“Something’s missing.”
The words slipped past Anya’s lips, not for the first time. Most days, she could keep them buried under other, safer thoughts. But on warm pleasant days like that one, when it was quiet and peaceful, they had a nasty habit of wriggling out to warm themselves in the sun.
“Hm?” Colton asked after a long minute. “What did you say, Anya?”
They were sitting up on the hill, outside of town, where they’d been told again and again not to go. The city was spread out before them at a distance, light sparking off the chain link fences meant to keep wild animals out.
“Oh… Nothing,” the girl answered, the thoughts skittering away again, back into the dark shade of her mind.
The breeze ruffled her short auburn hair – let down from its usual tight bun – and tried to coax her long skirts up and away from her ankles.
Colton’s tie was loose. He kept plucking at it, though. Anya could almost hear his fingers itching to tighten it. He had never quite been able to match Anya’s eagerness to loosen up. It had taken her weeks just to persuade him to come out to the hill with her after she’d found the broken section of fence.
It had been so odd… Finding the gap in the fence, that is. It had been on another warm day. Her feet had been as rebellious as her thoughts, carrying her to the overgrown, unknown exit, and then past it, until she stumbled onto a little, weed-covered path. It was an escape route – sure to be forbidden if its location were known. It was like it had lain there for years, just waiting for her.
She’d followed the path all the way up to the hill, fighting the sense that she’d done so before, long ago; she’d never felt such a strong case of deja vu in all her life.
“Actually, I did say something,” Anya blurted.
There it goes again, she thought irritably, in regard to her tongue. When she lingered on certain, dangerous thoughts, it became twice as rebellious, spitting out words before she could stop it.
“Something’s missing,” she finished, thinking it too late to turn back.
“What do you mean?” Colton asked, nose wrinkling the way it always did when Anya said something he found odd.
“I don’t know.” Anya shrugged, tilting her head back to face the sun. “Just… Something. Something’s gone… Vanished.”
“Did you lose your handkerchief?”
Anya sighed. “No, Colton. Just forget I said anything. Shall we head back?”
~
“Mother, Father, I’m home!”
Mr. and Mrs. Hazelby poked both their heads into the hallway, smiling.
“Did you have a good time at the duck pond?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“That mean old goose left you alone, didn’t he?”
“Yes, Father.”
Mr. Hazelby returned to his study to finish his reports on that mythical contraption Anya had never been allowed to touch: the computer. Mrs. Hazelby went back to her embroidery; she’d almost finished Anya’s new dress.
Anya stayed in the entryway for a moment, thinking about what to do next. Today wasn’t a day for playing with dolls. She was too restless for a game like that. But there wasn’t much else she could play on her own, and Colton had been dragged home by his mother to do his lessons.
So… It would have to be dolls, then. At least that would keep her from her own lessons and stitching for a while longer. Playing the same old games of pretend with Mrs. Button and Longnose would be – at the very least – bearable.
For the millionth time, her gaze was drawn to the four framed pictures hanging on the wall as she started towards her room. In the first frame, her father. In the frame beside it, her mother. Below hung Anya, smiling in what was once her best dress. All three pictures had the same lighting, the same background… It was obvious that they’d been taken on the same occasion.
The fourth picture was the peculiar one. It had the same kind of frame as the other three, but the photo was an older one, of Anya’s grandparents (whom she’d never met). They wore strange clothing in the picture. Anya’s grandmother even seemed to be wearing trousers, like a boy. But that wasn’t what made Anya stare at that picture a little harder than all the others.
“Something’s missing,” she murmured again. But what?
~
She was sitting with Colton on the hill again just a day later when it happened.
The sun beat down demandingly, ordering her to… To what?
Remember.
She turned her head to say something to Colton, and then it hit her. A sharp ache in her heart. The sudden certainty that she’d done this before. That she’d sat on the hill, next to a boy Colton’s age.
“But I was younger,” Anya thought dazedly. “I was younger, and he was laughing. And it was such a nice day…”
“Anya!”
The girl’s mouth snapped shut, and she stared at Colton blankly, sure the feeling would leave in a minute, as it always did.
I’ve felt this before?
“I think I have to go home,” she said softly. She got to her feet and brushed off her skirts, Colton hurrying after her in bewilderment.
She remembered. Something.
A boy, walking in front of her, showing her the path. Showing her the gap in the fence. Laughing, laughing, always laughing and making her smile. Reading her stories – old books he got from Grandpa and-
No. Not them. Why would he get books from Anya’s grandparents?
Anya felt sick.
She started to run, leaving Colton behind, his shout of dismay not quite making it through her ears and into her head.
Images of the boy – Daydreams? Memories? – were everywhere. Leading her to the hill. Teasing the ducks in the pond near the fence. Running ahead of her and into the house before she could catch up.
Always laughing.
~
“His name is Alex.”
“Excuse me?” Dr. Gordon frowned, making a note on his papers.
“The boy. His name’s Alex.”
Anya tried to hold back tears, her lips stretched into a thin, strained grimace of a smile.
