As I entered the classroom, a girl across the room waved and smiled at me. I smiled and waved back before sitting down in the first empty seat I could find. Class was as entertaining as ever, that is to say not at all. Afterward the same girl approached me.
“Hey,” she said.
“Um, hey,” I said back.
“So are you ready to go?” she asked.
“Sure just let me write down a note in my planner.” I pulled out my day planner and opened it to today. The page was blank. Had I forgotten to write down what ever this girl and I had planned to do? Was she tricking me?
“What does it say we’re going to be doing?” she asked.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“You forgot that we’re doing something and were checking your external memory to see what we had planned,” she explained my own actions to me.
“How do you know that?”
“Cause you told me,” she sighed, “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Of course I remember you,” I lied.
“What’s my name?”
“It’s Lara,” she shook her head, “Kelly?” another head shake, “Mary Poppins?” That time she laughed.
“My name’s Rosie.”
“Rosie of course that was going to be my next guess,” I said.
“No it wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked
“Cause you forgot me again.”
“Again?” Oh dear, I had forgotten her before and she now she was probably mad at me. But she didn’t look mad. She looked bemused.
“Yep. Ok cliff’s notes version: You and I are friends. This is the seventh time you’ve forgotten me.”
“I told you about my memory loss?” I asked her.
“You told me that you can’t remember much past five years ago. Stuff you learned like history and math is all there you just don’t remember everything else. You’ve had to learn about your childhood secondhand from your parents. You don’t remember anyone you went to school with or what classes you took or even if you ever had a girlfriend. It’s easy for you to forget new people if you don’t talk to them often. I’m some kind of extra weird anomaly because even through we talk on a regular basis you still completely forget me every once in a while.”
“Yeah so, we going somewhere?”
“Yeah, you hadn’t forgotten me in over three months and we thought you wouldn’t forget me again. We thought I was safe from being forgotten,” her voiced caught slightly in her throat, “We were going out on our first date.”
“Oh,” I said quietly.