The fact that I couldn’t remember seemed problematic, but I had more important things to figure out just then. Like where the hell I was, for one thing.
I pushed up into a seated position and immediately regretted it. My head spun and I gave serious thought to passing out again. Plus, my left shoulder was on fire.
The cat jumped to the floor as I moved and gave me a reproachful look for making his seat go vertical, which seemed a little possessive for a cat I barely knew.
I looked around the room with curiosity. It was small and wood-paneled, but not in the 1970s, shag carpet kind of way. No, this was that dark, rich wood paneling you saw in castles and—well, castles were the only thing coming to mind. My brain really did seem to be slow today.
There was a desk along one wall, with a lamp in one corner and a tissue box in the other. The bed I currently occupied was on the opposite wall—a single twin bed with a red plaid blanket. There was a bookcase on the wall to the right, full of books I couldn’t identify, except for a copy of Madame Bovary that had been pulled halfway out of its shelf. Next to the bookcase was a tall, narrow window that looked out onto the spindly branches of a winter-bare tree, a frost-blue sky visible in the distance.
It was a perfectly nice, cozy-feeling room. There was just one problem.
I didn’t recognize any of it.
And not just in an I’m-visiting-friends-and-woke-up-a-little-disoriented kind of way. I couldn’t even remember coming into the room last night to go to sleep. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember anything about the night before, or the day leading up to it or—holy shit—who I even was.
“What the fuck?” I said to the cat, who sat on a braided rug in the center of the room, washing a paw.
Or, that was what I tried to say. But it came out as an aborted, raspy croak, because the second I tried to force my vocal cords to work, I regretted it. It felt like someone had taken a chainsaw to them. Like if I stuck a hand down my throat, they’d be frayed like fringe on a jacket, or squiggles of cheese after going through a grater.
How is it possible that I don’t know who I am?
I looked at the cat in silent confusion. If anything, his stare grew more judgemental. He continued licking his paw.
I looked around the room again, fear rising in my chest, mixing with the dread I already felt. Something bad had happened. Or was happening. Possibly both. I wasn’t sure, because I wasn’t sure of anything.
There had to be something in the room I recognized, some clue. I staggered to my feet and fell forward with a lurch. I grabbed the edge of the desk at the last minute, barely keeping myself upright. I wasn’t sure if my muscles were just weak or I’d actually damaged something, but standing was a lot harder than I’d expected.
I pushed the old wooden chair out from the desk and collapsed onto it, breathing deeply until I realized that breathing hurt too. I stared down at my hands and noticed, for the first time, that they were cut up, scraped and swollen. The cuffs of my sweater were torn, too, and now that I was becoming a little more aware of my body, I realized I felt damp.
I wrinkled my nose. Was that saltwater?
I pulled out the desk drawers, hoping to find something useful—a calendar or a clock—but all I found was a telephone book from 1983, a stack of Reader’s Digests from the 1990s, a blank, spiral notebook and pen, and some old postcards that said ‘Greetings from Birch Bay, Maine!’ on the back, with a picturesque little fishing village on the front.
Birch Bay, Maine. Could that be where I was? From what I could see out the window, this could be New England. It certainly wasn’t Costa Rica.
But I didn’t remember coming to Maine, and the name Birch Bay didn’t ring any bells, and how the hell was it possible that I could remember where Costa Rica was, and that it was tropical, when I couldn’t even remember my own name?
The fear in my chest was rapidly turning into panic, and I had to swallow around a volcano of tears that threatened to explode. I pushed up from the chair and lunged