Olivia Christakos and Her Second First Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

her face. “So you’re saying that—”
    “She’s forgotten who she is.”
    The quiet in the room hurts my chest, or maybe it’s panic seeping in. I’m not ready to hear this. I want to tell them to go talk somewhere else. I start to breathe rough and I grow dizzy. “Could you...slow down?”
    I close my eyes and I’m spinning around inside. I’m on a dark carousel from Hell. I’m hot and sweaty and I can’t think. When I try, I fall into a hole. There’s no light. There’s nothing. Just darkness, and I can’t climb up.
    I throw up my hands to cover my face. “Uhhh...” The sound rolls from my throat.
    “Let’s lie you down,” the doctor says.
    The bed makes a sound and vibrates. It straightens and lowers me. My stomach rolls again. Acid burns my throat.
    “Drink some more,” the boy next to me insists, slipping the water glass back into my hand. “You’re on a lot of medication and you’ve had a hell of a morning. Try to stay calm.”
    I don’t want to listen to him. If I had any energy, I would throw the water across the room. How dare he tell me what I’ve been through and what to drink! I will not take a drink just because some Cub Scout leader asked me to. But the more I try not to think about it, the more my throat aches.
    Everyone keeps asking questions and talking about scars on my brain when the doctor leaves the room. I’m offended that he left; he needs to be here until he fixes everything. The man and woman are talking in hushed whispers and I can only pick out a word or two. “Heal” and “regain” and “memory.” I can’t stand it.
    “Could everyone just shut up for a minute?” I say, wrapping my arms around my face to shield my eyes from everything. I want to crawl away. Maybe I can fall back asleep. I ignore all the outside sounds and concentrate on nothing. I don’t know who I am. How could that be? How could a person not know who they are? No, I don’t buy it. I have to know something, something personal. Not everything can be wiped clean. I won’t let it; I’ll find it.
    I concentrate. What’s my middle name?
    Darkness.
    What’s my favorite color? Food?
    More darkness.
    What fucking shoe size do I wear?
    A bucket full of darkness. I’m pathetically swimming around in it.
    My arms are shaking on my face. Tears wet my skin. I don’t like the tears. They make my head feel lighter, but they make my skin grow sticky and hot. A finger traces down one of my arms. The boy’s. I pull away. “Can everyone just leave?”
    The woman speaks. “I think you should push yourself.
Try
to remember something. Maybe if you can latch on to one memory, just one, you’ll remember everything else.”
    I shake my head violently, ignoring the blast of pain shooting through me. “I don’t want to!”
    “I understand that Olivia,” she presses, “But—”
    “Look at me.” The weird guy cuts her off. “You said you recognize my clothes. Look at my face again. We’ve known each other a long time. You can trust me.
Look
at me.”
    I grip the water glass, wanting to throw it in his face. But I also open my eyes. A feeling wriggles in my belly when I stare at his soft face, but the feeling is too hard to categorize. Familiarity? Recognition? Should I know him? Or is he tricking me? They can’t all be tricking me.
    I shake my head again and cover up my face. My anger and confusion turns to tears. Lots of them. And everyone lets me cry. No one says a thing; no one moves or seems to breathe. The only sound in the room is my sobs and they are so pathetic and they wrack my pained body. I try not to feel sorry for myself, to calm down, to think about things. I’m reeling in emotion and confusion and there’s nothing I can do.
    I fall asleep, and when I wake up, the light in the room has changed drastically. I see only blackness out the window, but there’s a soft, yellowy-orange light in the corner. The man and the woman from earlier are huddled together on a chair, staring at a