It had been three days since she first started to remember the boy – if she was really, truly, remembering. Her mind kept filling in blank after blank. Suddenly she had explanations for all the little things that had never quite made sense. Like why Father’s study had little toy boats carved into the part of the wall that met the floor, when Anya’s own room had little carved dolls. Like why there were four identical frames for only three similar pictures.
Like why Mother sometimes set four plates on the table instead of three, by mistake.
Anya was so sure the boy existed – had existed – somehow, sometime. Her mind was rising up against her will, battling her, dredging up long-hidden thoughts.
Anya had begun to wonder if she was going insane.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told Colton,” she thought, scowling at Dr. Gordon.
She should’ve known her friend would tell her parents and the doctor. Wouldn’t she have done the same, if a friend of hers started babbling about a nonexistent older brother?
“I don’t know how, but I… I know,” Anya said pleadingly. “I just know. I’ve always felt like something’s missing, and now it’s like… I finally know what. I’m not crazy, Dr. Gordon, I just- I-”
She trailed off, shoulders shaking, and the doctor leaned forward to touch her shoulder, making soothing sounds.
“I know, Anya. I know. No one thinks you’re crazy.”
“That’s just what someone says when everyone does,” Anya said bitterly, crossing her arms in front of herself as tears dripped down her cheeks.
“No, Anya. It’s true. I believe you.”
“How could you? I don’t even believe me!”
“Because, Anya. You’re right. Alex was real.”
The words sunk in slowly. She felt far off, like she was watching everything from a distance, even as everything in her buzzed with relief.
Right. I’m right. Not crazy. He’s real. He…
“Was?” Her voice cracked.
Dr. Gordon looked at her sadly. It was just how Father had looked at her a few years ago, right before telling her that the baby bird she’d been trying to save had died in the night.
“Anya. This village… Is there any crime here?”
She shook her head in confusion. What did that have to do with anything?
“Any longstanding feuds between families? Any serious quarrels at all?”
She shook her head again.
“Well, there’s a reason for that, Anya.” Dr. Gordon fiddled with his pen, rolling it between his fingers, watching it so that his eyes didn’t meet hers. “The population of the city is kept very… pure. To avoid any… conflicts. People who may become ‘undesirable’ are… removed.”
A chill ran down Anya’s spine.
He was choosing his words too carefully. Hesitating. Why is he telling me this?
“Alex-” she began.
“-started to cause trouble,” Dr. Gordon interjected.
“So you just took him away?” Anya said in disbelief. They hadn’t said the word “murder” yet, but the implication was there.
Why is he telling me all this?
“It wasn’t the first time someone had to be removed,” the doctor said calmly. He looked tense – still fiddling with his pen, faster and faster – but the words he’d just spoken (that had given Anya such a sharp sense of dread) were not the cause of his anxiety.
“We have ways to make people forget,” he continued. “Treatments. The people don’t even realize something’s been taken away. No one suffers from the loss. It’s necessary, for the good of the city.”
He paused. “Sometimes the treatment doesn’t stick. People start to remember. So we give the treatment to them again, and that’s usually enough.”
Anya relaxed, just a little bit, though her horror did not lessen. At least she knew why he was telling her; she’d never remember this conversation.
“So that’s what you’ll do to me now, I suppose?” she said in a low voice, clenching her fists. “And I’ll just go back, and never know anything was ever wrong?” Bitterness and accusation fell from her lips.
Dr. Gordon shook his head slowly, giving her that awful, knowing look again. “No, Anya. No.”
He rose from his chair. “With some people, the treatment never really sticks.”
The door to the outside began to open.
“You’re one of those people.”
Two of the city’s most outstanding citizens entered, regarding Anya with that same, sad look.
She began to tremble. “I don’t understand.”
Dr. Gordon stared at her evenly.
“You’ve already been given the treatment, Anya. Many times. You’ve used up all of your chances to forget.”
~
Mrs. Hazelby straightened the third picture that hung in the entryway next to the picture of her parents, just below the portraits of her and her husband. That wedding picture of hers never seemed to hang straight.
She went to join her husband in the kitchen, heaving a heavy sigh. He squeezed her hand fondly. They’d always had a happy marriage, despite the absence of…
“Something wrong?” Mr. Hazelby asked his wife with a frown.
“No, not really,” she answered. “I’m just in one of those moods of mine… Celine’s daughter is engaged. Soon Celine will have grandkids crawling about the house.” A wistful smile found its way onto her face.
Her husband began to rub her back soothingly. “And then,” he said, “Celine will be expected to babysit at any given moment, and all her free time will disappear. Dear, you’ve seen how she and Robert fight all the time. You’ve heard them complain about their kids again and again. It’s for the best that we never had children. How about we go for a walk this evening?”
She nodded tiredly.
What he said was probably true. It was probably for the best. Occasionally she harbored some regrets, but it never took her long to remember all of the good things she and her husband would’ve missed if they’d had children.
She almost laughed as she entered her sewing room with a bittersweet glance at the little carved dolls smiling pleasantly where the wall met the floor – the previous owners had probably used the room as a nursery or some such thing.
All her friends were so sympathetic.
They just didn’t realize what they were missing.
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