A Need So Beautiful (A Need So Beautiful #1)(29)
Author: Suzanne Young

During our last visit, Lourdes told me that her husband didn’t remember their honeymoon. He claimed that they never had one. She pressed him and tried to find the pictures to prove it, but they were gone. Instead her husband said they stayed home, although he couldn’t remember exactly what they did. So she stopped going back to her house. She gave up.

The memories will become foggy—like the person never existed. The writings, pictures . . . all gone. It seems that all that’s left behind is space. Empty spaces or the tricks that the mind uses to fill the time. Filling it with familiar things, almost like how you can drive home without ever having to think of where to turn.

Lourdes’s husband asked me if I was some kind of freak when I showed up at their place. He didn’t remember his wife, and I’m just glad they didn’t have children. I’ll miss her.

3/8

Today I went to see Theresa but she was gone. Her room at the hospital was empty and the nurse couldn’t remember ever having treated her. Again, I’m the only one to hold her memories, and it hurts. She was my friend. I feel lost without her.

She never had children, which is another common thread among her kind. They do not reproduce. There’s no one to remember them but me. And eventually they all withdraw from society when the forgetting becomes too painful, until they disappear from it completely.

I’ve asked myself a million times, Why me? Why am I the one who sees them? From all of my research with religions and early societies, I’ve learned that the other Seers throughout history were thought to be clairvoyant, or ill. But I’m no fortune-teller. I’m cursed with knowing ghosts. I wish I could meet another Seer, but they’re hard to find. I have yet to meet someone else like me, even though I know from the scriptures that they’re out there. Searching for their lights to guide. I’m waiting for my last Forgotten. And when he or she comes, the light will be different. Stronger. It will let me go. I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to be free of this.

I start flipping through the pages, trying to find out where I come in. I find passages about the Forgotten crossing over, the brilliant burst of light as they fall from some high place so that they can scatter. How it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. But I’m starting to hate the word “beautiful.” There’s nothing beautiful about me. And then I find a page that makes me gasp.

8/12

I met her today. Onika Nowak was standing in front of the college when I walked by. As she and I exchanged a glance, a woman in an old Chevy drove up and yelled to her in Russian. She pretended to not hear the woman, but I suspect it’s her mother. I could tell by the way she ignored her. It was kind of cute. Onika is in my class and she’s beautiful and blond, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. She is

The page stops, likes he’s cut off mid-sentence. Like something important had happened, stopping him. I read over the entry again. And then again.

A memory floods back and I can hear Onika tell me that Monroe used to be her Seer. “Oh my God,” I murmur. She didn’t cross over. She’s still here, which means that Monroe does know how to stop this. I start shaking with the first real possibility of it.

My heart pounds wildly in my chest as I turn the page.

8/24

Onika and I are going out tonight. She said she’d eat Italian, Thai, or anything that’s not Russian. I think it’s because of her mother. I don’t blame her. Onika makes me feel normal again. I think I’m falling in love with her.

From there, the journal jumps wildly. Some pages are blank. Some are just one-sentence bits of nonsense. By the next full entry, nearly three months had passed.

11/30

It’s happening. I don’t know how I didn’t see it sooner, how I didn’t know she was a Forgotten. I can’t lose her like the others. I have to stop this.

My eyes widen. Monroe was so insistent that there was no cure, but he had tried for Onika. It worked, so why not for me? Doesn’t he care about me, too?

The entries turn into formulas, medication combinations, and lists of names. It’s becoming frantic, impersonal. I start blazing through the pages, looking for the result.

1/6

She found me today in the lab. I injected her with vitamin E and collagen. She said it hurts but that it’s working and her skin is staying on. But I think she’s lying to me, and I think she’s been lying a lot.

She’s holding back the impulses. I’ve restrained her the last few times, and it seems to pass, but only with a lot of pain. It’s hard to watch. But she’s going to classes again, trying to be really present in life, which is completely the opposite of how the other Forgotten let their lives go. But something’s wrong. She’s acting different. But I don’t know what to do. She tells me to trust her.

I scan the next few entries, each one becoming more desperate. Monroe isn’t saying what’s happening to Onika, but with each new page, his notes become more clinical. And then, they stop all together. A chunk of about fifteen pages has been torn out, only jagged edges left behind.

What happened to her? I turn back to the beginning to look again for clues.

“Charlotte?”

I jump, startled by my name being called from the kitchen. What? What time—? I glance at the clock and feel completely disoriented. School starts in thirty minutes but it seems that only seconds ago it was nighttime. Behind my bedroom window, the sun is peeking out over Portland. I pick up my phone from the side table and see that I’ve missed four calls. All from Sarah.

I lost a huge piece of time and I want to keep reading, try to figure out the formulas. If anything worked. But just then, I get a text from Sarah.

Need you today. Are you alive?

I look at the journal in my lap, then back at my phone. The smell of bacon is wafting into my room, but I don’t want to get up yet.

Not coming today, I text back.

I’m about to go back to the journal when my bedroom door swings open, scaring the hell out of me.

“Hey,” Alex says, standing there and buttoning his wool coat. “Mercy’s looking for you. You’re going to be late.”

“But . . .” My phone vibrates. I don’t look at it because I know Sarah’s going to cuss me out, or worse, be nice. Sarah uses sweetness as a weapon. The journal is in my lap and I look at Alex.

“That dinner was intense last night, right?” he asks. “I thought Georgia was going to cut you.”

“Thanks for having my back,” I murmur.

He laughs. “I would have gladly backed you up, but I had no idea what you were talking about. I didn’t know you got hit by a car. Not until the next day when I came in here to steal your moisturizer. You need to lay off the weed, sister.”