The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 2

The world began to forget me when I was sixteen years old.

A slow declining, one piece at a time.

My dad, forgetting to drive me to school.

My mum, setting the table for three, not four. “Oh,” she said, when I walked in. “I must have thought you were out.”

A teacher, Miss Tomas, the only one in the school who cared, full of faith in her pupils, hope for their futures, forgets to chase the missing homework, to ask the questions, to listen to the answers, until, finally, I didn’t bother to put up my hand.

Friends, five who were the heart of my life, who I always sat with, and who one day sat at another table, not dramatically, not with “fuck you” flair, but because they looked straight through me and saw a stranger.

A disassociation between name and face as the register is called. My name is remembered, but the link is broken; what is Hope Arden? A scrawl of ink without a past; no more.

First you forget my face, then my voice, and at last, slowly, you forget my consequences. I slapped Alan, my best mate, the day he forgot me. He ran from the room, horrified, and I ran after him, red with guilt. By the time I found him, he was sitting in the corridor of the science block, cheek flushed, rubbing at his face.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Face hurts a bit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay; not like you did nothing.”

He looked at me like a stranger, but there were tears in his eyes when he spoke. What did he remember then? Not me, not Hope Arden, the girl he’d grown up with. Not my palm across his face, not my screaming until the spit flew, remember me, remember me. His pain was diminishing, taking with it memory. He experienced sorrow, rage, fear, these emotions glimmered in his eyes, but where were they from? He no longer knew, and the memory of me crumbled like sand castles before the sea.