallows. “When I look at your memories, the loudest one is a memory of someone… of someone screaming. It’s so loud it almost covers the rest of them up. I can’t see it clearly.”
Maybe that should scare me, but it doesn’t—how can I be scared of something that I don’t remember? I wish I did. I wish I had all the pieces. She can find a scream in my mind that I can’t. It doesn’t seem fair.
“Who am I?” I ask, not exactly to Celia, though I hope she has an answer.
Celia shakes her head. “I don’t know. Thirty minutes ago, you told me you were Lo.”
“I am,” I answer. “But that feels like a nickname. Like a fake name I give people, because my real name is Naida. It’s always been Naida. Naida…” My last name, it was on the tip of my tongue, it was there… but it’s gone. “I don’t remember anything. Bits and pieces of things, but nothing big. Nothing real.” I look at Celia desperately, and she reaches out to touch me again, closes her eyes. It takes her a few minutes. She moves her hand up and down my arm like she’s reading something beneath my skin.
“I think…” she starts quietly, like she’s not certain. “You have sisters. Or, one sister? It feels like there are two, but I never see the other’s face, never see any sign of her. I must be reading things wrong—”
“I have one sister,” I say, inhaling sharply. My older sister. She taught me how to French braid and painted my face like a cat every Halloween, since that’s all I ever wanted to go as.
“And there’s a sign, on the door of your house. I think it’s your name, I think it’s—”
“Kelly.” The word falls off my tongue simply, perfectly. “That’s my last name. Naida Kelly.”
“Right,” Celia says. She releases my arm, shudders like touching me hurt her. “Sorry,” she says when she notices me looking. “I’ve never done it on purpose before. It isn’t really fun, looking into people’s pasts, and that… that scream…”
I nod, then stare out over the ocean. That’s where Lo lives—that’s her home. Sounds drift down from somewhere above the pier, melodies and hums and generators buzzing. A carnival, it sounds like. I want to go, but… I can’t walk. I’m naked. I’m Naida, but I still look like Lo.
“Can you help me remember anything else?” I ask Celia.
“Maybe. It’s hard to tell,” Celia says. “It’s strange—everything in your head is dark. I think the more you remember, the more I see to help you remember, especially since that scream is in my way.”
“But there’s more, right? There are more memories there, somewhere?”
“Yes,” Celia says. “People block out memories all the time, but they’re always there. Even people with Alzheimer’s, the memories are still there….” She drifts off, like she’s said more than she wanted.
The tide has been creeping in as we talk; it won’t reach us, exactly, but it’s close enough now that occasionally we feel the ocean’s spray. The sky is dark blue, balancing on the edge of night. I keep trying to dig deeper in my memories, see more, but all I can get are glimpses, tiny flashes. Then Celia touches me again, tells me about something she sees in my mind, and it jump-starts my own recollections. Still, they only go so far. After another hour, it’s clear that I’ve remembered all I can—and besides, Celia is starting to look worn from digging through my mind. I feel guilty, move a little away from her so she doesn’t have to touch me again, even accidentally.