Change Places with Me(36)

“I’m at Forget-Me-Not.”

There was a pause on the other end. “Oh. So this is Dr. Star’s phone? Is she with you?”

Rose looked at the lady. “Are you Dr. Star?”

The lady turned the nameplate around. It said DR. .

“Yes,” Rose said into the phone.

“Stay right there. I’m on my way.” Evelyn hung up.

“She’s on her way, Dr. Star,” Rose said.

Dr. Star started swiveling again. “You might as well know, it’s not my real name—everyone who works at Forget-Me-Not is Dr. Star. We’re affiliated with the practice at the mall in Spruce Hills, called Memory Lane. Everyone there is Dr. Star, too.”

“Isn’t that kinda awkward? Everyone who comes here meets Dr. Star, so if they tell someone about it later—”

“But that’s the point. People don’t remember coming here—at least they’re not supposed to.” She gave Rose a wary glance. “And nobody else knows about what’s happened, either, not husbands or wives or children or friends or coworkers. It was different with your stepmother—she had to know because by law you’re a child.”

“So you met her. . . .”

“Last Saturday.”

“While I was at the zoo,” Rose said with some force. “I mean, the Bronx Global Conservation Center.”

Dr. Star was shaking her head. “We should wait for your stepmother, but . . . Rose, you were right here with me. Evelyn was in the hall, reading a book. You said your dad had taken you to the zoo when you were a child, so a visit to the zoo was, shall we say, arranged. We’re very thorough; we give plenty of visual and auditory cues, animal images and videos, and the brain fills in all the rest—the smell of the animals, maybe the silky feel of alpaca hair at the petting zoo, or the taste of an ice-cream sandwich.”

“There was no weather.”

“It was a cool fall day with late-afternoon sun. That should’ve registered.”

“The zoo was all wrong today.”

“Oh, you actually went to the zoo? That’s not good.” She tsked.

“I don’t understand.” Rose felt dizzy. The chair tightened its grip even more. “What memories were erased? And why would my stepmother force me to do this? I’m happy, finally happy, bursting with happiness.”

“Rose—”

“She’s always dragging me to doctors and therapists and treatments. They don’t work. They’re not for me. This couldn’t have been my idea.”

Dr. Star considered her for a moment. “Well, it was and it wasn’t.”

The intercom buzzed.

“Goodness, Rose, you only called her five minutes ago! What did she do, fly here?” Dr. Star got up to answer the buzzer, leaving the door wide open behind her.

“I’m here for my daughter,” Evelyn said over the intercom, breathlessly.





CHAPTER 23


Rose got up, took a couple of steps, and caught a glimpse of Evelyn out in the hall. Evelyn didn’t look well. Her skin was splotchy and raw; her hair, unbelievably, unkempt. And she’d forgotten a book.

Rose, with all her compassion, should’ve hurried to her stepmother and said a few words, but she couldn’t move any closer. Evelyn knew about Forget-Me-Not, about the obliteration of memories. How could Evelyn have done this to her, something so sweeping, so invasive, so . . . what was the word her dad had used about Evelyn?

Everlasting.

Dr. Star came back and closed the door, leaving Evelyn in the hall. “Please sit, Rose. We need to sort you out, help you remember everything. Company policy, should someone find his or her way back to the facility.”

Rose still stood there. “Can I sit somewhere else?”

“Everyone loves that chair!” Dr. Star said, sitting in her swivel chair and swiveling. “They want to order one and get frustrated when I tell them they’ll never remember even sitting in it.”

Rose sank into the chair, which molded itself to her body like a marshmallow with muscle.

“First,” Dr. Star said, “you need to be reminded . . . that is, you need to be told what it is we do and don’t do here. ME—that’s what we call Memory Enhancement—is not memory alteration, or erasure, or anything like that. All of your memories, every single one of them, have been and always will be yours.”

But that didn’t make sense. It did nothing to explain why Rose was so overwhelmingly confused. She did her best to listen carefully, follow every word.

“Memory erasure is, frankly, barbaric. The consequences can be disastrous, with devastating side effects that can be worse than the original memories themselves. Remember Hypno-Friends? Don’t get me started on that fiasco. The only memory we actually manipulate is the memory of your visit—three hours, give or take, the trivial amount of time you spend here with us. It’s crucial that you don’t remember going through the ME procedure. This is because your conscious mind simply wouldn’t accept the fact that we can accomplish in hours what usually requires months, if not years, of psychological treatment. No matter the problem, it can be solved as easily as popping a balloon. We can’t have you recalling that, can we? But, once again, all your memories are right where they should be, perfectly preserved. Aside from your memory of last Saturday, that is.” She turned her computer screen to face Rose and clicked it on. “Here, this will explain it.”