Change Places with Me(37)

An ad started, in highest res and surround-stereo. It featured a young woman in a red convertible. “I got hit by a car last year and had to get seventeen stitches in my leg,” the young woman said cheerfully. “But it was more than a scar. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t even cross the street. I just stayed inside my house, a prisoner of fear. Until I went for Memory Enhancement!”

We erase only the pain, flashed across the bottom of the screen. You’ll still be you, with your memories intact . . . a happier you.

“All it took was one session to give me a whole new outlook. Memory Enhancement doesn’t erase or alter the memory of the accident. Imagine the complications! What about my family, my friends, everyone who had seen me in the hospital and in rehab? No, I remember the accident perfectly—Memory Enhancement simply dissociates the emotions I have from the memory itself, and replaces them with serenity and understanding. My new attitude? Accidents happen! No biggie! Of course, I don’t remember getting my memory enhanced. I thought I’d spent the day at the gym. Just look at me now,” she said, turning the corner, hair streaming in the wind. “Accidents happen!” she called out again with a big smile. “No biggie!”

There were words on a crawl below the woman as she spoke: Actress portrayal. Based on composite events. Results may vary.

She had seen this ad before. She’d woken from a nightmare, gone to the living room, sat in the blue chair, opened her phone, and watched videos for the rest of that night, until it got light outside.

But she hadn’t been Rose, then.

“Did I do this?” she said quietly, almost to herself.

“No,” answered Dr. Star. “You, Rose, did not.”

“So, I mean . . .” God, she was really starting to freak out here. Panic filled her throat, and waves of sadness washed over her, and there was anger, too, coursing through her veins. These feelings so clearly didn’t belong to Rose—they had to be connected to something she couldn’t remember, despite Dr. Star’s insistence. “I had something erased. I must have. Something’s missing. Something with . . . my dad?”

“Rose, I promise you. Your father is still there.”

She thought about Evelyn in the hall, beneath a low-hanging spider plant. “This had to be my stepmother’s idea—so she could take something away from me. It’s the only explanation.”

“Actually, Rose, your stepmother was concerned and asked me, privately, about side effects and risks. There are none that are statistically significant, as I told her. I don’t know how much it helped. She gave her permission, but it was difficult for her—I could see that.”

“No, that can’t be right.” Rose wrapped her arms around herself.

Dr. Star called up another video. “We require proof of consent, in case we need to demonstrate the procedure was done voluntarily.”

The video played.

And Rose saw a crystal clear image on the screen, a girl in a flannel shirt and denim overalls; she had limp brown hair with bangs so long you couldn’t see her eyes. But you could hear her voice clearly. “I fully understand what’s going to happen to me,” she said. “I just want to say that I want Memory Enhancement. I want it more than anything. I want it with every cell in my body.”

“Do you see now?” Dr. Star said.

I didn’t do this, Rose thought, reeling as she recalled what she had known all along. Clara did.

Yes. Clara had wanted this, unquestioningly. She’d shaken Evil Lynn awake at dawn, told her to call the nearest Memory Enhancement clinic. A recording said they opened at nine. She’d sat and waited. Evil Lynn had never heard of Memory Enhancement and talked to her, greatly troubled after an hour of researching it online. There were some problems, Evil Lynn had said; it was too new and untested; it was something to think about for a few days and not leap into. But she’d said Please, over and over, and when Evil Lynn then said yes, she said Thank you. Finally, the office opened. What luck—she could go that afternoon; they’d had a cancellation. Why would anyone cancel anything so miraculous? Don’t plan to do anything afterward, she was told—you’ll just sleep and sleep. Evil Lynn tried to get her to eat breakfast. She wasn’t a bit hungry. Evil Lynn asked if she wanted to sleep a few hours. She couldn’t lie still. She carefully went over the route there on her phone, again and again, memorizing the names of streets, even visualizing all the turns. On the walk over, she didn’t have to refer to the phone once; she could’ve made the trip in her sleep. Evil Lynn kept asking if she was absolutely sure about this.

Yes, Clara was absolutely sure. Because the woman in the red convertible had actually done it.

She had changed places with herself.





CHAPTER 24


“You were given a shot of Alitrol,” Dr. Star said.

“Yes, on my jaw.” She pointed to the spot. “It’s been hurting all week.”

“Unrelated. The needle we use is tiny and doesn’t even leave a mark.”

“Maybe you hit a nerve.”

Dr. Star tightened her lips.

Had Rose just hit a nerve here, too? “If I was a frog, that spot would be my tympanum.”

Dr. Star shrugged at that and turned her screen back to face her. “Last week, the special light we use plus the Alitrol put you into a state we call IT—Irresistible Trance.”