Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch(21)

“Mostly episodic,” I said. “That’s all gone. Some semantic memory is still left though. See, those two types of memory live right next to each other in the brain. They think that some pieces of your semantic memory—like your name or where you’re from—are so connected to the autobiography in your head that they got wiped out right along with it. Other parts of your semantic memory that weren’t as connected are still there.”

“Like what?”

I had to chew on that one a second. “Oh! Okay. Who’s Superman?”

The girl cocked her head. “He’s a superhero.”

“What’s his costume look like?”

She shrugged. “Blue tights. Red cape. Big S on his chest.”

“Now tell me about a time when you read a Superman comic book or saw a Superman movie.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed on the grass between us as she tried to remember. She shook her head.

“See? The idea is that a semantic memory like that survived because it wasn’t as strongly linked to your personal story. It was just something you knew.”

She lowered her head, nodding like she was filing it all away. “How did this happen? The virus.”

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t know, or nobody knows?”

There was something exciting about the way she talked. It made me think of a razor slashing through the air.

“Nobody knows exactly,” I said. “There’s this Founder’s Day thing we used to have in the park every year. Practically the whole town went. They’re pretty sure that was ground zero for the outbreak, but nobody knows where the virus actually came from.”

The girl took that in; then she looked over her shoulder and nodded toward a wide black smudge in the woods out past the northside mansions. “I saw lots of places like that. Houses burned down. Broken windows.”

“Half the people in town lost their memory on the sixteenth. It was”—I swallowed dryly—“a confusing night.”

“Half the town lost its memory? The other half was immune?”

I shook my head. “They weren’t exposed. As far as we know, no one’s immune.”

She looked away. Her grip on the knife tightened. It was a while before she spoke again, and when she did she said, “Am I ever going to get my memory back?”

For the first time, there was the slightest quiver in her voice. Greer told me that every time he’d come across someone who was recently infected, this was the question they circled back to again and again.

He’d usually tell them something vague and hopeful. It’s early yet. People are working on a cure all the time. We have to be patient. I had those exact words all queued up, but when the time came to say them, I couldn’t, not to her.

“There’s a doctor in Manhattan,” I said. “Evan Lassiter. He’s the one they named the virus after. He’s been studying it ever since the outbreak, trying to create a cure or a vaccine, but none of them have worked.”

“So . . .”

“So you’ll be able to make new memories, but no, your old ones aren’t going to come back. I’m sorry.”

The girl was absolutely still. I don’t know what I expected. That she’d cry? Scream? Deny it? According to Greer, that was what most people did. But not her. Her eyes drifted away from me to a patch of grass between us. Her chest rose and fell evenly. I thought about how, over time, everything that happens to us—what we do and see and feel—comes together and makes what we think of as reality. What’s possible. What isn’t. Who we are. What we believe. It was as if the girl was bearing down and rewriting all of those things through force of will alone, finding a way to integrate Black River and Lassiter’s and this new blank slate in her head.

It was pretty amazing.

When the process was done, the girl came out from between the boulders and opened the paper sack. She ate the biscuits and a green apple, right down to the core. I tossed her the bottle of water that was sitting inside her tent. She drained it in a single pull.

“How about some good news?” I asked.

I want to say she smiled then, but it wasn’t quite a smile, more like the ghost of one.

“Somewhere at the bottom of this mountain you’ve got a family and friends waiting for you. You’ve got a name. A home.”

I pointed at the key around her neck. “That probably unlocks the front door.”

Her fingertips went to the key. She lifted it carefully, as if it were made of glass.

“My friend Greer, he’s the best at figuring out who people are. With him on the case we can probably have you back in your own bed by tonight. Once you’re there, well, you won’t remember, but at least you’ll know. You know? And hey, if nothing else, it’d be nice to call you something other than Green-Haired Girl.”

She released the key, then moved away from the edge of the mountain. I backed off as she approached, but she stopped before she got too close. She looked curiously at my mask and then extended her hand.

My knife lay in her palm, the hilt facing me.

“I decided I’m probably not going to have to stab you.”

She couldn’t see it, but I smiled behind my mask.

“Thanks.”

I took the knife, and then she stepped past me and through the veil of trees. I stood a moment in the quiet, looking at the blade and thinking about how its serrations reminded me of the teeth of a key. I slipped it back into its sheath and followed the green-haired girl down the trail.