Undiscovered (Unremembered #1.5)(24)

“Don’t give me ultimatums!” my mom screamed. “I told you, I don’t have a choice! I can’t stop this.”

“You can,” my dad insisted with audible sadness. “You just won’t.”

My mom sighed. I heard heavy footsteps echoing down a hallway, getting farther and farther away.

“Initiate protocol,” my mother called to someone.

Then everything went deathly silent.





18: Enough


I didn’t expect to find anything under the bench the next afternoon. After our failed escape a few days ago, I was pretty convinced they would be wiping her memories nightly. Which was why the small tangle of twigs that had been fashioned into an eternal knot, half buried in the dirt made my heart swell with relief and joy.

But the emotions were quickly hijacked by a flash of suspicion and distrust. Why had they kept her memories intact? Why hadn’t they wiped them? What were they planning now?

I picked up the small wooden symbol and turned to find Seraphina gazing at me from the front porch of the house.

She smiled and walked tentatively in my direction.

I held up the knot. “I didn’t tell you about this symbol the last time.”

“I found it,” she proclaimed. “I found it drawn on the wall next to my bed. I believe I drew it there. As a reminder. I made the assumption that the symbol was a reference to you.”

I smiled. “It was.”

She nodded. “What does it mean?”

I took a deep breath and walked toward her. “I means eternity. It means forever.”

“Forever,” she repeated quietly, playing with the word on her perfect lips. She reached out and touched the knot of twigs. “I like the symbol.”

I never took my eyes off of her. It was an easy thing to do … stare at her forever.

“I know,” I whispered. “It’s your favorite symbol.”

“Why?” she asked, looking up to meet my gaze. My eyes blazed with the connection, heat radiating through my entire body.

I reached out my hand and slowly extended it toward her face. I shivered as my fingertips grazed her flawless skin. “Because you said we are forever. Like the poem.”

“‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare,” she said, referencing our time together just the other night, when I used the poem to trigger her memory of me.

“Yes.”

“Will you read it to me?” she asked.

I smiled. “Always.”

*

Two hours later, the sun was low in the sky, almost completely vanished behind the wall that they built between us. Sera lay with her head in my lap and I softly stroked her hair, trying to commit each individual silky strand to memory.

It felt like a perfect moment.

So perfect, I could almost make myself forget all the ways they tried to keep us apart.

“One more time,” she demanded.

I dragged my fingers behind her ear and tickled her. “Again?” I teased. “But you must have it memorized by now.”

“Of course I have it memorized,” she said. “I’ve had it memorized since the first time you read it. But it sounds so much better when you say it.”

I laughed and picked up the old leather-bound book lying next to me, opening it to the earmarked page. The only poem she ever wanted to hear.

She reached up and touched the worn spine. “Where did you get this?” she asked.

I gazed down at her, loving the way the fading sunlight danced across her face. “From the Diotech historical archives. Is this the first time you’ve seen a real book?”

I knew it wasn’t. I had brought her so many books before. Books I knew she didn’t remember now. She loved the feeling of their soft paper pages, the slightly raised texture of the words. I admitted there was something about them that my slate just didn’t have.

She shook her head, surprising me. For a moment I thought she was going to tell me that she remembered. That the stories and texts I shared with her somehow stayed with her. But she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Rio collects them.”

A dark shadow suddenly passed over us. Everything came screaming back to me like a head-on collision with a hovercopter. Diotech. This house. This prison. Dr. Rio and his infuriating arrogance.

“So are you going to read it or not? Because I don’t have all day.” Her voice was teasing and demanding, it brought me back to her with a chuckle. Just like she had always been able to do.

I tapped her nose with my fingertip and focused back on the book.

I cleared my throat importantly and began to read the sonnet in the most obnoxious British accent I could muster. “‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’”

She batted at my arm. “No! Not like that.”

“What?” I asked, gazing down at her with a coy smile. “You don’t like my British accent? I’m just trying to give you a real authentic experience. Shakespeare was British, you know, so that’s probably how it sounded in his head.”

She giggled. It was like birds chirping, angels singing, everything beautiful wrapped up into one precious sound. “Read it your way,” she insisted.

I smiled endearingly at her. “Okay.”

I had started over so many times with Seraphina. I had watched her unremember and re-remember me over and over again. But this was something I would never tire of reminding her.