Incarnadine

Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

Lucky to be alive. That’s not the first I’ve heard of it.

Most people thought I had gotten raped in the woods because I was found naked with terrible wounds. While I couldn’t remember the event myself, medical results showed that there were no signs that I had been in any sexual encounter. Just the scars from animal mauling, and weirdly, a bullet in my side. A hunter must have mistaken me for prey and shot me, they said. It was a hunting rifle bullet, the kind they used to shoot deer and wolves.

I never wanted to think much about it. Like Mr. Cadwell said, there must be a good reason some things were not remembered, and the mind was better off not remembering anything.

I sketched the fire in my dream on my sketchbook. The house, all in details. I’d done some research in the internet and found that the house in my dream must indeed have been a traditional Japanese home. Almost medieval, even.

In one dream I was by the same beautiful lake that had appeared in my previous dreams. The water was so clear, so soft when my hand went through it. It was early in the morning. The birds were humming a tune that resonated through the forest. And then I bent down and saw my reflection.

Except it couldn’t have been me. It couldn’t have been the me before I lost my memories, because the girl in the reflection wasn’t a girl at all. She—I was a woman. I looked even older than I was now—probably twenty. I was in some ragged traditional clothes—not exactly a proper vintage kimono, but close to one.

Maybe I once lived in Japan? Or maybe it was just my mind making up things. For all I knew it could have been a Sushi parlor in a nearby Chinatown I was imagining on fire. But it had felt too real, too vivid.

“Class, we have a new student today.”

I stopped sketching, folding the cover of my sketchbook shut.

Mr. Harrington was one of my favorite teachers. I didn’t want to disrespect his teaching by not paying attention to him. I prop my chin by my hand, elbows on the desk. And then I straightened, and my hand fell.

Beside him was the guy.

Before, I’d always thought those swooning heroines in the Austen-era fictions were exaggerated. I mean, how could you just plop down gracefully to a set of strong arms because you had a ‘faint heart’? I’d never liked the expression itself. Talking about irony. It felt like the rest of the world had just drowned out, like water down the drain. There was a sound of flapping angelic wings in my ears—or maybe that was just my faint heart galloping faster than a racehorse. My eyes became a bit blurry, like a camera’s auto-focus, and the only thing remaining in clarity was his face.

It was him.

“I’m Duane,” he said to the class. “From Portland.”

The class was silent, waiting for his next word.

“That’s all?” Mr. Harrington asked. “Anything else you want to share with us? Single or taken or—”

“That guy must be gay,” someone whispered behind me. “A guy that hot usually is.”

“Duane,” the teacher pronounced the name into two syllables ‘Du-’ and ‘-ane’ instead of just ‘Dwayne’. “You can sit wherever you want.”

I looked around. The only empty seat in the class was just right beside me.

Duane obliged to the teacher’s command and went to sit beside me.

My heart pounded against my chest, my fingers itching to open my sketchbook to the pages I’d drawn him before. I hadn’t even told Jamie that the guy in the alley was him. Jamie would freak.