I'm currently working on a novel that is deliciously full of teenage angst, and one day I thought, what if I made that ten times worse by giving the main character amnesia? Then I was browsing through writing prompts on Pinterest and this one jumped out at me: "Never had I seen someone look so lost in their own home before." So, I'll be combining the two for this post, just for fun. Enjoy!
"Well, here we are," the brown-haired woman said, pushing open the front door. "We're so glad to have you home."
"Um...yeah. Good to be home, I guess," I replied, staring past her into the unfamiliar hallway.
"Well, don't just stand around. Come on!" The auburn-haired girl who claimed she was my twin sister grabbed my wrist and pulled me forward.
I stumbled over the step, still awkward with the crutches. The girl led me to a door with a handmade sign on it that read: "Jon's Room. Enter at your own risk." For some reason, there was also a drawing on there of a ball that looked like a football but not quite. A rugby ball, my mind supplied, though I didn't know how I knew that. I wasn't sure how I knew what a football looked like, either, for that matter.
The girl urged me into the room, decorated with rugby posters and an assortment of photos on the walls and on the bookcase and dresser. A wide grin split her freckled face. "Come on!" she called as I hobbled forward. I gritted my teeth; was it so hard for her to be patient? And what was she so excited about anyway?
"What?" I groused.
She rolled her eyes. "I'm going to help you remember, of course. That is, if you aren't just messing with us. Because that's definitely something you would do."
What kind of a jerk would pretend not to remember anything after an accident like that? I thought.
"Here," the girl said, lifting a picture frame off the disorganized bookcase. In it there was a family of four: the brown-haired woman, the girl, a man with dusty, rust-colored hair, and a boy who looked just like him. They were all grinning at the camera like they couldn't be happier to be taking a family photo together. "We took this picture at the beach down the road over the summer, because D-Dad said we needed an updated family portrait. That's you, of course," she said, pointing to the boy with his cheeky, freckled grin. Her voice caught when she said "dad." I didn't understand why.
"And this," the girl continued, putting one frame down and picking up another one, "is you, right after the rugby championships last year. Your team took second in the state."
I made a noise of acknowledgement and stared at the same freckled boy, kneeling with a ball like the one on the sign in one hand and a trophy beside him. He wore a blue and white sports uniform stained with mud and grass, the name Long Beach Sharks in bold black letters stamped across the chest. He looked quite proud of himself, despite the spectacular cut across his forehead.
The girl picked up another frame, and so it went for a good thirty or so minutes. Story after story she drove into my mind. This is when you learned to swim. This is you and your best friend. This is you and your favorite surfboard. This is you and your rugby team. This is you and me.
"Enough!" I finally said, cutting her off in the middle of yet another story. She gave me a shocked look tinged with hurt that made me feel slightly guilty. "Look, I appreciate the effort, but my memories aren't going to come back overnight—if they ever do. So just...leave me alone for a bit, okay? I'm a little overwhelmed."
"Oh. O-okay." She tried to smile. "Dinner's at six, so come out if you're hungry."
I tried to smile back. "Okay."
The girl—my twin (apparently) but a stranger—nodded, then she left the room, closing the door behind her.
Once she was gone, I dropped onto the bed. Then I took a moment to look around the room. The people in the pictures were all strangers to me. I hadn't even met "dad" yet. The picture of the boy, especially, made me uneasy. I saw the same face when I looked in the mirror, and I knew plenty about him. But I didn't know him. Nothing in this room—supposedly my bedroom—was familiar. Not even the clothes I wore were familiar. The two voices I could hear out in the kitchen were the voices of strangers. And yet it felt like something was missing, like there should have been one, or even two, more voices out there, laughing and having fun.
A hollow emptiness seized my chest. I pulled my knees up and hugged them to my body. Even with two other people in the house, I'd never felt more alone—or at least, I couldn't remember feeling more alone. I tried to remember something, anything, but everything before I woke up in the hospital was a complete blank. Supposedly I was home, but I didn't know where I was. I didn't even know where the kitchen was. Who ever heard of being lost in their own home? Supposedly I was Jonathan-it's-Jon Mills, but I didn't know who that was. I was home, but I was lost, lost in my own body and mind. Then the emptiness took over.
So what do you think? Feel free to try it yourself. Fingers crossed that I don't decide to rewrite 50+ pages to include amnesia as well as all that other delicious angst.
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