After a terrible accident, Gemma is left with no memory of the first twenty years of her life and nobody to turn to who can help her remember. When she loses her job, Gemma sets out on an adventure to find something worth living for. What she doesn'...
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"HAVE YOU STARTED your paper yet?" Chelsea asks after our Formal Writing lecture, as we're packing up our belongings.
I shake my head, and a few strands of hair that must have fallen out of my messy bun sometime during the past hour fall in front of my eyes. Pushing them away, I slip my backpack over one shoulder and look at Chelsea. "I haven't had time. I was at an--" I pause, thinking of an appropriate word to explain my whereabouts without sounding pretentious or raising too many questions-- "event Saturday night."
After I give Chelsea my reason for starting so late, I consider telling her more about the night and about Audrick. Maybe she'll have insight on the situation and on what to do now. But I don't want to relive the moment Audrick kissed me again, and sharing that with her would mean recalling the memory yet again. And that's something my brain already decided to do on repeat when I awoke at two a.m. last night and the night before.
"I can't imagine leaving my dorm at all these next two weeks," Chelsea sympathizes. "I was just going to suggest proofreading each other's papers when we're both finished?"
"Sure. That sounds great, actually. Since I've never written a paper before. You know, the whole memory loss thing."
"I know," Chelsea says matter-of-factly, and there's something in her eyes when they connect with mine that tells me she understands how grateful I am for her help. After all, the only help I can really provide would be typos or grammar. Which, as I've learned over the past few weeks, are actually very tricky errors to catch in my own work; they're just so easy to overlook.
"I'm headed to the cafeteria to grab lunch before returning to my dorm to finish this assignment," she says as we step outside. "Do you want to come?"
"I'd love to," I say, and I really would. "But I lost my phone at this event Saturday night and I want to see if the person I was with has it."
I don't want to see Audrick today. But there's a large chance he might have found my phone, and it would be stupid of me not to check.
The last time I saw my phone was when I left the bathroom at the golf club. My call to the North American Phone Registry only moments earlier turned out to be fruitless. The operator told me nobody with the name of Adam Barkley living in Seattle had their phone number available publicly. He hinted that he could try looking up other family members, and they could give me Adam's number. But I didn't have any names to give, so I just told him I had to go and that I'd call back another time.
After that, I'd gone upstairs to say goodbye to Audrick's parents and then walked with Audrick to the town car. I can't remember if I had it there or on the plane or in Audrick's SUV, but I'm hoping I did and that Audrick might have found it. While I could just send him an email asking, I figure it's easier just going in person since he has an office on campus. Maybe I'll get lucky and he'll have found it and have left it with his secretary.
